Avis Inde : middle class

The Traffic Jams in Delhi and the Capitalist Monster

A travel across the capital city in an auto-rickshaw or a DTC bus always seems like lambasting my own wit for choosing the roads rather than the Japanese and Korean funded metro rail. The traffic moves at a snail’s pace across the busy junctions, and the commuters keep on abusing the system and the slow rate of Indian progress story, often confined within the air-conditioned cars. While an onlooker like me seriously question the system of capitalism that begets every sort of crisis in the lives of the people, while the problems with the streets are commonly shared by the rich and the poor alike, especially when there is a long stranded traffic on a busy highway. Capitalism hates to wait, for it, each moment means an opportunity to earn money; just like in an insurance company it will be inevitable that a nosy and I-know-everything kind of a sales manager will tell the executive that every call is a ‘sales opportunity’. Capitalism has worked on the same logic while it hates to wait for anything; it loves to make people wait, even for centuries.

Chaos at Delhi

So traffic jam, if seen from a capitalist perspective, is caused by the ‘bloody poor people’ the ‘parasites’ as some of our beloved ultra-fanatic devotee of Modi would like to call them. The situation is more flummoxing than what it appears to be in its present avatar. First of all, the poor men and women, whom those on fast wheels consider pests infesting ‘their own’ cities and streets, are not people who came flocking to the cities like Delhi and Mumbai on their own seeking fun and employment; most of them are people who are evicted from their homeland, their villages and land by a development agenda, which these people in the air-conditioned cars consider India’s highway to economic prosperity. Secondly, these people, despite all the hardships of their lives, are not begging, but labouring hard to feed themselves and their dependants. Thirdly, the rich, the super-rich, and the wanna-be-rich type people are the major cause of roadblocks in a city like Delhi. Don’t believe me? Well, then sit close to a bus stand in any busy junction on any given business day and see how many people are riding their cars all alone to work, for every one person, four wheels and litres of fossil fuel are on the burning trail. Not one, tens or hundreds, but thousands of them are roving across the boulevards of the power city of India, their cars, their symbol of status, class and power is choking the city roads, forget the pollution and its side effects on the future generations.

Yes, a better public transport system, a greener orientation towards transport could have saved the city and its life for the next couple of decades from falling prey to the most chronic and critical illness. However, it is our rich and the mighty, who would never ride a bicycle to work or even consider taking a ride in a bus or metro rail an act of self-humiliation, because, for them, car symbolises their glory and achievements. After all tall talks about Odd-Even scheme, curtailing private cars on the streets, improving private transport, the Chief Minister of Delhi and his entire cabinet has reverted back to the old temple of status quo and have surreptitiously turned the issues of pollution – taboos . So, like other Indian metro cities, Delhi too keeps on symbolising the rule of the rich and super rich. Another city where a poor rickshaw puller, whose cart neither emits smoke nor consumes fossil fuel, is abused for doing what he does, rickshaw pulling; a cyclist is abused for riding on a street the lads of rich dads call their own. All these when a car or a motorbike keeps on violating traffic laws, rash drives, threatens the right of the pedestrians and other commuters on the road! When this is the shape of the mindset of a middle-class block in the most corrupt city in the country, I wonder what better can be there for these people, who are themselves a parasite class now vis a vis the people of the entire country.

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, by Tanmoy Ibrahim

capital

What The Corporate Media Preaches To The Working Class

Recently the national media started lamenting on the issue of the working class of the country resorting to the nationwide strike as a medium of protesting and putting up resistance to the neo-liberal economic policies of the BJP led Central Government and its allies. The national mainstream media has been vocal against any form of working class struggle, be it strikes, militant trade union struggle, or mere protest rallies. The corporate controlled media is not willing to tolerate any form of protest of the working class and always advise the workers and employees of the nation to toe the policies of the government, even at the cost of their livelihood for the sake of ‘economic development’, ‘economic growth’ and ‘national growth’.

The question that arises is whose development do the corporate bodies advocate when it talks about ‘national growth’ or ‘economic development’? In the last 15 years, thanks to the neo-liberal economic policies endorsed by subsequent governments led by the BJP and the Congress Party, the Indian economy has surely seen a boom. Despite the economic meltdown that began during the US subprime crisis in the year 2008, India managed to drive across the depression hit world economy, due to immense foreign capital investment in its stock markets, especially in the BFSI, real estate, IT, media and other sectors. India has turned into a safe haven for foreign institutional investors to park their money during troubled time at their home. This makes Indian companies record huge capital gains, despite slow down of economic growth worldwide.

