Compassionate Capitalism

Book Case Madhuri Santanam Sondhi

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s recent remarks to the Confederation of Indian Industries on the unacceptable gulf which separates India’s affluent class from the poor and immiserated and his suggestions for tackling it produced much media outrage. Critics suggested that he was hamstrung by his earlier doctrinaire views on the command economy with its accompanying ethic of distributive justice. He was almost accused of sabotaging India’s economic growth.

For the record, China, the envy of Indian capitalists and socialists alike, also faces environmental crises and a growing income gap between rich and poor: 70,000 cases of civil unrest were recorded last year, attributed to tensions arising from inequality (The Economist, June 2007). The Chinese Prime Minister, in no mood for another Maoist revolution, criticised the privileged for flaunting their wealth and threatening China’s "harmonious society." And in Europe and the United States, hard centres of capitalism and globalisation, industry itself has conducted an internal debate over the scale of CEO paycheques and the need for balance.
It is worth recalling that one of the major planks of the national movement against foreign occupation arose out of the grinding misery of the Indian masses. For the privileged Gandhi advocated a socio-economic ethic of self-restraint, controlled consumerism and low-level production, to equilibrate a largely agricultural society without offensive income distances and to maintain the natural environment. He warned against the unsustainability of greed and profligacy. Nehru the modernist found Gandhi’s prescriptions archaic moralisms, attracted as he was by socialism which promised utopian gratification to all through state-controls, state-distribution and large-scale industrialisation. Added to democracy this promised social equality, basic human rights and freedoms. Still his government imposed certain sanctions against lavish displays of wealth, especially at public functions and weddings. His grandson Sanjay Gandhi, in contrast to other restrictions enforced during the Emergency, dispensed with these controls, and since then extravagant spending by the rich has kept pace with India’s economic development, especially after economic reforms. But it would be wrong to assume that economic growth depends on excessive spending by the rich.
Debates on conspicuous consumption have arisen at various periods in the history of capitalism, with a series of interlocutors: Marxists, Green crusaders or essentialists concerned with job satisfaction or "quality of life" (neither synonymous with sheer wealth). Both socialism and capitalism are indebted to the Enlightenment vision of egalitarianism, rooted in humanistic individualism. Their differences lie in their methodologies, state ownership and controls versus free markets, and both in their pristine forms failed to achieve full social equality. So the Prime Minister only sought to restore the rhetoric concerning the humanistic goals of modernity, which has faded in the glare of liberalism and globalisation.
Citigroup strategists Ajay Kapur and Niall Macleod used the term "plutonomy" for economies dominated by the spending power of elites, a relatively new phenomenon resulting from globalisation. They argue that twentieth century mass democracy was economically supported by the earnings of blue-collar workers, especially those massed in mining, manufacturing, and transport industries. With their decline and the rise of enterprises employing skilled white collar labour, the economic mass base of democracy weakened, opening the door to oligarchy if not political extremism. Such phenomena are disproportionately skewed in a multi-layered developing economy like India’s which ranges from pre-modern agriculture to internationally competitive IT.
The term "conspicuous consumption" was coined by late nineteenth century American sociologist, Thorstein Veblen, best remembered for his classic Theory of the Leisure Class. He criticised not capitalism as such but the capitalists of his time for seeking social importance through flamboyant displays of wealth. The term now has wider application, encompassing the nouveau riche with their ostentatious spending, ubiquitous in expanding economies such as those of Russia, India and China. There is no disagreement amongst right-thinking people that all have the right to a decent standard of living: it is the inverse relationship between those who have too much and those with next to nothing that is, when publicly flaunted, unacceptable and politically volatile.
As it happens, the Prime Minister’s commitment to economic growth was integral to his argument. "Unless workers feel they are cared for at work, we can never evolve a national consensus in favour of much needed more flexible laws aimed at ensuring that our firms remain globally competitive." In other words, primitive capitalist exploitation is bad business in a globalised world. Veblen himself attacked the leisure class for slowing the pace of economic development and immiserating the poor, and pointed to the invidious effects of conspicuous consumption in a democratic society. Although it is undoubtedly true that liberal reforms in India have helped pull a good number of the erstwhile poor into the middle class, the sheer numbers of their neighbours still outside the reach of the trickle are a tinder-box of anger and resentment.
Interestingly, the economist Prime Minister did not suggest a luxury tax, but appealed, Gandhian fashion, to his audience’s moral conscience. The outraged media response suggested that the riche old or new no longer wish to be burdened with a conscience, which in itself is a challenge to any democracy. But the corporate heads to whom these admonitions were addressed made no demur, and some, like CII president Sunil Bharati Mittal, even responded: "The Prime Minister’s … concern was in view of the wealth inequality in the country ... in-your face spending hurts people. He meant ostentatious display of wealth should be avoided." Incidentally, in this regard, the Prime Minister, unlike many politicians, is himself an honourable exception
Patwant Singh is heir to traditions both of Sikh community service and enlightened modernity. In his Second Partition Fault-Lines in India’s Democracy (Hay House India 2007) he provides a detailed statistical examination of the abyss that separates India’s globalised elites and the 300 million marginalised and impoverished "rest," covering ill-health, malnourishment, unemployment, homelessness, lack of educational opportunities, which aggravate vulnerability to communalism, corruption et al. Also, for good measure, he criticises the "frenzied militarisation of the state" based on the popular belief that there is a "peace dividend" to be automatically harvested from disarmament, though history has not proven this to be a simple equation.
Disillusioned with state welfare, Patwant Singh concludes with faith in the possibilities of civic action, for which he has set a personal example with the founding of the Kabliji Hospital in rural India. It is also possible to cultivate a more compassionate capitalism with excess profits directed towards welfare: foundations such as those of Tatas, Mahindras or Bill Gates are exemplary. Humanising capitalism could initiate a virtuous circle of acceptable wealth creation and employment. If as Eugen Loebl defined it, an economy is "a system of thinking human beings," then hopefully India, with the best of her received ethos and her renowned economists can further explore the possibilities of combining economic growth with social responsibility.

