In my essay Capitalism: A Ghost Story (Mar 26), the sentence “All this in Goa, where activists and journalists were uncovering massive illegal mining scandals that involved Essar” should have read “All this in Goa, where activists and journalists were uncovering massive illegal mining scandals, and Essar’s part in the war unfolding in Bastar was emerging.” Also, the coup in Indonesia in which General Suharto came to power was in 1965, and not 1952.
Apropos Arundhati Roy’s essay Capitalism: A Growth Story (Mar 26), the future of capitalism is not as bleak as she would have us believe. This is because its main competitor, Communism, has done no good to the people who reposed their faith in it. Ms Roy is welcome to her fascination with the latter but the fact is that it has not worked and is on its way out almost everywhere. The only good that’s come of it is that it has forced capitalism to reform itself. True, capitalism is based on greed and moderating that greed is a serious challenge. But Gandhism rather than Marxism would help more in this endeavour. The captains of capitalism need to lead and act from the front.
Deepak Seth, on e-mail
Arundhati Roy is one of the very few media crusaders who haven’t sold their soul to the corporate devil.
Rajesh, Madurai
A 10,343-word essay on capitalism and development cannot really make a layperson reflect critically, unless it’s written cogently without overgeneralisation and poetry and neatly structured with titled sections to guide the reader on where the essay is headed. Seems the Outlook editorial team decided to rest on the author’s laurels and let this one slip. Her essay could have come across as more nuanced had Arundhati not just underlined the pernicious power of transnational capital pervasive in all spheres of modern societies from India to South Africa to America, but also endeavoured to acknowledge and respect societal changes in power dynamics between hitherto marginalised groups, the more privileged classes and state institutions as a result of socio-economic development in a Third World milieu.
Ranjana Ramachandran, Chennai
I receive my latest copy of Outlook, open the envelope, shudder in horror, sweat lightly, have my BP running high and low, feel weak mentally, disoriented physically. Why, you ask? I see Arundhati Roy on the cover. Despite the fact that Outlook has a new editor, it hasn’t changed its old habits.
R.K. Ravindra, on e-mail
Lakme is owned and operated by Hindustan Unilever. It used to belong to the Tatas.
Aakash, Gurgaon
Very sharp, Ms Roy. Excellent stuff. The US and Europe are in dire straits. Not just that, the Occidental kleptocratic mass murderers are losing their grip on the populations of the West. In America especially, there is a real chance for real change. The whole system is a swindle and I am so happy to have read such an eloquent critique. People might want to take a look at the documentary, Thrive: What on Earth will it take?.
Rene deGroot, Amsterdam
I find Ms Roy to be a bit of a princess—and too shrill by far. But she more or less hits the shiny little nail right upon its shiny little bald head.
David Wilson, Toronto
Someone must explain why people escape from communist countries to ones ruled by capitalist pigs. Why is there no traffic in the opposite direction if what Arundhati says is true?
Amit, Tucson, US
While Arundhati talks about the horrors of capitalism, she has forgotten about the horrors of socialism around the world. Even Communist China has dumped the idea of state ownership. In fact, the financial crisis of 2008 and its exacerbation is also a function of government intervention. A freer country with less government and less state intervention is the only path to prosperity.
Sonam Agrawal, Bangalore
Like all post-modern rhetoric, this piece is all fizz and directionless. What these so-called revolutionaries practise is actually a masquerade of the ‘Brahminical politics’. The article’s portrayal of invincible, self-destructive capitalism only reflects its author’s brand of ‘fatalistic’ politics.
Pindiga, Hyderabad
Phew. Verbal diahorrea along with intellectual constipation!
K. Vijayaraghavan, Chennai
What a colossal waste of 22 pages of admittedly high-class prose, which once again gets reduced to nothing more than the ranting of a disgruntled soul. By now, there does not seem to be anything under the sun that Ms Roy does not smell a ‘sinister design’ in.
Bhavna Mohan, New Delhi
Having trashed corporates, capitalists, economists, government, media, ngos, computers, think-tanks, databases, Bill Gates, Nandan Nilekani et al, how does Arundhati propose to save the poor from poverty?
Sumirti, Salem
I don’t think Arundhati has to provide a clear-cut solution. That’s not her job. Her essay is well-researched and well-written; it’s meant to provoke, educate, inform and awaken. Those who seek solutions from her should ask themselves what solutions they can think of.
Nishant Pratap, on e-mail
Self-proclaimed intellectuals like Arundhati operate as double parasites: they feed on the blood of the rich and live on the sores of the poor.
Swapnil Kothari, on e-mail
Yaawn, can someone explain to me in a “few words” what this piece is all about?
Subba Rao, Dallas
I am willing to pay Arundhati not to write any more.
Shammi Kapoor, on e-mail
I think a lot of Outlook staffers took a vacation. No wonder you had to fill up the pages with Arundhati Roy.
Ganesan, New Jersey
Arundhati Roy’s perception of a ‘caste mechanism’ in the political and social fabric of India is skewed due to her misconceptions about its content and evolution during the past 60 years. Neither Ambedkar nor S.A. Dange is responsible for the opportunistic engineering of caste politics in India.
C. Koshy John, Pune
I can write a bigger and better essay called Communism: A Gone Story. Gimme a chance.
Vaibhav Shrivastava, Calcutta
Whether you agree with her or not, Arundhati’s writings always manage to convey a sense of engagement with issues most journalists, let alone fiction writers, shy away from. She deserves respect for consistently exhorting readers not to follow the in-fashion narrative. It cannot be a writer’s mandate to offer solutions or churn out fiction that conforms to standards of thought that some deem appropriate.
Santosh John Samuel, Kochi
In a country with free speech rights, why cannot a person speak her mind? Doesn’t she have a right to talk about her country’s problems? Bury your heads in the sands, my friends, but don’t shoot those who raise their heads to take a look around them.
Ananya Bhattacharya, Bethesda, US
Are Arundhati’s rants worth a cover story? The Ambanis are not thieves, and they have a right to build themselves whatever sort of house they want. And who forces her to buy Tata Tea or whatever? She could choose the Wagh Bakri brand if she wanted to avoid the Tatas! To rubbish capitalism is too big a leap in conclusion that Roy is making. Do we have to go back to the time when we had to wait for years to get even a telephone connection?
Rajesh Chary, Mumbai
Ordinary mortals like me usually avoid commenting on Roy-bahadur. But one has to admit she has a way with the pen. A few comments, though: a) Surprisingly, she didn’t beat up the middle class; b) There was no breast-beating over Hindutva, though Narendra Modi was mentioned; c) I wonder if it was fair to Mohammed Yunus to say, without statistics, that people who chose his schemes have been dying.
Santosh Gairola, Hsinchu
In each page she criticises corporations and their greed, the adjoining page carries ads by the same greedy companies.
Madhuraj V., on e-mail
Arundhati says if the “100 great capitalists” of India were hypothetically removed, we’d be as poor as Sudan. But that may prove true of many nations, including the US.
B.V. Gopal Rao, Warangal
The only solution to the problems Ms Roy mentions is Anarchism. It does not mean chaos or the violent overthrow of the state. Rather, it is the least involvement of state and corporate power in people’s lives.
Fahad Ahmed, Hyderabad
Let me summarise Arundhati’s article: “Being proud of India is evil. The Indian middle class is evil. Hinduism is evil. Upper-caste Hindus are evil. Capitalism is evil. Business is evil. The US is evil. Consuming what capitalism produces is evil.”
Ramki, Delhi
No political system offers hope of justice to the poor. The role of citizens’ groups that challenge governments and political systems—such as the campaign led by Anna Hazare—must be seen in that light.
Narendra M. Apte, Pune
The one statement by Arundhati that left me impressed was: “Tidal waves of money crash through the institutions of democracy—the courts, Parliament as well as the media, seriously compromising their ability to function the way they are meant to.” Is the omission of bureaucrats an oversight? Love her or hate her, you can’t ignore Arundhati. She should be prescribed reading for the complacent and fatalistic.
Maj P.M. Ravindran (retd), Palakkad
Any system of governance is good if applied and executed truthfully, efficiently and without corruption. India’s problem is corruption and inefficiency, with the ruling party to blame in most cases.
Paramvir Sawhney, Gurgaon
Instead of rehashing rants borrowed from western socialists, Arundhati should focus on the quality of governance in India. It is still politicians who are powerful, and it is they who are to blame for India’s evils, not capitalism per se.
Dipto, on e-mail
Looking at the mirror is good—one sees oneself, warts and all. Arundhati has held up a mirror to us.
Manish Banerjee, Calcutta
Is there no saving grace to liberalisation then?
Girish Vaithilingan, on e-mail
Of course pieces like Arundhati’s are meant to irritate our sense of well-being. Seeing the very structure of our world falling apart, it’s natural for us ‘shining Indians’ to react in this antagonistic way.
Ananyo Mukherjee, Siliguri
Arundhati’s articles have lately become a show of her angst and emotions rather than attempts to educate the reader. She tends to repeat herself, beating round the bush rather than moving forward.
Sukanya Sarkar, Chennai
Kudos to Outlook for publishing Arundhati Roy, especially when, as she says, most of the electronic and print media are now owned by huge multinational corporates. And now that the cag has brought out a new report indicating irregularities in the auctions of coal blocks, perhaps people will start taking her more seriously.
Ramesh Kumar, Mumbai
All the talk about how India’s greedy and arrogant businessmen, in cahoots with the government, are undermining every institution in this country is, unfortunately, very true. Even if it comes from Arundhati.
G. Natrajan, Hyderabad
People like Arundhati lead seven-star lives, yet have the gall to write on the condition of the poor.
S.S. Nagaraj, Bangalore
Arundhati is as guilty as all the people she condemns.
Ramachandran Natarajan, on e-mail
Unless things change real fast, Arundhati Roy will be made irrelevant. She’ll be just one voice among the angry, unheeding millions. Ms Roy isn’t the publicity-seeking dramabaaz that she is made out to be; she’s our very own Cassandra.
Paresh, Rolla, US
Another rich, nuanced article by Arundhati. Instead of ranting at her, it’d be good to step back and introspect on how the definition of democracy has morphed along capitalist lines.
Siddharth, Boston, US
By linking every problem India faces to capitalism, Arundhati can blame the majority of India’s population.
Lakshmi Narasimhan, Chennai
Good piece. Shows the other side of the capitalism coin.
K. Nithyan, Denver
Well said.
K. Narasimhaswamy, Bangalore
The only grouse of Arundhati’s that I found valid was on Antilla. But here too the blame lies more with Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation than the Ambanis for allowing such a large-scale, uber-lavish dwelling to be constructed for a family of just six members!
Ramesh T., on e-mail
Antilla throws up a multitude of ironies depending on which part of Mumbai you are looking at it from. The most obvious is the contrast with Mumbai’s slums. But equally striking would be if you were to see it from the Navy Nagar beach in Colaba. At the end of that land strip is the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, set up by Homi Bhabha with generous funding from J.R.D. Tata. JRD could have built an Antilla in Bombay, but instead preferred setting up institutes like TIS, TERI, IISC et al. Corporates of today end up managing even philanthropy in a profitable way, directly or indirectly. Arundhati Roy’s tone may be acerbic and prescriptive, but after 25 years of liberalisation and crony capitalism, the time is ripe to see where the Indian system is headed for.
Vinu Nair, New Delhi
It is no coincidence that Ms Roy chose Antilla as the epitome of evil. That it belongs to India’s richest man suffices. And when demonising and accusing becomes the defining theme of one’s life, what better than a structure of brick and mortar, however grotesque, to mount a venomous diatribe on capitalism.
K.K. Raja, Bangalore
Reporting on its housewarming party in November 2010, a Mumbai-based socialite-cum-pulp fiction writer breathlessly described Antilla as “the Taj Mahal of the 21st century”. Mumtaz Mahal and Shah Jahan must have turned in their graves at the mausoleum. However, given Arundhati’s views, she could well brand the Taj Mahal as a symbol of medieval capitalism. Even if it be that, at least it is supremely aesthetic. Not so Antilla, which is a permanent eyesore scarring the skyline of Mumbai, and which resembles a monkey wrench.
Ramesh Ramachandra, Bangalore
Arundhati’s piece reminded me of Waseem Barelvi’s couplet: Banenge oonchey makaanon mein baith kar naqshe/Toh apne hisse main mitti ka ghar na aayega.
Rajneesh Batra, New Delhi
The Ambanis’ house is a brazen display of wealth acquired through not so transparent means. American capitalists, big or small, contribute a lot to society through charity and by building schools, colleges, hospitals et al. They don’t cheat the government by fudging accounts, avoiding taxes and reneging on payments to provident fund accounts of their employees.
Arun R., Bangalore
Apropos Capitalism: A Ghost Story (Mar 26), Arundhati Roy wants to break our faith in every single institution, every movement, every effort, without feeling any responsibility for showing us an alternative, or even lay down the complexities. If the Tatas and the Ford Foundation are all villains, fine, show us the hero, even an imaginary one, or a vision. She lacks the intellectual honesty to accept the void left by the failures of the Communist experiment, that it did not deliver anything. She doesn’t concede the appeal of the older Ambani—as the rags-to-riches story of an obscure rural boy who beat the well-ensconced industrial houses. To India’s teeming small-town aspirants, it could well be a story of the limitless possibilities of capitalism. What’s there to make so much fuss of an ugly big house in a country that flaunts its many palaces to the world? Most importantly, what does she want of us? Almost all of us, Outlook readers, professionals that look somewhat beyond ourselves, have been painted black because of our association with one institution or the other, or admiration for some person she has castigated.
Vinatha Sampath, Delhi
From the US. Wonderful article. I read it twice, and am yet to digest all its insights. Still, I feel inclined to ask if today's injustices are truly unprecedented. Is the Ambani clan with its Antilla more extravagant than, say, the Wodeyar clan with their Mysore Palace? Most social mammals, including humans, always form into stratified societies with a food chain, a pecking order and a caste system. The strata are maintained by force, and (among humans) by mass delusion. The problem now is that pollution levels and resource depletion have reached unsustainable levels. And the ultimate form of capitalist pollution is DEBT, which is killing us as a species. Debt is a force multiplier for human greed, since debt drives the capitalist imperative of growth.
Richard Wilson, Los Angeles
In ‘Free’ India, this essay would be part of textbooks from Class 8 onwards.
Anurag Jharna, on e-mail
Arundhati’s piece is well-researched, the facts interwoven dexterously and the various players meticulously detailed. What is intriguing is the complete lack of any reference to the Birlas; their stakes in big business across the spectrum is as well-known as the less-than-flattering means used to achieve their ends. Is there some particular reason for this 'lapse' or are we to believe the redoubtable Arundhati too is sometimes fallible like other mere mortals?
