Of all the comments made on the dirty film, the comment made by Vaiko stands tall. He has said உலகெங்கும் வாழும் அனைத்து மக்களின் நெஞ்சிலும் நெருப்பை கொட்டிவிட்ட சினிமா (A film which has showered fire in the hearts of all throughout the world). He is right. Even Hillary Clinton has expressed her anguish and has condemned the film. Who is Hillary? She is not a Muslim. She is just a politician. One can imagine the toxicity of the film by her anguish.
The film reminds me of another mischievious, outrageous book written by Salman Rushdie. When The Satanic Verses was released in late eighties, similar reactions were seen throughout the world. The Indian Government acted swiftly then and promptly banned the book. But now it is not the case. It has not yet banned the movie. It has not yet blocked the URLs from the web.
How to vent our feelings? How to condemn this ugly, dirty and vulgar film? How to condemn this wretched movie?
Should we target the US embassies worldwide? Should we demonstrate in front of the embassies of USA? Is it the only way? I think we Indians are blessed with another option too. We could go in procession to the Raj Bhavans in the State capitals and submit a memorundum to the Governors there. We live in an age when there is not an iota of a difference between the Indian Government and Obama's government. What is the big deal there. The Manmohan Goverment has opened up the retail trade to American companies in the name of economic reforms. This move clearly demonstrates the slavery attitude of the UPA government.
உலகெங்கும் வாழும் அனைத்து மக்களின் நெஞ்சிலும் நெருப்பை கொட்டிவிட்ட சினிமா என்று வைகோ சொல்லியிருப்பது மிக்க பொருத்தம். எண்பதுகளில்
சல்மான் ருஷ்டியின் சாத்தானியக் கவிதைகளை விடவும் அதிகமான பாதிப்பை
அமெரிக்கப் படம் செய்துவிட்டுள்ளதகத் தோன்றுகிறது. இந்திய அரசாங்கம் அந்தப் புத்தகத்தை உடனடியாக தடைச் செய்துவிட்டது. ஆனால் அமெரிக்கப் படம் இன்று வரை
தடை செய்யப்படவில்லை.
இந்த அழுக்குப் படத்துக்கு எதிரான நம்முடைய உணர்வுகளை எப்படி வெளிப்படுத்துவது? இந்த கேடுகெட்ட படத்தை எப்படி தான் கண்டிப்பது?
அமெரிக்கத்
தூதரங்களுக்கு முன் ஆர்ப்பாட்டம் செய்வதுதான் ஒரே வழியா? ராஜ் பவன் வரை
ஊர்வலமாகச் சென்று ஆளுநரிடம் கோரிக்கை மனு தரலாமே? இன்றையக் காலத்தில்
இந்திய அரசுக்கும் ஒபாமாவின் அரசுக்கும் என்ன பெரிய வித்தியாசம்
இருக்கிறது? சில்லறை வணிகத்திலும் அந்நிய முதலீட்டை FDI அனுமதித்துள்ள
மன்மோகன் அரசு ஒபாமாவின் கூலியாளாகத் தானேச் செயல்பட்டுக் கொண்டிருக்கிறது?
India’s Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's image has slowly given way to a dithering, ineffectual bureaucrat presiding
over a deeply corrupt government.
The story of Singh’s dramatic fall from grace
in his second term in office and the slow but steady tarnishing of his
reputation has played out in parallel with his country’s decline on his
watch. As India’s economy has slowed and as its reputation for rampant corruption has reasserted itself, the idea that the country was on an inexorable road to becoming a global power has increasingly come into question.
“More
and more, he has become a tragic figure in our history,” said political
historian Ramachandra Guha, describing a man fatally handicapped by his
“timidity, complacency and intellectual dishonesty.”
Damaging to his reputation is the accusation that he looked
the other way and remained silent as his cabinet colleagues filled
their own pockets.
In the process, he transformed himself from an
object of respect to one of ridicule and endured the worst period in his
life, said Sanjaya Baru, Singh’s media adviser during his first term.
Attendees
at meetings and conferences were jokingly urged to put their phones
into “Manmohan Singh mode,” while one joke cited a dentist urging the
seated prime minister, “At least in my clinic, please open your mouth.”
The leader of a party allied with the Congress described to me a
meeting with Manmohan Singh in December 2005, two months after the
release of the UN report investigating abuses in the Iraq Oil-for-Food
programme. The report had implicated Natwar Singh, then the minister of
external affairs, and he was forced to resign as a result, but it had
also named Reliance Petroleum Limited as a beneficiary in the
oil-for-food scam. The party leader said he had raised the issue with
the prime minister, saying, “Sir, the report mentions not just Natwar,
it also prominently mentions Reliance. Why are you not taking any action
against Reliance?”
“With a sigh,” the party leader recounted, “Manmohan Singh said to us, ‘After all, what can I do? It is India’s largest corporate.’”
It is related that, whilst some game was being roasted for Nushirvanthe just during a hunting party, no salt could be found. Accordingly a boy was sent to an adjoining village to bring some. Nushirvan said: 'Pay for the salt lest it should become a custom and the village be ruined.' Having been asked what harm could arise from such a trifling demand, Nushirvan replied: 'The foundation of oppression was small in the world but whoever came augmented it so that it reached its present magnitude.' If the king eats one apple from the garden of a subject His slaves will pull him up the tree from the roots.
For five eggs which the sultan allows to be taken by force The people belonging to his army will put a thousand fowls on the spit.
A tyrant does not remain in the world But the curse on him abides for ever.
Sheikh Sa'di in The Gulistan of Sa'adi. MoreHere and Here
The fact is nobody quite knows. There are various estimates on the exact number of poor in India, and the counts have been mired in controversy.
This week the Planning Commission said 29.8% of India's 1.21 billion people live below the poverty line, a sharp drop from 37.2% in 2004-2005. (This means means around 360 million people currently live in poverty.) But one estimate suggests this figure could be as high as 77%.
The problem, believe many, is that the new count is based on fixing the poverty line for a person living on 28.65 rupees (56 cents/35p) a day in cities and 22.42 rupees (44 cents/33p) a day in villages.
This was lower than last year's recommendation by the Planning Commission to set the poverty line at 32 rupees (65c/40p) a day which stirred up a major debate across the country.
Last year activists dared the head of the country's planning body to live on half a dollar a day to test his claim that it represented an adequate sum to survive in a country with high inflation and leaky and shambolic social benefits. They concluded that the claim appeared to be grossly unfair and scandalous.