Madhuri Santanam Sondhi can be contacted at mssondhi@hotmail.com

Source: The Asian Age

Img src: flickr

Some Images of Bhutanese Refugees in Jhapa, Nepal

The Culprit : Bhutanese King

Tactics: Atrocities against Ethnic Nepalese in Bhutan

The Aftermath: Bhutanese Refugees in Nepal

Image source: Flickr
eKantipur

We are Here: Pale Blue Dot

Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar,” every “supreme leader,” every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there–on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.

– Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot, 1994

Bhutanese Refugees: The Right of Return, the Chance for Resettlement

Posted June 20, 2007

Bhutan may profit from evocative tourist images of an isolated cloud kingdom whose people live in serenity and colorful traditional dress, but for many Bhutanese it's far from idyllic. It's a place where citizens can't get a government job, buy or sell land, or open a business without a police-issued card attesting that the bearer is not "anti-national." But it's still home - or at least it should be - for the more than 100,000 Bhutanese citizens expelled in the early 1990s.

The Bhutanese refugees, ethnic Nepalis cleansed from the remote mountain kingdom in the early 1990s, have been warehoused ever since in overcrowded refugee camps in eastern Nepal with no progress toward a resolution of their plight. They have insisted on their right to return to Bhutan; the Bhutanese government has refused to allow them back. Fifteen rounds of bilateral talks between the governments of Nepal and Bhutan have led nowhere. The impasse has lasted more than 16 years.

But a new player has entered the scene: the United States has offered to resettle 60,000 or more of the Bhutanese refugees.

The U.S. wants to break the impasse of the bilateral talks, perhaps out of worry that years of pent-up anger and frustration could soon explode, or maybe just because it is tired of pouring humanitarian aid into the bottomless sinkhole of refugee camps.

Overwhelmingly, Bhutanese refugees say their first choice is to go back home, as is their right. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, as well as binding international treaties signed by Bhutan, enshrines the right of people to return to their country. During this long period of exile, however, Bhutan has not allowed a single refugee back.

Repatriation is generally regarded as the best option for refugees - but only when the conditions that caused them to flee have changed enough that they can return safely. The government's treatment of the ethnic Nepalis who still live in Bhutan, however, shows such conditions do not exist. They remain a marginalized group in constant fear that they too could be evicted.

"It is not possible to say that we want human rights for ethnic Nepalis. It is very dangerous to say these things," an ethnic Nepali living in Bhutan told Human Rights Watch. "They will definitely take away your No Objection Certificate [the police-issued permit]. They might even take away your citizenship card."

Despite their right of return, under present circumstances Bhutanese refugees in Nepal still can't go home. So, they continue their long wait. Without permission to work or farm, and dependent on international hand-outs for their survival, the refugees experience the range of social ills associated with protracted camp life, including depression, and domestic and sexual violence.

"After finishing their studies, young people don't get jobs. They have no work, they are idle," a refugee at the Beldangi II camp said. "They fall into bad company, and they drink a lot. They get violent."

