A(B)C MEGACORP PUBLIC ISSUE

I have had my faith in the Indian ... all along.

You ask anybody about India and Indians and they are sure to harp on the one-hundred-and-one types that make up that body politic called the Indian. And perhaps in an attempt to salve your irritation, s/he would quote the old school civics text and tell you that India's strength lay in its "unity in diversity"--a dramatic phrase that suits dramatic moments like when addressing the nation from the ramparts of the Red Fort, at one end, or when maybe delivering a mere speech from the not-so-grand local public podium, at the other.  But it is one phrase that is a very difficult pill to swallow, in spite of the accompanying glass of undiluted patriotism. Indians are a diverse bunch --and that is an understatement, if ever there was one!

But I still had my faith in the typical Indian all along.

Because I had, by pure accident, stumbled upon a factor that was common to all Indians. Take them from the know-it-all North, from the suave and sambar South, from the hauteur driven 'Colonial' East, or the Bollywood and black-money West, put them on any alien soil, and simply watch; keep watching for some time, and soon you will see a shocking pattern emerge. Despite their 'schooling' in the diverse corners of the world, despite their having 'absorbed' the culture, hairdos, hemlines and intonation of the surroundings, despite their being elected to the civic bodies and the clubs of the alien soil, despite their....(here put that big list of things that hard-working Indians are apt to achieve in no time in alien lands)....yeah, despite all that, when they come home... --not to a leased bed-sit or flat, but to their own home, bought and furnished, as only an Indian can do, whether he is in his own 'backyard' in India or in Suburbia in the US or Canada or Europe-- ....yes when they come home and "drop their guard", which had all along been 'up' in order to be good Western citizens, they instantly revert to being a "typical" Indian in their way of thinking and talking and acting...and 'acting' includes beating the wife, pulling up the daughter or even "honour killing" the sister, or behaving in umpteen other ways that will be quite obvious and familiar to a typical Indian observer as 'desi' ways.

There is a singular Indian streak in all Indians. Period. And I had all along believed that whatever the Colonials or the Neo-colonials did, they penetrated only the surface, not even the thick skin, and underneath it all, us Indians staunchly maintained our Indian-ness, our insularity and our cranky ways of doing things which we had inherited from our great-great-great grandparents. You just couldn't 'brain-wash' an Indian-- for obvious reasons, say the anti-Indians! But my years of careful observation and experience had made me pretty rooted in my conviction that when it came to the crunch, you could trust the Indian to behave like an Indian.

But not any more.

I see an Indian (and that too not one picked at random from the teeming streets) behaving with typical un-Indian-ness. He is only Indian in his dress and manner and his blue turban. But he has been totally brain-washed by all the neo-liberal stuff they drummed into his brain at the Western B-schools and universities where he spent a lot more than his impressionable youth, if we are to believe his bio. No, I do not blame him at all for what all he is doing--or not doing, which is more than what he is doing, when you look at it from that angle. It is purely a neo-liberal Western conspiracy, as I and many of my acquaintances think and believe.
We came to that conclusion the other day while discussing the article "Corporate Socialism's 2G Orgy" in The Hindu of 7 March. The article paints a horrifying picture of a systematic "subsidizing" of the corporates of India at the expense of the poor and the agriculturists and the middle class. This was being done particularly since our man came to occupy the 'hot seat' as a 'chosen man'. The figures quoted in the article--which are 'legal' figures released by the Ministry, no less-- would put the other recent scams to shame and qualify this 'official' and 'legitimate' scam to occupy the pride of place in the Guinness Book of Records.

If you have any doubt about its nature as a scam, go no further than the Oxford Dictionary--any dishonest scheme/swindle qualifies it as a scam. I urge you to read the article in question once again (http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-opinion/article1515930.ece ) and come to your own conclusions whether the legerdemain of juggling with figures in order to hide the honest truth is a fraud or not. The budget, particularly this year's, is mere sleight of hand, a conjuring trick,  that hides more than it reveals.

India, if we bid goodbye to the "feel-good" neo-liberal era and time-travel backwards, prided itself on the economic and social vision of the Founding Fathers of this Nation and its Constitution and its later policies. The very Directive Principles positively envisioned a Welfare State, where in a short term economic and social stability and equality was expressly planned to be augured in. The Five-year Plans, whatever might have been their shortcomings, if any, were the fuel on which a nascent India steamed ahead enviably. Huge sums of public money were invested in creating and consolidating the core infrastructure of this vast nation. The result of all these steady steps of reform and nation-building could very well be seen in many spheres.

Had we continued along that pathway of providing a better life, a better tomorrow for the "aam aadmi" of this great nation, surely today we would have achieved a greater and a more real and a more honest growth than what is trumpeted by the blowers of the neo-liberal horns. What happened in the era of the neo-liberal euphoria? There was this unprecedented and unnecessary frenetic call for growth and more growth. And one by one the great pillars of infrastructure built up with the sweat and tears of the public was got rid of by repeating the mantra of 'disinvestment'. Every public service and utility was starved and suffocated and left to die an unnatural death, while the private corporates grew fat on the carrion of these great public institutions, whose planned decimation left a huge vacuum that they were eager to occupy.