In India, poverty counts are based on a large sample survey of household expenditures. In other words, they are based on the purchasing power needed to buy food with some margin for non-food consumption needs.
Labourers (farm workers in villages, casual workers in cities), tribespeople, Dalits (formerly called low caste untouchables) and Muslims remain the poorest Indians.
But it is not happening fast enough, considering India's reasonably high rate of economic growth. "High growth, though essential," says the India Development Report, "is not sufficient for poverty reduction on a sustainable basis."
If the demographics and social character of the poorest in India is not changing rapidly, what is wrong?
Economists like Arvind Virmani believe that bad governance, misplaced priorities, unchecked corruption and a huge failure in improving the quality of public health and literacy are to blame. All of this is correct. More importantly, does all this happen because the Indian state is inherently anti-poor?
PS: The government's flip-flop over poverty count continues. On Thursday, PM Manmohan Singh told reporters that a "fresh [technical] group has been set up to devise a new method to assess the number of poor". Minister for Planning Ashwani Kumar echoed the sentiment saying there was a need to "revisit" the methods of counting the poor which would be "consistent with current reality". So yes, we still don't know who are the poor in India.
The leader of a party allied with the Congress described to me a meeting with Manmohan Singh in December 2005, two months after the release of the UN report investigating abuses in the Iraq Oil-for-Food programme. The report had implicated Natwar Singh, then the minister of external affairs, and he was forced to resign as a result, but it had also named Reliance Petroleum Limited as a beneficiary in the oil-for-food scam. The party leader said he had raised the issue with the prime minister, saying, “Sir, the report mentions not just Natwar, it also prominently mentions Reliance. Why are you not taking any action against Reliance?”
“With a sigh,” the party leader recounted, “Manmohan Singh said to us, ‘After all, what can I do? It is India’s largest corporate.’”
In the course of the last 20 years, Manmohan Singh has been at the centre of two major public debates, both of considerable historical significance: first, over the shift from a socialist planned economy to a liberalised free market, and second, over the turn away from a non-aligned foreign policy and toward stronger ties with the United States. In the waning years of his political career, he now seems likely to occupy a central role—if perhaps a symbolic one—in a third era-defining debate, over corruption and its causes and cures.
Manmohan Singh himself does not symbolise corruption in the way that he has become an emblem of liberalisation and Americanisation, and even if many call his government the “most corrupt” India has ever seen, that record may yet be broken. But the debate over corruption is not really about scandals and bribes, or about the devious schemes of amoral persons inside and outside of government: it is about the increasingly common fear that the system itself is broken, and about the inaction and apathy of those who should be positioned to lead in its repair.
In the end, the fate of Manmohan Singh’s legacy is out of his hands. If the intractable structural crises troubling India somehow get resolved, then his place in history will be far larger than a footnote. But if the centre cannot hold, then Manmohan Singh will be seen as the man who let loose a storm but failed to bring it under control—who sowed the wind, and reaped the whirlwind.
This is perhaps what the expression ‘setting the cat among the pigeons’ means. Just when Israel was putting up that little show, going around the world crying about the way Iran was targeting its peaceful diplomats around the world, the ayatollahs come up with their own little performance taking everyone’s breath away.
Not that Ahmadinejad didn’t warn us. As always, everyone was sufficiently intimated of the glad tidings on the nuclear front were on their way. Yet it was a master stroke. Give the Iranians their due. If the Israelis are known for their cunning and craft of obfuscation and manipulation, it’s not easy beating the Persians at mind games either. After all, they invented the game of chess.
Defying years of Western sanctions and the endless talk of war by Israel, the Iranians seem to have gotten another decisive step closer to their goal. And they have all the players and pawns where they want them to be. And for all their bluff and bluster, Israel and its guardian angels can’t do much about it.
As a former Indian envoy to Iran put it, this is like the classic Persian puzzle. Iran takes one step forward and waits and watches for the reaction of adversaries before taking the next cautious step. Call it the Persian incrementalism or whatever but it seems to have worked so far.
All Indian eyes are on Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh –- as if he fills the whole of Africa with his towering presence. But Africa is a huge continent and no one can be the monarch of all he surveys. The distance between Addis Ababa in the heart of Africa and Abidjan on the west coast alone makes about 7000 kilometers, which is twice the travel route from Delhi to Thiruvananthapuram. Africa could contain quite a few colonial powers at the same time in the 19th and 20th centuries – Britain, France, Germany, Belgium, Italy, Holland.
But Dr. Singh has no pretensions. To borrow an expression from an Indian official accompanying Dr. Singh, there is “enough space” for many outside powers to simultaneously pursue their agenda in Africa. While Dr. Singh’s prime ministerial aircraft was descending on Addis, another distinguished visitor was taking off from Abidjan – French president Nikolas Sarkozy. Their missions present a study in contrast and give a timely warning to the Indian policymaker. Sarkozy went as a conquering hero who deployed French forces to effect a transfer of power in Cote d’Ivoire. What an irony -- military power to enforce the outcome of a democratic election! Dr. Singh, on the contrary, arrived in Addis showering petals of goodwill in a continent where Gandhiji understood the magical powers of non-violence.
To go back to the Indian official, what he said is absolutely true – “The West is setting up Africa as a zone of contention. They want to pit India against China. They want us to be at each other’s throat. But this is not the 1885 Congress of Berlin where European powers decided to scramble for African resources.” From the tenor of his intellect, one can identify the Indian diplomat as someone with a scholarly sense of modern history. The point is, history never quite ended in Africa with the national liberation struggles of the 1950s. The flow of history merely got punctuated and the struggle for outside domination merely took new forms as Cold War picked up. The rivalries somewhat eased when the bipolar world gave way. A respite followed but in retrospect it hardly lasted for a couple of decades.
What should really worry India is that if the push comes to a shove, the West may use military power to assert its prerogatives. Libya is an unfolding scenario. The African swamp is full of crocodiles, indeed. Sarkozy was fairly explicit that the West will not hesitate to interfere in Africa’s internal affairs if its interests are in jeopardy. Sarkozy’s vision is diametrically opposite India’s. A pattern is emerging. In the Middle East and Africa, through the Cold War era, the West gave an ideological veneer to its agenda of dominance by pitting communism as the antithesis. Today, what is unfolding is the banner of “democracy” – and in the name of advancing freedom and human rights, the doctrine of “humanitarian intervention” is being dusted up. Sarkozy is a no-nonsense type statesman and he bluntly said, “This is the new Africa policy that we shall adopt, and it’s an international policy”. Was he speaking on behalf of Dr. Singh as well? I doubt it.