Shekhar Naik, on e-mail
If Mukesh Ambani has not violated any laws in building his Antilla, I don't see why we should bother. Life is not fair anywhere in this world. There will always be the Ambanis, skilled in making money, and the Arundhati Roys, skilled in writing about evil capitalists making money, the heartless exploiters and the helplessly exploited, the filthily rich wanting still more riches and the envious middle class gaping at the riches of the filthily rich and bemoaning and whining about how unfair the system is. Arundhati Roy’s essay is also like Mukesh Ambani’s Antilla in its blinkers, egotism and futility.
Mani Nair, Thiruvananthapuram
Arundhati has done it again, demonstrated how much she knows history and how little she understands it. She knows how to run a phrase, and is unafraid of being carried away by its centrifugal force. She appears to desire a world where compromise is shunned, where negotiated settlement will mean a sellout. She sees the evil in the appropriation of Martin Luther King and anc movements by corporate interests but fails to recognise what these movements won, and the relatively small price they paid for it. There are seven billion of us on this planet, Arundhati—we’ve got to negotiate our way through it. And, yes, the negotiation takes place in an unbalanced power relationship, where one side has the money, the power, and armed force, others don’t.
Rocky Dawar, Lucknow
Arundhati’s essay is a vigorous shake to the slumbering, apathetic and self-centred middle-class conscience. I marvel at her ability to muster so much of research to base her dialectic on. The world’s gone horribly wrong with our warped, unholy and unwholesome concepts of development. What is urgently needed is an altogether new world order, a free, all-inclusive, sustainable and, yes, just world in harmony with nature and peace among nations. But how utopian and naive it all sounds in the wake of all-pervasive madness—the economic wars, weapons accumulation, strategic partnerships, festering corruption, planet earth’s ecological slaughter.
Subhash C. Sharma, Palampur
The demon of capitalism has gained such enormous strength that it has become invincible. We can only wait for it to self-destruct.
Nitaidas Saha, Dhaka Arundhati’s usefulness as a commentator of the ‘other side of the story’ cannot be denied. Her writings make us aware, question and think on issues often dusted under the carpet in the name of development and progress.
Sandeep Choudhary, Calcutta
With all her obvious limitations, be it lack of any deep activist struggle or the purveying of five-star socialism, which would make her a sort of poor man’s Solzhenitsyn, the same thing which was said of him would hold good for Arundhati also (Capitalism.., Mar 26). A leading Russian editor of the liberal Russian paper Novy Mir said: “Maybe, we would like him to be more courteous and less gruff, somebody with better manners, but he is the only one we have.” Similarly, a less shrill, more reasoned Ms Arundhati Roy would do nicely but unfortunately, and this shows our real lack of independent voices, she is the only one we have.
Vinod Naik, on e-mail
Excellent article. It makes you think.
Adelia Bertetto, Bruxelles, Belgium
Works like Arundhati’s hold up a mirror to us, and if we don’t like what we see, the fault lies with the way we have made ourselves up and the society around us.
Amit M., Patna
The lift-out quote regarding burqa used in Arundhati’s essay is very jarring and detracts from the specific point she’s making in the context of western liberal feminism. What she means to highlight is how an important issue with great resonance vis-a-vis women’s liberation (ban on wearing burqa in France), which ought to have become a rallying point for women’s rights activists, had in fact been turned by the liberal feminist movement eating out of the hand of capitalist foundations into a rather limited debate about humiliation and coercion of women.
Pupul Dutta Prasad, IPS, NHRC, New Delhi
Most of the voluminous response to Arundhati’s essay decried her for the sake of doing so. This is how capitalism works. The upper and middle classes write in immediately because they’re the real beneficiaries of liberalisation, and the essay is unfavourable to them. And the vast majority of people whom the likes of Arundhati try to represent do not read Outlook; nor do they have the courage to speak against their villains.
P. Selvaraj, Villupuram
Arundhati Roy’s diatribe on the hydra called corporate greed is old-fashioned pamphleteering cast in post-modern dissonance (Capitalism..., Mar 26). Her rave and rant shares one trait with that of Marxian writers who blithely ignore Stalinist or Maoist excesses: the silences and the selective glossing over. Just that it’s applied to the new darlings of the uber-anarchists: the Taliban and the Indian Maoists. Ms Roy’s concoction is a strange, heady miasma of word-play and rose-tints, a searing call to shake off the chains of corporate funding and cavort in a mirage-like Utopia of autarchic good governance. It’s a fevered pop-psycho rendition of Rousseau’s noble savages with Thoreauesque imagery, Wordsworthian evocations of Mother Nature and Marxian/Gandhian philosophy.
Not unlike Roy's puzzled stare at Antila, I too get shaken up, reading her article o-very carefully. Did you collect these 'facts' and slot them suitably, or create the central arguement -using the word invent will be impolite and negative- first and then go after them one by one to meet specifications? Beware of "this globe eating monster'' we will. But please provide us with copies of the relevant operation manual. What do his policy plotters do- secret conventions of all Amabani to Arnold Trump, a 100,000 of them discussing and deciding on squeezing the world out through men like Yunus and Mandela, Dalit and Dragonfire, Purdah and Purdue....o, boy, what an agenda? Incidentally do these players, like the cat, have seven lives?
It seems daemon called Capitalism has its tentacles on every sphere. look at the list she provides, corporates, capitalists, economists, government, media, ngos, computers, think-tanks, databases, Bill Gates, Nandan Nilekani, Mohammed Yunus. It is baffeling to think how can so many different people can collude for something. It looks like hetherto-unheard consiparcy theory. But then probably there is some Diabolical force behind it.
What is the right economic, political and Social model to support 7+ bn people on this earth? We need 2+ earths to support current life style for even a small %age of population. In India the selection of survivors can happen most probably factoring in the following. Caste wars, water shortage, High levels of crime, Food shortage, More Naxalism, poor law and order, high crime rates, high corruption rates. Unless of course there is some other cause or some other miracle.
Arundhadi has a talent to make readable prose in English on contemporary issues and that's the reason why we all read her whether we agree with her or not.
She writes on the vices of capitalism and perhaps predicts its doomsday just as communism.
But human collective wisdom is on the evolutionary path and it will evolve better systems in the future as it keeps progressing.
Perhaps a few readers would like to explore more on this aspect. I have blog depicting some of those aspects of human evolutionary progress:
"About Civilization, Social Values & Population Growth : Some Facts You May Find Difficulty in Digesting !" Yes, these are issues which are difficult to digest with our limited understandings !
I just read the comments and think what will happen to these people when they will find at that time when they face the inevitable catastophic consequences because of this agressive monopolistic capitalism and will see there's none beside them fighting or at least trying to be vocal as the writer did. one doesn't need to subscribe one's view to and tail but being logical is what should be taken in consideration cuz it really about every each one of us.when i see the bailing out of air india and the pilots doing strikes and shouting in each and every tv channels to consider there situation and all the media including higher middle class intellectuals confronting them,accusing them of not providing service to the ''common people''; when bjp and congress leaders address the pilots in a same tone and dictate them to surrender and to join their duties without pay!!! i think the same feeling plays around in those pilot's mind which plays in the mind of those people fighting for the democracy of the 77% whose income is less than 20/- a day or for the democracy of the middle class and see none coming beside them shoulder to shoulder.i hope, that the people who are denouncing the writer for her constant efforts, may not ever have to feel the same as the air india pilots or those activists standing up front and alone. I hope.
We won't stand in your way if you wish to build an egalitarian society , provided you get out of ours.
My mother has been looking for a carpenter to fix our door, she has been searching for weeks, and none of these so called impoverished, oppressed people ever showed up to earn a little extra for their family, Hey, why would you need a job, when you can blackmail the Govt for more welfare goodies, why would one feel the need to struggle for a job when you have Affrimative action for those who simply breed more than they can feed?
@Hashim,
When we turned the other cheek like Gandhi told us to, we were simply slapped on the other side, that's all that happened.
The man had nothing to do with India winning her freedom, it was the death toll after the second world war.
But, hey, if you don't like the Punjabi/Gujarati elite, if you don't like the Brahmins, you can simply have another partition like we had in 1947, we will gladly keep the Republicans, the libertarians, the Secularists, while you can keep the Gandhians, the Bolsheviks and the Marxists.
You want the Dalits and Triabls to prosper, just tell them to breed less children than they can feed.
Hashim, if you are such a big Gandhi fan, then by all means preach his message in Turkey, and advise people to follow his lifestyle and philosophy. Gandhi is there for anyone, anywhere.
You keep ranting about Naxals, Kashmiris and Sikhs. What about the nature of those movements, or the movements claiming to represent those people? Are they progressive, humanistic, inclusive, secular and progressive? Absolutely nothing indicates that they are. If you are carefully following the Kashmir issue, you know that Pakistan supported Islamic terrorists are now threatening elected village representatives in Kashmir- which by the way shows that democracy and freedom do exist there. Again, India is multi-lingual and multi-religious, and multi-non religious as well. You can believe openly in any divine representation or not believe if you wish. India is not North Korea or Saudi Arabia, or even Turkey. Go preach and sermonise to those countries, and see how far you get.
Thanks for the great response Akshay! Thats what i was looking forward to ...... compassion in your words!! The beauty of a democracy, such as India, is that it builds tolerance in the whole system!! It does not tun you into a "hard stick" that only has a breaking point but till then its all "no-respect-for-difference-of-opinion"!! The problem is that people over here are failing to understand the context in which i am saying things! When i quote Gandhi again & again, i do not refer to some kind of a "personality cult" on my behalf ..... I point out a whole way of running a political/social/economical system under the teachings of ,perhaps, one of the bravest men of 20th century i.e. Gandhi!! Yes! Change is coming to India! Yes! The dilits are wining political power ..... & Yes! Upper casts are ceding ground but in what way!! The upper class wealthy Indian have almost moved to posh suburbs being developed 50 miles apart from Mumbi or Delhi ...... far away from those slums into some kind of artificial incubators!! Mayawati may have won (and lost 2012 election) but in a nut sheell, even being a Dilit, she & her ministers turned out to be the most corrupt lot of all !! She used to sack her corrupt ministers at speed of light.....!! Erecting all those statues & wasting tax payers money that should have been diverted to public projects, what else has she done for the Dilits !! See! The issue is that everyone in India who climbs the social ladder either by sending one of his kids to New York/Qatar/UAE or by establishing a Tech business somewhere in Banglore/Delhi or by becoming a politician just like Mayawati turns indifferent to everything in india! He/She stops seeing all those slums, all the corruption around, all those human rights voilations against Maoists/Kashmiris/Sikhs, the child labor, villagers commiting suicide etc etc! Then, its all S _ x, drugs & rock & roll !! Let me tell you that 90 years back, Gandhi also turned rich when he returned from South Africa and started his practice as a smart barrister yet he devoted his life to the birth of a nation! He was not a "show off" like Rahul but some one genuine who felt for all of this misery around despite being a rich person! Now, i do not say you should leave your cars, houses or fat pay cheques the way you are demanding from Roy! What i say is, just feel the pain of a slum dweller, a Kashmiri, a Maoist, a Sikh, someone who has to bribe a police man/drug inspector every week or a Dilit in your heart! Just saying that everything is OK is like moving dust under a fine "Turkish" carpet :) !!
@ Islam Hashim
There is no Punjabi elite or Gujarati elite in India. The Indian elite is too diverse to be described so simplistically. Also there is no Brahmin elite. The backward castes have over the last 60 years been slowly but surely siezing political power, not by rebelling against the state but by using the power of the vote granted to them by the Indian constitution. The upper castes, have been ceding ground, realising that change is inevitable. This has resulted in things like the rise of Mayawati (the first dalit woman chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, India's largest state), something that would have been been considered impossible for thousands of years before 1947. Today, out of 30 chief ministers, how many are brahmins? maybe 5-6, not more. All this change has been achieved not because of maoists and other essay writers like arundhati roy but because of our existing system which despite its serious flaws is a good system and should not be run down by people who dont have solutions to offer
Regarding your comment on Gandhi. As you have rightly pointed out, Gandhi lived the life of an ascetic while Arundhati Roy lives the high life, residing in one of the most posh neighbourhoods of Delhi and travelling abroad whenever she desires. Gandhi lived his philosophy, Roy chooses not to. Oh, and do check up on what the maoists, left liberals etc etc actually say about Gandhi. They have always abused him, calling him a reactionary and a friend of the capitalists. You see my friend, the world is more complex than you imagine it to be.
Well! I am happy that my earlier "prophicies" are coming true word by word. GOWRI has openly endorsed Bill Gates as someone "chasing-the-riches-rat-racer" middle class of India, probably, "worships", forgive me if this word sounds too harsh, and i am tahnksful to GOWRI for that! As far as Roy using the same products and changing her life style to tune of the poor is concerned, for the last many responses, i have been giving the example of Gandhi's "Ashrams" again & again! This was one person who, despite being one of the best advocates in India, counld have afforded every luxury imported from Britian at that time yet he chose to stitch his clothes using his own hands & lived like all of those slum-dwellers, the idiot invisible le miserable nothings, the dilits, Shudars & lesser castes, only there to pick the shit up or provide child labor to posh localities in Delhi & Mumbi, the same people that Indian Barahaman & upper caste middle-class Punjabi/Gujrati elite despise so much!! May be, even touching them is prohibited in the culture, correct me if i am wrong! Yet Gandi spoke for these people, Roy & all those rational Indians who belive in human rights, justice & rule of law & myself will keep on speaking for these people! Regarding blaming the so-called "agitators" among Miosts, Kashmiris & Sikhs, let me put it that way! For the last 13 years, it has remained Indian government's strategy to blame the le miserables behind the label of "terrorism" when they get into a protest against the government excesses! Kashmir is a burning hell! There is no police over there. There are 700 thousand militry troops - its Martial law, not democracy, over there since, God knows when! Maoists rebel movement has spread across 12 provinces yet has the same upper-caste middle class in Delhi & Mumbi that remains, probably, busy with all trichness, beauty, depth, complexity and dynamism ever given a damn! In 1948, when Gandi was shot by one of the same fanatics, the mind-set of vice that probably has become torch bearer of every upper middle class Indian of today busy only in making the buck via hook or crook or whatever, he was on his way to the neignbor Pakistan to solve all the disputed issues! Man! Was Gandhi a saint!! May be! It is so sad that, in India of today, there is so much vice, hate & in tolerance with no room for difference-of-opinion in a nation that shoudl have followed the legacy of a saint i.e. Gandhi! India never needed capitalism, it always had Gandhisim & thats where it should get back!!
