Privatisation - The argument continues

Vatsan, having seen some of my views on capitalism and privatisation, has sent me a mail quite a while back, which I saw only recently. I have sent him a reply which I have added below:

From Vatsan

Hi Sridhar,

I feel your views on disinvestment and privatisation are based on a superficial understanding of the issue, I also was an ardent fan of disinvestment, why should the government be bothered with production, etc. But some reading and pondering on the issue changed my perspective, and now i am against disinvestment. Think about it and your views may change. You arelooking just at one side of the pcture - better service, but there are more variables involved.

Regards
Vatsan


From me

Hi Vatasan

I'm not looking at disinvestment with blinkers. I do understand the perils of it. I'm an ardent supporter of disinvestment, privatisation and capitalism because I strongly feel that they are most appropriate solution to most of our problems. There are however a few caveats:

1) I'm not an economist but I look at the issue from the sociological point of view

2) Capitalism is not an answer to all our questions but other models answer lesser questions

If I have to compare the countries which implemented capitalism succeeded and failed with countries which adopted socialism and other models (communism) and succeeded and failed the ratio itself will speak for itself. For example, the critics of capitalism quote only Argentina and a few other South American countries as failures. But count the number of countries which have succeeded. I ask the question differently: Show me one -just one- country which adopted socialism or communism or public-sector model and succeeded. We have none.

And I have a lot more to say on this issue. If you still feel its superficial, I have to admit that my knowledge on this is really poor. I'm not an economist.

But my conviction isn't. I have spent my first twenty years in socialist India which probably you haven't. I have waited hours in front of a milk booth and returned home with empty vessel. I have seen my dad paying Rs. 3000, a huge sum at that time as an advance and waiting for four years for a telephone connection. I have seen the same telephone connection going out of order every four to five months. I have waited like a begger in front of telecom office to get my connection restored. I have seen my uncle booking Ambassador six months before with full payment and still could not decide on the colour. I have seen 'Sorry for the interruption' every second day on my Doordharshan. I have seen the bank manager, after making my dad wait for 2 hours and rejecting a loan application because my dad could not provide 'adequate' collateral security.

If this is the plight of the situation for a reasonably affordable urban Indian, I refuse to understand that life was any different for a rural citizen. I reckon it must have been far worse.

Capitalism is like democracy. It may not answer all our questions. But unfortunately, it's the best we have.

Animals, big dams and people - Part III



For this third and final instalment of this piece, I would like to talk about the statement 'It's great to make space for people, but animals lose out'.

I exactly don't know what the commenter meant by this statement but I am interpreting it as deforestation, endangered species and warming up of the poles, which means the polar animals are dying.

This brings me into another point which my friend from a fertilizer company said 'Economic activity triggers pollution'. He meant to say that the better your economy gets, the worse you pollute the place.

Pity he hasn't heard of a new-age term 'sustainable development'. Of all the great philosophies and theories of the 20th century, I would consider environment awareness as the greatest. Somewhere during the mid 20th century, man realized that he cannot mindlessly and greedily expand the territories of his domination. The world 'indeed' belongs to other animals too just like how they belong to humankind. Chaos theory which states that there are unexplainable repercussions if you meddle with the nature and quantum theory helped man stabilize to some extent. The lesson is this: Watch out for the repersussions!

It's great to make space for people. Can somebody please tell me how much of the space the 'people' need? How much sqauaremeters of shopping mall do you require? How wide do you want your swimming pool? How many lanes should your highway have? How many tonns of enriched uranium you want to store? How many tonns of non-disposable garbage you want to dump onto your seas? How many kilolitres of chlorofluorocarbon(CFC) you are going to release to your atmosphere? Who sets these limits?

Penguins are dying. Occean life is depleting. Coral reefs are receding. We are witnessing changes in the migratory pattern of the birds. There's a dramatic hike in the cancer registrations in the city hospitals.

Animals becoming extinct is not going to happen in isolation. Animals dying is indeed a warning to us. Birds changing migratory patterns are indicative of weather getting chaotic which will have direct impact on your rains and winters. Penguins dying, certain primates going extinct will have impact on your pollution levels. Tigers and elephants receding in numbers holds a direct question. Who's next?