M. K. Bhadrakumar in Diplomatic Perspective. More Here
Why are we so gullible and so full of superstition? No other major society has such a variety of outlandish—and thriving—swamis, gurus, yogis, babas, acharyas, bhagwans, astrologers, palmists, numerologists and faith healers as ours does.
Some put on intellectual airs (Rajneesh), others claim “miracle” cures—even for cancer (Ramdev). All of them are, without exception, wily con artists and spiritual fraudsters, eager to ferret money out of you. And if you are an attractive woman or a fetching young boy, quite a few will attempt to seduce you (many succeed, Nityananda did). Yet, millions of Indians, even the highly educated, flock to them. They probably command more followers than organised religion does.
When India won the T20 World Cup, Harbhajan Singh and Yuvraj Singh, both Sikhs, did not dedicate their success to Guru Nanak, but to some baba belonging to some dera. And what about Sachin Tendulkar, idolised by an entire nation? As the photos in the newspapers show, he turns out to have been an ardent follower of the recently departed Sathya Sai Baba, who is probably the most successful “godman” of them all—at least fiscally, having built a colossal empire estimated at a mind-boggling Rs 40,000 crore, most of it foolishly forked out by credulous Indian devotees. I knew that Sunil Gavaskar had been a disciple of the fuzzy-haired Baba. But Sachin? He has come down a notch or two in my estimation.
The first person to expose Sai Baba was the late Sri Lankan rationalist Abraham Kovoor. He decided to look into the Baba’s famous claim that when the Japanese head of the Seiko watch company visited him, he had “materialised” a Seiko watch, the only specimen of which lay in a Tokyo vault.
Kovoor wrote to the company, asking for details. The company wrote back that nobody from the company had visited Sai Baba and that no such specimen of a watch existed in a Tokyo vault. The story had been cooked up by one of Sai Baba’s advisers! When Kovoor published his findings, there was a deafening silence from the Sai Baba camp. Kovoor’s seminal book, Begone Godmen, is essential reading for those who still believe in these fakes and liars.
In the 1970s, Kovoor undertook “miracle exposure” tours of the country, during which he demonstrated, with the help of magicians, exactly how our “godmen” performed their “miracles”. I was at one such demonstration on the Bombay University campus, where the magician accompanying him showed, to everybody’s glee and amazement, how light bulbs could be chewed and swallowed, objects could materialise “from thin air”, and a person could walk barefoot unharmed on burning embers—all of which are standard fare for magicians and have rational explanations.
There was also a simple trick to the framed pictures of Sai Baba shedding vibhuti (holy ash). The pictures’ framers would use aluminum frames and dab a mercuric chloride solution on them. Upon coming into contact with moisture, a chemical reaction would occur and grey ash fell—vibhuti!
The trouble is, despite the damning exposes of Kovoor and Premanand, too many Indians will keep believing that Ganesh idols can drink milk and that a natural ice formation is the lingam of Lord Shiva and to be worshipped as such.
And ministers will continue to consult astrologers before taking momentous decisions, superstitious women will add a letter to their names (Shobhaa, Jayalalithaa), and swamis will merrily consort with women who have infertile or impotent husbands—while Dr Manmohan Singh and Sonia Gandhi genuflect before the body of Sai Saba (Would Jawaharlal Nehru have done that? Never!), thereby lending respectability to irrationality and quackery.
Have the political parties of India given up morality and humanism? Did any honourable Member of Parliament raise his powerful voice against the indefensible but ever-continuing incarceration of young Muslim boys, charged with enacting Malegaon, Ajmer, Hyderabad and Samjhauta Express blasts?
Did any TV channel organise any meaningful talk-show on the redundancy of criminal cases, needlessly destroying careers of Muslim youth in various jails?
Are the State Home Ministers of Maharashtra, Rajasthan and Andhra Pradesh cocksure they will not have to, at the end of the day, hang their heads in shame before the nation in this regard?
What does the law say on the subject in concrete terms? Is this being misused by the morbid minds?
Cannot the Supreme Court, the last ray of hope of the hopeless, take notice on its own as it does in some cases to right a grave and grievous wrong to the principal minority of the country?
TALE-TELL CONFESSIONS
Pragya with senior BJP leaders
After tale-tell confessions, in addition to misleading statements as well, by Col. Srikant Prasad Purohit, Ms. Pragya Singh Thakur and Swami Aseemanand, detention of the Muslim accused appears to be utterly unjustified to the minority leaders, opinion makers, whistle blowers and social activists. If it is a confusing case, let the State and Central governments remove the cobwebs for the sake of clarity and political ethics.
Here are a few glimpses of some chilling, real life stories, told not by any idiot but by close relations of the police victims:
“I am Saliha Khatoon from Gujarat, Zahid Sheikh’s sister. He had been accused of 26 July 2008 bomb blasts. The police asked him to come for some enquiry regarding mobile SIM cards. He went on his motorcycle and has not returned since then. My parents want to see him. They saw that he was unable to walk. He was severely tortured. We were allowed to meet him for two minutes only.”
“I am Jamil Msiullah from Malegaon, Maharashtra. I am the elder brother of Shabbir Masiullah. The police arrested my brother at 3:30 a.m. on August 3, 2006 from his house. He was given electric shocks on his private parts and acid was poured on his private parts to make him confess that he was responsible for either the Malegaon or the Mumbai local train bomb blasts.”
“I am Abdul Kareem from Hyderabad. I used to drive an auto-rickshaw before arrest. One day police barged into my house and took me away. I was tortured, hit on the soles and other body parts with a rubber belt. I was asked what I knew about the Hyderabad bomb blasts. I answered I did not know anything. But they were still forcing me either to admit to the crime or to speak about it.”
Not only the parents but the nation as a whole must be taken into confidence by the state governments as well as the central government with regard to use of electric shocks and pouring of acid on the private parts of even the proven criminals. This is a subject that deserves sympathetic consideration of the powers-that-be.
Does our civilized society approve of it? Does it not run counter to human rights, which we think are enjoyed even by the criminals, proven or otherwise.
What a poor, semi-literate, helpless accused can do to sensitise the callous police and the not-so-callous lower level judiciary and administrative officers? Add to it the planned infiltration of communal mindset in the system.