She finds fault with rich for being rich, with middles class for being middles class, because there are millions of poor Indians. But What about her? I see make up on her face, books in her place. Can't she sacrifice her comfortable living for the poor? When you dont practice what you preach, no one respects you.
I respect Mr Bill Gates much more than Ms Roy: He made money but he tried to change the lives of poor across the world with his money. Not even 0.01% of us (including the "poor indians") are prepared to part with our wealth as Mr Gstes did, if we had that kind of wealth.
She find fault with governement and army but is blind to the violence of the Maoists. No one wants to hear a biased view. If you want a solution you need to accept the facts as they are. When people turn violent while protesting power cut police dont have a choice but to use force. How do you expext them to keep law and order when theere are, say, 100 police against 10000 agitators?
I find Arundhati Roy's views extrmely biased : against the government, industry and army and for Maoists. Against the right and for the left.
She accuses millionaires for being milloinaires, middles class for being middles class becuase there are croere of Indians are poor. I have not seen her changing her life style because there are poor Indians. I see make up on her face, lots of books in her place. Her confortable living has not changed because of poor Indians. She should ask herself before preaching and before using bitter words against all of us: Has she stopped using products from all the companies that she is finding fault with? It is possible to live like that aim sure. Many tribals must be living without buying any of these company products.
I would respect her more, and listen to what she has to say in case she does some thing about changing all these "atrocities".
She says government is killing people but is silent about Maoists violence. It is well known that Maoists also kill people. If you are doing an impartial analysis you cannot escape mentioning it. No one is interested in getting a one sided view of events. If you need a solution to a problem first of all you need to accept the facts. She says police open fire in Kashmir for agitating against power cut. But she doesnot say the "agitators" turned to violence. How do you solve power problem by stone pelting or burning buses? How are, say, 100 policemen supposed to control a crowd of 10000 people? You can not give excuses like "We kill peole because we dont get justice" or "We do Rasta Roko because we dont have power" Just because you are inconvenienced does not mean you take the law in your hands and diturb everyone.
I dont understand what exactly is her complaint about Oprah coming to India and declaring that she likes to come again and again. Just because there are poor Indians Oprah should not have been invited?
I respect some one like Bill Gates much more than Arundhati Roy. He made money but he tried to give something to the poor , tried to make a difference in thier lives. Unlike Ms Roy who is satisfied blaming everyone (including herself, Im sure) and doing nothing. I dont think even 0.01% of us (including Ms Roy's "poor" Indians) are willing to part with wealth like Bill gates did, in case we had that kinf of wealth.
When she write about Narendra Modi's part in capitalism where is the need to talk about the Hindu- Muslim riots? I think it is fashioable to keep writing bad about Mr Modi. No one becomes great by accusing others. what have you done other than talking?
I am impressed by the essay of Roy and I deem her one of the best writers in the world. What fascinates me about her is her direct and fearless voice and bold ideas. I never miss her articles. I feel we want a writer with the same sprit and guts she has in Nepal too. I do not mean we are running short of great writers. We have a great culture of our own that spawns great writers and even among those writing in English have their international reputes. But that do not suffice and what we need now is like Roy who can feel the pulse of the poor and the downtrodden or those on the socioeconomic margins. Capitalism is a disease in point of fact in a thousand and one cases that disease a country or culture in any part of the world. Nepal is also a neighboring country of India and the same specter is haunting us too. We desperately want a voice that rises sonorously and that resonates the voice of the tens of thousands voice less people living mired in socioeconomic and geographic quagmires.
When I read Roy I feel like crying since she voices the very sentiments brimful with me and echoes the very core urges I always like to give shape to but always run short of the words or domains to give vent to what is haunting me.
>> Other countries, including Turkey, would have long wiped out any offending group
Turkey accomplished it long back
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armenian_Genocide
In India, I see richness, beauty, depth, complexity and dynamism, together with the unfortunate historical legacy of poverty, colonialism(which largely created that poverty) and overpopulation. You see slums, child labour, callous middle classes, greedy rich. Don't expect Indians and persons of Indian origin to all share your blinkered perception. As for those "minorities' you mention, apart from your gross generalisation about persecution, you forget to mention that there are extremely violent insurgencies going on in different parts of the country. And India is dealing with them the best it can. Other countries, including Turkey, would have long wiped out any offending group. India accommodates 18 official languages and all the world's major religions, besides a few minor religions as well. And the freedom not to belong to a religion!( atheism, agnosticism).
Let Turkey have a few million Hindus and Buddhists plus a few million Christians, and if it handles that diversity better than India, come back and tell us about it. Otherwise, your preaching and sermonising is just so much gassing and belching.
Bro, I wish to see India more than yourself as a dynamic & independent entity! There should not be a single doubt that India has its own unique & rich narrative. But! I do object to your description of Gandhi as "if you are so inclined. Don't preach about him to me. I respect him as a major figure who helped India obtain its independence." Apologies to say so bro but if Gandhi is only "a major figure" for the young people of India, not a "forefather", and Indian kids just do not want to be preached about "the out-of-fashion" old man, then i am correct to assume that your "great wealth chase" has changed your mindset altogether! This mind set has made the "wealthy" Indian middle-class so much indifferent to the extremes around them that they just give a damn to all those slums, those poor workers/child labor that maintains the kitchen clean at their homes, all those villagers suffering at the hands of army, police & politicians, inflation & drought, all those corrupt mifas & all those human rights atrocities against minorities such as Sikhs, Christians, Naxalites & Kashmiris!! Just for your info, even after leading the biggest IT scam in corporate history of India & bringing a shame to the names of thousands of employees, Ramalingam Raju (one of the earlier Mital's whom middle-class Indians like yourself had worshipped so desperately) along with 2 other accused of the scandal, had been granted bail from Indian Supreme court on 4 November 2011 as the investigation agency CBI failed to file the chargesheet even after more than 33 months of Raju being arrested. Perhaps, a group of "wanna-be richies" in CBI must have taken a slice of the pie that Raju had syphoned off from company's assets for their "services"!! What India of today needs not your "imperialist capitalist" stubborn talk cloaked inside some kind of fuzzy "unique-narrative" without substantive argument to support but another Mahatma - A Gandhi who can pull this ghost of "the richer the better" out of your mind buddy!!
Again, India is not just the Tatas and Mittals, nor the slums of Mumbai. That's your obsession, not mine. Do you have a problem with foreign investment in Turkey, if so don't allow anyone to invest in your country. And nothing is stopping you from following Gandhi's teachings, if you are so inclined. Don't preach about him to me. I respect him as a major figure who helped India obtain its independence. To repeat, Arundhati Roy, like yourself is obsessed with drawing India into the 'imperialist capitalist' narrative, rather than seeing India as a dynamic and independent entity with its own rich-and mostly unique- narrative.
When I read Roy I feel like crying since she voices the very sentiments brimful with me and echoes the very core urges I always like to give shape to but always run short of the words or domains to give vent to what is haunting me. I am impressed by the essay of Roy and I deem her one of the best writers in the world. What fascinates me about her is her direct and fearless voice and bold ideas. I never miss her articles. I feel we want a writer with the same sprit and guts she has in Nepal too. I do not mean we are running short of great writers. We have a great culture of our own that spawns great writers and even among those writing in English have their international reputes. But that do not suffice and what we need now is like Roy who can feel the pulse of the poor and the downtrodden or those on the socioeconomic margins. Capitalism is a disease in point of fact in a thousand and one cases that disease a country or culture in any part of the world. Nepal is also a neighboring country of India and the same specter is haunting us too. We desperately want a voice that rises sonorously and that resonates the voice of the tens of thousands voice less people living mired in socioeconomic and geographic quagmires.
Good to know that you have been to India but i wish if you had cared to look at the slums with a caring heart instead of looking down upon the dwellers, you would have written something different! Going by your standards, Gandhi must have lived in a slum something that i read as "An Ashram". The problem with the "new" Indian elite, & trust me i have seen many of them, is that these guys have started worshipping wealth with utmost selfishness instead of looking at it as merely a "part of life" whereas Gandhi was someone who prioritized community & compassion over material progress! Thats why, Gandhi's followers used to be happy even in mud-walled houses, sewing their own clothes. Has Gandhi & his philosophy remained any ralevant?? For Indian kids of today, Bill Gates is the hero not Gandhi!! Perhaps, no one will care to remember Gandhi had his pic not there on the Rupee bill !! And bro, where have i said that India is all greed & slums!! India can be more dynamic than anything but what concerns me is this current wave of greed, pomp, show-off & selfishness that has engulfed Indian society altogether! This wave is destroying all those "-isms" that you have pointed out about India leaving behind only one "ism" & that is "Corruptionism"!! If the current pace of Corruption continues, probably, people will call it Corruption-istan instead of Hindustan!! Last year's rising of Anna Hazare's movement proves my point that even in India, there does exist a consensus that corruption is exceeding limits! Anyways, if you wish to keep on insisting on your belovedness for your Tatas, Mitals & Ambanis, who am i to point out? Your Tatas & Mitals are investing billion in chemicals & steel in Turkey!! I fail to understand, based on their own narrative & dynamism, why these guys never thought about installing these factories in their own motherland! May be due to the level of Corruption, on a scale probably unmatched anywhere in the world !!
But that's just the point. India is not simply the 'slums of Bombay'(Mumbai). It is growth, dynamism, complexity, individuals, organisations, ideologies, democracy, secularism, pluralism and liberalism. On a scale probably unmatched anywhere in the world, save perhaps China for growth. This is what the likes of Roy and yourself miss, in your attempt to fit India into a particular 'imperialist capitalist' narrative. India has its own narrative, and its own dynamism. One doesn't have to be in India to see that. And yes, I've been to India many times, and I didn't just look for slums and poverty. I'll leave that to you and Arundhati Roy.
Thats ur simple problem Varun! You carry a Canadian citizenship, live under the comfortable social fabric of a Western government and see things 12000 kms aways from the slums of Mumbi through ur laptop while sitting in a centrally heated living room with all the best amenities of life around u! Why, yourself and rest of the N.Delhi + Mumbi elite is waiting for "their" financial crisis to make u guys understand the suffering of the masses around you. I have already seen the same in Istanbul, back in late 90s! Trust me, it turns into real misery when the balloon-economy bursts! Greece may be the biggest foe of Turkey but God forbid, whats happening with Greece of today, it should not happen to anyone! Thailand, Indonesia, South Korea ....... just pull some time out to read what misery market-based baloons brought to these socities!! It is not "Globalization" that saved these economies but "Localization i.e. prioritizing the interests of local communities, eridicating corruption, enacting rule-of-law & respecting human rights" that has made these nations part of th first world!!
Islam Hashim, your posting is just a hyper-rant about, really, nothing. India is pretty dynamic and complex, too much so for you, and Roy, to understand or appreciate.
I just went through this great artcile by Ms. Roy. Ever since "A god of small things", i have been following Ms. Roy's literary works. To be honest, yes, i do take an anti-depressent after reading Roy. There is all pessimisim and not a tinge of happiness anywhere in her literature but does that turn her into a scary idiot whom we should all shun because she calls the spade a spade. Let me say that i agree in 100% to what Ms. Roy says. The India of today is not the one that Gandi had inspired. Whereas Gandi used to stitch his own clothes, the ultra-arrogant Ambanies & Malia's will hate to even use a tissue paper using their own hands to clean their lips. Its so depressing to know that, after 2000 years of historical progressions starting from Bhuddha continuing till Gandhi & 200 years of peaceful strive against the British Raj, the India of today has concluded that the ultimate winner is a Tata, Ambani, Malia or some corrupt MIG plane/2G scam commission agent politician or bureaucrate. Had Gandhi been living today, probably, people would have called him a billion-dollar loser! I paid particular attention to the comments that came from a number of Indians and saw a stark difference! The Indians based in America are supportive of Roy whereas those based in India are so much against her!! Has greed won over Gandhi's compession, forgiveness & tolerance! Has today's Indian society turned into 300 million rats running in a race for Dollars, Pounds, Dinnars & Rupees with no tangible end in sight! Does no one cares for the human rights excesses of New Delhi against Kashmiris (the 2010 massacres, mass graves etc etc), DIlits, Naxalites and so many other left behind communities! Even with a GDP of 6.9 % & so much gold/forex in the exchequre, why every middle class Indian is desperately hell bent to leave "the motehrland" at the next short notice even for opportunities in so-called "fundamentalist" orthodox Gulf states such as Qatar, Kuwait & Saudi? Why the American embassy in N. Delhi has got crowded with so many H1B application despite a rise in the fee?? Why has the "oldest civilization on planet earth" tuned itself into an American puppet against China whereas the non-aligned mantra was working perfectly?? I may be stoned to death by the same "intellectucals" on this forum who are calling names to Roy, but N. Delhi & Mumbi will only wake up somewhere in 2016/17 when India will have its won financial crisis!! Only then will these upper-caste Punjabi Hindu elites of N. Delhi & Bombay will realise that, while they were bashing Roy on this forum with all their intelluctual ammo, the Ambanis, Mitals & Tatas were busy in suphoning their wealth to Switzrland, Bahamas & other heavens! These elites will only recognize Roy when one of thers boys will lose his job!! Lets wait for 2016 !! Till then, i salute Outllook for not bowing down to the corporate media & giving Roy the space & its readers the oxygen for the "other" prespective!!
Also Ms Roy wonder wether u always question or do u give answers too :-)
Ms Roy do u consider yourself polemic as claimed by others?
Ms Roy,wonder if you agree or disagree with the title polemist,people love to call u?
Sir,
I have also registered my views, but they are not carried, in the print version of Outlook. Did not you get these? Or, any other reason?
Height of hypocracy! Arundhati tought dance and aerobics in FIVE STAR HOTELS and her clinetile included businessmen, rich politicians etc.
She owned huge banglow on a land (in Panchmarhi in MP) owned by tribes.
Having wasted few years of my life working for NGOs I can surely say: Its all about name, fame and Platforms if not money. There is niche for those famous ones, like megha patekar has anti dam; rhetorics apart she has never done any thing for tribes, nor has Arundhati spent penny for poor. I was there when Arundhati tried to use Megha Patekar's platform, Megha was so furious that she ran away from her, so that Roy could not use her hard erned platform.
Why cant she suggest any 'ism' thats worth a try.
Thought provoking.
Thank you Ms. Arundhati Roy for researching and writing it and thank you Mr.Vinod Mehta for having the guts to publish it.
I shall be looking forward to more such thought provoking articles.
