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Feb 12, 20218 min read

INDIA WOUNDED: A BIRD’S EYE VIEW

Compiled By Debaprasad Bandyopadhyay

Posted on 12/02/2021

Updated on 01/11/2023 (GMT 15:45 hrs)


“If thou cannot save me, why unfurl such deafening arrangements then?”

Do you know what is Matsya Nyaya? The Sanskrit word Matsya Nyaya (Sanskrit: मत्स्यन्याय; mātsyanyāya) refers to the principle of the Law of Fish. It is the fundamental law of nature in which the big fish devours the smaller fish, thus the “fittest” swallows the “weak”. It can be equated to the ‘Law of the Jungle’, with the instincts of lust, greed and hunger reigning supreme. Kautilya used this term in his Arthasastra to describe the Hobbesian state of nature where humans live a “nasty, brutish and short” existence in opposition to one’s fellow beings and one’s environmental conditions. The state apparatus needs to be deployed in order to bring out human collective life from such a state of chaotic existence. Where matsya nyaya dominates, the so-called “strong” illegitimately reigns over the so-called “weak”, i.e., the former exploits, suppresses, governs and appropriates the latter. Kautilya stressed the importance of ‘danda niti‘ (statist disciplinary technology) to counter such an anomie, viz., socio-political disequilibrium, a state of moral lawlessness. Thus in the present Indian socio-political situation, the terms like “tanashahi” (autocrat/tyrant), “jumlebaaz” (the maker of false promises), “Godi Media” (the Adani-Modi-Shah controlled media) etc., are used to depict the regime of the Modi-crazy: the regime of terror, hate (nafrat) and intolerance⤡! Now, let us apply this understanding further to the state of present-day Indian republic.

I. CRISES

The following statistics (if statistical data are to be believed! According my personal experience, Sahibs oftenallege that this country for poor data quality despite this country has celebrated institutes, viz., Indian Statistical Institute, National Sample Survey etc. Cf. (a) Data deficit and India’s peripheral States; (b) Why India lacks quality in its demographic and health data?) of India (Population: 135.26 Crores and still counting, July, 2020) speaks for itself about the condition of the country. It has worsened during the catastrophic situation due to COVID-19 outbreak:

  1. Hunger Index: rank 107 out of 117 qualifying countries (2022)

  2. Unemployment rate: 8.74% of the population (2020)

  3. GDP growth rate: 1.9% post-lockdown (2020), following global recession. GDP per capita rank 42nd (nominal; 2020) 124th (PPP; 2020)

  4. According to The Economist (2016), India occupied the ninth position in global Crony-Capitalist Index, having crony sector wealth that accounts for 3.4% of the total GDP.

According to reports from various sources, the ruling party’s assets are increasing by leaps and bounds:

Even, it is alleged that in case of individual party member is also gaining, e.g.,

On the other hand, PSU banks, some private banks are going to be bankrupted due to Gross NPAs. Inflation is inevitable. One peculiar instance:

The middle-class depositors of the Dewan Housing Finance Corporation Limited (DHFL), Punjab and Maharashtra Co-operative Bank, Yes Bank, Punjab National Bank etc., are undergoing insolvency. It’s a different type of “capital” punishment for them.

5. Happiness Index: Rank 136 out of 156 countries (2022)

6. Corruption Index: Rank 85 out of 180 countries (2020)

7. Informal sector workers: 93% of the total workforce (2019).

Disinvestment and privatization are the major reasons behind it. Supposed/probable citizens of India (“probable”, as the Indian citizen is yet to be proved by the tiresome processes of NPR-NRC-CAA) used to elect their government to switch over from public sectors to private sectors. What a paradox! Only an equivocator could say two antithetical concepts: “FDI” and “atmanirbharata” (self-reliance) with nationalistic jingoism in a same breath! 8. Availability of Hospital beds: 0.055 per 1,000 populations (2020) 9. Defense Budget: The union government justifiably allocated Rs 3.37 lakh crore as the defense budget for the financial year 2020-21. (compared to 8, it is observed that the death industry is proliferated by the government itself)

10. Malnourished population: 195.9 million malnourished people (2015-17); one-third of the world’s malnourished children belong to India.

11. Carbon Footprints: Emission of 2,299 million tonnes of Carbon Dioxide (2018). No visible step is observed to save the planet from the consequences of anthropogenic global heating by the Indian Government. Even there is no anticipatory policy regarding the rehabilitation of climate refugees. Instead, the government is justifiably busy with ostentatious display of statues, temples, anti-green bullet trains etc., along with planned deforestation for mining and other developmental projects.

12. Poverty index: rank 49. Two-thirds of people in India live in poverty: 68.8% of the Indian population lives on less than $2 a day. Over 30% even have less than $1.25 per day. More than 36 crore Indians still cannot afford three square meals a day. India had 73 million people living in extreme poverty which makes up 5.5% of its total population. India’s top 1% owns half of national wealth.

2022-2023 Updates:

“Despite the significant reductions [poverty level], however, the largest number of poor people in the world — 228.9 million — lived in India in 2020, said the MPI report, released by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI) at the University of Oxford.” VIEW HERE ⤡

13. External Debt is nearly about Rupees 86 trillion (as on 02/05/2020)! However, Indian Government has written off the astronomical figure of money, 68,607 crores owed by the super-rich people at the time of international crisis.

National Debt update (as on 30/01/2023, IST 22:43):

14. Suicide rate: About 800,000 people die by suicide worldwide every year, of these 1, 35, 000 (17.8%) are from India. India now accounts for over a third of the world’s annual female suicides and nearly a fourth of male suicides.

Update: After the COVID Pandemic hit India and an unplanned lockdown was imposed by the Government, the suicide rate rapidly multiplied.

