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| Corporate Democracy Plague | |
by M.I. Bhat
Be it religion or democracy, America has changed the very face and meaning of both and turned them into tools for the crony capitalism – the crux and soul of the New World Order.
With the developments in civilian and military technologies and accumulation of monetary returns, America began to view the world as its fiefdom where it could act as God and lay down rules and decide rights and wrongs for humanity. God may have created the Earth and its resources for His creations but America decided it is all for the US corporates (1%ers).
Both religion and democracy of the old world versions were re-molded into American corporate version where God and morality were banished from domestic governance and international and human relations lexicon and replaced by brazen lies and deceit. No wonder usury, pornography, same sex marriage, racial discrimination, homeless and hungry, tent cities, fake monthly job numbers, regime changes and bombing civilians, cruel and lecherous behavior in Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib and Bagram, spying across the board of allies and enemies – everything religion abhors and explicitly forbids – gets neatly explained and justified. So does the transformation of religious events, like Christmas Eve, into profit making for business corporations. Remembering and reconnecting with Jesus Christ (PBUH) and his message is for old world religious backwards – like Russians who know the difference between “a faith in God and a belief in Satan.”
Corporate democracy is the new norm, rather the new religion. It has spread like a plague. If there was any check or hindrance, that went away with the disintegration of the Soviet Union (courtesy of the Muslim blood in Afghanistan). Anyone of any or no faith is welcome to this ever-expanding tent – willingly the better, like much of the “free world;” otherwise color revolutions, terrorism and covert and overt military force are the standard “legal” means freely in use. Legal is whatever helps forward the US corporate democracy forward and implement its agenda. Human rights and “war on terror” have become the two handy tools.
Whoever and whatever stands in the way – be that an individual, Government or a nation -- is a threat and must be forced to yield and adopt or get destroyed. Muslims in particular and Russia, China, North Korea and most of the South American and African nations in general are the targets.
Reason and rationality has been turned upside down: America can sanction and blockade a Communist regime (Cuba) on its border but Russia must not object American nuclear missiles on the gates of Moscow! Guantanamo Bay wasn’t land grab, Crimea is! America can invade or dismember any country and world should hail it. Vanquished should not try to fight back for freedom; if they do, they are declared terrorists and droned along with non-combatants, irrespective of men, women, old and children! If a sovereign country decides anything America perceives against its corporate interests, world must back it to bomb that country! America has right to go anywhere in the world to defend its allies but Russia must not defend Russians just across its border in Ukraine! “A nation of killers” that has been on killing mode since its inception, the only nation that has used nuclear bombs on civilian population and continues to do so (Fallujah), the nation that took kidnapping and torture to new moral depths and created torture chambers around the globe is claiming to be the guardian of human rights and lecturing other nations! Jupiter’s “Exceptionalism,” indeed!” (quod licet Jovi, non licet bovi -- what is allowed to Jupiter is not allowed to the bull.)
Corporate democracy has spread too fast and too far from the American shores. But in its wake it has left ordinary people everywhere suffering and up in arms against their Governments -- in its home country, the claimant of “the beacon of democracy”/ “the leader of the free world” (America), in “the oldest democracy” (Britain), in “the largest democracy” (India), in “we are in the same league” (like France, Italy, Spain, Greece, Portugal, Israel, Australia).
We saw when Arab dictators were falling America got gripped end-to-end by OWS movement (99%ers against 1%ers), bringing out people in hordes against the tyranny of their corporate democracy. Europe and other “free world” countries were soon to follow. Although the movement has petered out, it has left the societies in every corporate democracy vertically divided. The frustration and anger of 99%ers -- all it needs is another match stick, which is widely predicted to come from impending far severe stock market crash, to burst this time into full flames. That is, unless the US corporate democracy gets us all into the Third World War.
Meantime, India is one country where fight to free democracy from corporate stranglehold has begun in earnest through non-violent, electoral means. A little background here may be in order.
When President Obama came on his maiden visit to India in 2010, he declared, “India is not just a rising power, it has already risen.” Wow! How gratifying for a people – mainly elite and those drunk on elite propaganda -- aching to be recognized as a world power by the “only superpower!” It dawned much later, in 2012, what Obama really meant by India has “already risen” when Indian public came to practically see and appreciate the vice-like corporate grip on our Government. That is, when the present Government shunted first the oil minister and his deputy and then environment and forests minister (all elected members) for their refusal to acquiesce to the demands of some corporate and industry moguls. Well, like God able to listen and read every word communicated anywhere in the world, Obama should naturally have known, much before the Indian public, how robustly corporate democracy is flourishing in India? What he said was to cheer our Government in coded words for Americanizing our governance. We, the sheeple, thought we have reached the sun!
