This small and readable book is a layperson바카라s introduction to India바카라s economic catastrophe. Since many people believe in an ongoing economic miracle, such views are often dismissed as doomsday talk. But it is better to be aware of reality than to live in an illusion. The title is apt바카라Bhaduri offers us an unsettling vision of what awaits us if we continue along the current path. He alerts us to the ideological assumptions underlying the scientific detachment of our growth-obsessed economists, who operate as metaphysicians of capitalism rather than as acute observers. That is why they will not address the fact that 바카라the market as an institution has no accountability except for the largely make-believe ideology of self-regulation바카라.
For the past two decades, India has undergone a transformation. Celebrated by an elitist media, the ongoing economic changes have acquired political endorsement across a spectrum ranging from the CPI(M) to the BJP and Congress. In a country where over three-fourths of the population has a daily income of less than Rs 20; some 61 million of whose children are stunted by malnutrition (the world바카라s highest figure); and over 90 per cent of whose labourers work in conditions of informality, what sense does it make to adhere to a growth strategy that systematically punishes the poor, destroys their livelihood and makes a mockery of democratic citizenship? Bhaduri points to the reality in Indian agriculture, where a farmer commits suicide every 30 minutes; where vast tracts of tribal-inhabited land in mineral-rich areas of Jharkhand, Orissa and Chhattisgarh (protected by Schedule 5 of the Constitution) are being acquired by fair means and foul바카라mostly the latter. Intimidation, police shootings and corruption accompany the transfer of lands for mining and industrial allotments. Forcible acquisition and dispossession amounts to nothing less than violent internal colonisation. And that바카라s official: a review of land reforms by the rural development ministry describes this as 바카라the biggest grab of tribal lands after Columbus바카라.
Reigning common-sense talks in glib assertions about development and growth. It stubbornly refuses to consider the question: development for whom and at whose cost? At what cost to the environment and to the country바카라s resources? The strategy adopted thus far, says Bhaduri, can only be described as developmental terrorism. This is a blatant assault on Indian democracy by state governments that have become agents of corporate interests. When the central government fails to protect India바카라s weakest citizens, when peaceful struggles and repeated attempts at legal redress fail, when all political parties fawn on capitalists as the messiahs of growth, the impression is bound to grow that the Indian State itself is rapidly on the way to possession by a mafia. The climate is ripe for extremist ideas to flourish바카라especially as vested interests and political leaders have thrown the Constitution to the winds.
There is a way out, one that steers between the extremes of a bureaucratic state-controlled economy and untrammelled corporate rapacity. Medha Patkar joins Bhaduri in the last essay, which deals with feasible solutions. They do not oppose industrialisation바카라that is another glib assertion of an establishment that remains deaf to far-reaching criticism바카라rather, they ask for an industrialisation that can tap 바카라the enormous productive potential of the people바카라. They call for growth led by the need for employment rather than corporate profits, growth with a focus on agriculture, domestic demand of ordinary people, the fiscal empowerment of panchayats and devolution of development initiatives바카라all within the constitutional framework.
It would have been useful if the essays, written over the past few years, had been revised more extensively. Yet its many repetitions do not irritate, for these themes bear repetition. Above all, this is a book about India바카라s poor as human beings, not as 바카라factors of production바카라. That is why it could contain more on people바카라s movements that are not insurgent, but continue to resist the new industrial regime. An excellent introduction to a burning issue, it deserves to be widely read, and made compulsory reading for bureaucrats, policemen and politicians. And, lest we forget, economists.