The very servants of the public (the only time politicians and ministers will use that phrase is during the poll tamasha days) paid from the coffers to safeguard these pillars of public service, removed the corner stones and the cap stones of these edifices. If you are fond of scams, especilly the ones not yet uncovered, look no further than to the reign of Mr Ramdoss, our honourable minister so concerned about the health of the general public, who with extreme alacrity shut down ALL the centres of preventive vaccine production, citing some vague WHO directive. Now after so many years, a Parliamentary panel has found that what was done was "not proper". (http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/article1510997.ece)All right, and thank you, but what has the Panel finally DONE? Have they restored the status quo ante and ordered the immediate reopening of these manufactories? Has anybody been punished for the 'misdemeanour'? How many lakh-crores were paid by the foreign drug companies, and to whom? And how much money had been siphoned out by these companies in the last few years by way of inflated prices for a product that had been manufactured absolutely satisfactorily all these years by these home-grown institutions establised as part of the Five-year Plans?

More important--did they consult the owners before shutting the laboratories and manufactories down? The public owns them, and you just can't 'disinvest' something that is owned by someone else. Try it elsewhere and see where that would get you! If this is not a dishonest scheme, I dont know what is...

Mr Singh will, if you ask him, quite 'honestly' tell you that he was not told of all that, and more. And, poor man, graciously he would accept fully the blame. What difference does it make whether he accepts the responsibility or not? What good does it to the country, and to you and me? Once you accept the blame, you should do your best to reverse the error, repair the damage as good as you can. AND punish those that were supposed to tell you and keep you abreast of things and who didn't, and THEN punish the actual wrongdoers. Without doing that, if you go on repeating the "error in judgement" mantra, the judgement errors will soon snowball into judgement terrors.

In the good old days (and that means about 5-10 years back, or if you will, before 2004 ), ministers had a few people in their offices whose chief occupation was to read the day's papers and prepare 'important' cuttings for the great man. I gather that such cuttings from local vernacular dailies, with translations, used to be sent North in the past. Mr Singh has apparently only illiterates in his staff whose vocabulary seems to be limited to a monosyllabic 'yes sir', and who don't read the papers. As for the sanitized images that appear on the visual media, the less said, the better. A gentleman friend who retired as a Judicial officer tells me that the Honourable Justices of the HIgh Courts often kept an eagle eye out for instances of social injustice, as reported in the major newspapers, and many were the times when they intervened with the power that was vested in them 'suo motu' in order to correct the situation in a grand gesture of the upholding of Justice, absolute and impartial.

Our man as he pursued his economic studies ad nauseum in the foreign centres of learning seems to have forgotten all these things. His brain now registers only the neo-liberal mantras and his guiding lights are the politico-corporate junta. He doesn't see anything wrong in this new amalgm of Yankee interests as he has been totally brainwashed. Only the other day he had equated stolen money with subsidies given to the poor-- the first (and let us hope it will be the last too) such instance when the 'leader' of a nation of largely poor has disowned the poor totally. The only thing that merits his attention and according to him deserves subsidies is the corporates --which is the holy truth as per the Bible of the neo-liberals.

This being the reality of the day, it would be foolish to hope for and wait for some sort of a 'change' for the better for the common man. The only course, as has been suggested by my Judge friend, is to approach the last refuge of the common man, that symbol of Justice, the Supreme Court, and bring this blatant discrimination in implementing the tax burden. The common man must pay, or else.... If you are a corporate, oh, you will be mollycoddled. The Supreme Temple of Justice would surely not tolerate two laws for two different people, and its heavy gavel would come crashing down upon the wrongdoers. A good plan, surely. So let us by all means move the Supreme Court for the redressal of our grievance of discrimination. But is that the only way out?

And that brings me to the A(B)C plan.

I have a better scheme. Let us all get together and subscribe Re 1 each and as per company rules and all else and in full compliance with the laws of the land etc etc, float a company --the Aam aadmi (Bharat) Corporation -- to pursue our well-being and prosperity! I guess it is possible and allowed under the corporate and other laws. We will probably have the largest subscriber base and enough money to take care of everything, including the hire charges for top level PR honchos (who needs Radia if you can afford the best?), ads in all the major media etc to establish our 'corporate image'  and presence.

And above all the votes we hold are better than the second-rate votes that are cast in the board rooms of common corporates--they can be cast, and that too effectively, in all the public elections!
We ARE the largest corporate entity that all India, nay, the entire world has seen. We are the NUMERO UNO, and on top of the Fortune 500! And we are...

Aam aadmi (Bharat) Corporation !!

I will guarantee this will work. Mr Singh, programmed by his Western education to recognize corporate power, will see reason and we will soon garner all that we wish for and more, for ourselves and for our 'corporate agronomists', who no longer will have to look for an inexpensive means of snuffing out their lives in the face of 'economic situations'!

It is a dream to top all dreams. On second thought, why don't we get down and do it ASAP ???

         * * * * * * * * * * * *