Friday, 9 February 2018

The enemy is us.

I was talking to a young friend who was railing at Ambani's daughter wearing a dress of diamonds. I told her it did not affect me. It actually does not. It might have when i was younger.
I told her that compared to the vast undernourished majority of this land, both she and I were vastly provided for. When there is hunger somewhere, each of our indulgences is an excess. The rot begins with each of us. And leads to Ambanis.
Reforming the Ambanis extravagences is not our mandate. Our class, all of us who have over our basic needs of food and clothing, need to collectively address the criminal disparity. The Ambani scion's foolish displays cannot hurt this country. We, a vast number of educated and well off Indians, by our indifference to utter poverty are real issue.
Geeta Charusivam Partly agree with you. Those of us both with privileges, class, caste or gender should realise what life means for those without it.
But the Ambanis have not just hurt this country with their display. They have plundered it by looting natural resources, bribing governments, exploiting people all to earn their vulgar wealth. They are pure evil.
Aparna Krishnan Do we use the products of Ambanis, or Ambani clones ? The Ambanis exist because of you and me. Period.
Geeta Charusivam Ambanis don't exist because of us. A vast majority of people in this country were happy buying products from PSUs. We need to look at the larger picture.....at the system that creates Ambanis and their ilk. Most businessmen in India think that deceiving people to earn a little more profit makes them clever. This idea of maximizing profit at any cost is one of the root causes for huge inequalities.
Aparna Krishnan I see the root cause in our choices as a community and as individuals. Gandhi could help people bring down the Manchester cloth industry. We lack the spine to bring down an Ambani or a Unilever or a Union Carbide. We love to blame others like Ambani - he is irrelevent to my scheme of thinking.
Aflatoon Afloo अम्बानी की लड़की के हीरे के लिबास को देख कर आप पर असर नहीं हुआ।क्रोध क्यों नहीं आया?
Aparna Krishnan 1. Each of us is behind the growth of such monsters. I would rather direct my energies on me/us. If we were to stop buying their products, neither would Ambani be there, nor his daughter, nor her diamond dress 2.There are exterme perversions, and I would rather look at the wider and more systemic conditions that lead to the extreme disparities. 3. I see gowns advertized for 20,000/- and 50,000/-. So its a larger malaise and to waste energies on the person of Ambani is rather pointless. We need to see the root of the matter.
Amarendra Srivastava Brilliantly put "We, a vast number of educated and well off Indians, by our indifference to utter poverty are real issue." Salute!
Comments
Reply11h
Narayana Sarma Are we contemplating a poor man run facebook and google, or a poor man owned geo or road network, or a Petroleum company set up from scrap by poor? 😲👹👺
Nature of industries has not remained the same, Aparna. Bhopal has lost its relevance. 
We don't need to buy Ambani's products any more- our governments are owned by them.
Manage
Reply11h
Aparna Krishnan "Nature of industries has not remained the same, Aparna. Bhopal has lost its relevance." Meaning ?
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Reply11h
Narayana Sarma With new modes of owning and running industries, with newer partnership models, and newer funding mechanisms, stocks and trading etc things got very complicated.  For example Union Carbide no longer owns Eveready. Simplistic notions like boycotting a product are effectively made irrelevant by the industry. With much of the market share captured by corporations that do not depend on physical labour oe even individual purchases like the earlier industries did, companies have become immune to individual outcry . You can stop buying HLL products but before you know they will have bought the company producing your favourite brand. And by owing governments, you can get large contracts for your ammunition, for your vaccines, for your computers and spectrums. Poor cooperatives can no longer compete with them.!
Manage
Reply10h
Aparna Krishnan True. So what is the way now. Where and how does one offer satyagraha ?
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Reply10h
Aparna Krishnan I thinl it takes us back to the essential gram swaraj. Producing completely locally.
But even there, the resource base has been destroyed. And mindscapes have been bought over. By TV and schooling among other things.

Gandhi had it easier, I sometimes feel.
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Reply10hEdited
Narayana Sarma Birlas and Tatas supported freedom struggle. Adoniis, Jindals and Patanjalis are like new players... 
How should one view them? https://m.facebook.com/story.php...
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Reply9h
Aparna Krishnan Adani Ambani are pure capitalists, 100% after personal welfare. Well, Tata ans Birla also finally have to play by those rules.

A persistant complaint is that Gandhi took the help of Birla, and thereby was compromised. He took the help, as each citize
n, rich or poor, capitalist or communist, had a duty for the independence struggle. but was not compromised. His strong case for Gram Swaraj, and unforgiving questioning of disparity. Unlike the present incumbent.
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Reply7h
Narayana Sarma Tatas and birlas got into many controversial projects post Independence and followed more or less the same rules as Ambani's and Adanis. Infosys got GSTN, AADHAR through Nilekani and also the most recent Integrated Banking Application- which will replace individual core banking packages of all PSBanks- got the deal through what means, God only knows. 
Gandhi had an external enemy to fight against, and to get people around. We are now fighting our own demons which is much more difficult (and not so rewarding aa well. 😊)

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Reply6h
Aparna Krishnan Yes, the capitalists and those facing their brunt united against the white man.

Today we have become the enemy, each one of us. Its going to be a long battle, maybe waged simply because it has tpo be waged.
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Reply6h
Uma Shankari It is a very different world today, Narayana Sarma and it is also changing so fast; no 'ism' is going to work; there is no enemy or friend, every side is mixed and grey; what may work is everyone to follow his /her conscience, truth and duty. Perhaps that may work.

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