Re: [IAC#RG] Most of Congress top leadership in Chattisgarh injured or dead in Maoist attack

And look at where reforms and GDP growth has got us. India is languishing at number 142 on the Human Development Index. Child malnutrition is rampant. An eminent economist of Indian origin based in the US has opined that children of poor and lower class parents are genetically underweight. Sure. The parents do not get enough nutrition. All this is very relevant to the naxal issue. Our strategic community is obsessed with the threat from China. So you have nuclear submarines, a new strike corps being raised and mountain guns being imported from our newly found friend, the US. Never mind the huge fiscal stress and debt being incurred. Naxals are just a 'menace'. This attack is a statement that we will attack anytime and any place of our choosing. Possibly a reaction to the attacks on villages where non combatants got killed. Typical insurgent tactics. The battle is for the hearts and minds of the people. Local support is the oxygen of naxals. The choice is clear. If you raise the threshold like what Sri Lanka with the LTTE, then be prepared for an all out civil war with the armed forces getting involved and terrorist strikes taking a toll in urban areas. That would be a sad day for our country. Sure, we must compete with China to catch up with their human development. It would be in the interest of corporate entities to participate in this exercise. Pavan Nair

On 27 May 2013 22:19, "Vidyut Kale" <wide.aware@gmail.com> wrote:

Interesting conversation.

More interesting is the subject of socialism, which seems to be an area of great prejudice. There is a belief that "left" cannot bring prosperity. All I can say is that this is not true. It is capitalist propaganda. There is no school of thought that aims for lack of prosperity. This can be seen for yourself if you try to examine how you "know" socialism will not bring prosperity. What is the data you have? In most cases, there is no data, but influential opinions presented as hep. "The moneyed crowd know how money is made and they sneer at socialism"

This basically has cold war roots, when socialism was used as one label against Russia. Yet, it was Russia that was the threat to US, not another capitalist country. US remains one of the few countries in the world to not be socialist, which is how they manufacture and propagate this bullshit. Coincidentally, it also helps their MNCs MINT MONEY in other countries. What a surprise! Yet US provides extensive social security and is now facing unrest as it gets slashed.

Fact remains that whatever else Gadaffi was, Libya prospered under him. Literacy tripled. Healthcare became freely available, improved in quality, state support for education was unparalleled and so on. One of the few countries growing solidly today is China.

Capitalism is a method of running something. Simply put, it picks the best performance for input. It does not care what happens to what it rejects. It has no ideology or ethics of its own. This is dangerous in a country with a lot of vulnerable people. Be it poor, vulnerable to inflation or living expenses or women and kids vulnerable to social exploitation because it sells, or protecting has no visible profit.

Lacking laws to protect people, capitalism would find it efficient to kill off old people to save resources. This is an extreme example - most countries have laws against murder. However, there are many less obvious ways to destroy people that are increasingly tolerated in the great GDP chase, but those who sing the virtues of capitalism rarely stop to think if their country has the robust laws it would take to protect people in a jungle raj where whatever wins is allowed to take it all. What about the rest?

The success stories of capitalism are well published. Less spoken of is the fact that crony capitalism and imperialism is the only way capitalism can be, because capitalism has no ethics beyond what environment it must obey to be allowed to operate and it has no ethics that prevent it using its power to game the rules either. Corporate Social Responsibility - a concept manufactured to artificially introduce some sense of the prosperity not being one way, when it became obvious that the supposed welfare of all was not happening and people would reject loot. World Bank - the entity that imposed capitalism on every country it could hold hostage by its needs - has stopped mentioning the trickle down effect completely (about a decade ago) and in fact has raised the alarm on unchecked power being concentrated in the hands of a few a time or two.

The US, slashing social welfare because of budget constraints needed less than a week to come up with a trillion dollar bailout for the banks. In "pure" capitalism, the banks would be allowed to fall, indeed dragged to courts for wrecking world economy, but in reality, CEOs took home million dollar bonuses. "Pure" capitalism was impossible. Too many things would collapse in the one way money vaccuum created. People further below in the ladder of loot would make angry noises and perhaps topple governments rather than lose their goodies.

For a poor country to embrace capitalism is the death knell for the poor, because the country's policies have already not helped them, and capitalism has no morals, it has no problem with the poor starving if they cannot compete with the rich in generating profit. We see it happening. It will increase as companies control basic needs of people - electricity, food, water. Privatizing needs is genocide in a few decades, because a corporation has no obligation to make sure people not its clients survive. Clients pay. The end.

We are outraged by govt scams, but ignore that corporations are usually their partners in it. But corporations being exempt from RTI manage to keep peddling their "efficient" image. Ambanis are so publicly known as corrupt it is not funny, yet no one will touch a hair on their head. They control electricity, phones and gas for millions.

Eminent analysts have raised the question of if capitalism is compatible with democracy at all. Is the job of the state to look after all, or to ensure that those who can rack up the statistics (for themselves) leaving the majority in dire straits.

But all that is for another day. Since we see white skin as some kind of proof of "right", worth thinking that the Nordic countries, which count as among the best and safest to live in in terms of quality of life (better than US, "land of opportunity") are staunchly socialist. Women and kids are probably safest there - including from their loved ones harming them. Their response to a terror attack was a sea of roses and greater efforts to integrate those who may feel alienated. Countries like Australia are electing socialist parties to power.

There is a need for India to look beyond the brainwash and actually seek concrete reasons for supporting or rejecting something. You may still dislike socialism and think it is some kind of Darwinism for those too poor to live to die or perhaps your data shows something different from what I see, and you think capitalism will bring prosperity for all, but you should know why you choose what you choose based on concrete facts rather than falling for the "repeat something enough and it becomes true" formula. Use data, use case studies, use surveys, analyze patterns, be your own auditor and skeptically look at everything before investing your support. Decide for yourself.

Vidyut

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