WHAT IS THE REAL MEANING OF DEVELOPMENT AND CORRUPTION ? from Faridabad Majdoor Samachar, March 2014. [ • It (Progress or Development) is bad, but it is necessary. “Necessary evil” seemed to be the fate of human beings. To do wrong, not unknowingly, but rather knowingly, became the new epidemic, worldliness. ] • To ruin air, water, and earth.......... to desecrate. To sicken the body and pollute the being. To go beyond the earth and sow the seeds of destruction in outer space. These are the routine activities of progress and development today. And, for such doings, corrupt ideas and corrupt practices, or corruption, is a general necessity. • The bankruptcy of progress and development was proclaimed loudly to the world by the killing of 25 million people between 1914 and 1919 in the course of a war amongst states. And the killing of 50 million people in the war between states during 1939 to 1945 buried any remaining illusions. But the enigma of what in place of progress and development, what option, what alternative, remained. In this context, various forms of naiveté and cunning have been wreaking havoc. • It is bad, but it is necessary. “Necessary evil” seemed to be the fate of human beings. To do wrong, not unknowingly, but rather knowingly, became the new epidemic, worldliness. • During 1965-1970 straight forwardness stirred against crookedness. Mass upsurges ( students movements and workers and peasants uprising in many countries ) made waves the world over. But still, quite some haziness remained. In such a situation, a major wave of technical solutions to social issues arose. It can only be termed tragic that persons with sharp brains, of fast thinking and acute intelligence, get entangled in techniques, thereby increasing the knots. • To breathe life into the corpse of progress and development, scholars and savants unleashed the ultimate weapon of electronics. The whirlwind which arose from electronics, making things go topsy turvy in Western Europe, North America and Japan, razed to the ground structures in Russia and Eastern Europe. The label of the cloak was all that remained in China. WHAT TOOK 100-150 YEARS TO YEARS HAPPEN IN EUROPE-AMERICA-JAPAN HAS STARTED HAPPENING IN 5-10 YEARS IN AFRICA, SOUTH AMERICA, AND ASIA. • The process of women becoming wage workers became very rapid. In Western Europe and North America, from 1970 on, women became wage workers in such large numbers that the term wage workers to connote only men became a thing of the past. In China this pace was so fast that today 80% of the factory workers there are women. In India since 1990, the increasing pace has today made women’s presence amongst wage workers in every sphere significant. In the garment factories in Bangladesh most workers are women........ • The social death and social murder of artisans and peasants has been going on in the world since 200 years. About 80-100 years ago, peasants-artisans had virtually disappeared from Europe and North America, while in large parts of the rest of the world peasants-artisans were significant up until 40 years ago. By the year 2000, in India, artisans virtually vanished, and the speed of the social death and social murder of peasants increased exponentially. Today, all over the world, one sees, on the one side, wage workers upon wage workers, and on the other, ever growing crowds of those being made or becoming redundant- dysfunctional-useless-unemployed. • It is very common now for people to go to places hundreds-thousands of miles away from their places of birth. Production has become so intertwined that for purposes of levying tax, the US Congress taxes its brains over which car to regard as locally made and which to regard as foreign made. • Till 1980-1990, England-Germany-Japan-USA-Russia were regions that had an overwhelming dominance in factory production and the export of manufactured goods. Today China-India-Bangladesh-Cambodia-Vietnam- ..........are regions that have a significant presence in factory production and the export of manufactured goods. • And, the factory mode with its increasing production with lowering of costs has become dominant in every sphere of social life. In retail trade, in place of shops and shopkeepers, we find malls-retail chains-shop workers; engineers are becoming line engineers-technical workers; schools-high schools-universities are explicitly factories for skill and knowledge production, teachers-lecturers are becoming educational workers; doctors in hospitals are becoming medical workers......... • In this scenario, social churning has, of late, become very intense. Myriad forms of practice and thought have shrunk the space for naiveté and cunning to such an extent that they have become irrelevant. It is because of this that the workers in the Maruti Suzuki Manesar factory which was established in 2007 began leaping over hurdles that were regarded as complex and huge, in June 2011, and in July 2012, thousands of workers attacked the two symbols of the wages system, managers and factory buildings. It is because of this that in February 2013 thousands of workers in Noida and Okhla launched attacks on factories in these industrial areas........ • And it is because of all this that significant matters are beyond the control of each and every government, and have crossed the boundaries of nation-states. When in the world in 1890 it came to the fore that for the first time a state had a standing army of one hundred thousand soldiers, it created a furore. Today, the state in India has an army of 1.3 million soldiers, an air force of 150,000 persons, then a navy, a paramilitary force of 1.2 million persons, then there is the armed police of each provincial government, then the police at police stations, then varied kinds of intelligence organisations, then security agencies with hundreds of thousands of security guards, then cameras-telephone tapping-internet surveillance-satellites-drones-missiles-atom bombs- .........and, governments of all shades and hues are shaky, are becoming increasingly dysfunctional. • But there are also people who are unable to take from our heritage that which is positive, and to discard what is negative. There are also persons who fail to absorb what is today positive all around, and to discard what is negative. The essence of the burden of the past and today’s negativity is: “There can be no radical transformation – nothing will change fundamentally”. This is an expression of deep despair. And, extreme despair is the basis of the philosophies of helplessness. The discourse, on the one hand, that nothing can be done and of nothingness, and on the other, of omnipotence, that everything can be done, are the essence of the philosophies of helplessness. That is why, those among the intensely despairing who are sharp and smart, take on leadership roles, and those who are naive, become followers. Here, these days, deeply despairing, shrewd people, are handing out, in huge quantities, amidst much beating of drums, assurances of being able to set everything right, by making a dysfunctional government functional, BY PUTTING AN END TO CORRUPTION, BY INCREASING THE STRIKING POWER OF THE ARMY, BY BECOMING SUPERPOWER, BY ENHANCING THE COUNTRY´S SHARE IN THE GLOBAL LOOT AND PLUNDER , AND BY LAYING WASTE THE BIOSPHERE AND ENVIRONMENT MORE THOROUGHLY AND RAPIDLY. When the violation of laws has become the norm, and obeying laws has become an exception, there is talk of making this or that law to set everything right. Where whether a person is or is not has become almost the same, there, there is babble that this or that person will set everything right. This level of intellectual bankruptcy is an expression of shrewdness breathing its last. Therefore naiveté, too, is not going to be around for long. • THE HUMAN SPECIES IS A PART OF THE EARTH, and the attempt by this part to dominate the whole has brought us to the brink of extinction. But the enthusiasm for living life rather than letting it just pass away somehow, is bringing to the fore, in many different ways, THE SIGNIFICANCE OF EACH INDIVIDUAL, and the bonds amongst the world’s seven billion people. Unique and together is being manifested in new experiments, new creations. The upsurge for radical transformations is becoming more and more intense the world over. The bases of antagonism between one human being and another have become extremely weak now. And, the end of hostile relations between humans, and the establishment of harmony of human beings with the earth, are intimately related to one another. Translation from Faridabad Majdoor Samachar, March 2014 issue For Hindi version go to : faridabadmajdoorsamachar.blogspot.de/
Posted on: Tue, 08 Apr 2014 06:11:31 +0000