INDIA WOUNDED: A BIRD’S EYE VIEW
INDIA WOUNDED: A BIRD’S EYE VIEW
Compiled By Debaprasad Bandyopadhyay
I. CRISES
The following statistics (if statistical data are to be believed! According my personal experience, Sahibs oftenallege that this country for poor data quality despite this country has celebrated institutes, viz., Indian Statistical Institute, National Sample Survey etc. Cf. (a) Data deficit and India’s peripheral States; (b) Why India lacks quality in its demographic and health data?) of India (Population: 135.26 Crores and still counting, July, 2020) speaks for itself about the condition of the country. It has worsened during the catastrophic situation due to COVID-19 outbreak:
- Hunger Index: rank 102 out of 117 qualifying countries (2019)
- Unemployment rate: 8.74% of the population (2020)
- GDP growth rate: 1.9% post-lockdown (2020), following global recession. GDP per capita rank 42nd (nominal; 2020) 124th (PPP; 2020)
- According to The Economist (2016), India occupied the ninth position in global Crony-Capitalist Index, having crony sector wealth that accounts for 3.4% of the total GDP.
According to reports from various sources, the ruling party’s assets are increasing by leaps and bounds:
A. BJP’s Declared Assets Increased By 627% in 10 Years: ADR Report
B. BJP highest earner in FY19 at Rs 2,410 crore; TMC’s income spikes 3,628% VIEW HERE
C. BJP’s assets increased by 22% in 2017-18, Congress’ down by 15%: ADR VIEW HERE
Even, it is alleged that in case of individual party member is also gaining, e.g.,
D. Amit Shah’s Son Delayed Filings, His Total Income Rose By 15000% From 2014-19: Report VIEW HERE
E. Amit Shah’s son’s ₹6 crore company got credit facility worth ₹97 crore, says Congress VIEW HERE
On the other hand, PSU banks, some private banks are going to be bankrupted due to Gross NPAs. Inflation is inevitable. One peculiar instance:
F. Loans over Rs 68k crore, including to Mehul Choksi’s firms, VIEW HERE
The middle-class depositors of the Dewan Housing Finance Corporation Limited (DHFL), Punjab and Maharashtra Co-operative Bank, Yes Bank, Punjab National Bank etc., are undergoing insolvency. It’s a different type of “capital” punishment for them.
5. Happiness Index: Rank 140 out of 156 countries (2019)
6. Corruption Index: Rank 80 out of 180 countries (2020)
7. Informal sector workers: 93% of the total workforce (2019).
Disinvestment and privatization are the major reasons behind it. Supposed/probable citizens of India (“probable”, as the Indian citizen is yet to be proved by the tiresome processes of NPR-NRC-CAA) used to elect their government to switch over from public sectors to private sectors. What a paradox! Only an equivocator could say two antithetical concepts: “FDI” and “atmanirbharata” (self-reliance) with nationalistic jingoism in a same breath!
8. Availability of Hospital beds: 0.055 per 1,000 populations (2020)
9. Defense Budget: The union government justifiably allocated Rs 3.37 lakh crore as the defense budget for the financial year 2020-21. (compared to 8, it is observed that the death industry is proliferated by the government itself)
10. Malnourished population: 195.9 million malnourished people (2015-17); one-third of the world’s malnourished children belong to India.
11. Carbon Footprints: Emission of 2,299 million tonnes of Carbon Dioxide (2018). No visible step is observed to save the planet from the consequences of anthropogenic global heating by the Indian Government. Even there is no anticipatory policy regarding the rehabilitation of climate refugees. Instead, the government is justifiably busy with ostentatious display of statues, temples, anti-green bullet trains etc., along with planned deforestation for mining and other developmental projects.
12. Poverty index: rank 49. Two-thirds of people in India live in poverty: 68.8% of the Indian population lives on less than $2 a day. Over 30% even have less than $1.25 per day. More than 36 crore Indians still cannot afford three square meals a day. India had 73 million people living in extreme poverty which makes up 5.5% of its total population. India’s top 1% owns half of national wealth.
13. External Debt is nearly about Rupees 86 trillion (as on 02/05/2020)! However, Indian Government has written off the astronomical figure of money, 68,607 crores owed by the super-rich people at the time of international crisis.
14. Suicide rate: About 800,000 people die by suicide worldwide every year, of these 1, 35, 000 (17.8%) are from India. India now accounts for over a third of the world’s annual female suicides and nearly a fourth of male suicides.
15. India is also a victim of Lawrence Summers’ (chief economist of the World Bank 1991-93) memo “Let Them Eat Pollution“. Majority of Indians have lost their herd immunity for consuming spurious products of so-called Green Revolution (empirical data not available).
16. Water Crisis: An average human being needs 15 litres of water per day to meet the basic needs and easements, which roughly amounts to more than 50 litres per family. In the rural areas, more than 50% of women walk up to minimum 5km on a daily basis for necessary consumption. On an average, they have to undertake 2-3 trips to and fro with earthen pots on their heads (15-20 litres capacity each). Carrying such heavy loads of water on their heads leads to chronic biological complications. Unsafe water also leads to an annual surge in infant mortality. Children of nearly 100 million households in India are left to survive without water. Due to the non-availability of safe drinking water, 2 lakh Indians have to die every year and 600 million of the Indian population encounter extreme water crisis.
II. FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF A SOCIAL SCIENTIST
- In the context of the crony capitalist scenario of India, it is found that few of the mercantile enterprises are controlling, approximating, appropriating and codifying the ruling party and the government.
- Thus, the government and the ruling party are trending towards monopoly capitalism by choosing few mercantile donors.
- For the sake of (1) and (2), crafted crises are created to hand over all the governmental institutes and “other” private financial institutes through, what Baudrillard called, “Simulation” in the context of the consumer society.
- This is euphemistically glorified as “disinvestment”, as if 43% of Indian adult citizens had chosen (by the way of common suffrage/universal franchise) their government (2019) for switching over to non-governmental agencies. These private agencies are acquiring the (a) infrastructures, built by the taxpayers’ money-signifiers (thus “public” is subservient to the free flow of private capital); (b) natural resources as “free gift” that leads to the catastrophic glocal heating.
- In the context of such a consumer society, this type of situation (free flow of private capital) encourages market fundamentalism apart from the ruling party’s declared religious fundamentalism.
- Creating anxiety disorder through crafted and simulated crises is also a hyper-real business. It contributes to the businesses of pharmaceutical companies and legal professions and cripples the cognitive competence of homo sapiens sapiens. Thinking persons are endangered. Creativity is crippled. Not only that it is also a part of anatomo-bio political intervention into the docile corporeal of the subjects with a goal to execute Malthusian positive (?) checks.
- The shadow economy (a la Pigou) of the so-called “underworld” is also controlling, approximating, appropriating and codifying the mercantile enterprises as well as political parties. This is the tragic shadow world of the Indian economy.
- By encouraging FDI, India is welcoming foreign MNCs, thus it is like re-welcoming the East India Company. This not only contradicts the atmanirbhar project of the current Indian political regime under the neoliberal economy, but also it affects the economic sovereignty of India.
- The ideological standpoint of the ruling party and its associates is working as a mask since it does not comply with the main ideological tenets of the rich Indian epistemological traditions.
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