Midnight’s CHILDREN

People refuse to be taken for a ride anymore. They will no more accept half measures and betrayals
Amit Sengupta Delhi

SOME OF THEM may have banned the depressing term 'recession' in the media, but recession stays despite the flights of fancy of the sexy Sensex which, perhaps, affects less than three per cent of our population, like the stock market. Old habits stay steadfast. Die hard fanatics of the neo-liberal regime of globalisation have already started pumping the prime minister to rapidly push economic reforms, disinvestment in the public sector and bailout for predator capitalism, "now that the Left has been shown the garbage can of history".

Till yesterday, they were screaming their hearts out saying that agricultural growth will create new wealth, new demands, and save the economy. This is when the mantra of 'industrialisation' was being chanted from Kolkata to Delhi, by the official Left and the Right. This is when they effectively have tried their best to kill agriculture (which remained static at around 2 per cent growth last year), the farm sector, and the vast network of the public distribution system. So much so, the purchasing power of the people was so low, that even Rs 2 kg rice seemed inaccessible. No wonder, now they are all promising cheap rice as an election promise. Stuff your stomach, and stuff it. Don't ask questions. Let the fat cats fly.

Some things just don't change - as if the free fall of the free market in the most volatile centres of advanced capitalism has nothing to do with the end of ideology, or a painful philosophical rupture in political economy. So, the bulls have started roaring again and voters below the mythical poverty line can go back to their insomnia, listening to silence of the lambs.

If artificial hype could compensate for the glorious uncertainties of the globalised market, then we would all be buoyed by the great leap forward. But, life is not like this only: millions have lost jobs in the world, in the West, in China and in India. And, this includes not only workers of the organised and unorganised sector but also the inheritors of the middle class and elite, IT experts, MBAs and media professionals, yes, journalists. Tens of thousands of migrant labourers, mostly landless farmers, are moving back to their jobless villages as factories and industrial hubs shut down (see Hardnews, February 2009), artisans and skilled labourers are out of work, senior professionals are sacked, the young are not being hired, businesses are shutting down.

And yet, we are not supposed to utter a word, even as the chattering classes sing the virtues of globalisation. If this is not market fundamentalism and censorship, then what is? If the Indian elite continues to be so shallow, inegalitarian and without a social vision, how can it even hope to be part of a united and prosperous India? And, how can a country be united and prosperous if economic and social fragmentation and divisions are so sharp and unjust?

Suddenly, the virtues of farm loan waivers and the NREGS have been discovered by those who would hate to document the village reality of India because it does not sell. While the tens of thousands of farmers who have committed suicide and continue to die, mean little to this ghettoised magicians of fetish, wallowing in their own wealth, ambitions, luxury.

If 78 per cent Indians live on Rs 28 a day, how do they and their children survive? Do they get education and medical care? Do they get warm clothes during winter and food and nourishment for their family? How do they travel to work?