Dear Friend,
Assume that Donald Trump is coming to address ‘Namasthe Trump’ meeting in Hyderabad or Vishkhapatnam or Bangaluru or to Chennai or Cochin there would not have been a need for building walls around the slums on the way to Airport or to his hotel or to the stadium where he addresses the meeting. But in Ahamedabad there is such a need because the way to any big hotel or to the stadium, there are full of slums which not only look very poor but stink very badly. Hence the PM Modi wanted walls to be built to cover up the Gujarat model of poverty and slum life. Slum life tells the story of development as the Slumdog Millionaire did.
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Why Walls Around Gujarat Model Of Development?
by Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd
Assume that Donald Trump is coming to address ‘Namasthe Trump’ meeting in Hyderabad or Vishkhapatnam or Bangaluru or to Chennai or Cochin there would not have been a need for building walls around the slums on the way to Airport or to his hotel or to the stadium where he addresses the meeting. But in Ahamedabad there is such a need because the way to any big hotel or to the stadium, there are full of slums which not only look very poor but stink very badly. Hence the PM Modi wanted walls to be built to cover up the Gujarat model of poverty and slum life. Slum life tells the story of development as the Slumdog Millionaire did.
Assume that Donald Trump is coming to address ‘Namasthe Trump’ meeting in Hyderabad or Vishkhapatnam or Bangaluru or to Chennai or Cochin there would not have been a need for building walls around the slums on the way to Airport or to his hotel or to the stadium where he addresses the meeting. But in Ahamedabad there is such a need because the way to any big hotel or to the stadium, there are full of slums which not only look very poor but stink very badly. Hence the PM Modi wanted walls to be built to cover up the Gujarat model of poverty and slum life. Slum life tells the story of development as the Slumdog Millionaire did.
This raises a more fundamental question: what was the kind of Gujarat development model he built for 12 years as Chief Minister and later his hand picked Chief Ministers? By no stretch of imagination Ahamedabad would match the capital cities of South Indian states. This being the reality, it would be interesting to take a note how the national media bought this propaganda and the RSS/BJP launched this campaign before and during 2014 elections and how the people in other North Indian states including South Indian Karnataka believed it and voted for that model. This only tells the story of ‘media myth’ making.
No doubt Gujarat has more number of top industries and many of them supported Modi and the BJP due to their displeasure with the Congress, which ruled for 10 years before 2014 elections. The Congress also got caught in corruption and the family control issues. The Gujarat industrialists at that time were visualizing a future for their economy to grow unchecked under the BJP rule. Some of the present Government supporters got more wealth than they could imagine. But the economy is in a bad shape now and many industries are in deep crisis. But how does the Modi Government and ruling party at Delhi justify the fact that walls are being built to cover up poverty from the gaze of not just Trump but from the gaze of the global media. It is true that media is now coming to its senses even in India.
Both Gujarat Government, the Centre under the leadership of Modi could not give a two bedroom house to those Ahmedabad slum dwellers as some of the South Indian states did. The most industrialized state of India could not do away stinking poverty in the capital city even with the benevolence of rich industrialists like Ambanis and Adanis who control massive wealth of the country. Anyway they do not share their wealth with the poor of India. There is no such moral and ethical commitment on their part. The Hindutva ethic does not demand that.
Gujarat stood at 22nd rank among Indian states in the Human Development Index for 2018. Yet the state which was show cased as the model for development just six years back also housed massive wealth by the rich of that state. This conundrum is getting exposed now.
Hence RSS/BJP which allowed Modi to show case that state seem to have realized that the nation does not believe that development model anymore and hence the communal card with CAA/NRC is deployed. But this agenda has invited more foreign criticism as the UN General Secretary himself said that the Muslims of India might remain stateless. This is a serious assessment of the UN. The whole nation should be concerned about this image of India among the comity of nations, which we are a part.
But the world today is rejecting such agendas because the largest democracy and the oldest democracy cannot engage with religious and communal cards in their hands. As India is slipping into theocratic discourse , America under Trump is pushing its democracy out of the boundaries of secular notions. Though Trump and Modi won their elections with America First and India First slogans but America under Trump changed the nation’s unemployment graph. America’s unemployment rate is 50 years low and India’s unemployment rate 40 years high under Modi.
Though Trump promised to build walls across the nation’s borders to check illegal migration he could not really start building such walls because of strong opposition from Democrats . The opposition to Trump is so strong that he was impeached in the Congress but escaped losing power in the Senate just by margin of six votes.
But Modi is building walls around slums to hide the stinking poverty in the nation yet there is no serious opposition. Any critic of Modi’s Government or party is being dubbed as anti-national. What does this nationalism indicate?
In the midst of so much nationalist euphoria why such slum life of people remains as it is? Anyone who travels across North India where the BJP got highest seats poverty and misery could be seen everywhere. This is not true of South India where the BJP cannot make much headway. Anyone who travels across South India would find much better living conditions, health levels and housing conditions. South India also accommodates social diversity much better.