A recently retired Intelligence officer has, not long ago, admitted in black and white: “Hindu link to blasts was ignored at the outset.” To quote him from a story by Josy Joseph from the Times News Network: “... several vital clues that should have prompted us to be far broader in our approach towards those blasts were ignored. We were swept away by the overwhelming opinion in the (security) establishment that only Islamic groups could carry out the sophisticated blasts we saw in Samjhauta and Mecca Masjid.”
Such blasts, he added, were ignored in cases that are now being seen as the handiwork of the Abhinav Bharat network. For example, in the initial days, after the twin blasts in Jama Masjid (on April 14, 2006) we had intercepted suspicious phone calls to an RSS member. But we chose to ignore it.” He added. A senior official pointed out the “environment was so overwhelming” in the belief that only Muslim extremists could carry out terror attacks – “we did not even have discussion on other possibilities.” Mind it: this is from the proverbial horse’s mouth.
UTTERLY ILLOGICAL
Otherwise in each and every democracy, but particularly in a plural polity, justice and even-handedness is a must. What ensures rather strengthens a heterogeneous setup is judicious treatment with various religious, linguistic and cultural segments. The Congress as a party perhaps forgot to look beyond its nose in this regard. Our charge is graver as all the affected States except Gujarat are governed by the Congress Party. See the secularist lethargy on the one hand and on the other observe the systematic plantation by the Rightists of their cadres in various sectors and services. Does the very thought of Muslims blasting the faithful in a mosque during the Friday prayers not run in the face of commonsense? At similar footing rests the case of destruction of a divine’s mausoleum or train carrying Muslims back to their country.
MINDLESS PERSECUTION
But neither at the State level nor at the Central plane, the logic of Muslims killing Muslims appears to be odd. And they continued persuing and prosecuting the innocent Muslim youth. This mindless persecution resulted in legthening the shadows between Muslims and the government, Muslims and Congress and Muslims and other communities. What the Untied States was laboriously popularising after 9/11 that Islam is a terrorist ideology, so are its friends doing in India, official denials notwithstanding.
For what crime Ishrat jahan was murdered?
It is noteworthy that almost each and every fanatic, owing allegiance to the Abhinav Bharat has, direct or indirect, relations with the known fascist outfits.
On the other hand, it is not the case of a few hundred Muslim youth standing between Malegaon and Samjhauta Express. The entire 170-million strong Muslim minority stands in the dock, charged with terrorism not only against the Hindu brethren but against their own co-religionists.
BEYOND ASEEMANAND
Aseemanand
Things would not stop at Swami Aseemanand.Those would go beyond him. The official machinery appears to be acutely conscious of that embarrassing eventuality. Therefore, perhaps they are putting blocks after blocks against the withdrawal of the framed cases and bail to the fictitiously manufactured accused. The less-than-morally conscious officers and their less-than-bold bosses see their political future in keeping the innocent as long as possible in the jails. Inexplicable delay in enquiries, illogical denials of bail and hurdles in the release of the Muslim accused speaks volumes of the nervousness of the bureaucracy.
ROLE OF SHARAD PAWAR
You must have heard Mr Sharad Pawar periodically vaxing eloquent on the Muslim plight. What you appear to have forgotten is that both at the time of Malegaon and even now the Home Minister of Maharashtra was, and is, from Mr. Pawar’s party, the NCP. At the time of innocent Muslim youths arrest, Mr. Pawar did not raise his little finger. Now when the bail applications of the accused are put forward, they are successfully opposed by police working under the NCP Home Minister. Mr. Pawar, we feel, is doing what an ace politician should, having nothing to do with morality. But what has happened to Dr. Manmohan Singh and Mr. P. Chidambaram? True, law and order is a State subject and security is more than a state subject. But all this should not be used as a tool to persecute a peaceful minority’s upcoming children, whose careers and future are being destroyed mindlessly. Another question of importance is: will it not raise the level of frustration breeding among Muslims? Is it good for national integration?
Let the all-India Muslim leadership rise to the occasion and hold mirror to the morally weak, myopic, unethical leaders of the country and demand justice for the innocent youth who are suffering for crimes which they never committed.
Dr S Ausaf Saied Vasfi in Radiance Weekly. MoreHere
The Americans know that turning the screws on non-resident Indian accounts in Indian banks is a pressure tactic that the Manmohan Singh government will not be able to stand up to. India now ranks at the top of countries which have impressive foreign exchange reserves, but those reserves will significantly evaporate if American actions to curb alleged tax dodging by their citizens of Indian origin were to force Indian Americans to pull out their deposits from such accounts which constitute the bulk of India’s foreign currency holdings.
The same applies to NRI stock holdings in Indian companies. In other words, the Obama administration has the wherewithal to turn India’s impressive foreign exchange reserves into hot money that can evaporate and push India back to the 1990s, when it virtually begged for foreign currency.
But it need not come to that. Indeed, it will not, given the nature and composition of the Indian power structure. The Americans have known for some time now that Indian Americans have considerable influence on their system. But the way NRIs in America were mobilized — first by the National Democratic Alliance government to thwart sanctions against the 1998 nuclear tests and then by the United Progressive Alliance government in support of the nuclear deal — has convinced Washington that NRI power is a double-edged sword: that it is a force which can be used to influence New Delhi as well.
Powerful Indian politicians and senior civil servants have their children, siblings and a variety of other friends and relatives in the US who have NRI accounts in Indian banks which are now under the scanner of Obama’s IRS.
Those who hold the levers of power in New Delhi and state capitals are not going to stand by and let the threat of prosecution — as in Dahake’s case — hang over the heads of their family members or cause them to lose sleep. That is how the Americans will secure orders for at least a significant share of the 126 medium multi-role combat aircraft, the biggest military aviation deal in history. That is how the Americans will secure other import orders and significant concessions from New Delhi.
If these orders and concessions are forthcoming, the threat to India’s foreign exchange reserves through withdrawal of hot money through the prosecution of NRIs in US courts will evaporate. In any case, the Americans will have proved that they can decisively influence the making or unmaking of India despite the illusion in New Delhi and Mumbai that India is a rising global power.
Sen is a reminder of the deeper travails of our society. We hate the poor for their poverty. Worse, we hate those who fight for the poor. Somehow it has become fashion to condemn human rights, to treat activists as fifth columnist, to regard them as fronts for terrorists groups.
Let me frame it in a different way. Today’s sedition might be tomorrow’s axiomatics. We often define as sedition what we can’t understand or can’t stand. It challenges our sense of security, the security of categories. It might be easier to understand Sen’s work within a framework, a spectrum of thought.