Tsunami in Southern Asia would have killed lesser people had we protected our coral reefs and looked after the occeanic life. Katrina and Mumbai would have submerged lesser area had we not dumped non-recyclable garbage in the seas and increased its overall temperature which began melting the polar icecaps. Number of cancer cases would have gone much lesser had we been careful in releasing fossil fuel emissions and CFCs.

It's not great to make space for the people if animals are going to lose out. Because animals dying is a sacrifice to protect us. To warn us that we should be more careful. To tell us that we should start reducing the impact on earth and take precautionary steps for the future projects. If we don't listen, when all of them are gone, the next head to be placed in the sacrificial altar will be that of people.

Animals, big dams and people - Part II

Medha Patkar

This is the continuation of previous post. I want to talk about another generic statement, 'Build a dam for the people, but tribals lose out'.

I have two problems with this statement. One is the terms 'people' and 'tribals'. When you make dam for people, the non-people tribals lose out. This statement, somehow unconsciously I'm sure, thinks tribals are basically the in-between creatures from primates to urban, civilized people. So 'people' don't lose out on big dams but tribals do.

Actually, the main issue is 'people' themselves lose out. Since independence, there is never a serious study conducted by our governments on how our big dams are performing. The independent studies conducted by NGOs reveal that they have been performing quite badly.

Over the years, we have learned that if you mess with the nature the nature either shrinks or retaliates. In the case of big dams, you are messing with river and it shrinks. There were countless cases across the world where the big dams have either polluted the rivers or made them behave erratically. The developed nations have understood this and they have stopped building dams or worse even demolished some of the existing ones.

Today, only the third-world is busy building big dams. This is because they get world bank funding for dams which goes to the dam-building western companies who in turn bribe the greedy and corrupt politicians. It's like a vicious cycle. Sardar Sarovar Project at Narmada is a classic and horrendous case to testify this.

Apart from environmental disaster, the dams enforce a lot of things. Sardar Sarovar project displaced close to a million people. The governments do not have, yes, DO NOT HAVE a documented procedure to rehabilitate these many. Worse still, they don't even have a scientific data on how many come under 'project-affected'. And for not a single question raised by Narmada Bachao Andholan was answered by goverment authorities satisfactorily.

So big dams are not just about tribals losing out. They are about a small group of people displacing a huge number of people, tribals, villagers, farmers out of their homes throwing them into nowhere, building a practically unviable dam that's going to pollute the river and kill it later on and the built dam helping to irrigate lesser land than the river did before the dam was built and in the process, the policy makers making tons and tons of money.

Before any of you want to jump into contradicting me on this, please read 'Silenced Rivers' by Peter McCully and 'Greater Common Good' by Arundhati Roy. The first book talks about the plight of the dams and rivers in the western world and the World Bank's global scheme to reemploy the dam building companies by loaning greedy rulers of the third world. The second book talks about the plight of the dams in India and with accurate statistics (which the government has not disputed) explains why Sardar Sarovar is a hugely destructive plan.

Animals, big dams and people - Part I



The other day I was reading the comments in my blog. One response to my post on American literature told me that there are no good or bad things, there are only choices. While I have no problem with that statement, I had serious problems with the examples listed.

- It's great to protect animals, but people lose out
- It's great to make space for people, but animals lose out
- Build a dam for people but tribals lose out

I have problem with all these points. I would like to write about each point separately. I'll take the first point in this piece.

I guess this comes from my own experience with PETA. PETA stands for People for Ethical Treatment of Animals. PETA preaches vegetarianism. I don't. I look at non-vegetarianism and animal rights differently for my own convenience. The way animals, especially the eatable ones, are treated in this world is evident enough for some one to scream for their rights.

Let me explain this.

Well, we are going to eat that broiler chicken regardless. But what are we doing before that? That broiler chicken lives 14 most truamatic days before entering your tikka or 65 or masala. You have seen the cages they are put in. They are iron cages with sharp edges with very little space to maneur around. They can't even stand up properly. Remember that a chicken is a bird? Which basically means they like to fly. But broiler chickens are genetically modified to produce more flesh, so they grow up with disproportionately. So, every broiler chicken is born with a thyroid problem by design. And talking about transportation. Around 20 chickens are tied tightly around their legs with a jute rope and hung in the cycle with 10 each side of the wheel. They travel around 5 to 10 kilometers in that cycle. I have often witnessed the scene where so many chickens are hung in the cycle where their head and beak touch the pedal. The cyclist rides on blissfully everytime banging the pedal against their head and couple of unlucky chickens bleed their way to the shop.