Enough problems..what is the solution please.. communism? like USSR? or like China? or like Cuba? Oh perhaps Indian style communism, the way we had it in West Bengal?
Mandela, Anna, Nandan, Murthy, Gates.. all are wrong..only you and your ultra-leftist friends are right.
Micro credit is bad because it resulted in suicides..how about the suicides due to uxurious money lenders..or did India have no farmer suicide before micro credit came.
We have problems, big problems.. but your rants and raves wont solve them. And your suggested method, and that of your buddy Marx, have miserably and decisively failed. Look at the former East and West Germany, a communist paradise vs. a capitalist vampire.
As you say, there is a lot of money (and a few Nobel prizes) in poverty. Seems to me, you are itching for the prize, and then renounce it as a capitalist gimmick!
The choice of symbolism was apt (Mukesh Ambani's ugly mansion) but the arguements lacked their flair and were mostly repetitive. Yes, the philanthropy of the corporates are always aimed at promoting their self interest but one wonders how can that be prevented.
One common complaint of Roy bashers is always that she is articulate in pointing problems but never solution but then expecting her to do that is expecting her fill a far bigger shoe than she is ready (or perhaps capable of). But her usefulness as a commentrator of the 'other side of the story' cannot be ignored. Her writings makes us aware, question and think on issues which are often dusted under the carpet in the name of development and progress.
And lastly, her writing is always charming and her way of mutiliating the targets with words fascinating.
So, we need her and I personally wait for her articles. Only, I believe she should move on to study and expose the issues related to budget, nuclear power and environment and provide us the inside story of these issues.
The ugly face of capitalism is all too well known to us. We are tired of listening these sort ghost stories.The story narrated here can hardly claim of any originality. It is not even old liquior in new bottle. Content and container both are age old.Mrs.Roy only deserves our pity for taking so much trouble which was not necessary. The demon has during the last two centuries gained such an enormous strength that it has become quite invincible. Any effort to fight it out is sure to meet with failure. History is replete with enough examples of such failed attemt to get rid of the evil designs of these devouring demon. We have no alternative but to wait till the demon gets decayed through internal degeneration.
Hi Arundhati - did you happen to read all the posts that disagreed with you and try to analyze them or did you just skip over them as usual? (too many 'Fascists' for your liking, madam?)
Balanced you are not, madam. Preaching anarchism, as if that will solve the problem. Do you support communism then? You wont say! What a cowardly, second-hander doing the best to be like the fictional character Ellsworth Toohey in the 'Fountainhead'.
Arundhati Roy does it again.
She demonstrates how much she knows history, and how little she understands it. She knows how to run a phrase, and is unafraid to be carried away by its centrifugal force.
She appears to desire a world where compromise is shunned, where negotiated settlement is a sell out.
She sees the evil in appropriation of the Martin Luter King and ANC movements by corporate interests, but fails to recognize what these movements won, and the relatively small price they paid for it.
Perhaps by her book Gandhi was also a pimp who sold India, which was therefore born of an illegitimate deal with the colonial rulers.
Would the majority of the people of South Africa consider the deal that Mandela struck all that bad? It wasn't perfect, but do you think they'd prefer to be living in a communist South Africa, as ostracized as North Korea?
There are seven billion of us on this planet Arundhati -- we've got to negotiate our way through it. And yes, the negotiation takes place in an unbalanced power relationship, where one side has the money, the power, and armed force, and others don't. And yet, even in such an unequal world, the Mandelas and Martin Luther Kings are able to bring a better life to their people.
They learned to negotiate a trecherous world. They didn't just know history, they understood that the odds of a better life for their people were higher through a negotiation with power.
If Mukesh Ambani has not violated any laws in building his Antilla, I do not see why we should bother. Life is not fair anywhere in this world. There will always be the Ambanis skilled in making money and the Arundhati Roys skilled in writing about evil capitalists making money, the heartless exploiters and the helpless exploited, the filthily rich still wanting more riches and the envious middle class gaping at the riches of the filthily rich and bemoaning and whining about how unfair the system is.
According to Arundhati Roy American capitalists and their clones in India will do business even with the devil if it means making more money. Arundhati writes:-'They are capable of quick thinking and immense tactical cunning. They can adapt and constantly innovate.' Well, these are not bad qualities. Every one needs them to survive - whether the capitalists or the poor, whetner the Indian Army or the Maoists, whether Ambani or Arundhati.
There is more exploitation of natural resources and local people by China in Sub Saharan Africa which finds only bare mention in Arundhati Roy's essay.
Arundhati Roy presumes considerable naivete in those who receive aid and grants from the Foundations set up by the capitalists. Surely, the recepients - atleast a majority of them - are capable of thinking and making independent decisions for themselves.
Arundhati Roy's essay is also like Mukesh Ambani's Antilla in its blinkers,egotism, and futility.
"in gist i get the idea govt is bad and so is capitalism. am i right?"
Of course. But you did not have to waste your time reading the whole article to understand that. Just read the title. That should be enuf. I only did that and figured it out.
i read thru the whole article only because it was by arundhati roy. i find it really difficult t get what she is getting at. it seems she has so many things she wants to say and so she keeps on bringing up so many issues. it certianly is one of the most confusing article i have read. in gist i get the idea govt is bad and so is capitalism. am i right?
it is not capitalism. it cannot be described or defined. it is more than a cannibalism
There is nothing Indic/Indian about Roy's outpourings. To repeat, it can be described as "roving international communist/socialist diatribe against the inequalities within India", with some content specific observations about India.
Where is the Indic narrative and the sense of the Indic culture and civilisation being one organic whole? Ranting against corporations and capitalism does not constitute an Indian consciousness or spirtuality.
The analogy of comparing India with a woman at a dance is really pathetic and offensive. India is a distinct culture and consciousness with its own concerns about China and the Islamist threat. That would be there with or without the US and its corporations, which are an entirely different issue.
So there, Anita from Bhopal, is abuse from a hawk( or non-hawk as it were).
nice article, most informative on post reform structure of the country,in this country the freedom is only for the capatalists. not for the people who belong to poor, money flows on tips of the capatalists,industrialists they even took over the political structure of the country with their power ,it leads to the economic variations which seem all over the world ,according to mao class strugle is only way to erase this economic inequalities, its true to say poverty line bonded the many working classes it ties them for decades ,centuries the Knot which will loosen or removed through the class struggle. finally the revolution is only way to awoke the people and fight for the soil, iam must say one thing the biased journlism which bound over with these ware houses the information flow is also regulaed with thier tips ,and world dance over on the toes of the capatalists, ultimately it laeds to impirialism .
VERY INFORMATIVE MA'M.
Wonder why have the abuses not yet poured in by hawks as usual.
Roy is right and as real as rain!
The Federal Reserve Act of 1913, also falls neatly into the 1911-Carnegie and 1914- Rockefeller foundation time frame of financial scamming. The Federal Reserve Act passed Christmas eve with Congress wanting to go home to be with family. This ACT is neither federal nor logical. The preditor banks have been raking in billions of interest for 99 years!
Former governors such as peanut king Jimmy Carter and slick Willy Clinton attend these exclusive meetings with the Bilderberg group, CFR, and the Trilateral Commision and all of a sudden become very popular in the media and low and behold they are presidents!
India beware of the 100 year slow motion financial sucker punch!
you are a good teacher, ms arundhati roy. i salute you.
Flowery language is no substitute for honesty and brevity, something Ms. Roy can learn from P. Sainath whom she extols. One example would suffice. Micro finance now serves 155 million people. If Ms. Roy has a problem with a million budding entrepreneurs, mostly rural women, who have been freed from the clutches of usurius money lenders, then she should say so openly instead of citing a suicide note. Default rates are extremely low due to members of the group helping out others to meet payment requirements. Due to economies of scale and low defaults and modern financial instruments such as securitization that have wreaked havoc in the western world have quietly worked wonders in bringing down the cost of borrowing to 20-30%, compared to the 80-100% or more borrowers would pay the money lenders. What the sector and the poor need are prudent regulatory oversights and not self serving insults from the likes of Ms. Roy.
"but what about the Moghuls and their palaces? Or the Kakatiya dynasty’s palaces at Golkonda?"
You are getting into pre-industrial, pre-Eurocolonial history and conditions here. India during these periods was positively not known, not known at all in fact, for poverty, illiteracy, destitution, pronounced inequality and slums. That all came much later in the post-colonial era.
The reason India was attacked so much was simply because it was both wealthy/prosperous and divided politically at the same time. Not because it was poor.
A very good essay, first one for me of Roy. Flabergasting if this is all true and happening. Any government elected is just a puppet to all these corporates. Any current political party is dare enough to defy these corporates and bring back some sanity to this planet and make life easier to our future generations? How do these corporates manage such huge amount of money? How much more do they need? In Kannada there is a song written by Purundaradasa "Keraya Neeranu Kerege Chelli" translates to "offering to God material goodies (money, food, flowers, cloth etc.), from the wealth that was obtained by the grace of the very same God". I strongly feel the corporates should start giving back and play fair.
From the USA - Wonderful article! I read it twice, and still have not fully digested all its insights. It includes many things I did not know. Still, I feel inclined to ask whether today’s injustices are truly unprecedented. Is the Ambani clan with its “Antilla” more extravagant than, say, the Wodeyar clan with their Mysore Palace? Okay, that’s a bad example, since the Wodeyars collaborated with the British, but what about the Moghuls and their palaces? Or the Kakatiya dynasty’s palaces at Golkonda?
Most social mammals, including humans, always form into stratified societies with a food chain, a pecking order, and a caste system. The strata are maintained by force, and (among humans) by mass delusion. The problem now is that pollution levels and resource depletion have reached unsustainable levels. And the ultimate form of capitalist pollution is DEBT, which is killing us as a species. DEBT is a force multiplier for human greed. It drives all other forms of pollution, since DEBT drives the capitalist imperative of “growth.” It is the deadliest and more widespread form of pollution, and yet the easiest to eliminate. All we need are genuinely public banks that issue debt-free currency. But even then we will retain the human tendency to stratify into caste systems.
Oh well. At least we have people like Ms. Roy who exposes the lies that help sustain the nightmares. Seriously, I am very impressed with this article, and will read everything by Ms. Roy I can find. Bravo.
Varun,
>> Their reasoning and motivation are very different.
But both they and you are jingoistic and disinclined to forge a bhai-bhai future.
I think it's safe to say that Capitalism made the wrong decision in the 1940s, they should've teamed up with the Hitlerists and wiped out communism right then and there, well, it's still not too late , if the cultural Bolsheviks are free to express their hatred for the upper castes, then we're also free to discuss the inheritibility of intelligence, read 'IQ and the wealth of nations'.
If we can destroy the very foundations of Marxian Socialism, we have completed our mission
Well done!
Nothing, except the voice of AR, have been blacked out! What kinbd of 'free spech' is this?
"Your posts are so much like what I see on some Muslim blogs. You must get together with them and share your fish stories"
Their reasoning and motivation are very different. They want Islamic sharia law, and equal representation for Moslems in all areas, failing which Moslems must riot and rampage. After all, that's how Moslems were galvanised to create Pakistan. They also do no believe in a 5000 year history for India, rather that history begins with the Islamic invasion. And they would justify an attack like Godhra by saying that the Hindus were going to Ayodhya, where a mosque was removed years ago.
Arundhati Roy wants to break our faith in every single institution, every movement, every effort, without feeling any responsibility to show us an alternative, or even lay down the complexities - if the Tatas and the Ford Foundations are all villains, fine, show us the hero, even an imaginary one, or a vision. The intellectual honesty to accept the void left by the failures of the communist experiment, that it did not deliver anything, leave alone its grand vision, is not there. She doesn't concede the appeal of the Ambanis, at least the older one - as the rags to riches story, all in one generation, of an obscure rural boy that beat the well-ensconsed well-heeled industrial houses; to the small town aspirant, it could well be a story of the limitless possibilities of capitalism. What's there to make so much fuss of an ugly big house in a country that flaunts its many palaces to the world! Most importantly, what does she want of us? Almost all of us, Outlook readers, professionals that look somewhat beyond ourselves, have been painted black because of our association with one or the other institution, or admiration of some person she has castigated. With all our blackened faces, we look at her, she shrugs, paints her face black as well, and says see, me too! It won't affect her, for this is her game - her words, her effect. What of us?
>> Here then is an explanation for the Gujarat violence.
Your posts are so much like what I see on some Muslim blogs. You must get together with them and share your fish stories.
Mr. Varun Shekhar, the killing of an innocent man, woman, or child, whether Hindu, Christian, Muslim or Jewish, is reprehensible. So is rape and torture. It is chilling to me that you seem to be condoning deaths.
"Varun Shekhar, no I didn't hint that terrorism in India is understandable or explicable. I would have to be a complete idiot and a lunatic to believe or say that."
Interestingly, several commentators in the US and UK have used this line i.e" terrorism against India related to Gujarat, Ayodhya and Kashmir" in other words, it's understandable or explicable. But for how long?
Here then is an explanation for the Gujarat violence. People are fed up with Islamic terrorism, of which the attack on Godhra was a major example. They reacted savagely to that.Violence in Gujarat is connected to the history of Islamist violence in the subcontinent. Anyway, if you add up all the Islamist terror attacks in India including Kashmir, they surpass in numbers the deaths from the Gujarat riot or pogrom as you call it. In other words, the Islamists have got their revenge with interest.
Varun Shekhar, no I didn't hint that terrorism in India is understandable or explicable. I would have to be a complete idiot and a lunatic to believe or say that. I wonder how you came to that amazing conclusion. I read my post seven times to figure out how an objective person would come to that conclusion or bring up such a connection, and I am still shaking my head in mystification.
A person who is using facts and analysis (even if you disagree with the latter) cannot be said to be "ranting," in my opinion. And according to the Merriam Webster dictionary, "pogrom" means "an organized massacre of helpless people." It was used to describe the way Jews were targeted in the Russian Empire. In many of these cases less than 100 people were killed. So pogrom doesn't have much to do with the number of people killed. (You may be confusing the term with genocide.) According to many news organizations such as the BBC, a disproportionate number of Muslims were targeted and killed in Gujarat in 2002 (though all sources say more than 250 Hindus were also killed), in addition to their houses being burnt down and women were raped. You may be interested to see a photo essay for the BBC by the journalist Arko Datta, which will drive home the fact that, yes, Muslims neighborhoods were targeted by Hindu mobs after Godhra.
Ananya Bhattacharya, Roy is criticised because of the volume of publicity she receives, and the length of her rants. So we would expect constructive ideas, as opposed to just pointing out that not everything is right in India- not everything is great in America, despite 200+ years of independence and growth.