It is precisely what a former Indian Revenue official, Arvind Kejriwal has challenged now. Kejriwal, a social activist and now a politician, came to limelight with his successful fight for forcing the Government enact and implement RTI in India in 2005 (He won Ramon Magsaysay Award for his efforts). More recently, he joined Anna Hazare’s (a Gandhian) “India Against Corruption" movement that demands Parliament pass a bill, drafted and drawn by India civil society activists, for the appointment of an independent institution, Jan Lokpal (Citizen's Ombudsman) to fight and eradicate widespread corruption in the Government. Millions all over India came on the streets in support of Hazare. He went on fast, people joined him. Unfortunately all that didn’t bear fruit as he was tricked into belief that Government was serious to enact the law. But it did leave an impact that became hugely evident when Kejriwal took his fight to political arena.
Giving a call for the second “struggle for independence” to free Indian democracy from corporate imperialism, Kejriwal launched a political party – Aam Aadmi Party or the Common Man’s Party -- in November 2013 to fight elections to Delhi State Legislative Assembly. To the surprise and shock of the two main national political parties, the Indian National Congress and the Hindu nationalist Bhartiya Janta Party, AAP won 28 out of total 70 seats; Kejriwal himself defeating the three-term incumbent Congress Party CM very convincingly. He formed minority Government on 28 December 2013 with the support of 8 Congress members and two others.
Grounded in Gandhian simplicity and rejecting all the VIP trappings for himself and his ministers, Kejriwal immediately set in motion pro-public actions, like halving electricity charges, providing 700 liters of free water per day to poor households, ordering audit of the private power distribution companies in Delhi, rejecting FDI in Delhi’s retail business, and so on. Surveys showed corruption in Delhi Government offices took a major hit. All these steps caused a swell of public appreciation and support across India. Naturally it didn’t go well with either the main political parties or with big businesses. Sensing a potential and rising threat to their future prospects, both Congress and BJP criticized Kejriwal and his Government day in day out for whatever it did or didn’t do. And media played it up with its own helpings. The final straw came when Kejriwal Government was blocked by the Congress Party, with the tacit support of the BJP, to legislate Ombudsman Bill for Delhi State. Kejriwal Government resigned, just after 49 days, saying if it is not allowed to fulfill the most important promise to its electorate there was no sense in sticking to power. It recommended fresh election in the hope of winning sufficient majority to be able to work for people unfettered but Central Government refused to hold elections; instead, it left the legislature in suspended animation while transferring executive powers to the Lt. Governor. AAP filed a suit in the Supreme Court against the decision.
AAP immediately took plunge to contest national elections scheduled next month for the Indian parliament, raising the stakes for both Congress and BJP whom Kejriwal blames taking turns for looting the country and it is poor in cohorts with corporate houses. Kejriwal doesn’t shy from publically naming names during his election addresses and media interviews whom he alleges have corrupted Indian democracy and are looting India, like Reliance Industries Limited, Tata, Adani, and so on.
More than campaigning against its principal rivals, Congress and BJP, it is the media role that AAP will have to neutralize to achieve any effective numbers of parliamentary seats. An idea of the uphill task AAP faces can be imagined from the simple fact that the richest Indian, Mukesh Ambani (of RIL) whom Kejriwal never misses to name as the top most culprit, alone holds 95% share in Infotel, a TV consortium that controls 27 TV news and entertainment channels including the most influential ones broadcasting in English, Hindi and regional languages, which means propaganda against AAP has all India reach.
How much AAP’s broom (which is the Party’s symbol) can clean Indian democracy from its corporate poisonous filth will be known in May when election results are declared. Its success could possibly embark people in other corporate democracies on a lighted path.
(The writer retired as Professor and Head, Department of Geology & Geophysics (which he founded in 2000), University of Kashmir, served for 20 years as a scientist at one of Indian premier research labs, Wadia Institute of Himalayan Geology, Dehra Dun. Other than his research subject, international politics has always been his main attraction. )
(Opinions expressed in write-ups/articles/Letters are the sole responsibility of the authors and they may not represent the scoopnews.in)
Editor, Scoop News.
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