What is the nationalist morality? Reducing inequalities and exploitation should be the primary goal of nationalist party and leader. Why there is no focus on that fundamental issue of improving the life of productive masses?
Building walls around poor people’s living localities does not improve our image internationally. It exposes the weakness not strength.
On the one hand the Prime Minister talks about India reaching 5 Trillion dollar economy from the present 3 trillion dollar economy. On the other he builds walls to hide poverty. Wealth cannot be produced from mythological sources. Masses have to work and produce wealth. The chief source of wealth is labour of masses. Their food intake, living conditions that include housing and educational facilities have to be good. There is no evidence that this central Government is working to improve them in a focused manner.
The focus is on other issues that do not improve the living conditions of the poor slum dwellers and villagers. Trump comes and goes but the walls that are being built in Ahamedabad to hide the stinking poverty of Gujarati working people will remain to tell the story of Modi Government both in Gujarat and Delhi for long time to come
Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd is a political theorist, social activist and author of many books, the latest being From Shepherd Boy to an Intellectual—My Memoirs.
Shaheen Bagh is a template for
Restoring India’s Unity
by Kaleem Kawaja
Shaheen Bagh has proved once again that the Gandhian pacifist Satyagrah methodology, that is inclusive of everyone and abhors discrimination against anyone, is an invaluable template to save the nation from internecine religion- based discords that breed disunity and threatens us with national calamity.
Amidst Protests, Masses are Getting Politicized and Energized
by Badre Alam Khan
To commemorate 100 years of Jamia, several programmes, seminars, conferences, cultural activities and Qawalies (singing of Sufi songs) were held and will continue to be so in the upcoming months as said by the vice-chancellor Prof. Najma Akhtar. In this respect, JTA ‘Multidisciplinary International Conference’ (JTACon-2020) has been organized from 16th to 18th as a
mega event to commemorate and celebrate 100 years of Jamia Millia Islamia.
Liberal Lamentations in their Diminishing Hopes
by Zahid Makhdoom
Even while the six US Democratic hopefuls were busy in their pursuit of winning the most goodwill of the Nevada public, the Liberal media were busy constructing alternative futures towards containing a modest incursion by the “great unwashed” in their comfy domain where the corporations have an almost exclusive control over those chosen through a mind-numbing array of manipulative processes
Even while the six US Democratic hopefuls were busy in their pursuit of winning the most goodwill of the Nevada public, the Liberal media were busy constructing alternative futures towards containing a modest incursion by the “great unwashed” in their comfy domain where the corporations have an almost exclusive control over those chosen through a mind-numbing array of manipulative processes. My circle of liberal friends and acquaintances, were crest fallen as they saw their hopes dashed by the unconvincing performance of their choice candidates, Bloomberg, Buttigeig, Klobouchar et.al. In their moments of pessimism, most of them already conceded Mr. Trump his second take at destroying even the minor manifestations of justice and fairness in the US and the manner it conducts its business of imperial governance.
Well, I’m an optimist. If we view the great juggernaut, the USA, as a giant island for the wealthy and the privileged, the billionaires, and their valiant surrogates and well-wishers, that is the so-called “upper-crust” that populates the top Fifth percentile of its population, we would see a perennial presidency of Mr. Trump. Some of us had even pinned our hopes on another, a little shorter, a little older billionaire, but with personal minutiae that’s not much apart from his friend, Trump. He’s racist, classist, narcissist, authoritarian, and generally full of shit. But when he opened up his ill-gotten vault, dishing out hundreds of millions to the liberal media and FoxNews, the purveyors of liberalism ran after him with their tongues lolling, lips puckered up to be the first ones to latch on to the filthy asshole of, well, an asshole. Without even uttering a word, the dude was catapulted to herald the arrival of freedom from, well, another asshole. For a few days, until he opened his mouth, we were at ease basking in the crazed word-soup dished out by the loud-mouths and empty noisemakers like Chris Matthews and Rachel Maddow, the so-called scribes who see Russians lurking even inside their kitchen sinks. The liberal establishment, the military-industrial complex, the prison-industrial complex, the big pharma, health insurance boondoggle, intelligence community including assorted other warmongers, saw a sort of Phoenix rising. Sadly, the Phoenix turned out to be a dud. Hence, pessimism of my liberal buddies.
If we’ll continue to view the political landscape through the lens we have hitherto used, we’d likely get a skewed image. Yes, the economy is doing well. But for whom? 87 million Americans do not have any health coverage. Most of the ones with insurance can not afford to have one catastrophic illness. The per capita number of homeless people has grown exponentially. The salaries of teachers and other white-collar workers have been effectively frozen, hovering around 20% less in purchasing power than these were in the early 1970s. Salaries of the service industry workers have been at least 23% less in value than these were in 1968. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, the pauperization of Americans has seen exponential growth. With the cutbacks in the food stamp type of social entitlements, the US is destined to fall into the times that Charles Dickens lamented about. Yes, the upper 5 percent have seen their fortunes tripled and quadrupled. Jeff Bezos is probably worth twice what he was last year. Those paying their fealty to this “majestic economic growth”, only see what they aspire to become and perhaps genuinely believe that they have a crack at it. They fought the 2016 US election on that same perspective. Up until the last electoral vote was counted they were busy putting final touches to their hero, Hillary Clinton’s trek through the glass ceiling. They believed in their own invincibility. They never imagined that a bunch of “deplorables” (as HRC called them) are going to snatch the presidency from her deserving hands passing it over to an orange clown.