Now onto cows and buffallos. They are transported to Kerala to be sold to slaughter houses. In a truck capacity of 20 cattle, 40-45 are loaded. Just so that they don't fall on each other and get killed, their legs are tightly tied together. But alas, you can't assure that completely when 40 guys are stuck together for 12-14 hours of their standing journey. They obviously get squeezed and some weak ones faint during the journey. An unconscious cattle is considered to be sick and doesn't get good price. So to awaken them and to keep them alert, salt and pepper is rubbed in the eyes of the unconscious ones. That added to back, side, and leg breaking journey, they scream and yell in agony in the market to be sold to prospective buyer who's going to break their bones or employ some other innovative method to kill them.

This, I want you to compare with the very generic and very harmless statement that says 'it's great to protect animals but people lose out'. I'm not saying people should protect animals but I wonder how some one cannot have problems with such a treatment being meted out to these poor creatures before they are brought to your dining table.

I've just shared two instances of ill treatment. I've not shared other horres stories and if you are already shocked, will leave you to
explore them further.

The traits of a home sapien

The movie I saw last night made me think about the people in various cultures. I have always been critical of the Indian public being supportive of mindless potboilers and the Hollywood, on the contrary, generating intelligent flicks. Not that they don't come out with formula potboilers but they always had a b-grade stamping on them. Not really. I saw National Treasure yesterday. The story is just one meaningless line, the performances are pretty insipid and sleep-walky and the movie severely questions ones very basic comprehension skills, leave alone the intelligence. In a very valiant attempt equivalent of T. Rajendar wearing Mani Ratnam's shoes, the director of National Treasure has attempted an Indiana Jones. Very ambitious, I must say. But I have my doubts if this director has really seen Indian Jones. Those who have seen wouldn't even be dreaming of a clone.

That apart, what really stumped me was my friend telling me that this movie is a huge hit. Of course, National Treasure's pulp patriotism will put Roja and Bombay to shame. And it just goes to show that you can kindle some cheap nerve chords in people and make pots of money. Whether you're in America or in India. I can't see why National Treasure be any way superior than any of the potboilers the Indian directors have cooked. And believe me, despite my own contempt for Indian (especially Tamil) movies, some of the Indian potboilers are indeed very entertaining and intelligent ones.

This brings me to another story, Hurricane Katrina. About the starving, looting, and violence in New Orleans, a reporter from New York Times wrote thus 'It can't happen here. It's not a third world. It's America for god's sake'. Last night, I felt like screaming, 'if National Treasure can happen in your country, so can violence and looting during the floods'. It is because, irrespective of whether you are white, black, yellow or brown, or rich or poor, as long as you're a home sapien, you behave exactly in the same way. Especially during a crisis.

Actually to contradict the New York Times reporter and various others who think such things happen only in third worlds, I must humbly prod him to read S. Gurumurthy's article (Indian Express, 7th Sep) comparing Kartrina and Mumbai killer rains. During the rains in Mumbai rains, there were no looting, rape or violence reported. And to prevent the affected from starving, people opened their kitchens to outsiders. There were stories of community kitchens being setup and the feeding the 'aditis' and various organisations from the army to the RSS jumping into the slush waters to helps the needy. And certain neighbours walked out of their safe houses to rescue a group stranded in a double-decker bus. Such stories were enough to fill three volumes of chicken soup book.

And yes, THAT perhaps, doesn't happen in America.

Privatisation and dollars

For the previous post, Mr. Anonymous (or is it Ms?) has commented that it is evident that I'm an ardent admirer of privatisation because I've mentioned the 'Indian' CD price in dollars. I would like to humbly point out to him/her that the DVD I was referring to is indeed an American version and hence it's priced it dollars.

Actually taking this argument further, it's an irony that none of the Indian public broadcasting corporations have ever bothered to release a VCD or DVD of Pather Panchali. Yes, the best Indian film ever made cannot be bought from any of the stores in India but you can buy it from the 'evil minded' multinational Amazon released by evil minded multinational Sony. My friend told me that it's available in some DVD outlets in London too. But alas, we Indians only get the battered version with flawed subtitles in the middle of the night without any announcement. So much for service orientation.

PS. Pather Panchali is available in stores in Kolkata but they come without subtitles.