Economic ‘horror’ factor: 40 % of national wealth in pockets of 1% money-spinners

WE in India or Bharatdesh are blessed because we have got one of the best ever written Constitution, the envy of the world! See how other countries including the Muslim countries don’t have such a Constitution to protect the fundamental rights of its people. Thank the wisdom of the Babasaheb Ambedkar. If you read the news you will have seen the plight of the beleaguered working people of Syria, Ukraine, some of the countries of Europe and of course there is Pakistan, Afghanistan and life is not rosy in China either…in comparison we’re so better off because our Constitution still protects us at least in court when the judge is of the old order and not the new Hindutva or RSS order!
But I will still say rejoice for small mercies this early spring time season the country over which is invoking the early springtime rites and joys of Uttrayan, Makara Villaku, Lohri, Makar Sankranti, Bihu, Pongal …Vasant Panchmi will soon be here. The sun is on its return trip to the Equator and the growing warmth is making the birds of the wild sing…we still have them despite our various technologies of G4 and now G5 and I am not sure where we should draw the line.
If too much technology is going to turn the very air we breathe, water we drink and food we eat, toxic to human health as well as to the creatures of the wild which we constantly want to watch out for…for don’t they do all the happy pollination of flora and fauna which impacts us vitally! Don’t know about you but I would like to return to some of our old, safer, less harmful and dangerous technologies, I don’t want more and more mod cons to make life easier and cushier – for whom? Not for Mother Earth! Then who? The 10 richest Indians of India whose wealth has gone up by 32.8% in 2022, who got richer but are neither loved nor respected by the majority of their country men and women! I mean, last I read, 74% GST is paid by the bottom 50% of Indians so that our ambitious, show-off, arrogant Raj Sarkar and its orators can have a rum time filling their pockets and the pockets of their cronies?
Well, do think about all this and rich or not so rich learn to make up your mind on the side of a happier Mother Earth and the world we live in today!
TO move to another subject, food is one of my favourite subjects so I went listen in to some of the talk at ASSOCHAM’s Food Processing Conference 2023 in Panaji on January 24. Sorry, it commenced rudely at least two hours late, waiting for the political chief guests to arrive and in the end only Minister for Industries Mauvin Godinho arrived at about noon (for the 10am inauguration) to offer some of golden words about how the economy is going to boom one of these days if not today, tomorrow. Given the entrepreneurial spirit of people our people.
But at ground level there is so much to worry about! So many small businesses (the feeder businesses of the big businesses) have closed down or are floundering for want of financial aid (which various government schemes are anxious to offer but they come with ridiculous demands for collateral security? Most small folk in need of loans don’t have the kind of securities the country’s rich have so that they may borrow in multi-crore, later pay off the government or run away abroad to live the good life while banks back in their home country deal with their NPT sins of omission and commission.
It was not a Republic Day to celebrate if you’re asking me. The truth about the last seven years is that more working class people are committing suicide for want of secure jobs to live a modest aam aadmi life. How many more Indians will have to commit suicide and do we care at all at the top of the rungs of governance? According to the National Crime Records Bureau 42,004 daily wage workers committed suicide in 2021 across India. You want to celebrate that?
Clearly something is wrong with the manner in which this country is being governed and I will not recommend the Gujarat model of governance at all! If you’re asking me we need a strong working class movement again …Oxfam’s India report says only the rich are surviving in India today, only 5% of Indian citizens own more than 60% of the country’s wealth. So we are not only becoming an oligarchy but an autocracy of oligarchs.