The stats on the Gujarat violence are mentioned and criticised to show how ridiculous and idiotic the word 'pogrom' is. Pogrom denotes violence that is both monstrously huge, as well as one sided. Gujarat doesn't qualify.
Are you hinting in your allusion to analysis of terrorism, that the terrorism India has experienced is somehow understandable or explicable in terms of the Gujarat violence? That's absolutely unacceptable and ludicrous. India has suffered the most terrorism of any pluralist democracy on earth. One shudders to think how the US, UK, France or Germany would handle and respond to the kind of terror India has endured.
What are the factual inaccuracies in Arundhati Roy's article? In a country with free speech rights, why are so many of you asking a person to not speak her mind? To those who are perturbed by her having no solutions and only digging up problems, don't people have a right to talk about problems? Take terrorism for instance. Do all writers/journalists have to pose solutions for the problem of terrorism in order to write intelligently and analytically about it? To those of you claiming that she is a communist, no she's not. If you read the article, you'll see she is critical of communism. To people who only want publications to publish "India Shining" kind of stories: News flash---India is a country with a huge amount of poverty. There are more poor people in India than in sub-Saharan Africa. Arundhati Roy is not making that up. P. Sainath and Amartya Sen, among others, have documented and analyzed India's poverty too. To the commentator claiming that 500 Hindus were killed in Gujarat: No, that's not true. Junior home minister Sriprakash Jaiswal told parliament that 790 Muslims and 254 Hindus were killed, 223 more people reported missing and another 2,500 injured (most of them Muslims).
Bury your head in the sands my friend, but don't shoot those who raise their heads to take a look around them.
Arundhati Roy is one of very few media crusaders who haven't sold their soul to corporate devils.
@Prof HS Dumb
1.Take a look at the labour laws in China and in the US, you'll find that it is the Chinese that are the capitalists in this regard, also what kind of Capitalist country would have the number of Billionaires that the Chinese have?
2.Take a look at the welfare spendings of the two countries, and the tax rates.
All we're asking is for Roy to come clean on where she stands on economics,
If she's a Libertarian Socialist, Welfare state socialist or pro- division of means of production, then we're open to negotiations.
However, if your kind tries to implement the economic tyranny of the 1950-90 era, you will have your hands burned.
@Vaibhav,
I am not shocked at your observations, as it is what most of the people think due to impact of neo-colonialism, corporate world-led media and the slave mentality, which we have become used to, all of which put together have blindfolded our eyes. You can write a bigger essay, but not better, my dear friend, as where will you bring such new revelations, which make AR’s writings toast of all eyes. Capitalism is not doubt an old concept, but shedding new light on the ancient concept is always what we expect from the intellectuals. Is there any concept older than religion, still most of the Earth-dwellers believe in and talk about religion even today, and will do so after billions of years also, if mankind survives, upto that time. You are welcome to compare China with USA and WB with Gujarat, but you will only find disappointment, as capitalist USA has liability of 15 billion dollars, while China has 3 billion dollars of surplus capital. China is leading world economy, while USA is facing major economic slump. Much of the world market has been taken over by China, but you still are singing praise of USA. Obama is virtually begging alms from world powers, but you are still worshiping the ‘super’ mendicant. About Gujarat, I should not say anything. If you can neglect mass manslaughter and forcible occupations, only to back and worship or praise corporate-friendly foe of common man, you are free to do so, but my dear friend, man is man, not Hindu or Muslim, as the politicians have made them to be. Do you ever think of religion of the person, when you go to barber, befriend someone or attend some teacher? Your answer is what I want to listen.
after reading this article, i realise it is so easy to write esays on any damned subject in the esteemed weekly.... i can write a bigger and better essay on Communism:a gone story.... just gimme a chance, outlook......the allegations against capitalism are baseless.....even if capitalism cause more rich poor divide, still theyr are less poor than the poor in communist lands eg.. compare communist bengal with so called capitalist gujarat....or may be china with USA....
PS- THE WRITER IS SO BIASED IN HER WRITINGS THAT ONLY THE NUMBER OF MUSLIMS KILLED IN GUJARAT HAVE FOUND A MENTION,AS IF THE 500 HINDUS DESERVED TO DIE...
This cover story is an example of the disturbing trend of media houses pandering to sensationalism at the cost of reasoned debate and responsible reporting. Arundathi Roy is using her celebrity status combined with a cherubic smile and dexterity with words to further her public image. She is clearly an accomplished opportunist. There was very little rationality in her so-called 'essay' - it became one (extremely) long rant against every prominent icon ad infinitum.
Outlook magazine has clearly shown that it is desperate for audiences and will sacrifice informed debate if that's what it takes.
Her article will be elevated if one attempts a rational response. But suffice it to make one point here. Communism and socialism assume that economies are zero-sum games where one person's gain has to be at someone else's loss. Hence "'the rich have robbed the poor, rob them back to support the poor". Capitalism, for all its faults, is the only system that has celebrated the human spirit. That is one "factor of production" that leftists of various hues of red just don't seem to grasp.
One of the meaning of the name "Arundhati" is "unrestrained"...The root of the name is the Sanskrit word rudh, meaning "to restrain," and the prefix a, which means "not"...
Arundhati Roy has a "unrestrained" mind... I think she not being a Hindu does not understand the meaningless ness in the duality of the world which she percieves....
Poverty is defined as antethesis of Richness... There is NO POLITICAL SYSTEM IN THE WORLD WHICH CAN NEGOTIATE WITH THE RICH ELITES... The myth of redistribution of wealth to the masses is UTOPIA... The moment you start the definition of POVERTY IS THE MOMENT YOU PLAY INTO THE HANDS OF ELITES...
But I agree with ONLY ONE SENTIMENT... There has to be a infrastrcture of negotiations between the have nots and the haves... After all so called wealth is created by the Haves while consumed by the Have-Nots.
A final word to Arundhati... Please stop complaining and bitching... We all know the evils of Capitalism... But WE DO NOT WANT SOCIALISM WHICH IS IMPOSING OF SOMEBODY ELSES WILL ON THE SOCIETY.... Let the market forces CORRUPT THEMSELVES.. After all that's hoe the Universe works...
Just look at the Solar system in the sky... THERE IS ONE POWERFUL SUN AND 8 OR 9 PLANTES WHO HAVE FREEDOM BUT WITHIN THE CONFINES OF THE SUN... THE SUN DEFINES THE BALANCE. The earth and Jupiters has freedoM BUT CANNOT DREAM OF BECOMING A SUN...
At the moment USA IS THE SUN OF ECONOMICS.. The rest of the world can have freedom but HAS TO BE WITHIN THE CONFINES OF THE US ECONOMY... NOBODY SHOULD DISTURB THE US ECONOMY.. THAT WILL DESTABIIZE THE WHOLE EARTH...
So just SWOLLOW THIS PILL AND GO BACK TO YOUR UTOPIA...
Arundhat Roy has so much in common with other feminist journalists such as Puspa and Saba Naqvi :
Single Strong male fawn base Anti-male views
Similarly, how many female, feminist polticians such as JJ, Mamata and Sonia who are
Single Anti male,
share the quality of CORRUPTION with Maya?
Antilla has finally become the defining critical symbol of a mindset singularly characterised by an eternal resentment against anything and everything that has to do with human creation. It is no coincidence that this structure in brick and mortars, however grotesque, has been chosen by Ms Roy to symbolise what she considers an epitomical symbol of evil, in her mental scheme of things. It belongs to India’s richest man, and that suffices her intellectual requirement to demonise all that m.ambani represents-WEALTH. And when demonising, accusing, and criticizing any or many entities becomes the defining theme of one's life, what better than a piece of architecture to fixate her entire pulp fiction venomous diatribe against Capitalism. On a more serious note, What is more important to understand is not what she is trying to say, but why she is saying so. The former can easily be dismissed as a piece of garbage by a simple effort of one’s intellect to cross-examine them against all available facts and logic. The rationale, the empirical factual contents, the logic of arguments within which this ten page verbose of rant and ridicule (that she chooses to call as an essay) falls is easily verifiable and can easily be disposed off as trash or worthless. But it is her underlying PRETENSION of being an intellectual when she attempts such analysis, that goes unnoticed to an unsuspecting reader which is more worrisome or dangerous. This oversight, probably gives her yet another free ticket or pass to usurp a platform from where she reaches still wider audience, successfully masquerading as a serious thinker with cogent purpose. The ripple-waves of misplaced notions based on dis-jointed facts of a fake thinker permeates further into the unsuspecting audience. Since Adam Smith, the ghost of capitalism, figuratively and otherwise has haunted a vast class of people, ranging from mystics to despots, from socialists to communists. The common thread however of all these people is a kind of mindset termed as collectivist mentality. Epistemologically, this mindset is as divorced from reality as is absurdity from rationality. Observe closely how they all, including Ms Roy uses poverty and depravity as an eternal background or canvas to paint their distorted worldview where it is a sin to be rich and successful, evil to practice enterprise and the only valid moral virtue is to shed tears in the name of poor, not remove poverty as such. Observe that they have no definitive or constructive suggestions to get rid of poverty and depravity, except of course run down the only known experiment in the history of mankind called capitalism that has been most successful so far to overcome this scourge .Poverty and depravity are indeed too serious an issue to romanticise, but that is precisely what these pseudo left intellectuals indulge in. It becomes a dangerous tool when attempted by those like Ms Roy with literary bends, for words can easily be twisted, phrased and placed to be presented as cogent discussion to a casual mind . There exists only two degrees of separation between pure prose and pure pulp fiction . Prose, however attractive can never be a substitute for a coherent, rational analysis . It is very shocking how a weekly that claims national readership can so unwittingly fall prey to illusions and temptations of wider circulations by espousing such bromides of an internationally recognised FAKE thinker. A detailed rebuttal to Ms Roy’s trash, perhaps titled “In Defence of Capitalism” is very much in the offing, but owing to space constraints, not possible here. Wonder if Mr Vinod Mehta would care to publish such work, only if to get balance in his weekly. -- K K RAJA
Antilla has finally become the defining critical symbol of a mindset singularly characterised by an eternal resentment against anything and everything that has to do with human creation. It is no coincidence that this structure in brick and mortars, however grotesque, has been chosen by Ms Roy to symbolise what she considers an epitomical symbol of evil, in her mental scheme of things. It belongs to India’s richest man, and that suffices her intellectual requirement to demonise all that m.ambani represents-WEALTH. And when demonising, accusing, and criticizing any or many entities becomes the defining theme of one's life, what better than a piece of architecture to fixate her entire pulp fiction venomous diatribe against Capitalism. On a more serious note, What is more important to understand is not what she is trying to say, but why she is saying so. The former can easily be dismissed as a piece of garbage by a simple effort of one’s intellect to cross-examine them against all available facts and logic. The rationale, the empirical factual contents, the logic of arguments within which this ten page verbose of rant and ridicule (that she chooses to call as an essay) falls is easily verifiable and can easily be disposed off as trash or worthless. But it is her underlying PRETENSION of being an intellectual when she attempts such analysis, that goes unnoticed to an unsuspecting reader which is more worrisome or dangerous. This oversight, probably gives her yet another free ticket or pass to usurp a platform from where she reaches still wider audience, successfully masquerading as a serious thinker with cogent purpose. The ripple-waves of misplaced notions based on dis-jointed facts of a fake thinker permeates further into the unsuspecting audience.
Since Adam Smith, the ghost of capitalism, figuratively and otherwise has haunted a vast class of people, ranging from mystics to despots, from socialists to communists. The common thread however of all these people is a kind of mindset termed as collectivist mentality. Epistemologically, this mindset is as divorced from reality as is absurdity from rationality. Observe closely how they all, including Ms Roy uses poverty and depravity as an eternal background or canvas to paint their distorted worldview where it is a sin to be rich and successful, evil to practice enterprise and the only valid moral virtue is to shed tears in the name of poor, not remove poverty as such. Observe that they have no definitive or constructive suggestions to get rid of poverty and depravity, except of course run down the only known experiment in the history of mankind called capitalism that has been most successful so far to overcome this scourge .Poverty and depravity are indeed too serious an issue to romanticise, but that is precisely what these pseudo left intellectuals indulge in. It becomes a dangerous tool when attempted by those like Ms Roy with literary bends, for words can easily be twisted, phrased and placed to be presented as cogent discussion to a casual mind . There exists only two degrees of separation between pure prose and pure pulp fiction . Prose, however attractive can never be a substitute for a coherent, rational analysis . It is very shocking how a weekly that claims national readership can so unwittingly fall prey to illusions and temptations of wider circulations by espousing such bromides of an internationally recognised FAKE thinker.A detailed rebuttal to Ms Roy’s trash, perhaps titled “In Defence of Capitalism” is very much in the offing, but owing to space constraints, not possible here. Wonder if Mr Vinod Mehta would care to publish such work, only if to get balance in his weekly. -- K K RAJA
iterature,like all other forms of creative arts is rooted in human imagination.However,in order to deserve genuine reverence by an audienceon or a critic benchmarked
As always, Arundhati Roy makes us read what she wants to say. It is another matter that it is so taxing! But simple truth is that no political system today offers hope of justice to the poor. Secondly, whether one likes it or not, it is a bitter truth that those who are having control over capital resources and modern technology would be in command in today’s world. It is but natural, therefore, that organizations, whether government organizations, non-government organizations (NGOs) or corporate bodies, with the above two things in possession, will be in direct or indirect control of our lives. Role of citizens’ organizations who challenge the role of the oppressive governments or their representatives has to be understood in this context. It is unfair to criticize such organizations or people who sincerely believe that things will change if the right wing party of their choice or the communist party is in power. But it is also rather naïve to have a blind faith in a parliamentary democracy of the British kind. Concerned citizens in India want implementation of electoral and many other reforms. For that to happen many like Anna Hazare have to join hands.
Bala - pointing out to the fact that every invention that has improved living conditions over the last couple of centuries is due to industrial revolution and free market capitalism isnt the same as supporting british occupation of India .
by that logic opposing capitalism and by extension opposing british rule would mean you would like us to be back under Mughal rule
Iam sure this makes no sense for you as your's doesnt for me.
thanks for sharing this Arundhati :)
Namaste ~ __/\__ ~
Why does Ms. Roy have to provide a clear-cut solution to spoon-feed everyone? Is that her job? This is a well-written, well-researched article. It is meant to educate, inform and awaken. Every reader has the freedom to choose what to believe and what to be skeptical of, the freedom to publish their agreement or the lack of it. But do we have to stoop to calling her stupid, lonely, unloved, unhinged? It only shows our inability to come up with a legible argument. The ones who expect a solution from her, should look within themselves and try and see what THEY can do to bring about change. I might not agree with every single point that Ms. Roy makes but I do believe something is very wrong with the world today and efforts are being made to wean us away from that fact.