“The National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) released data on suicidal deaths in India in August, 2022 and the figures were startling. A total of 1,64,033 suicides were reported in the country in 2021 which is an increase of 7.2% in comparison to the previous year in terms of total numbers. In terms of rate of suicide, India reported a rate of 12 (per lakh population) and this rate reflects a 6.2% increase during 2021 over 2020.” VIEW HERE ⤡

15. India is also a victim of Lawrence Summers’ (chief economist of the World Bank 1991-93) memo “Let Them Eat Pollution“. Majority of Indians have lost their herd immunity for consuming spurious products of so-called Green Revolution (empirical data not available).

16. Water Crisis: An average human being needs 15 litres of water per day to meet the basic needs and easements, which roughly amounts to more than 50 litres per family. In the rural areas, more than 50% of women walk up to minimum 5km on a daily basis for necessary consumption. On an average, they have to undertake 2-3 trips to and fro with earthen pots on their heads (15-20 litres capacity each). Carrying such heavy loads of water on their heads leads to chronic biological complications. Unsafe water also leads to an annual surge in infant mortality. Children of nearly 100 million households in India are left to survive without water. Due to the non-availability of safe drinking water, 2 lakh Indians have to die every year and 600 million of the Indian population encounter extreme water crisis.

17. India is “partly free”, says 2021 World Press Freedom Index:

“The 2021 World Press Freedom Index produced by Reporters Without Borders (RSF), a French NGO, has again placed India at 142nd rank out of 180 countries. This despite the fact that for a year, under directions from the Cabinet Secretary, an Index Monitoring Cell worked to improve the world rankings, including a meeting between Ambassador to France with the RSF officials to lobby for a change in the ranking in the index compiled by them. In 2016, India’s rank was 133 which has steadily climbed down to 142 in 2020. The RSF report says India is one of the world’s most dangerous countries for journalists trying to do their job properly. They are exposed to every kind of attack, including police violence against reporters, ambushes by political activists, and reprisals instigated by criminal groups or corrupt local officials.” VIEW HERE ⤡ (As reported on 21st April, 2021 ©The Hindu)

18. World Inequality Report 2022: “As per the latest World Inequality Report 2022, India is a “poor and very unequal country, with an affluent elite,” where 57 percent of the national income is held by top 10 percent, while the share of the bottom 50 percent is merely 13 percent in 2021.” VIEW HERE ⤡ (As reported on 8th December, 2021 ©The Quint)

19. V-Dem Democracy Report, 2022: It classifies India as an electoral autocracy ranking it 93rd on the LDI, out of 179 countries. India is one of the top ten ‘autocratisers’ in the world says the report. VIEW HERE ⤡

20. Freedom House report, 2022: “While India is a multiparty democracy, the government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has presided over discriminatory policies and a rise in persecution affecting the Muslim population. The constitution guarantees civil liberties including freedom of expression and freedom of religion, but harassment of journalists, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and other government critics has increased significantly under Modi. Muslims, scheduled castes (Dalits), and scheduled tribes (Adivasis) remain economically and socially marginalized.”

India: “party free” (66/100)!!!

21. HUMAN FREEDOM INDEX (2022): India occupies the 112th Position among 165 countries. ⤡

22. Passport Index (2023): India is ranked 82th on the Henley Passport Index. VIEW HERE ⤡ VIEW HERE 2 ⤡

23. Democracy Report, 2023: The George Soros-funded V-Dem Institute has ranked India 108th in the World Democracy Index. It has termed India as an “electoral autocracy”.

India Ranks 108th on Electoral Democracy Index 2023 ⤡ (As reported on 3rd March, 2023 ©CNBC)

II. FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF A SOCIAL SCIENTIST

  1. In the context of the crony capitalist scenario of India, it is found that few of the mercantile enterprises are controlling, approximating, appropriating and codifying the ruling party and the government.

  2. Thus, the government and the ruling party are trending towards monopoly capitalism by choosing few mercantile donors.

  3. For the sake of (1) and (2), crafted crises are created to hand over all the governmental institutes and “other” private financial institutes through, what Baudrillard called, “Simulation” in the context of the consumer society.

  4. This is euphemistically glorified as “disinvestment”, as if 43% of Indian adult citizens had chosen (by the way of common suffrage/universal franchise) their government (2019) for switching over to non-governmental agencies. These private agencies are acquiring the (a) infrastructures, built by the taxpayers’ money-signifiers (thus “public” is subservient to the free flow of private capital); (b) natural resources as “free gift” that leads to the catastrophic glocal heating.

  5. In the context of such a consumer society, this type of situation (free flow of private capital) encourages market fundamentalism apart from the ruling party’s declared religious fundamentalism.

  6. Creating anxiety disorder through crafted and simulated crises is also a hyper-real business. It contributes to the businesses of pharmaceutical companies and legal professions and cripples the cognitive competence of homo sapiens sapiens. Thinking persons are endangered. Creativity is crippled. Not only that it is also a part of anatomo-bio political intervention into the docile corporeal of the subjects with a goal to execute Malthusian positive (?) checks.

  7. The shadow economy (a la Pigou) of the so-called “underworld” is also controlling, approximating, appropriating and codifying the mercantile enterprises as well as political parties. This is the tragic shadow world of the Indian economy.

  8. By encouraging FDI, India is welcoming foreign MNCs, thus it is like re-welcoming the East India Company. This not only contradicts the atmanirbhar project of the current Indian political regime under the neoliberal economy, but also it affects the economic sovereignty of India.

  9. The ideological standpoint of the ruling party and its associates is working as a mask since it does not comply with the main ideological tenets of the rich Indian epistemological traditions.

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