Begin with the Arjun Sengupta report on the informal Economy. It shows how we have sinned against the life world of hawkers, traders, scavengers, trades which constitute 70% of our economy. Then think of Jairam Ramesh claiming forests are not as renewable as we think and that tribes and forests have a connectivity that we must understand. That shakes up the naïve theory of growth. Then think of Mahasweta showing how tribes have been converted to bonded labour, how mining has corroded our country.
From an Open letter to PM written by Shiv Viswanathan. MoreHere.
Dr Manmohan Singh is believed to be one of the most honest prime ministers our country has had. But, ironically, he presides over arguably the most dishonest government machinery we have seen. The latest in the series of scams is the massive corruption in the Commonwealth Games. Despite charges of large-scale fund misuse and inefficient management, Suresh Kalmadi, almost defiantly, says he won’t step down till the PM or Sonia Gandhi asks him to do so. He seems to be confident that neither of you would ask him to step down!
The scale and arrogance of corruption in the Commonwealth Games is so bizarre that if it goes unpunished this time also, then there is no hope for this country. Both Dr Singh and you have said on several occasions that those involved in corruption in CWG will not be spared after the games. But which agency will investigate these cases? .... .... ....
When corruption reached its peak in Hong Kong in the ’70s, it created an Independent Commission Against Corruption and gave it complete powers. The commission sacked 103 out of 107 police officers in one go. That sent a strong signal to the entire machinery. Such swift and effective action is needed in our country also, immediately.
You created history by renouncing the chair of the prime minister. We urge you to create effective systems in our country to rid this country of corruption.
From an open letter written by RTI activist Arvind Kejriwal in Outlook. More here.
At Washington's request, the Manmohan Singh government has agreed to delete a key provision of the draft civil nuclear liability bill allowing American suppliers to be sued for recovery of damages in the event of an accident caused by gross negligence on their part.
Although the bill channels all liability for a nuclear accident on to the operator of the facility, Section 17 of the draft tabled in Parliament last month allows the operator a ‘right of recourse' — legalese for the right to recover any compensation it is forced to pay — under three circumstances. These are if (a) such a right is expressly provided for in a contract in writing; (b) the nuclear incident has resulted from the wilful act or gross negligence on the part of the supplier of the material, equipment, or of his employee, and (c) the nuclear incident has resulted from the act of commission or omission of a person done with intent to cause nuclear damage.
Of these, only (a) and (c) find mention in the model law specified by the Convention on Supplementary Compensation for Nuclear Damage (CSC). The CSC, which India will accede to, however, does not prohibit the inclusion of additional provisions. Indeed, some countries have already included gross negligence by suppliers as grounds for invoking the right of recourse in their liability laws. Article 4 of the South Korean Act on Compensation for Nuclear Damage, for example, includes language similar to 17(b) of the Indian draft.
When the Indian bill's provisions were made public, senior officials took pride in the inclusion of 17(b), which they said was needed to deter suppliers from being negligent taking their safety obligations lightly; 17(a) alone was inadequate, they said, since no supplier agreed to accept liability of negligence in a contract. But pressure from Washington seems to have prompted a rethink.
On March 8 and April 1, The Hindu had reported how the U.S. nuclear industry was upset with 17(b) and wanted it deleted for fear it would “open the door to more lawsuits.” The government has now obliged the American side by getting rid of this sub-clause entirely.
From Siddharth Varadarajan's take in The Hindu. More Here.
I thought the day Bhopal verdict came, Manmohan Singh should have stood up and addressed the nation. He too could have assured the people that he will leave no stone upturned to bring the guilty, including the corporates involved, to pay for their misdeeds. Like Obama, he too could have assured the nation that he would ensure that Union Carbide/Dow Chemicals/Eveready pay for the human lives lost, maimed and also for the toxic clean-up.
It requires a courage of conviction to stand up and be counted.
Manmohan Singh could have promised to also go in for a political clean up. He should have sacked by now P Chidambaram, Kamal Nath, and Montek Singh Ahluwalia for being party to the exemption that Dow Chemical wanted. He should have simultaneously launched an investigation into what went wrong, and that includes the faulty lines in the Indian judiciary, and at the same time taken all political parties into confidence to bring corporate accountability. People have the right to know the names of political leaders, bureaucrats, judges, and the business tycoons who betrayed the nation. Even if it includes former President Giani Zail Singh and the former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, so be it.
After all, Prime Minister is the head of the government. He can make the nation, and its judiciary, behave. He does not have the option of any excuses. He must deliver or be made to quit.
The fact is that India has no standards. Call it a 'systemic failure', the fact remains, as intrepid journalist Rajdeep Sardesai often reminds us: "is hamam main sab nange hain" (everyone is naked in this spa). Indians lack compassion, and are selfish to the core. Everyone, more so at the top, is trying to exploit the lesser children of the god. The more the bold and powerful you are, the more you are willing to slit the throat of others. Corporate India is doing it to the poor tribals. Manmohan Singh is only using State power to make that possible.
From Devinder Sharma's article in his blog. More Here.
One German business daily which wrote an editorial on India said: “India is becoming a Banana Republic instead of being an economic superpower. To get the cut motion designated out, assurances are made to political allays. Special treatment is promised at the expense of the people. So, Ms Mayawati who is Chief Minister of the most densely inhabited state, is calmed when an intelligence agency probe is scrapped. The multi-million dollars fodder scam by another former chief minister wielding enormous power is put in cold storage. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh chairs over this kind of unparalleled loot.”
An article in a French newspaper titled “Playing the Game, Indian Style” wrote: “Investigations into the shadowy financial deals of the Indian cricket league have revealed a web of transactions across tax havens like Switzerland, the Virgin Islands, Mauritius and Cyprus.”
A third story narrated in the damaging article is that of the former chief minister of Jharkhand, Madhu Koda, who was reported to have funds in various tax havens that were partly used to buy mines in Liberia. “Unfortunately, the Indian public do not know the status of that enquiry,” the article concluded.
“In the nastiest business scam in Indian records (Satyam) the government adroitly covered up the political aspects of the swindle — predominantly involving real estate,” wrote an Austrian newspaper. “If the Indian Prime Minister knows nothing about these scandals, he is ignorant of ground realities and does not deserve to be Prime Minister. If he does, is he a collaborator in crime?”