The US resettlement offer has provided a ray of hope for some refugees. Parents can finally envision a brighter future for their children. But for others, the offer looks like a ruse to undercut the goal of return to Bhutan and to undermine the will to seek the fundamental political changes in Bhutan that would make return possible. These refugees cannot bear the idea that resettlement might relieve Bhutan of its moral and legal obligations, and that their own dreams of return to their homeland might be delayed that much longer.

Some have started to threaten and intimidate refugees who speak out in favor of resettlement; in late May, a mob attacked refugees who have supported resettlement, beating one of their leaders, burning their huts, and chasing some resettlement supporters out of the camps. In the ensuing violence, Nepali police forces shot and killed two of the rioters. The anger of the opponents of resettlement appears to be misplaced: resettlement does not extinguish the right of return. Those moving to the United States could still insist on their right to go back to Bhutan, and might even be better placed here to advocate for change in Bhutan.

At this critical moment, the United States and India, among other governments, need to pressure Bhutan to fulfill its obligations under international law and allow refugees to return in conditions of safety and dignity. But first, the government of Nepal must provide security in the camps to allow all refugees to make their own choices, free from threats and violence. The refugees who want to hold out for return deserve steadfast international support, but those who can wait no longer should be allowed to choose resettlement now.

Bill Frelick, Refugee Policy director at Human Rights Watch, researched and edited the report "Last Hope: The Need for Durable Solutions for Bhutanese Refugees in Nepal and India." He has worked in the refugee field for nearly 25 years. He previously was the director of Amnesty International USA's refugee program and before that directed the U.S. Committee for Refugees and edited The World Refugee Survey.

Source: The Huffington Post

Image: Tamal Roy, The Associated Press

Some fun - Virtual Haircut

Use headphones: That's mandatory.





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When Only The Enlightened Speak Out, Reason Is Bound To Lose

Is religion a destructive force? The debate over Fundamentalism and the new Atheists overshadows the scientific research on faith.

By Andrian Kreye, Editor, the Feuilleton, Süddeutsche Zeitung

It is of course easy to poke fun at belief and nonbelief. One need only look for the right stories. The Monday of Pentecost marked the opening of playground that is the Creation Museum in St. Petersburg, Kentucky. In a space of 5,500 square meters, the organization Answers in Genesis has mounted exhibits and installations that are supposed to prove that our planet can only be 6,000 years-old, just as it says in the Bible. It also houses a Planetarium, as well as installations that educate about the intelligent designer God — such as model dinosaurs in the Garden of Eden, and even on Noah's Ark. On the other side of the spectrum are the stories about Oxford professor Richard Dawkins, who supposedly preaches his Atheism sometimes in outburstsof fury. There's story circulating that he scolded an airport attendant that her cross (necklace) insulted his intelligence and that he asked her to remove it.
The disputes over faith has always been less about God than about Man and the image he makes of himself. Many cutting edge scientists have questioned the existence of God and thereby the dominion of the Earth. As heated as the dispute has been over the past year, for a long time it had disappeared from discourse. The triumphant advance of fundamentalism from Rome and Jerusalem to Mecca and all the way into the American heartland drove the liberal Agnosticism of the 20th century so far into a corner that there's a new and militant atheism rising in defense.

The philosopher and neuroscientist Sam Harris created the first spark three years ago with his book The End of Faith. Written in reaction to the desasters of September 11th. The book focuses mostly on the fundamentalists, whom he sees as an acute threat to the continuation of civilization. On his heels came philosopher Daniel C. Dennett of Tufts University in Massachusetts, and evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins of Oxford University. In his book Breaking the Spell, Dennett presents religion as an explanatory mdel, which had been made null and void by scientific advances by the 19th century. Dawkins goes a step further in his book The God Delusion and directly takes on all people of religious faith. Not only are they irrational, they are all too destructive, he writes. Only an end to all faith can enable the progress of mankind.

Just now the essayist and cultural critic Christopher Hitchens has joined the scientists' ranks with his polemic God is Not Great: How Religion poisons Everything. In it, he picks apart the myths of faith and religiosity with rhetorical brilliance. Nobody can provoke the public with more mastery than Christopher Hitchens. For instance, he gives his chapter on Islam the title, "Was Mohammed an epileptic?" Hitchens cannily refers to the "heartless Christians", who he contends bring to mind the enlightenment of the prophets in the tradition of the enlightenment of St. Paul on the road to Damascus. To this point he connects all such points of contact between research and belief that render the current debate explosive.

At Laurentian University in Toronto, the movement has long centered around Canadian neuroscientist Michael Persinger. Persinger developed a helmet device that creates a magnetic field with which he can stimulate the temporal lobes of his subjects. In this way he can successfully trigger the experience of a presence in the room corresponding to what believers describe as a genuine godly being. Persinger explains that the characteristics of this experience overlap with the symptoms of epilepsy.