The huge capital investments made by the Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) route in several sectors, especially the service sector of the economy, the affluent and rich classes of urban India has experienced a rapid boom, with excessive income that far surpasses the national per capita income. The growth of the nation, as hyped by the corporate media organisations like Times Group, or Hindustan Times Group, both owned by corporate giants, is actually the growth of wealth of the rich, which has driven the poor to the poorer segment and the poorest to the segment of pauperisation and starvation.

To add fuel to the loco of this so-called development model, the corporate bodies lobbied for more access into the hinterland of the country in search of cheap raw materials, land and labour. The corporate groups, funded by foreign monopoly and finance capital were allowed to plunder the nation and its resources, especially the minerals, land, water resources, and cheap labour to burgeon their profit books. The people on the other hand were evicted from their lands, especially the oppressed castes, tribal people; the poorest of the poor were targeted as lambs of sacrifice.

This so called development model has widened the economic difference between two broad sections of the people. On one hand, there are the rich, super rich, upper middle class, the affluent urban society which is accumulating wealth through the organisations blessed with foreign monopoly capital investment, which is causing them to lead a super luxurious life, boosting the luxury apparel industry and foreign monopoly capital owned FMCG industry. On the other hand, there are the broad masses of people, including but not limited to, the workers, peasants, toiled people, urban poor, and lower middle classes. These people are facing constant isolation from the growth trajectory of the rich, as for them the growing consumerist industry and its aggression is causing the problems like inflation, rapid rise in living costs, and ever diminishing real income.

Therefore, on several occasions these classes, who forms nearly 90% of the Indian population bursts out in protest against the burden of exploitation and oppression levelled upon them by the rich and the government that favours the rich. As a result of this the working class and mass struggles takes the militant form to press the establishment and make it concede by force the justified demands of the people.

However, such acts of open rebellion against the policies of corporate plunder and exploitation by the 90% of the population often draws ire of the 10%, which is expressed by these 10% of the population through their mouthpieces like the corporate controlled television channels, news papers and internet sites. They vehemently oppose the working class, the peasantry, the poor and lower middle class people resorting to militant struggle to press for their justified demands in a democratic country. They call the endeavours of the working class and peasantry, even the most peaceful one, excesses committed by the people.

How do these corporate controlled media and their puppet journalists plan to resolve the problems that the working class faces? They all answer – through the mercy and grace of the mighty capitalist lords they hope that the problems of the workers will be solved. That means that the working class should shed all forms of protests, and plead with the Indian capitalists and their foreign masters for granting them some charity. These corporate honchos want the Indian people to pay lip service to democracy and allow them to enjoy all privileges enjoyed by them through government patronage.

So, we can see that if there is a rally of the workers on the streets, it is despised as a traffic decelerator, causing discomfort to commuters (ie those riding their Benz or Audi). If there is a strike, it is called a spoilsport as it allegedly destroys mandays and cause loss to the corporate account books. If the people resort to voice their protest through meetings, then they are shown the farthest corners of the cities, where no one can hear their concerns, for example, at the isolated corner of Connaught Place, we have the Jantar Mantar, as a venue for all type of protests with no voice reaching the people of Delhi.

In case we see the data released on the Industrial disputes by the labour ministry till 2012, we can find that the number of lockouts, lay off, and closure in the private sector industries far surpass the number of strikes in such industries. However, alike the strikes of the workers, the labour retrenchment and closures of factories which cause immense agony among the working class, is not considered a crime by any court of law of this country. No newspaper editorial or TV anchor sheds any crocodile tear for the agony of the workers and the poor people affected by such arbitrary actions of the foreign big monopoly capital and their Indian lackeys. Rather these very representatives of the foreign capital interest argues in favour of these capitalists, asking the government to provide them ‘more’ leverage and ‘favourable’ conditions for business growth.

The problem is that our middle classes are influenced by such propaganda of the corporate big capital, and their representatives keeps on parroting the lines of the corporate honchos, even unaware of the fact that such policies always goes against their own class interests, and even future survival in a country which is fast turning into a neo colony of foreign big monopoly capital.

We need to think, we need to act, now; otherwise it will be too late very soon.