The Telegraph of the UK reported the 2G scam saying: “Naturally, India's elephantine legal system will ensure culpability, is delayed.”
Blinded by wealth
This seems true. In the European mind, caricature of a typical Indian encompasses qualities of falsification, telling lies, being fraudulent, dishonest, corrupt, arrogant, boastful, speaking loudly and bothering others in public places or, while travelling, swindling when the slightest of opportunity arises and spreading rumours about others. The list is truly incessant.
My father, who is 81 years old, is utterly frustrated, shocked and disgruntled with whatever is happening and said in a recent discussion that our country's motto should truly be Asatyameva Jayete.
Europeans believe that Indian leaders in politics and business are so blissfully blinded by the new, sometimes ill-gotten, wealth and deceit that they are living in defiance, insolence and denial to comprehend that the day will come, sooner than later, when the have-nots would hit the streets.
In a way, it seems to have already started with the monstrous and grotesque acts of the Maoists. And, when that rot occurs, not one political turncoat will escape being lynched. The drumbeats for these rebellions are going to get louder and louder as our leaders refuse to listen to the voices of the people. Eventually, it will lead to a revolution that will spill to streets across the whole of India, I fear.
Perhaps we are the architects of our own misfortune. It isour sab chalta hai (everything is OK) attitude that has allowed people to mislead us with impunity.
From Mohan Murti's article in Business Line. MoreHere.
"Bhopals will happen, but the country has to progress.”Hard to believe, and enraging too. According to Sathyu Sarangi, a member of the Bhopal Group for Information & Action, a voluntary body, this is what Prime Minister Manmohan Singh told him and six of his colleagues when they met him on April 17, 2006, to press for action against Union Carbide Corporation (UCC), a wholly owned subsidiary of the American firm Dow Chemical Company since 2001. “Yes, I remember that clearly. This is what the prime minister said,” Sarangi tells Outlook.
Over quarter of a century after the gas tragedy in Bhopal, doubts linger that it is US pressure that may have enabled Warren Anderson, the then CEO of UCC, to go scot-free—being released from arrest in Bhopal and flying back home—and forced the government to rein its authorities from acting against UCC. Now, a set of new correspondence accessed by activists using the RTI, copies of which are with Outlook, reveals how the current CEO of Dow, Andrew Liveris, has been trying to lobby the prime minister and his office, along with senior ministers of the UPA government, to support the firm’s business interests in India despite continuing public opposition over its unwillingess to accept responsibility for Bhopal.
From Debarshi Dasgupta and K. S. Shaini's report in Outlook. More Here
To a question as to whether he was really as pro-American as the Left makes him out to be, the Prime Minister said he is “working on an agenda that serves India to the best of my ability” and that it was for the people of the country to judge him.
(In September 2008, as he sat beside George W. Bush at the Oval Office of the White House in Washington D.C., Dr Singh had said: “The people of India deeply love you”.)
A few minutes later during the press conference, one wonders if the Prime Minister’s made a proverbial Freudian slip of the tongue when he said that “we are a country of a billion dollars”, before quickly correcting himself to replace his last word with “people”.
From Paranjoy Guha Thakurta's column "What the PM didn't say" in The Asian Age
Manmohan Singh has nothing to celebrate. He has said nothing new in his much publicised press conference. It is a tragic irony that we have a qualified economist at the helm of affairs and he could do nothing to stall the rising prices.
When he was asked about the ways to contain the prices, he dodged the question and started giving lectures on global financial crisis, inflation, fiscal figures etc. I just could not understand the logic there.
This government came to power with the votes of Aam Aadmi. It is yet to THINK about the welfare of the aam aadmi. How sad!
Was a deliberate gag manufactured to silence Masoom Moradabai of Urdu newspaper Akhbar e Jadid, when he asked the most crucial question engaging the 200 million Indian Muslims as to how Prime Minister will act on the recommendations of Sachar Commission and Justice Ranganathan Misra Commission reports.
The Urdu journalist was the fifth journalist in the line to be given the chance to address the questions to the Prime Minister. However when he posed the sensitive question about Muslim plight, all of a sudden the DD telecast went dead. Can one imagine a national TV Channel to be so inefficient and callous about breakdown in its telecast of Prime Minister’s Press Conference, without some sanction from the authorities? Was the breakdown of the telecast was designed specially to shield the Prime Minister from replying to embarrassing questions about the abject failure of his government?
One can see the last flashes of Prime Minister's instant distress while the Muslim journalist reeled out the question on behalf of his Urdu newspaper, when the telecast went off the air.
First, I want to assert that I am not a blind supporter of Manmohan Singh. How could I love a man who openly declares his love for George Bush and who has stooped low to get an autograph of Obama! But, nevertheless, I didn't like the way he was ridiculed, scolded and derided by Luh purush L K Advani. The choice of the word Nikkamma was in bad taste. Manmohan Singh may have played with the destiny of the nation in bonding with USA. But to call him Nikkamma is different.
All these days, weeks and months the scathing comment by L K Advani never faded away. Now I was pleased to hear it from Khushwant Singh. Oh! what a reply it is! I enjoyed it. Each and every word of it.
Dr. Ajmal sent it to me. Thank you, Dr. Ajmal!!
Now read the story! It was published here and here.
Like millions, I watched Mohan Bhagwat’s press conference on TV. He is the head of the RSS; the BJP is the progenyNikkamma number 1 of the RSS. The BJP leaders had a bitter fallout and are looking for guidance from one who now represents their founding father.
Bhagwat did not commit himself to anything specific. Like any father would, he told his squabbling children to settle their differences between themselves, without involving him. However, he did express the opinion that it was time the BJP retired its old leaders and infused younger blood in the party. He did not name anyone, but it was obvious who he meant. That his voice counts a lot was proved by the fact that the next day most of the top leaders of the party, including L.K. Advani, Rajnath Singh, Sushma Swaraj, Arun Jaitley and Venkaiah Naidu went to call on him to get his aasheervad — blessings.
It can be assumed that the one man almost certainly to be asked to step down will be L.K. Advani. He should have left the political scene in a blaze of glory, but now not many tears will be shed for him. And for good reasons. Did he ever regret the role he played in the demolition of the Babri Masjid? If he did, as he claims, why did he not tender an apology? Did he regret the anti-Muslim pogrom in Gujarat? If so, why did he protect Narendra Modi from being sacked as Prime Minister Vajpayee evidently wanted to do? Is it possible that as home minister he did not know of Jaswant Singh’s mission to Kandahar to swap three jehadi militants for 150-odd Indians held hostage in hostile territory? There cannot be an iota of truth in his statement that he knew nothing about Jaswant’s mission till it was over.
