System failure: poverty grows on USA!

Frankly, I'm shocked going through the press report that 44 million people in US are living in BPL.This is 14.4% of the the country's total population of three hundred and fifteen million. For us Indians, specially for the middle and upper middle class folks, America has always been  a coveted greener pasture where you get all the goodies without much of an effort.  But what do hear now? Ever since the economic meltdown in 2008, the country has declined economically for sure, but is not this revelation  a bit too scary? BPL, so long a phenomenon of developing countries, is now a fact of life in your dream land of  milk and honey. Oh, capitalism!

 Cuba, that hallowed citadel of socialism, which  fought relentles battle against Imperialist forces since 1959 under the able leadership of Che Guevera and Fidel Castro,  has now landed in a deep crisis.Their much avowed socialist policies of food,shelter and employment for all,  have got a serious beating.Their economy is in a shambles. Raul Castro,brother of Fidel Castro and now president of Cuba, has recently announced that the onslaught of sanctions by USA & its allies on all items barring agricultural products and medicines, has left him with no other options but to resort to stringent measures such as phasewise retrenchnent of workers. Oh, socialism!

The bottom line is, no system - or doctrine for that matter - is full-proof, and guarantees any secured  livelihood of the mankind.  It's fair to conclude that at a certain point of time any structure  / concept on which the administration works, crumbles irrespective of the world order.

 Of late, the  Heads of 189 countries at United Nations have vowed ,as part of their Millenium Goals.  to eradicate poverty, stop climate change and overcome economic crises all over the world by 2015.

I wonder if it is going to be another exercise that ends up in yet another system failure.

So, what's Rahul Gandhi up to?

So, what is Rahul Gandhi up to?

The scion of Neheru-Gandhi dynasty recently had a whirlwind tour across West Bengal and aroused the intesest of the masses by simply mouthing things that were half-baked rhetoric. To cite just one example, he told in a meeting that there are two Bengals – one that of rich CPM’s, and another of the poor masses. He was of course cheered with applauses, but is there anything new about it? Do you see any novelty in such a benign and apolitical statement? If it wasn’t shit, it was not a tolerable insight either.

Rahul is evidently posing as the messiah of the underdogs, but without any credibility. Think what he stated in the wake of the Central Government’s rejection of Vedanta’s Niyamgiri project in Orissa following the relentless resistance movement by the Adivasis. He congratulated the Adivasis for the triumph of the movement, and assured them that he would be their ‘sepahi’ in New Delhi to fight for their cause in future. Now, who is going to have his faith in someone who has never ever associated himself with this movement?

Here is the irony: Rahul advocates for the poor while his Government is systematically batting for the mining corporates who are supposed to hike the GDP!

So, it does not require much brain to understand that Rahul is just paying lip service for the ordinary poor people of India and is in the game of building up an image on his way to being at the helm of affairs in not too distant a future.

Graveyard humour!

In yet another long essay in the Outlook weekly, Arundhati Roy lambasts Manmohan Singh and Co with her great prose.

Excerpt:
On the 64th anniversary of India’s Independence, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh climbed into his bullet-proof soapbox in the Red Fort to deliver a passionless, bone-chillingly banal speech to the nation. Listening to him, who would have guessed that he was addressing a country that, despite having the second-highest economic growth rate in the world, has more poor people than 26 of Africa’s poorest countries put together? “All of you have contributed to India’s success,” he said, “the hard work of our workers, our artisans, our farmers has brought our country to where it stands today.... We are building a new India in which every citizen would have a stake, an India which would be prosperous and in which all citizens would be able to live a life of honour and dignity in an environment of peace and goodwill. An India in which all problems could be solved through democratic means. An India in which the basic rights of every citizen would be protected.” Some would call this graveyard humour. He might as well have been speaking to people in Finland, or Sweden.

Are You Really Concerned about the Poor, Mr PM?

I'm quite taken aback by the Prime Minister's rejection of Supreme Court's order for free distribution of wheat/rice to the poor people. What does he mean by saying that the Supreme Court could not get into "realm of policy formulation"?

Let us face it.The Supreme Court had to issue such an order because the officials of Food Corporation Of India allowed, criminally, 50 million tons of food grains to get rotten. This happens when the food price has skyrocketed beyond limit despite the Union government's "credible performance" and people under BPL(Below Poverty Line)- a staggering 46 crores in number- are pushed further down due to their abysmally low income - as low as Rs. 20/= a day. In this context it's only humane and laudable that the Supreme Court orders the food grains to be distributed to the poor free of cost. What's wrong with it. Mr PM? Are you not, as the head of the state, supposed to care for the poor and weaker section of the democracy that we boast of? The fact is that our PM, himself an economist, is a staunch champion of "Free Market Economy" and does believe in seller- buyer relationship only. There is nothing like free distribution in his scheme of things.

What a paradox NATIONAL ADVISORY COUNCIL headed by Congress chief comprising eminent personalities and experts with their deep sense of humanity and objectivity is now thinking of formulating a "Food Security Bill" to ensure availability of food items round the year at a subsidized price to the people under BPL!

Lastly, if the govt. of the day can afford to exempt corporate tax to the tune of Rs. 62000 crores, allow three-fold hike of wages of the MPs, increase the wages of the public servant handsomely and pay stimulus to different business houses from to time, then why would not the SC's order be carried out with all the sincerity it requires to achieve the much talked-about programme of "Inclusive Growth"?

Are Bihar Maoists deviating?

The recent abduction case of the police by the Bihar Maoists and their release in return for the eight comrades in custody has  a queer element to it. It’s the terrorists who are used to doing such negotiation. But the Maoists rarely resort to such tactics.

In chattishgarh, for example, the Maoists fight with the security forces quite often, and have lost many of their comrades. Some of their comrades may have been arrested by the police in the process. But they have never abducted any cops, or any official for that matter, and raised demand for release of their arrested comrades.

 The  strategy does not conform to the  tenet of Marxist- Leninist-Maoist thought.

 Is it any adventurist line that the Bihar Maosts are pursuing? Are they disconnected with the other       Maoists elsewhere? Are the Maoists disintegrating?

The Maoists, during their long movement in different parts of India, won over a section of the civil society by their relentless mobilisation of the masses against the exploitations of the impoverished tribal people by the repressive government. Eminent personalities like B.L. Sharma, Prasanta Bhusan, Arundhati Roy, Swami Agnivesh, Soma Chowdhury and others now stand for them.

 It’s not sane – in fact, juvenile – for the Maoists to behave this way at the cost of their ideology.