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, by Tanmoy Ibrahim

India

The Uncritical Citizen -Toxic for Democracy

The recent events, including the building of public opinion in favour of hanging Yaqub Memon, convicted in the Mumbai serial-bomb-blast case of 1993, despite several loopholes in the story of the prosecution, and the falsehoods used to erect a monumental figure in the memory of former President, A.P.J Abdul Kalam throughout the offline and online spaces, proved that the corporate media has now turned into a large scale opinion manufacturing unit and the people are fed such manufactured pieces as gospel's truth to serve the interests of the big corporations.

We saw how uncritically the educated urban middle-class gulped the pills sold by these corporate-owned media houses and considered their stories as gospel truth, be it about Yaqub Memon, A.P.J. Kalam, or anything else under the sun. The dangerous thing is not that the people are only gulping the sedative pills offered by the corporate media houses, but they are also a victim of the vicious rumour-milling by the RSS-affiliates over social media, where fake news blended with vitriol is often consumed by the vulnerable masses of youth in higher doses.

On all social media platforms, the RSS-affiliated IT wings have created millions of fake profiles through which they broadcast the venomous propaganda against the Muslim community of the country. A team of thousands of professionals hired by the saffron fascist outfit is trying to shape the psychic of the upper-caste Hindus who belong to the middle-class and lower-middle class with the help of fabricated information and concocted tales. There is also an incessant attempt to magnify the minuscule or nil achievements of the Modi government through different morphed images and doctored videos.

For example, recently a picture showing the flags of Western countries, including the US, flying at half mast was posted on social media by the RSS' affiliates, claiming that the Americans paid homage to the former president of India, A.P.J. Kalam, who died a few days back, by lowering their flag. Quite soon, after that post became viral, the investigations made by independent journalists revealed that the claim was a hoax. However, this could not stop the cyber mascots to carry on the exercise and hoodwink the social media users, who on the other hand spread the news like an epidemic in the Websphere.

The recent outbursts of the social media users following the BJP - Shiv Sena incitement against the troubled Bollywood star Salman Khan showed that how easily these middle-class people can be misguided by using xenophobia. The Muslim identity of an individual is the best thing to stir up hatred against him or her and villainize them on the national plane.

The political opinion of 80% Indian youth and middle-class, across all communities and castes, form their opinion by adhering to hearsay and social media hoax, which is deliberately used by the ruling clique to legitimise its fascist domination over the people. The uncritical middle-class, unable to decipher the real intent behind such extremist campaigns, utter the same words that they are taught by the evangelists of hate on different social media and television channels.

The reason for this lack of critical thinking can be attributed to the semi-colonial education system that the British imperialism once established in this country. The British saw to it that the Indian people cannot acquire critical and advanced western education so that they may be good only for clerical jobs, for which the British brought the English education at the first place.

The Indian middle classes were created from the affluent sections of the rural societies during the period of early urbanisation by the British colonial rulers to secure a source of clerical staffs and hence they made these affluent middle-class and elite Indians educated in their carefully tailored curriculum, which manufactured the best copy cats but not rational thinking individuals. It's for the same reason the British colonial rulers were able to command the allegiance of this parasitic Babu class, which continue to rule the bureaucracy even today. No wonder, some of them still praise the British for the “magnificent development” of India, as they praised Narendra Modi for his “development skills” earlier.

The education system of a country is an apparatus to serve and further the interests of the ruling classes, this holds true for any class that holds the state power of a nation. In countries like India, where the handful of rich, supported by foreign capital investment, rules more than one billion people, it naturally becomes a very important tool to serve their interest to create a pool of obedient pawns who can work as their docile tool.

For nearly two centuries, the semi-colonial education system is manufacturing half-baked clerical staff and creating pawns for the ruling classes from the educated section of the country, which still has a large number of uneducated people (not considering literacy).

The talent creation of the education system has dropped to nil; the Indian minds that can think critically are in the minority and are mostly targeted by the ruling classes by inciting hate propaganda against them. The Indian minds that are promising are bought and extracted from the country by the foreign monopoly capital, which employs them in huge number as their paid slaves to serve their interests. This had been fuelled by the lack of technology and infrastructure in India which can promote scientific experiments and development. Moreover, the prevalence of a semi-feudal production relation creates great socio-economic obstacles in carrying out large scale and path-breaking research in the country.

Hence, we can see that despite breeding a huge chunk of software engineers, India, could not produce an operating system of its own. Though India produces large numbers of doctors every year, we still lag miles behind to the Western countries in any innovative and path-breaking medical research; despite having a large population of automobile engineers, India, does not have a car built on indigenous technology with domestic capital.