An important omission in the analysis of the rapid decline of the BJP is the role of the RSS. The BJP took its ideology from the RSS. Islamophobia was its motivating factor as it was of militant right-wing organisations like the Shiv Sena and Ram Sena. An increasing number of people no longer subscribe to this ideology. Membership of these parties has dwindled.
Mohan Bhagwat’s assertion that the RSS includes members of the minority communities, including Muslims, has to be taken with a large dose of salt. While he decides on replacements for Advani and Rajnath Singh, he should also take a closer look at the factors which have contributed to peoples’ disenchantment with what all these parties stand for and the readiness with which they resort to violence to achieve their ends.
I have no regret over Advani’s discomfiture and imminent fadeout from national politics. He has done grievous harm to our efforts to create a truly secular India. He described Manmohan Singh as nikamma — useless. It so happens, Manmohan is still much in use, while Advani’s own erstwhile colleagues have pronounced him as of no use any longer. It is as comic a tragedy as any we have witnessed in recent times.
The following is an article on Globalisation. It is enlightening and interesting. I am very thankful for the Jamaat-e-Islami Hind people for sharing this valuable piece of intellectually stimulating article on Globalisation.
Nowadays everybody talks about Globalisation. It is the most discussed subject today in this country. But seldom I came across persons who are well versed in the subject. Those who take stands in the issue do so without any deep study and analysis. There are some who take an extreme stand and reject Globalisation wholly and fully. They brand globalisation as the tool of modern imperialists. They equate it with evil and reject it with vengeance.
There are some who have splashed in the illusions created by the Globlalisation. They are over awed by the glittering world created by the globalisation. They consciously chose to close their eyes and they refuse to see the side effects of globalisation.
Now with the UPA government once again in the centre and with Dr Singh as PM one could expect a rise in the globalisation process in India. They may behave responsibly and sensibly. Or they may not. And the leftists have already left the scene. They are no longer interested in the interests of the Aam Aadmi. Nandhigram and Singur are the worst examples.
Amidst this challenging scenario with nobody there to challenge the evils of Globalisation it is for the common man to do the job. Hence I commence a series of articles on Globalisation with this post. Excerpts from the article (author unknown):
There are two strands to the argument that globalization is undermining nation states. First, it is that it is empowering corporations at the expense of the nation state, and secondly, that the international institutions such as the WTO and World Bank are not democratic.
There is an issue of sheer size. It is noted that many corporations are larger than nation states – more than half the 100 largest economies in the world are corporations. The sales of Ford and General Motors combined are greater than the combined GDP of sub-Saharan Africa while those of the six largest Japanese trading companies are almost as big as all the nations of Latin America combined.
Critics of capitalism say the problem starts with laws of the early 19th century, which meant individual managers, and directors could not be held liable for the actions of the corporation. It is argued that globalisation was not a democrat choice but was pursued by corporations to suit their own ends of maximising profit by playing one nation off against another.
The international organisations, such as the World Trade Organisation, the World Bank and the IMF are make it their mission to open the world to the influence of transnational corporations. The IMF rules make it hard for nations to legislate to stop currency speculators from attacking their economy. The World Bank insists that nations to which it makes structural adjustment loans privatise government enterprises, often handing them to transnationals. The World Trade Organisation’s effort to break down trade barriers is designed to open markets to transnational corporations.
None of these supranational organisations are democratically constituted, and they make their decisions behind closed doors.
Globalization as an Attack on Democracy
THE GLOBALIZATION OF RECENT DECADES WAS NEVER A DEMOCRATIC CHOICE by the peoples of the world--the process has been business driven, by business strategies and tactics, for business ends. Governments have helped, by incremental policy actions, and by larger actions that were often taken in secret, without national debate and discussion of where the entire process was taking the community. In the case of some major actions advancing the globalization process, like passing the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) or joining the European Monetary Union (EMU), publics have been subjected to massive propaganda campaigns by the interested business-media elites. In the United States, public opinion polls showed the general public against NAFTA even after incessant propaganda, but the mass media supported it, and it was passed. In Europe as well, polls have shown persistent majorities opposed to the introduction of the Euro, but a powerful elite supports it, so that it moves forward.
This undemocratic process, carried out within a democratic facade, is consistent with the distribution of benefits and costs of globalization, and the fact that globalization has been a tool serving elite interests. Globalization has also steadily weakened democracy, partly as a result of unplanned effects, but also because the containment of labor costs and scaling down of the welfare state has required the business minority to establish firm control of the state and remove its capacity to respond to the demands of the majority. The mix of deliberate and unplanned elements in globalization's antidemocratic thrust can be seen in each aspect of the attack process.
ONE OF THE MAIN OBJECTIVES OF TNC MOVEMENT ABROAD HAS BEEN to tap cheaper labor sources. Labor is often cheapest, and least prone to cause employer problems, in authoritarian states that curb unions and enter into virtual joint venture arrangements with foreign capital, as in Suharto's Indonesia and PRI's Mexico. Capital moves to such friendly investment climes in an arbitrage process, shifting resources from the more expensive to the less costly locale, in a process that penalizes and thereby weakens democracy.
The actual shift of capital abroad, and the use of the external option to drive hard bargains at home, has weakened labor. Labor has also been weakened by deliberate government policies of tight money and restrictive budget policies to contain inflation, at the expense of high unemployment. These policies, and the incessant focus on labor market "flexibility" as the solution to the unemployment problem, reflect a corporate and antilabor policy agenda, fully institutionalized. There have even been more open and direct attacks on organized labor--both Reagan and Thatcher engaged in union busting, and the latter was quite explicit in her aim to weaken labor as a political force. Democracy, according to pluralistic theory, is said to rest on the existence of intermediate groups, like labor organizations, that can bargain and work on behalf of an otherwise atomized population. The deliberate weakening of such groups is thus an attack on democracy.