Just started reading the article and came across - TV anchor ,involved in the 2G scam just wonder who is this TV anchor .....any guess here ?????
Any strong idealogy seems to survive and thrive in the presence of an equally strong opposing idealogy. The demise or decline of one seems to be a warning bell for the survival of the other,
Absence of an opposing idealogy lays bare the lacunae in the surviving idealogy.
Subscribing to Outlook feels so much like subscribing to the National Geographic. There you are assured of getting at least a few free maps each year. In case of Outlook it is Ms. Roy's wordy essays.
Vijay S. Jodha
B-001 Krishna Apra Residency
Sector 61 NOIDA 201301
Email: vijayjodha@gmail.com
Very sharp, Mrs Roy. Excellent stuff. Osho and Krishnamurti would have been delighted in reading such a sharp critique on our global psychopathic feudal overlords.
Reading from the previous comments, it seems that the majority of the commenters have their heads firmly stuck up their behind. Wake up and smell the coffee!
The U.S. and Europe are in dire problems, not only that, the Occidental kleptocratic mass-murderers are loosing their grib on the populations of the West. In America especially, their is a real chance for real progress/change. The whole system is a swindle and I am so happy to have been able to have read such an eloquent critique.
You might want to have a look at the documentary, "Thrive - What on Earth will it take".
Good luck, all the best.
Pradeep,
So what are the things your modern capitalist India invented that you used everyday?
Is not your reasoning lead you to the conclusion that british colonial rule in India was benevolent? (Because they introduced all the 'Modern' things to Indians)
Love her or hate her but you cannot neglect her! Indeed this should be prescribed reading for those are complacent and / or fatalistic. The one statement that appealed to me the most is 'tidal waves of money crash through the institutions of democracy—the courts, Parliament as well as the media, seriously compromising their ability to function in the ways they are meant to.' Whether the missing bureaucrat is a deliberate omission or oversight needs to be clarified. But then, s/he does appear elsewhere but almost inconspicuously, when the author asks: How do you vacuum up people’s fury and redirect it into blind alleys? Here is where our bureaucrats are at their best- They simply trash the fury or route it to the wrong people- like a complaint addressed to the PM will be sent to the Village Officer and one addressed to the CM will be sent to the some Gram Panchayat in the neighbouring state! For the more serious students who would like to research the games bureaucrats play, just collect 10 random orders of any information commission and see how they have subverted the one and only pro-democracy and citizen friendly law of the land- the Right to Information Act!
Phew. Verbal ..........coupled with intellectual constipation. As bad reading as her novel. Sorry, but that's what I strongly feel./
Arundhati like me saw India during the socialist era. I do not know what was so great about the socialistic model. Everybody was poor including the middle class, while the consumer choices were forcibly restricted. We hated private enterprises. Public enterprises used to accumulate colossal losses after squandering a poor nation's money with a noble objective of serving their employees and not their customers. Still Mrs. Gandhi amended the preamble to the constitution of a Sovereign Democratic Republic to revise its people's solemn resolve to be constituted as a sovereign socialist democratic republic. I saw much more extreme poverty in my childhood among the urban poor- even though the population was about half of what India has today. Seeing the beggars and stray dogs scrambling for left over food in garbage dumps was a common sight. Maid servants barefoot in tattered clothes looked very different from today's maids who carry mobile phones and send children to schools.
Obviously afterIndia's departure to a different economic model since 1990s nobody had shown any love left for the bankrupted socialistic ideas. Bengalees from Calcutta/Bengal are a notable exception with their traditional dislike for capital and romanticism about the alternative form of politics a.k.a socialism ( read occasional views of Manish Banerjee and fellow residents' views in this forum as sample). Bengal's leader of change ("paribartan")Mamata Banerjee continues to follow the same path the Left Front politicians treaded before her for 3 deacdes.
After living in a capitalist country for a long time while observing the transformation of a India I left behind under a capitalist regime in the last two decades I personally have no doubt that there is nothing to borrow from the economic model of India in our childhood . To be fair to Arundhati's views, capitalism, if totally unbridled, can create havoc and the winner takes it all philosophy can favor a miniscule section at the expense of the majority. This is where the governments play a key role in helping the disadvantaged while intervening with creative rules and regulations wherever necessary to ensure that the liberty of the free markets is not interpreted as a license.
Amazingly researched and superbly argued. In a world of 140-character tweets and TV sound bytes, it is heartening to see old fashioned scholarship. As P. Chidambaram once said in a TV interview, one may not agree with what Arundhati Roy writes, but she is required reading.
@Balakumar
Capitalism has saved more lives than you might otherwise believe - every single invention that has improved humanity's living standards in the last 200 years has been due to the capitalist free market ( just look at child mortality , average living age and famines even if you exclude all other progress ) - its too much to list here - just think of anything you do from when you wake up to when you go back to sleep - not one that I can count from communism , except for lofty theories and long essays by "intellectuals"
I am not a communist sympathizer but I would like to point out that
1. Greed western colonial market capitalism killed more (millions of) pupils around the world (including India) than communist Russia or China. Occupation and killings still continue in some parts of the world. 2. Democratic Socialist leaders are in power in some Latin American countries.
On one thing we agree. The Antilla is one ugly puppy. When it first came into prominence, the photo I saw was ugly. This photo does much more justice to it's ugliness. I will be in Mumbai end of month and hope to see the ugliness with my very own eyes.
Paresh writes .... "Otherwise we are destined for dark days indeed."
Are you saying we are not already living in dark days? I thought we have been living in the dark days for as long as any of us alive can remember.
He also says .... "We need a plan that makes ....."
Plans we have had plenty. The problem is in our execution of plans, i.e., genuine hard disciplined corruption-free work - not a shortcut as the fastest path to somewhere.
Unless things change real fast Arundahti Roy will soon be irrelevant.
Actually they moved fast. Real fast indeed. They shifted the goal post. From 32 to 28. By this sleight , a mysterious entity called Tendulkar ( not the one of one hundred century fame ) Committee working relentlessly furiously hard brought down poverty from 43 % to 25%.
And this slip of a woman thought that she is the only clever one around.
Read the rants and skip the essay and you will follow everything.
Wise thing to do . Even skip the rant. Reading Tendulkar Commitee report is recommended instead. Who knows ? One may be richer by 24.02568 % at the end of a one hundred page or so PDF file. Voodoo is known to have worked wonders.
Gee, this is pseudo-intlellectualism par excellence !
Bashing Hinduism as a routine excercise is one thing, but mixing up economics at the micro-level with that in the macro-level is an entirely different matter. I wonder how many buyers will there be in the European world for such an enterprise (to spell out explicitly, the thesis presented in this column), which is incidentally a milieau with real Christian values and education - not pseudo in contrast to those of the converts.
well said.
Unless things change real fast Arundahti Roy will soon be irrelevant. She'll be just one voice among millions. Angry millions at that - vengeful unheeding millions. I think it's time that we as a society acknowledged that.
We need a plan that makes being aware an end, being correct an end - being humane an end. Otherwise we are destined for dark days indeed.
Ms. Roy is not the braindead, publicity seeking draamebaaz that she is made out to be. If anything she is our very own Cassandra. And we would do ourselves a great service if we paid mind to her.
We cannot scold her away.
Thank you Outlook, for publishing this article. As Ms. Arundhati Roy mentioned in her article, the Electronic Media and most of the Print Media in India are now owned by huge Multinational Corporates and none of them would dare publish this article.
Now that CAG has brought out a new report regarding the Scam relating to allocation of Coal Blocks -which has resulted in a loss of about Rs.10.7 lakh crores - hopefully everyone will start taking Ms.Roy more seriously.
Cynically incisive and highly analytical. This tome is more than an essay. It is an insight into contemporay Indian socio - economic milieu presented in a multi dimensional format.
A lot of people have complained that they are unable to understand the essence of Roy's long article aka verbal diarrhoea. We can put that all in simple para here:
Being Proud of India is evil. India's middle class are evil. Hinduism is evil. Upper Caste Hindus are evil. Middle Class Indians are evil. Capitalism is evil. Free Enterprise is Evil. USA is Evil. MNCs are evil. Doing Business is evil. Being a consumer of those goods produced by big business is evil. Supporting America is Evil. India's IT Companies and their workers are evil. Anyone in India who supports the Middle Class, believes in free enterprise, believes atleast to some extent in Hinduism are all evil. And anyone in India who admires USA , the Western Nations and NATO are evil. Anyone in India who wishes for and works for improvement in physical infrastructure (be it a dam or a irrigation project or a railwayline or a power plant) is evil. BJP/NDA voters and supporters are evil. Those who are patriotic and proud of India and its diversity are plain evil.
Now Ms Roy, this is what you are trying to tell in a nutshell. You want to see no evil, take no evil, have no evil around you. Fine. Given all this, Let me give you a small suggestion. Please plan for a 3 month vacation to the following two nations 1) Somalia 2) North Korea.
Both these nations are out of the orbit of the hated/hatable MNCs, Western World and USA. Both these nations are devoid of the evils you mentioned. Somalia , being closest to a stateless anarchy should impress you. North Korea as the only world's atheist socialist state with perpetual hostility to Western world and Capitalism should delight you. Particularly there are no Hindus or BJP supporters or Modi lovers in these two nations. Please take with you a interpreter, live in these two nations and enjoy . And do come back and report on the ghost or angel stories that you encouter in Somalia and North Korea. We would love to read it for sure.
While I am a supporter of capitalism myself, and hence to that extent disagree with Ms. Arundhati Roy, it still needs to be said that hers is a much needed voice. She brings up issues that the rich new media and elitist news channels chose to conveniently ignore.
Could you provide a summary of this article? I tried reading it but could not understand what Arundhati was saying - if capitalism is so bad, what is the alternative? Should we go back to our glorious days of state socialism? Are the rich so bad?
I always find rants on Roy's article far more interesting than the article itself. She writes the same things over and over again. She is predictable and stale now.
>> You can condemn her, you can appreciate her, but you can not IGNORE Arundhati Roy
Huh???
I have not read any article by her in several years. I think that can be called ignoring.
To be fair, I made an effort from time to time. But the mindless drivel was too irritating for me.
Prophets are never honoured at their home. What she wrote a decade back in these columns of OUTLOOK in her famous essay THE ALGEBRA OF INJUSTICE has been an open secret now, and what she writes now, will be understood by us a decade later! Today, we are criticising her, but tommorrow, we will call her - the patriotic pensmith. Films will be made on her, with scintillating names and adjectives. Lets honour her word now!
It is always a treat reading Arundhati Roy. There are many who denounce her, but if she is incorrect, they should correct her, reveal her loopholes. Even the big guns from corporate wordl, so called crusaders and the politicians are silent. Silence is approval.
Arundhati calls a spade a spade and this is the fact. I solute her!
She may not cut her hair, but her pieces (articles) cut the big guns (in politics, busines/corporate world and bureaucracy) to pieces. She can look like a rag-picker, but the holes she pick in the system are really blasting and awesome. She might not look like a heroine, not even a supporting artist, but her pen -which is mightier than a sword - has proved that if there are heroines in the real world too, they must be like Arundhati Roy. She can live a cosy life and relish all the luxuries of life, which she can easily gather, by the power, which she has, by dint of her celebrity status and the power of the pen, but she dares to reveal the truth, so that we can live and lead a good life, atleast, if not the best! Too reduce and eliminate the gap between the poor and the rich, she is always on toes, by diagnosing the reasons of this ever-widening gap and by pinpointing very ashtonishing truth. She may revel in fiction and lead a prosperous life, but she is committed to a task, which makes one a real leader. Still, she has got a wide spectrum of critics! Not surprising, because every person who raises voice against the big guns, and reveals the facts is always sought after by the biggies, first, tried to be purchased but when he/she refuses, they go after him/her, defame her/him. But - hum akele chale the janbe safar, log milte gaye kafila ban gya.....
You can condemn her, you can appreciate her, but you can not IGNORE Arundhati Roy, becuase what she says is always honestly-true and always a revelation and not an open secret, which all are aware of. That is the reason she has a wide readership, cutting accross all lines. Including me, there are many, many readers who READ Outlook, just because Arundhati Roy's articles appear in it, even though very very occassionally. If you know she got the Booker award, you do not know that all the pelf, which she got was donated to pro-people 'revolutinary' organizations and trade unions. She has refused to accept Bhartiya Sahit Academy Award! So, if we compare her with Jean Paul Sartre, who refused to accept Nobel, by calling it a bag of potatoes, what is exaggeration?
Prof. HS Dimple, Jagraon
Another rich and nuanced artile by the Roy. The amount of details just underlines the myriad range of problems societies are facing with privatization of every activity. Instead pf ranting at Roy, it would be good to step back and introspect how the definition of democracy has morphed into capitalism for the urban elite without giving the rights to the rural and tribal sections to determine their future for themselves.
The egregious amounts of money the Indian government spends in establishing industrial corridors, buying arms and building military to subdue the Naxals are foreboding to the American model of mulitary-industrial complex where shortly foreign lands are attacked by the military and then handed over to the industries for revedelopment. Unfortunately India is pursing the same strategy within its own country and its own people.
Its not a shame to think intellectually about these relationships. It is however a shame to read, think and not react proactively to it. In democratic societies , this could be done through voting or starting public agitations a la Anna Hazare . But these agitations have to extend beyond urban corruption , inflation is what she is hinting at.
Thumbs up to Roy
Indian state was overthrow long ago by the hindut’s and cooperators.
Antilla throws up a multitude of ironies, depending on from which part of Mumbai you are looking at it. The most commented would be the contrast with Mumbai's slums. What could be equally striking is when watched from the Navy Nagar beach in Colaba. At the end of that land strip is the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) set up by Homi Bhabha with generous funding from JRD Tata. JRD could have made an Antilla in the Bombay of those days, but instead preferred setting up national institutions including TIFR, TISS, TERI, IISc. Corporates of today end up managing even philanthropy in a profitable way, directly or indirectly. Ms. Roy's tone might be acerbic and prescriptive. But after 25 years of liberalisation and crony capitalism, time is ripe to see where Indian socialism is headed for.
Saw Roy recently at the Delhi airport. Hogging attention but no one bothered. She needed a bath, looked like a lost woman in rags with untidy hair all over her face. When no one paid attention to her she sat in a corner sulking. Something very off putting about her.