After the election, they spent their entire time manufacturing one or another specious reason for their loss. Russia, Ukraine, Assad, Twitter, Chelsea Manning, Julian Assange, Edward Snowden, Glen Greenwald, the list goes on. They are making the same mistake this time around. They need to unstuck their lips that are firmly latched on to the teats of the Wall Street and their noses permanently lodged inside the filthy assholes of the billionaires, the big pharma, merchants of war etc. There’s a need for analysing the causes of Trump’s first electoral victory. He won because the working class folk in the previously manufacturing states had experienced the wholesale loss of everything. They were drinking poisoned water, getting their protein from muskrats and assorted other rodents, living in dilapidated shacks. Their schools had converted into the places where the homeless squatted. They had always voted for a Democrat. Theirs was a protest vote that would have put Bernie Sanders instead of Trump in the White House. But the fact is that the greedy and selfish could not imagine sharing even a little sliver of the pie. Bernie is not a socialist. He is at best a mild social-democrat, with a plan to help improve some circumstances for the ones who have been fucked for so long. They, the liberal establishment, could not fathom even such a benign incursion into their power and wealth. And they are doing it again. Of course, that will once again rob freedom-loving Americans of a fair choice. Americans are wanting to change the power structure a tad bit. Unless we see the truth behind that simple formulation, we would always see the right-leaning protest groups, such as white-supremacists, ultra-Zionists, billionaires, and fascist evangelists, run the roost.
Zahid Makhdoom is a curmudgeony Canadian of Sindhi origins who lives in Vancouver, BC with his pet rock. He can be reached at zmakhdoom@gmail.com
Collected Essays, Volume V
by John Scales Avery
I would like to announce the publication of a new book, with the title, “Collected Essays, Volume V”. The book contains articles on the serious problems that are facing the world today. It may be freely downloaded
A new freely-downloadable book
I would like to announce the publication of a new book, with the title, “Collected Essays, Volume V”. The book contains articles on the serious problems that are facing the world today. It may be freely downloaded and circulated from the following link:
Other books and articles on global problems can be found on these links:
Table of contents
· The Devil’s Dynamo
· Fascism, Then And Saving The Future
· The Climate Emergency: Two Time Scales
· Money, Media And The Climate Crisis
· Nuclear Weapons: An Absolute Evil
· The Passions Of Mankind
· Population And The Environment
· We Need An Ecological Revolution
· Fighting For Americas Soul
· Terrorism: A False Threat
· Sanctions As Collective Punishment
· Attacks On Iran, Past And Present
· Kicking The Habit
· Institutional And Cultural Inertia
· Our Lifestyles Must Change
· Feedback Loops
· Criticism Of Israel Is Not Antisemitism
· Interview With Dr. David Krieger
· The Importance Of Alternative Media
· Climate Crisis And The 2020 Us Elections
· Benefits Of Equality
· Floods In Iran And Climate Change
· Gandhi’s Message For Today’s World
· Greed Is Driving Us Towards Disaster
· India’s Future
· Kashmir: What Would Gandhi Say?
· Madmen And Economists
· Mainstream Under-reporting Of The Climate Crisis
· Largest Climate Action In History Neglected By The Media
· Secrecy Versus Democracy
· We Can Unilaterally Stop Being Nasty
· The Kidnaping Of Meng Wanzhou
· The Social Responsibility Of Scientists
· Interview With Editor Binu Mathew
Cultural History
· Lives In Engineering
· Lives In Astronomy
· Lives In Chemistry
· Lives In Medicine
· Lives In Ecology
· Lives In Physics
· Lives In Economics
· Lives In The Peace Movement
John Scales Avery is a theoretical chemist at the University of Copenhagen. He is noted for his books and research publications in quantum chemistry, thermodynamics, evolution, and history of science. His 2003 book Information Theory and Evolution set forth the view that the phenomenon of life, including its origin, evolution, as well as human cultural evolution, has its background situated in the fields of thermodynamics, statistical mechanics, and information theory. Since 1990 he has been the Chairman of the Danish National Group of Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs. Between 2004 and 2015 he also served as Chairman of the Danish Peace Academy. He founded the Journal of Bioenergetics and Biomembranes, and was for many years its Managing Editor. He also served as Technical Advisor to the World Health Organization, Regional Office for Europe (19881997). http://www.fredsakademiet.dk/ordbog/aord/a220.htm. He can be reached at avery.john.s@gmail.com. To know more about his works visit this link. http://eacpe.org/about-john-scales-avery/
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