IN THE UNITED STATES, BRITAIN, CANADA, AND OTHER COUNTRIES the business community has also mounted a sustained ideological campaign to make their preferred policies part of common understanding. These campaigns have proceeded in parallel with globalization and have been remarkably similar, reflecting the global flow of ideology and overlapping sources of funding. The favored neoliberal ideology pushes the idea that the market can do it all, that government is a burden and threat, and that deregulation and privatization are inherently good and inevitable. It presses an extreme individualism and the value of "personal responsibility," which is highly advantageous to corporate power, leaving bargaining between large firms and isolated individuals. Collective and community values, the threat of externalities and ecological damage from unconstrained business growth, free market instability--all are shunted aside in this ideological system. This ideological campaign has been highly successful, because vast sums of business money fed to intellectuals and think tanks, and business domination of the mass media, have allowed their views to prevail. Heritage Foundation leader Edwin Feulner has described the strategy of his corporate-funded and globally linked think tank as analogous to Procter & Gamble's in selling soap--saturate the market with messages that overwhelm any that are less well funded.10 But this is a corruption of democracy; it is a bought market of ideas, not a free market of ideas.
The business community has also mounted a powerful effort to dominate governments--either by capture or by limiting their ability to serve ordinary citizens. Globalization has contributed to this effort, partly by the arbitraging process mentioned earlier, which favors authoritarian rule. Apart from this, by enlarging business profits and weakening labor it has shifted the balance of power further toward business, so that political parties have been even more decisively influenced by business money in elections. In the United States, it is notorious that Mr. Clinton has sought and received enormous sums from business and serves their interests almost exclusively, with only token efforts on behalf of the major nonbusiness constituencies of the Democratic Party. The globalizing corporate media have added their growing strength to the advance of neoliberal ideology and opposition to any vestiges of social democracy, making social democratic policies difficult to implement. The Murdoch effect on British elections, and the current Murdoch-Blair connection illustrates the point.
Another well-known and important antidemocratic force is the power of global financial markets to limit political options. Social democratic policies make for an unfavorable investment climate. Businesses will therefore respond to politicians and acts serving ordinary citizens with threatened or actual exit. Financial market effects on exchange and interest rates can be extremely rapid and damaging to the economy. Spokespersons for the new global economy actually brag about the ability of capital to penalize "unsound" policies, and the fact that money capital now rules.
These business efforts, aided and validated by the IMF and by media support, regularly cause social democrats to retreat to policies acceptable to the rulers. Thus, in country after country social democratic parties have accepted neoliberalism, despite the contrary preferences of great majorities of their voting constituencies. But this means that nominal democracy is no longer able to serve ordinary citizens, making elections meaningless and democracy empty of substance. This helps explain why half or more of eligible U.S. voters no longer participate in national elections.
Not satisfied with this level of political control, the business community has pushed for international agreements, and policy actions by the IMF and World Bank, that further encroach on the ability of democratic polities to act on behalf of their constituencies. These agreements and the demands of the international financial institutions invariably call for precisely the policies desired by the TNC community. The EMU conditions give primacy to budget constraints and inflation control, in accord with the neoliberal and corporate agenda. GATT, the WTO, and the NAFTA agreement also give top priority to corporate investor and intellectual property rights, to which all other considerations must give way. In the early 1980s, the IMF and World Bank took advantage of the Third World debt crisis and used their leverage with numerous distressed Third World borrowers to force their acceptance of Structural Adjustment Programs. These forced the borrowing countries to agree to give first priority to external debt repayment, private as well as government; it compelled them to adapt austerity programs of tight money and budget cutbacks focusing heavily on social expenditures affecting the poor and ordinary citizens; it forced a stress on exports, which help generate foreign exchange to allow debt repayment and that more closely integrate the borrower's economy into the global system; and it stressed privatization, allegedly in the interest of efficiency, but serving both to help balance the budget without tax increases and to provide openings for TNC investment in the troubled economy. The IMF is doing the same in Asia today.
A second characteristic of the new agreements and IMF-World Bank actions is their denial of democratic rights to non-corporate citizens and elected governments. These are subordinated to the rights of corporate investors, the superior class of global citizens with priority over all others and beneficiaries of the New TNC Protectionism. In the NAFTA agreement, governments are denied in advance the right to take on new functions; any not asserted now are left to the private sector and to the superior class of citizens. In these agreements, also, and even more aggressively in the Multilateral Agreement on Investment now under consideration, the global TNCs have no responsibilities and none can be imposed on them. They can fire people, abandon communities, fatally damage the environment, push local companies out of business, and purvey cultural trash at their full discretion. They can or will be able to sue governments, and disagreements are to be settled by unelected panels outside the control of democratic governments.
A third characteristic of the new agreements and IMF-World Bank actions is that they rest not only on neoliberal theory but on a false reading of recent experience and economic history. As noted earlier, globalization so far has been a productivity failure, a social disaster, and a threat to stability. The claim of its proponents that free trade is the route to economic growth is also confuted by longer historic experience: no country, past or present, has taken off into sustained economic growth and moved from economic backwardness to modernity without large-scale government protection and subsidization of infant industries and other modes of insulation from domination by powerful outsiders. This includes Great Britain, the United States, Japan, Germany, South Korea and Taiwan, all highly protectionist in the earlier takeoff phases of their growth process. The governments and institutions bargaining on behalf of the TNCs today, through the IMF, World Bank, WTO and NAFTA, have been able to remove these modes of protection from less developed countries. This threatens them with extensive takeovers from abroad, thoroughgoing integration into foreign economic systems as "branch plant economies," preservation in a state of dependence and underdevelopment, and most particularly, an inability to protect their majorities from the ravages of neoliberal top-down development priorities.
Conclusion
IN SUM, WE ARE IN THE MIDST OF AN ANTI-DEMOCRATIC COUNTERREVOLUTION in which globalization and its imperatives are being used to weaken popular and elected authority in favor of a system of domination by super-citizens, the TNCs. This process sows the seeds of its own destruction, as it serves a small global minority, damages the majority, breeds financial instability, and exacerbates the environmental crisis. Its destructive tendencies are likely to produce an explosion if the process is not contained and democracy is not rehabilitated.
Halting this anti-democratic juggernaut will be difficult, not only because of the power of its beneficiaries, but also because it operates within the framework of nominally democratic structures and musters plausible arguments. But these arguments are self-serving and wrong, and should be vigorously contested. An agenda should be advanced that serves ordinary citizens rather than the TNCs and financial institutions. Negatively, this agenda will include strenuous opposition to all supranational arrangements that take power out of the hands of democratic governments to serve some alleged economic need. Positively, the agenda requires support for the imposition of serious limits and responsibilities on TNCs, including capital controls and other deterrents to financial speculation. Pursuit of this agenda is going to require a combination of understanding and effective organization of the large majority who are the victims of globalization.