" she fails big time for her honesty, she hijacks every issue, she lacks research as a writer, her booker prize is for showing India in a bad light "
She is irrelevant. I dont think anyone in India takes her seriously. She is mere nuiance. She needs to be ignored. People should not read her articles even for some amusement and comment on it. Outlook will stop posting her articles if everyone starts ignoring her.
Arundhathi roy and her vested interests, capitalism and Kashmir should be the title of this most beautiful rant, Capitalism is her problem or India is her problem, one never knows it fully, to be frank its neither capitalism not India is her problem, her problem is with her own ideological mind, she wants India to be split, ruled by Maoists killing people in the name of ideology and social justice same like how capitalism kills people unknowingly through plundering, so Arundhathi can fill the paper with already known facts, by linking every damn problem India faces to capitalism so she can blame majority of India's population. Her comments on rushide is to save her face and to get in to the good books of the sanctum word "secular", she fails big time for her honesty, she hijacks every issue, she lacks research as a writer, her booker prize is for showing India in a bad light , the most elitist extreme left . Personally i don't have problem with Ms Roy, but, as a writer her measurements are with vested interests, which if followed by any sane person would lead to more blood shed. Read this to know her dishonesty for those who still feel her as a good critic http://clearvisor.wordpress.com/2011/08/23/why-i%E2%80%99d-rather-be-anna-than-arundhati/
Roy must do something about her hair. She looks very untidy.
I have rad the above article of Arundhuti Roy.Very sharp and critical analysis writting.I love her writting.I call her a rebel writer, writting against our system.I find similar writting in writting of Writer and social activist Mahasweta Devi,specially the novel "Hazar Churasir Ma".Arundhuti Roy a writter of excellance.
I think any system of Governance is good if if applied and executed truthfully,efficiently and uncorruptibly .
The problem in India is the corruption and inefficiency.Politicians of ruling parties are the main culprits who do not allow the honest and efficient judiciary to prevail.Every system has flaws and ills which allows culprit go unpunished but judicilal system must come in to play its role but this old and thoroughly corrupt and inefficient system is allowed to remail as it is for the last 70 years courtesy CONgress.So,Ms communal & corrupt Ms Roy please write some essay on congress ,the evil cause of all ills plaguing this nation.
In this whole story she has blamed everybody right from private companies to Narendra Modi.But like always she conveniently forgets and forgives the government which been in power since 1947 who has been making flawed policies and plans and which execute these plans and policies even more flawfully and with full of corruption.CONgress is responsible for all the ills which this nation is having.
The more you think about all the ills the more it will become obvious to you that yes it is the CONgress who is the real culprit but this incorrigible lady always forgets and forgives it.
Lakmé is owned and operated by Hindustan Unilever. It 'used' to belong to the Tatas.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lakme_cosmetics
Is this worth a cover story in Outlook?
Ambani earned his wealth - he is not a thief and does not run shady businesses! So he has a right to build his house the way he wants. Wealth has to be created before it can be distributed, and he is one of the wealth creators! And why does she not mention Ratan Tata who until recently did not even have his own home?
Yes TATA manufactures everything from motors to mobile services - but it is only in a capitalism that we can choose NOT to buy something from TATA. Nobody forces Roy to buy TATA tea or TATA Sky! Buy Bagh Bakhri chai or Airtel Dish TV or whatever! In a communism we'll be forced to buy it from some state sponsored corrupt low quality crook who will favour the privileged.
But the most important thing is money as a tool of exchange between human beings. Its far better than privilege, favours, council of elders, etc etc. which communism, socialism etc seem to propogate. Why should a council decide what occupation a person should take up - as happens in communist countries?
There is however this issue of the tribals occupying large tracts of forest land since generations. Roy believes they should be left alone and the jungles/mountains etc should be their property. Of course they are also Indians, so we cannot just disregard them - we need to find a way forward.
But to use this issue to rubbish capitalism altogether is too big a leap in conclusion which Roy is making. We dont want to go back to the days when we had to wait 2-3 years to get a telephone connection...
Perhaps, there is no difference, between people living within the system, or without. We are all influenced directly by it. Today, people in the system, are wanting the system to make a difference. Previously, they felt, this was impossible.
Someone should explain why there are always people migrating from communist countries to the ones ruled by capitalist pigs and not the other way around. Even Dhoti Roy spreads the smorgasbord of her complaints in the capitalist bastion of NY. The fundamental problem with Roy is that at the root, she is a dishonest writer, in the business of self-promotion with a hint of megalomania who thinks that only she has the repository of information about sufferings of the underprivileged in India. Scores of thoughtful and selfless people have written eloquently about such issues. It's not that such problems are new. If one needs to get a perspective, one cannot do better than watch a movie by Louis Malle about India made in the late 60s. The entire country looks wretched. Curiously, the same problems existed then (yes the tribal and the farmers etc.) and, irritatingly, the same obsession with defunct ideologies. In fact, Malle makes a telling comment when interviewing Roy's favorite Marxists: that he had heard them before, over and over again in France and elsewhere and that there was a weary familiarity about their arguments. That, in essence, is the same problem with Roy: she says nothing new. The same old tired arguments dressed in catchy prose, but all the verbosity cannot hide the emptiness of her intellect. There is nothing new and that is the saddest part: a voice anointed as the conscience of India, much as our Amul Baby is our youth icon, has allowed her bloated ego to be fooled by the voices of an echo chamber. Anna Hazare may be a fascist, a Hindu fundamentalist, a misogynist, a simpleton, and many other things. But he has done something concrete to make a difference to lives of the very people for whom Roy claims to have a bleeding heart for. Roy, in contrast, has only sold their plight in the chic social circles of London and NY. That itself is not new, though one must give credit to her for making it fashionable (and expensive) much as Khadi is now.
In this artcle Arundhati has scribed all false stories about Salwa judam. Salwa judam is organization of those who were made to leave their homes forcibly for not accepting conversion in to Xianity. Who did not leave were murdered by naxals. Their women were raped by the terrorists. Their land and properties forcibly acquired by those killers. They were helpless, no education for their children, they were living in hell. So they formed their org and named as Salwa judam. Arundhati is annoyed as to how CG gvt is providing help to those who refused her conversion programme. here Arundhati is supporting horrible killers who kill security personnel and innocent people. Kidnap people for extortion money. Smuggle minerals. Can anybody portray the old syings-- CHORI AUR SEENAJORI--- better than our beloved Ms Suzie.
I too find Arundhati Roy to be a bit of a princess, and too shrill by far, and other such-like stylistic quibbles, I'm not sure I could bear to be in a room with her ... BUT, having read her book 'Broken Republic' several times, I find that she more-or-less hits the shiny little nail right upon its shiny little bald head.
(In days gone by, before the cod moratorium, I fished - the inshore fishery y'unnerstan' - on Newfoundland's south-east coast with a man who was then building the very last schooner. He used galvanized 'boat nails' which have a distinctive rounded head, and as he pounded each one he would gently curse the name of Joey Smallwood - the author of the Resettlement Program aka 'shiftin' - who happened to be bald.)
I hope instead of rehashing the same old rants borrowed from the western socialist ideas in all her overly long essays, Roy should focus her attention to the quality of governance in India. Although the wealth and power of private sector companies increased in the last two decades, in India even now the power is with the politicians, the jumbo cabinets and a large machinery of government employees who are thriving in bribery , corruption and the tax payer sponsored salary hikes through successive pay commissions, Large corporations may influence living standards of the middle class and the upper middle class. However, the bulk of the Indian poor living in rural areas with limited or no purchasing power are hardly impacted by the rise or fall of corporations. For the bulk of Indian poor (for whom apparently Arundhati sheds tears and writes her jumbo essays) Sarkar is still Mai Baap. These poor could have immensely benefitted from the targetted social welfare programs if we had governments functioning with less corruption and more accountability.
In fact the reforms have touched certain economic sectors but the administrative reforms of the governments continue to remain a pipe dream. Irrespective of the stated ideologies of the political parties in power in the last six decades, the poor have benefitted only in states that have or had efficient government machinery. Rise or fall of Antilla, Indian billionaires as well as debate of capitalism vs. socialism are not relevant here. But Arundhati is too rigid to understand or recognize why a large section of Indians supported Anna Hazare's agitation for a corruption free government, although they do not care about the political ideological issues that only interest Arundhati .
I have a new paradigm for action in the United States -- which carries the imprimatur of the late Howard Zinn and a host of other high profile figures worldwide -- and it would address the concerns of Arundhati Roy's article if implemented soon. I ask one and all to help put me in contact with Arundhati Roy so that she can serve as an asset for the purposes of this action which follows a fresh paradigm, which has a true shot at making a difference. I can be reached at aptosnews@gmail.com, or anyone can feel free to telephone me in the U.S., in Clear Lake, California at 707-994-1839 at any hour. Thanks for your kind consideration, Ric Oxman
Its Arundhati's story. To put it in JoMb's words "Indian middle class and the affluent class suck". Does this lone declaration from me makes me a concerned individual ? If yes, I agree with you on all of what you have to say. Not only me, I assure you that almost all of those who criticize you also are. Thank you
Roy spares almost no one in her trenchant critique of the predicament that has befallen us in post liberalisation era.While using her pen as a scalpel she has produced a narrative where she sidsteps vital historical events and linkages.True,the capitalist forces have stolen innocence and the night(euphemistically) from the common.One must ask.Is communism any better? History has stood witness to the eccentricities of communist leadership in parts of the world.Exploits of pol pot and stalin can be quickly recalled.Want and destitution did not vanish through collectivization and purging.One can argue for long on the benefits which accrued from communist regimes.Mankind has suffered the excesses of political systems.India continues to reel under stark poverty.Equal redistribution of wealth is a marxian dream which is a far cry in India of the present.However,in order to extricate the nation from the capitalist abyss it is perhaps inescapable to not engage with capitalism.By negotiating the vicissitudes of this jamboree dalits and tribals will get their due.They need to be empowered economically and politically for an equitable society.Promotion of socialistic values in institutions of governance should be encouraged.Translation of such efforts into concrete results will take time.For now we should contain the morbidity of urbanisation and usher in systems based on equity and justice within the capitalist structures.The wasteful part of capitalism may perhaps wither away in time.
Most of the ( jiffy and fast-forward readers, I could bet they are , crony capitalism does not yield and authorise that much leisure and intellect building) here seem to be too ignorant and naive too, see beyond the scum, underneath they survive, for example Mr.Jafar expresses his mind out that if Ambani or whosoever make billions how does it affect him or people of similar opinion. These people are that breed of middle class who are born , live and die in dreams of Allurement and Affluence believing and reading inspirational and motivational dummies llike Dale Carnegie,Kiyosaki and Shiv Khera to who every make-believe is real and just a stride away,bereft of sordid realities. Now they must know int space you can't splurge like cowboy attitude and expend. The earth and its resources are limited and money is made out of it thus Antilla has some share of everybody inside its plinth and base.
Arundhati.....along with her ideological convictions( I mean gossip) will not find place in either Peru......Nepal ....North Korea or in China....but surely Outlook shares her burden
First of all let me confess, I could not read beyond the second para, primarily because its the same staple Roy stuff. Secondly, lets do what Roy asks us to do, get rid of the rich, the 100 in the world who own half our wealth, they need to go, if we do that we may attract none more to create wealth in this country. Who needs them afterall, maybe China wants, them, or may be they can go to the USA, we the morally correct Indians dont need money, phone or anything as such. We will use shrubs to cover our modesty and run around fire to please the god of wisdom to shower the best the earth can produce. And while we are at it, the rich in other countries can plan and then bomb us, we would then become guerillas like Fidel uncle and still win. Roy bullshit has no cure, the least we can do is sleep after reading this crap.
Reporting on its housewarming party in November 2010, a Mumbai based socialite cum pulp fiction writer breathlessly described ‘Antilla’ as “the Taj Mahal of the 21 st. century” in a bylined front page article in an Indian tabloid which masquerades as a national broadsheet. Mumtaz Mahal and Shah Jahan must have turned in their graves in the mausoleum of one of the Seven Wonders of the World.
Given her extreme leftist leanings bordering on nihilism, Arundhati Roy may well brand the Taj Mahal a symbol of mediaeval capitalism. Even if it be that, it at least has the saving grace of being supremely aesthetic. Not so ‘Antilla’, which is a permanent eyesore scarring the skyline of Mumbai, and which can more appropriately be christened with the pejorative “The Monkey Wrench” which it closely resembles.
Middle class asked to be upset about one more issue than thousands already bugging it
Middle class, which has already its ass on fire due to inflation, corruption, crime, family matters, social commitments, professional challenges, and other existentialist problems of daily life, has been asked to worry about a couple of more issues even though it didn’t appear to affect it directly.
Thinkers have accused the middle class to be absolutely selfish for not accommodating unsettling discomforts, like human rights violation thousands of miles away, to its already fucked-up life.
“How the hell does it matter to them if they start worrying about just a couple of things more?” thinker Akhil Waghmare wondered and accused the middle class, especially those living in India, to be selfish, coward, and having low IQ.
Thinkers like Waghmare (and Arundhati), who wake up each day to fight for and bring justice to victims in various parts of India, wonder why a middle class person, already feeling suicidal due to professional and personal frustrations, doesn’t feel the pain of activists not being allowed to protest in Gujarat (or are not protesting against Antillia).
Responding to such routine criticisms, which shoot up when a thinker wakes up in a bad mood or is exposed to harsh realities of the world, middle class representatives have conceded that they indeed were selfish.
“Yes, bloody we don’t care about such issues!” said a visibly and perennially upset Harish Mehta, a middle class sales executive who had a fight with his wife last night and got a dressing down by his boss this morning for failing to meet his weekly sales target.
Taking exclusively to Faking News as no one else seemed interested in listening to his woes, Harish further claimed that not only middle class, every class was selfish and didn’t care about issues that didn’t directly affect them: “Have you seen a poor farmer fighting for free speech or ridiculing Kapil Sibal for internet censorship?”
“See! They are nothing but selfish cowards and with low IQ!” thinker Akhil Waghmare said, claiming victory over the Indian middle class!
another masterpiece ... its hard for us sometimes to sit quite and just go on reading these kind of articles, especially when it irritates the very idea of our ''well being'' but in reality it should irritate us...disturb us. the rhetoric of our structure our idea,our consensus has to be disturbed,finding another rhetoric from a different paradigm in function to weaken the whole paradigm.
if anyone sees that the very structure of one's world is falling apart ,its very natural to react in an antagonist way,as we the ''shining indian'' or the dominants are doing, but on the contrary its evident that for the well being of the handful,most of others are facing a pogrom.
thanks a lot arundhati roy to ameliorate the rhetoric of ''the others''.