Renowned American philosopher cum activist, Noam Chomsky, while quoting the works of Sam Bowles and Herb Gintis, both economists, said that these two correctly:

"pointed out that the educational system is divided into fragments. The part that's directed toward working people and the general population is indeed designed to impose obedience. But the education for elites can't quite do that. It has to allow creativity and independence. Otherwise, they won't be able to do their job of making money."

The Indian education system is similarly breeding a section of obedient servile clerical staff from the less privileged sections of the society, especially from the middle and lower middle classes, while on the other hand it nurtures those from the affluent classes to gain higher and specialised education, which enables them to either mint money for themselves or for the top ranking capitalists and their enterprises.

The total control of the Indian economy by the foreign monopoly capital in collaboration with the indigenous big comprador and crony capitalist class that works as its lackey and the feudal landlords have caused a dearth in any technological or scientific progress in the ancient epicentre of knowledge and rationality. Rather, we find extreme communal disharmony, superstitions, racism and bigotry in the country which could have easily wiped off such stigmas if it traversed an independent course of development since 1947.

The education system of India prohibits those with the leverage to attain it from any sort of critical and scientific thinking. Dogmatism, metaphysics, and traditional values are given prominence in the sphere of knowledge rather than rationalism, critical thinking, and seeking truth from facts. Indian education system promotes blind faith and dogmatist outlook among its products, forcing them to succumb to the vicious propaganda of the ruling classes.

This has created a large number of semi-educated and half-baked minds in the nation, which has worked against the interest of the broad masses of the workers and peasants of the country, who nearly constitutes 80 % of the total population. The so-called educated sections of the country rather aspired only for higher paid jobs, bureaucratic positions, and foreign immigration. They have subscribed wildly to the propaganda of the ruling classes.

The concept of "nation" and "nationalism" is distorted in the national educational curriculum. A "nation" for the middle class means the geographical territory of the country, and "nationalism" means supporting the political - military and economic endeavours of the government without questioning the motives behind them. This is a reason that anti-war and pro-peace activism does not find much support from the middle class and privileged sections of the country, who easily succumb to the chauvinist propaganda of the ruling classes. For them not supporting a war the country is involved in, even if it is a predatory war, is an act of treason.

Indian students and youth are spoon fed fascism, blended with communalism, since their childhood. They are made to believe that the real challenges regarding the growth of the nation lies in countering Pakistan and China, along with exerting Indian influence, military and political, in the neighbouring countries. They are forced to believe, uncritically of course, that the government and its establishments are working to promote the interest of the country, and a true patriot should always support the "nation" (the government) in its military endeavours.

However, it is also true, that several Indian youths are smashing these shackles to free their mind, and seeks knowledge out of the official domain to know history and the present world affairs. Though the number of such youths are less in comparison to those who subscribe to the official version, yet, they pose a threat to the ruling establishment which counters them by further distorting the education system, the mission undertaken by the fascist BJP-RSS regime at present.

The BJP, following the theoretical guidance of Hedgewar-Golwalkar fascist clique, the blind followers of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy during the rise of fascism in those countries, is constantly pushing a far-right communal education policy, which will generate numerous communally biased youth every year.

Famous Indian historian, K.N Pannikar, while criticising this vicious move of the BJP-RSS to communalise the education system, nearly fourteen years back, said:

"The restructuring of the education system undertaken by the present government and the agencies under its control is primarily oriented towards the redefinition of the nation in religious terms. Using the logic of majoritarianism the nation is being conceptualized as Hindu and a system of education to legitimize this notion is being put in place. In this attempt the interpretation of the past and the social consciousness emerging out of it are of crucial importance, which explains the promotion of a hinduised history by the Sangh Parivar. The soul of hinduisation, however, is not the distortion of facts, which at any rate are aplenty, but a religious interpretation of the past, which establishes the right of the nation to the Hindus. Reminiscent of the colonial view of the past, the communal history, which is now being propagated by government institutions like the Indian Council for Historical Research and increasingly finding place in school textbooks, depicts Indian history as a record of continuous strife between religious communities. In this interpretation all communities other than the Hindus are identified as foreigners and therefore the enemies of the nation. What is implied thereby is that Hindus alone has a right to the nation. The recent attempts to prove the indigenous origins of the Aryans and their vegetarianism are a part of establishing historical legitimacy for Hindu nationhood. This however is only the tip of the iceberg. A very concerted and well-planned attempt is being made to create an alternate historical consciousness. The channels of dissemination of this consciousness are not the textbooks or the research projects sponsored by the ICHR alone, but more so the vernacular pamphlets extensively distributed through religious and social networks. They do not make any distinction between myth and history; in fact they parade myth as history, which in a way makes their reception easier. The history of Ramjanmabhoomi circulated during the temple campaign is a good example."