There is no question that that the results of such research call into question more than just religious experiences. Natural scientists have long grappled with topics that question not only belief, but also the accepted view of human nature. The first research results to present free will as the pure function of genetic and biochemical sequences were decried not only by representatives of religion. For instance, neuroscientist Steven Pinker of Harvard University likes to dismantle the Enlightenment's stalwarts like the blank slate myth with scientific arguments. If the conclusion is drawn,that it's alright to control the human spirit by means of psychopharmacology, even secular circles see it as heresy in the process of building free will and character`.

Longing after infallibility

Natural scientists are now daring to study one of the last fields to have eluded them for so long: faith itself. This, of course, threatens faith and philosophy’s hold on the definition of man and his place in the world. This is a main reason why Harris, Dawkins, and Dennett are debated so fervently.

However, science is not inherently in conflict with faith. For example, Darwin was convinced that belief in an all-encompassing spiritual God was a universal phenomenon. There is divergence from the hard-fought battle being waged by these atheists against the threat of desecularization the attacks against reason and rational thinking.

Behind this fight of current urgency there is a scientific revolution in the making. Soon, not only man, but his faith and spirit will be explained scientifically. At present, research on faith is divided into two camps. On one side is the Darwinist approach, which is that of Scott Atran, a research director in anthropology at the National Center for Scientific Research in Paris, France. On the other side are those who take into account evolutionary psychology, such as Justin Barrett, Director of the Centre for Anthropology and Mind at Oxford University.

In the early seventies, Scott Atran was already asking why since primeval times humans have worked so hard to overpower their need for rational explanations with their faith. Why, he asked in his book In Gods we Trust, are societies ready to pay such a high price for faith, when it costs them valuable resources like time, energy and materials? What threats to survival could be warded off by means of faith? What function does faith serve to the individual and to the collective? And why have religious communities historically shown better chances for survival? Soon after, Darwinist faith research emerged and placed faith firmly in the realm of consciousness, asserting that it was not the pure product of cultural influence and education. However, they could not identify a function that would make faith an evolutionary advantage. So they concluded that faith must be a byproduct of evolution that originated as the result of some earlier, now-gone function.

Nevertheless, Scott Atran was certain of one thing: religion has always played a role in the history of mankind. This is his biggest critique of Harris, Dennett and Dawkins, with whom he has been in a heated debate over the past year. He argues that he isn't questioning the motive for their call to free the world from dogmatic belief systems that are barbaric, anachronistic and inhumane. But the Neoatheists are not presenting adequate scientific facts, or conclusions drawn from actual faith research. Belief systems by their nature can be neither strictly true nor false, however meaningless. They can't be necessary, but they can serve a practical purpose. And often enough, these purposes can outweigh the cost, because faith has the capacity build strong, interconnected communities, which in the world of Darwinian competition can help them outsurvive other communities.

Such undogmatic considerations can be also found among evolutionary psychologists who share Justin Barrett's approach. This camp sees faith not as a strategy for the survival of communities, but as a developmental stage of the human psyche above all. With simple experiments, Barrett has proved that children at the age of three or four years still possess an unwavering faith in the infallibility of their mothers. Only at age five or six do their own individual wills and their own personal knowledge begin to dissolve this faith in their mothers' omniscience.

Joy and Anxiety

Even these two explanations cannot get to the heart of theology. On the contrary, dogmatic atheism yields findings that can serve as the foundation for a deeper investigation of religious communities, whether it be a radical subculture like the Islamic suicide bombers—or broader movements like the victories of the religious right in American politics. He who reaches an understanding of the bombers' salvation and of the motivational powers of the Christian fundamentalist voting ranks can also comprehend the historical developments.

The Neoatheists' anger is nevertheless understandable. It is not just the scientists who are engaged in this vicious culture war. The desecularization of the post-ideological world has recently gained so much momentum that it has created a substantial following for secular worldviews and for Science. This may not be obvious to the European at first who may be blinded by the advances of the most radical belief groups—for example, the rise of Hamas in Gaza, or the desularization of American society.

But even in Europe the culture wars smolders. Last fall, Pope Benedict XVI stated clearly, at a conference at the Castel Gandolfo addressing the nature of evolution, "It is not yet the time to reconcile the two domains." And: "This is in the interest of regaining a dimension of reason, which we have lost." One advantage faith has over atheism is that it offers hope for an afterlife. Thus far, we have found only religious answers to assuage the fear of death. It always comes down to a choice between delusion and reality. Reality just may make you love your live so much more.

