THE FALSE REALITY - The Indian Century or India as an emerging superpower is a neologism referring to the possibility that the 21st century will be dominated by India, similarly to how the 20th century is often called the American Century, and the 19th century the British Century. India has served a new deity called Economic Growth and is hailed as a Global Leader, apparently heading in what the smart money believes is the right direction. The myth of progress states that the largest democracy has moved, is moving, and will move in a desirable direction. Progress is inevitable... Indias ascent to New World Power is both true and what Edward Bernays, the founder of public relations, called FALSE REALITY. The notion of FALSE REALITY means fabrication of a false reality that is to be consumed as real. A condition in which what is real and what is fiction are seamlessly blended together so that there is no clear distinction between where one ends and the other begins. False reality requires historical amnesia, lying by omission and the transfer of significance to the insignificant. Year 1991, marks the beginning of liberalisation of the Indian Economy. The barriers protecting industry, manufacturing and agriculture were demolished. Coke, Pizza Hut, Microsoft, McDonalds and Rupert Murdoch entered what had been once a forbidden territory to corporate predators. Limitless growth was now the measure of human progress, consuming both the BJP and Congress, the party of independence. New Shining India would catch up China and become a superpower, a tiger, and the middle classes would get their proper entitlement in a society where there was no middle. As for the majority in the worlds largest democracy, they would vote and remain invisible. There was no tiger economy for them. The hype about a high-tech India storming the barricades of the first world was and is still largely a myth. This is not to deny Indias rise in pre-eminence in computer technology and engineering, but the new urban technocratic class is relatively tiny and the impact of its gains on the fortunes of the majority is negligible. Despite a growth rate of 6.9 per cent and prosperity for some, more Indians than ever are living in poverty than anywhere on earth, including a third of all malnourished children. Every year two million infants under the age of five die. To get the point through, here are a few excerpts & example(taken from a web article) to show that these facades are literal and surreal - When the national grid collapsed in 2012, leaving 70 Crore people powerless, almost half had so little electricity, they barely noticed. Just a few weeks later, the front pages of major news papers boasted that India had gatecrashed the super-exclusive ICBM (intercontinental ballistic missile) club and launched its largest ever aircraft carrier and sent a rocket to Mars: the latter lauded by the government as a historic moment for all of us to cheer. The cheering is inaudible in the rows of tarpaper shacks you see as you land at Mumbai international airport and in myriad villages denied basic technology, such as light and safe water. Here, land is life and the enemy is a rampant free market. Ram Suhavan and his family live 60 feet above a railway track. Their home is the inside of a hoarding which advertises, on one side, exotic, exclusive homes for the new elite and on the other, a gleaming car. This is in Pune, in the State of Maharashtra, which has booming Bombay or moving Mumbai and the nations highest suicide rate among indebted farmers. Most Indians live in rural villages, dependent on the land and its rhythms of subsistence. The rise of monopoly control of seed by multinationals, forcing farmers to plant cash crops such as GM cotton, has led to a quarter of a million suicides, a conservative estimate. Foreign multinationals dominance of food grains, genetically modified seed, fertilisers and pesticides has sucked small farmers into a ruthless global market and led to debt and destitution. More than 250,000 farmers have killed themselves since the mid-1990s - a figure that may be a fraction of the truth as local authorities wilfully misreport accidental deaths. Across the length and breadth of India, the government has declared war on its own people. Using the 1894 Land Acquisition Act, central and state governments have forcibly dispossessed farmers and tribal peoples in order to hand their land to speculators and mining companies. With the use of colonial-era laws, fertile land has been taken from poor farmers for as little as 300 rupees a square metre; developers have sold it for up to 600,000 rupees a square metre. In Uttar Pradesh, a new expressway serves luxury townships with sporting facilities and a Formula One racetrack, having eliminated 1225 villages. The farmers and their communities have fought back, as they do all over India; in 2011, four were killed and many injured in clashes with police. The Largest Democracy succeeded in granting the voting right to a population of over a billion, and today there are 3.2 million elected representatives in the country, yet it fails to build a semblance of social and economic justice. The opportunism is understandable here. India has become a model of the imperial cult of neo-liberalism - almost everything must be privatized, sold off. The worldwide assault on social democracy and the collusion of major parliamentary parties - begun in the US and Britain in the 1980s - has produced in India a dystopia of extremes and a spectre for all. Narendra Modi who was once denied a Visa to the US, is now a darling and a Man of Action for Barack Obama and United States. For Britain, India is now a priority market. In 2010, David Cameron took the heads of the major British arms companies to Delhi and signed a $700 million contract to supply Hawk fighter-bombers. Disguised as trainers, these lethal aircraft were used against the villages of East Timor. They may well be the Cameron governments biggest single contribution to Shining India. Furthermore India has the longest shopping list of Army & Defence hardwares for the western military-industrial complex. In this imperial cult of neo-liberal dangers, there is a ray of hope in which the great popular resistance that gave India its independence is stirring. The gang rape of a Delhi student in 2012, Anna Hazares movement India Against Corruption brought vast numbers into the streets, reflecting disillusionment with the political elite and anger at its acceptance of injustice and a modernised feudalism & Corruption. Across India, the communities have fought back. In Orissa State, the wholesale destruction of betel farms spawned a resistance. In Kashmir, a forgotten India barely reported abroad, a peaceful resistance as inspiring as Tahrir Square(venue in Egypt that marked the beginning of The Arab Spring) arisen in the most militarised region on earth. The voice that the government of India has tried so hard to silence, has now massed into a deafening roar. Hundreds of thousands of unarmed people have come out to reclaim their cities, their streets and mohallas. They have simply overwhelmed the heavily armed security forces by their sheer numbers, and with a remarkable display of raw courage. What is always exciting about India is this refusal to comply with political mythology and gross injustice. This is Indias enduring gift to the world, and those with corrupted power ignore it at their peril.
Posted on: Fri, 12 Dec 2014 10:35:23 +0000
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