The government of India, despite several protests by the democratic and progressive quarters against such moves to distort history and communalise the education system, is adamant to go ahead with the saffronisation of education along with providing the capitalist classes lucrative options to invest and earn profit from the education sector. The clique of top capitalists of the nation, who finds it comfortable to only serve the interest of foreign capital in India, proposed the BJP government of Vajpayee, to divide the education system into two streams, one for producing clerical staffs, including technocrats for which more private capital must be allowed to be pumped in the education sector (which lately happened with numerous private universities popping up) and on the other hand, let the humanities and liberal art students study in mediocre educational institutions funded by government. The sole intention for this motive was to promote the service sector of the Indian economy to an extreme level so that India becomes the clerical hub of the world, especially the western countries.

The implementation of the policy has turned India into an outsourcing capital of the world. The highly educated sections of the middle and affluent classes are here employed in the service sector to serve the interest of foreign monopoly capital, and the service sector has turned into a major contributor to the national GDP.

The dependence on the service sector, especially outsourcing and IT related services, resulted in the downfall of net asset creation on one hand, and on the other hand, made the national currency succumb to foreign currencies, especially the US Dollar, thus becoming a factor to help the inflation to skyrocket. The manufacturing and the agriculture sector shrunk considerably during the last two decades due to the growth of the service sector, which only employs a handful of the available labour force in the country.

The compulsion to grow the service sector to serve the interests of foreign monopoly capital better, the Indian ruling classes engineered a Machiavellian policy of controlling the information flow to the educated section of the people, who are not served any news on the actual condition of the Indian people. Though the corporate media publish news with the sole purpose of hoodwinking the people on one hand, while on the other hand, to inform the ruling classes of the objective conditions prevailing in the country so that they can take better decisions regarding their business and investments. Yet, the Indian middle-class drastically fails to comprehend such cunning moves and uncritically believes in whatever they read and follows whomsoever the corporate media asks them to follow.

The concept of democracy makes it imperative to have a counter view, to differ, debate, to criticise and arrive at a conclusion by analysing data objectively. Unfortunately, the so-called proponents of democracy and liberty in the present world, i.e. the imperialist West led by the US and their allies in the countries of Asia-Africa and Latin America are strongly against any such move that provides such rational thinking capability to the educated middle-class.

They just want people to be their flunkeys and strive to promote the interest of the international monopoly and finance capital, which is plundering countries like India by mining out precious mineral resources, by damaging the environment and by robbing the labour. Hence, they will never allow any progressive move to change the course of Indian education, which their docile tools control on their behalf, rather they will promote the reactionary fascist education system of the RSS brand vehemently to ensure the efforts to resist the government and the corporate plunder can be minimised in the coming days.

Once the people of Germany and Italy suffered terribly due to the notorious propaganda of the fascist robbers, Hitler and Mussolini; despite being the most culturally advanced nations of their time, these two countries succumbed to fascist menace faster than other countries. India, being a largely feudal country with comprador capitalism sucking its resources, is actually a backward nation and hence cannot withstand the onslaught of the saffron fascism for quite long time.

It is a fact that in a class-divided society, where the rich rules the poor, the semi and unconscious masses looks up at the class on top of it in the economic hierarchy as its target class, as they want to reach that level and therefore, are terribly influenced by such classes. In India, the poor looks up at the middle classes, as they target to reach their level, due to lack of political-economic consciousness, and therefore, they are the easy victims of the middle-class thoughts.

The middle class, the educated privileged people, holds a great power of knowledge which they can use to arouse the broad masses of workers and peasants towards a social change. That is why the ruling classes of rich, who influence the thought process of the middle class, struggles to curb the growth of free and rational thinking among them and push mediocrity with extreme pressure to subjugate the educated mind.

It is very important therefore, that those who hold progressive and rational views, those who are democratic and secular, must work towards enlightening the members of the educated society along with the poor masses to make people comprehend the real peril that is at the doorstep of the nation, make them comprehend the peril of fascism stemming out from the dominant feudal-patriarchal socio-economic set-up and organise the people to spearhead a democratic transformation of the country towards a progressive and bright future.

Any failure or lacklustre in fulfilling this historic task will curse the nation and its future, and history will never forgive those who consciously evaded their responsibility towards the broad masses of the people.