[Translation by Karla Taylor.]

Source: Edge

‘WE WANT A FREE COUNTRY, NEITHER NEPAL NOR INDIA’

Jaikrishna Goit, head of the underground Janatantrik Tarai Mukti Morcha (JTMM-G), in conversation with Sankarshan Thakur.

We cross the dusty border into India on a rickshaw at a location we are committed not to disclose. We are then led to a poky hotel, a stone’s throw from no-man’s-land where the leader of the main Madheshi insurgent group is holed up. The JTMM (Goit) strikes every other day somewhere in Madhesh and is high on the security’s hit list. You expect to see a raging warlord. Jaikrishna Goit is a bespectacled sexagenarian who wields history texts more often than he wields guns to justify his armed enterprise to liberate his land. The professorial revolutionary refused to be photographed but spoke at length on why he wants to secede from Nepal.

Excerpts

Tehelka: Most Madheshi groups want autonomy and a stake in how Nepal is run. Why do you want liberation?

Jaikrishna Goit: Because I am another country. The Tarai was annexed by Nepal’s Pahadi rulers and then parts of it were ceded to them by the British through treaties. By the Indo-Nepal agreement of 1950, all earlier treaties stood abrogated. This is not merely in the treaty, but also a part of un documents. The Tarai should have become free then. Am I to blame if my forefathers were not vigilant or smart enough to claim back their land? Even India cannot argue against me. India signed the 1950 treaty with Nepal and it clearly states all previous treaties stand scrapped. It is simple, we are free, we should be free.

You think it’s so simple? Do you think a new country on these borders can become a reality? Will anyone accept that in this changed world?

Many countries are getting liberated, that is the changed world. And I am not seeking anyone’s acceptance, I want my country, whether anybody agrees or not. I know what you are talking about — whether Nepal will be ready, whether India will want it. The fact is I am neither Nepali nor Indian nor of Indian origin. History proves that, I have texts to establish that. I want people in Kathmandu also to make themselves aware of their real past. The people of the Tarai are a separate people, they should have their country. I may not be able to achieve that in my lifetime but that is not the point. The aspiration for liberation is there and the coming generations will get it. I belong to the Tarai, I know the only thing people want is freedom.

But you were long part of Nepali politics, you were first a communist, then you turned a Maoist, why this sudden thrust for liberation?

Because I am the most exploited and colonised person in Nepal, because I have no way of correcting that other than being completely free to determine my circumstances. Those who are negotiating autonomy are collaborators, they will never get that from the Pahadis, they will only get tokenism. That is not what we want.

How do you justify this daily bloodshed?

Even Gandhi said it is better to be violent than to be a coward. The enemies of my country have to be eliminated, there is no other way. Ram fought and killed Ravan. Krishna fought the Kauravas. Nepalis do not treat us as human beings. There is no other way of dealing with them.

Can you fight the Nepali state with arms?

Why not? Most of Nepal’s great struggles have been fought in the Tarai by the people of the Tarai. We know how to fight. The myth of Gorkha bravery is just a myth; whatever they know about battle, we taught them. Read history carefully and you will know. And we are not killing innocents, we target people.

Many of them are Tarai people, many of them are from other Madheshi groups. Some people say your struggle has degenerated into petty crime and reprisal.

The enemies of liberation have to be eliminated, no matter who they are. And those who call us criminals merely want to defame us. Do I look like a criminal to you? Don’t you see I have been pushed into a corner where I have no choice but to pick up the gun? Nobody calls the Maoists and the Young Communist League criminals. They are in government and continue to kill and commit all sorts of other crimes everyday.

Don’t you think the new Constituent Assembly might fulfil the aspirations of the Tarai people?

It will only renew the slavery of my people. Nepal has no right to conduct an election here and talk about a Constituent Assembly. We do not belong to them.

So there is no possibility you will talk?

No, I can. If they create the right atmosphere, I can go and tell them: pass legislation in parliament for an independent Tarai and we will live happily thereafter. That is all I have to say to those in Kathmandu. At the moment, there is no such atmosphere. The State and the Maoists are after us, we are running for our lives most of the time.

Do you have the strength to fight a sustained battle?

I am not saying I will achieve liberation tomorrow. We are in a movement, we are building cadres, opinion is turning towards us. An autonomous Tarai is a halfway house and you will not even get that. The only way is a complete break.

Is India protecting you?

I do not want to make any comment on that. All I can say is I am a freedom fighter and a guerrilla. And, legally speaking, India has to support the case that the Tarai was never a part of Nepal, it had only been annexed or gifted by imperial powers. That injustice has to be undone.

Source: Tehelka