@arun r Bangalore, india
You "educated fool" learn English first. I said "most" Indians, that excludes me and
includes senseless like you.
The fact that so many comment on her articles here is probably what's feeding this Cancer.
Dear Outlook editor: just because a lot of people comment on her article does not mean she is good for the magazine. Look how many are repulsed by her writing. Just because you or Vinod Mehta thinks she 'makes a good point' or 'sells copies' dont lose long term readership. Outlook will be termed a commie rag (right now it's 'left leaning').
What % on the posters are actually for her?
This piece is a perfect cure for insomnia. Dhoti Roy could have saved us the torture and just reproduced the song that so perfectly captures her angst:
"I feel pretty, Oh, so pretty, I feel pretty and witty and bright!"
Beats me as to how she can go on rambling without a hint of irony that her signature trips abroad as well as her residence in South Delhi is funded by the same evil corporations.
Like all post-modern rhetoric this piece by the author is all fizz and directionless. This article is actually a masquerade of the 'Brahmanical-politics' these so-called revolutionaries practice. This article's portrayal of capitalism and capitalists as invincible and that capitalism is self-destructive only strengthens the author's brand of ‘fatalistic’ politics they are nurtured in. Its logical underpinning is not to have broader democratic alliances with progressive forces to overcome exploitative 'capitalism'. Coming to the question of Dalit politics, this 'radical' has no clue what dalit politics are. If we are to look at her statement, "Given the situation in modern India, it would be casteist and reactionary to say that Dalit entrepreneurs oughtn’t to have a place at the high table" she would otherwise not mind to show her contempt for the 'dalits'. Dalit politics are about equal rights for all citizens in everywhere and establishing a society based on the principles of liberty, equality and fraternity. It's a suggestion for the 'radical' to read 'Buddha or Karl Marx' and 'States and Minorities' by Dr.B.R.Ambedkar to understand Identity politics of dalits. P.S. Oy! The master of the 'Imperial' English 'Bahujan' means depressed majority (proletariat! an identity your snobbish self would not agree though) that is all-encompassing to establish a social order free from all kinds of exploitation.
@ kel Shorey wrote - "How do you know, I have an Ideology?
I am a logical man, have common sense, admit mistakes, unlike you, and can be persuaded to change my ideology.
This is called "Common Sense", wwhich most Indians like you lack."
You are an Indian or not and you are saying most Indians lack commonsense ... shame...
you are sick man ...consult a doctor immediately!
I just have one question - where does a a woman who lives in a bungalow in Chanakyapuri easily worth a couple of crore get off screeching about the wealthy, idle rich?
By the way, didn't this woman start her career offering aerobics lessons in 5 star hotels to the rich and the privileged classes? Perhaps the stain of the scarlet letter is too strong too wash away, which is why the lady doth protest too much
I did not read this article but I know why it got published-many in the Outlook office went for vacation. The Editor had to fill the required pages with something-anything. Who better than Roy who will write a sick leave letter for 10 pages? Even Roy is helpful at times. She can fill up all the pages of Outlook.
Yaaawn, can somone explain to me in a "few words" what this article is all about?
A 10,343 words essay on capitalism and development cannot really make a lay-person critically reflect, unless it is written cogently without over generalization and poetry and neatly structured with titled sections so as to guide the reader on where the essay is headed. Seems the editorial team of this magazine rested on the author’s laurels and let this one slip. This essay could have come across as more nuanced had Roy not just underlined the pernicious power of transnational capital pervasive in all spheres of modern societies from India to South Africa to America, but also endeavoured to respect societal changes in power dynamics between hitherto marginalized groups, the more privileged classes and state institutions as a result of socio-economic development in a third world milieu. To illustrate briefly on the ingenuity of institutions, political parties and community based organizations in challenging and contesting the hegemony of capital in India, the fact that the Right to Food campaign has been relentlessly campaigning for universal PDS despite the Central government advocating a more targeted system whilst many state governments support a universal one; that opposition parties as well as allies of UPAII came together to derail the government’s plans on FDI in multi brand retail last year; that in February this year, trade unions cutting across party lines joined hands to strike work for one day demanding abolishing of contract worker system and adequate social protection for unorganized sector workers; and that just a few days back, an Indian pharma company has been issued license by Indian authorities to manufacture a generic variety of a cancer treatment drug at a fraction of the price the German multinational who monopolized the patent was pocketing, are just four separate developments that makes one appreciate efforts of actors who without the aid of guns politicize and reform public policies in a flawed democracy, thereby engaging with social, political and economic realities to build unique pathways in realising a more equitable society.
A mortal like me usually avoid commenting on Roy-bahadur. One has to admit she does have her way with pen.
Few observation though:
a. A pleasant surprise that there was no excessive beating of middle-class. I wonder why "us" middle class became a good boy suddenly. Maybe the "occupy xxxx xxxx" was all middle class itself.
a.1. neither there was over-the-top Hindutva breast-beating. Narendra Modi did figure out-of-blue though.
b. Bangladesh's Grameen Bank and Mohammed Yunus did wrong (including received Nobel), and farmers in Andhra died. I didn't get it. I have no idea if farmer (and loan takers) of Bangladesh are ok or not, but it is unfair to Yunus, unless you give some statistics of people dying under his scheme.
b. Indian Express talk of Dalit karorpatis, so did Outlook. Was it planned not to name Outlook? I mean no harm to Outlook, and I do hope Rajen Raheja do not have any interest in mining and displacement.
I must say, the farmer suicide photo was chilling. So many farmers killed themselves in last so many years, it was the first photo I have seen. I wonder why? She does have a point.
Agree or not with Arundhati, her writings always manage to convey a sense of effort and engagement with issues most journalists, let alone fiction writers, shy away from. Whether it be opposition to the nuclear bomb, or big dams, or the neoliberal march that middle class India seems enthralled by, her writings do provide a contrarian view that is practically absent in the mainstream media. Or looked at differently, not allowed an expression in the mainstream media. Roy deserves respect for consistently exhorting readers against blindly following the in-fashion narrative. It cannot be a writer’s mandate to necessarily offer solutions, or to consistently churn out fiction, or even to conform to standards of thought that some might deem fit. That many do not agree with her is understandable. What is not is the fundamentalist streak of opposition in many of the letters that attack the writer and not the writing. A fairly long piece with much truth (i’m referring to facts and numbers that are more or less beyond debate) is dismissed in a couple of sentences, in some cases just falling short of abuse. A gentleman from Bangalore even tried making a connection between the style of writing and lack of affection in the middle age! p.s. A recent article by Dreze and Sen (http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?278843) has a bit of similarity in thought and content with the current article. A comparison of the tone of comments between the two articles makes for interesting reading.
Correction 72/D-68 : First sentence read - A lot of things here is being said about capitalism
Lot of things here are being said about. The issue here is not capitalism but ghost of capitalism.
Jhon Maynard Keynes is unlikely to have said '' Capitalism is the extraordinary belief that the nastiest of men for the nastiest of motives will somehow work for the benefit of all.”
What he most certainly said is "The day is not far off when the economic problem will take the back seat where it belongs, and the arena of the heart and the head will be occupied or reoccupied, by our real problems — the problems of life and of human relations, of creation and behaviour and religion."
And finally
"Like Adam Smith and Karl Marx before him, Keynes believed economics wasn't merely about studying the efficient allocation of resources. For him, the good life meant beauty, art, love, morality -- the passions that define civilization -- and the value of economics lay in its pursuit of the stability and wealth that would allow our passions to flower. "
www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/04_15/b3878037_mz072.htm
@arun r, Bangalore, india
How do you know, I have an Ideology?
This is called "Common Sense", wwhich most Indians like you lack.
The only answer to all the above mentioned problems by Arundhati is ANARCHISM. Anarchism does not mean chaos. It does not mean no state. It means the least involvement of state and corporate power in people's lives.
AR is the ultimate cynic.
Rao despite being sarcastically inclined has rightly commented -------wipe out the 100 capital suckers from India and it turns Sudan.This logic is very clear but unfortunately the commentrator is incapable of understanding its own meaning that besides these people ,This country is simply as deplorable and impoverished as Sudan ; and it is these metaphorical 100 who suck our Human dignity turning us into life of Insects and rodents living on refuge
As expected, on this forum, Arundhati Roy generates the most comments. As always, she is a poor teacher as she just berates everything and everyone with no solutions - so no one really reads (to understand) her. So no one learns from her, she doesn't learn anything from the comments, nor do the commentators learn from each other - as the views are pre-formed anyways.
Outlook what benefit do you get from publishing Arundhati Roy - I assume some but I am missing it.
BOWENPALLE VENURAJA GOPAL RAO.
Very Well and logically said Rao.
Only thing is that by any means Tatas were no middle class any time. If we go through the details of efforts of Jemshetzi Tata in putting the steel plant at Jemshedpur we will respect him for his sagacity, vision and perseverance. He goes to USA in the 19 century to get an expert. Imagine the troubles he must have faced in motivating an unwilling American engineer to come to this country unknown to him in those days of no airplanes to travel to establish the steel plant in a backward place like Bihar to produce rails as good as England made. The English who originally dismissed the idea of a steel plant by an Indian had to eat the crow and accept the rails of Tata steel which they found a tad better than England made. And J.Tata built that great Taj Hotel as a positive response when he was not admitted to a hotel in the racist England then. He had the foresight to build Indian Institute of science at bangalore. These great contributions is what I call patriotism.Some thing alsting and very positive response to the challenge of racism and discrimination in colonial times to prove his point that Indians are no less if only opportunities are vailable. Thats the way one should seek. I have great respect for the house of Tatas who have made many families happy and our country proud. JRD is the most deserving of any of the Bharat ratnas the country awarded. MS Roy type purposeless negative news mongers which do not help any except spread disaffection in the society are always there.Whats the greatness in it except rousing rubble.
You have correctly said about the logical outcome of adding or removing of industrialists. Hope her hare brain understands this basic economics. reality is harsher and knows no sentiments.Its finally food chain of Nature that one needs to accept. Utopia is only in the fertile imagination of lazy ideologues.We need industrailists and investors not rubble rousers like Roy. Down with Roy.
Arundhati is a loud audible cry in the wind railing against suffering of the poor, the starving, the discriminated against, the underclass and for some odd reason the muslim. Women are tagged on to the list of disempowered.
In attributing blame Arundhati has constructed or discerned a pattern of oppression from across the privileged minority of hindus, capitalists, corporations, world powers and educated people.
Every institution of learning or activity is a conspiracy towards a capitalist upper class utopia. There are so many wolves in sheep clothing that the real victims who outnumber the predators are lost and overpowered.
I am trying to understand the way out, while admitting that there is some truth in the painful cries emerging from her ample chest of pain.
And I realise that if I see evil under every garb, it is bound to be so.
So patriarchy, capitalism, religion, activism of a non violent kind are bad almost in toto but unless we find some redeeming qualities in them we have no recourse.
Such a complex issue reduced to so much anger with no solutions in her sight or ours.
Since the spiritual self has been so compromised by the religious institutions we cant even suggest a spiritual, ascetic approach to cleansing the body personal and body politic. And Arundhati doesnt believe in that approach at all.
She and we are in serious trouble since all sides are compromised.
Basically it does seem we are up shit street and should await an implosion.
Or look at the glorious animal kingdom where some natural justice prevails all the time with a few lions, many more hyenas and multiples of wildbeest and deer and so on. And be philosophic.
What say?
If you remove, hypothetically, these "100 great capitalists”, India would become as poor as Sudan or any country in Africa. Same is the case with US, if you remove just one dozen great capitalists and their empires, USA would as poor as any developing country.
As far as unbridled growth of capitalism and its destruction of environment, middle level small businesses, self-employed little traders, displacement of huge chunks of populations from their native lands, we should consider, China as the number in the list with biggest polluter, biggest dictator and destroyer of the most ancient social customs and family systems.
There is some truth in weeping and wailing of Arundhati but she blissfully ignored the damage being caused by soul harvesters called Christian missionaries in the jungles of central India. In their bribing, “soul harvesters" make sure that tribes forget who they are and what have been their ancient belief systems,sentiments,simple lifestyles and their fighting spirit without inferiority complexes of the modern world.
She need not give any solutions and she does not have a capability even to remotely suggest any such solutions.
It is not easy either for any one. India is a big continent, with highly complex society held together as one country by its ancient belief systems and its family systems. You just destroy this belief systems of “karma", rebirth, different gods and complete tolerance for different types of worship, you would easily destroy what is called India.
No one needs worry about these so called "great capitalists"!! Tatas were middle class family by the time of Second World War. Now consider where are mighty business tycoons like Mehatas, Bagurs,Walchands and a dozen of others like Gokuls, Parshvanathas etc.,
We see now Narayana Murthy, Ambanis and nearly 250 other big business men today who own empires and control companies across the continent including USA and China who have risen to this level, beyond the imagination of human beings once upon a time , just within our own life time. Just for example my own colleagues had seen Narayan Murthy walking along the streets of Mumbai, and there are many who had seen big obese , Dhirubahi Ambani with a brief case endlessly chewing pawn and living in a chawl while his two sons Mukesh and Anil playing with cycle tyres in the slums of Bombay ( Mumbai)! The only luxury his two sons enjoyed was a plate of Idly in an hotel at least on Sundays and that too because, Dhirubahi Ambani thought that his children should enjoy their childhood. !!!
We need to regulate national wealth and scarce resource like 2G and 3G bandwidth and we need to check corruption by people in power because corruption resorted to by a person in a powerful position of public office who can squander away national wealth for a comparatively pittance payments to his personal accounts is entirely different from the corruption of traffic cop or a revenue clerk.
We need introduce systems rather than fight with the systems. When Rajiv era , computerized Railways corruption disappeared from railway reservation systems, ticketing etc.,. Now even PF offices relatively far better than what they were before. Look at AP, Chandrababu Naidu introduced E-seva, a computerized systems of payments of bills and also to request an get most of revenue documents.
We only can move with the time, cannot afford to stagnate, cannot lag behind other countries. If China had not embraced stock market and individual enterprise, it could have collapsed like USSR by now. Chinese billionaires neither better than Indian billionaires not they can afford to be better even in future China.
We cannot expect tribes of Central India , to remain same as they had been before for centuries together but we have to preserve their customs ,their culture and their simple life style and belief along with their economic upliftment or development of their areas. They must be made partners in the mining business and a royalty should be paid to them. Salva Judum like private armies are the evil brain child of Chidambaram ! . The first step is to remove Chidambaram along with his stupid ideas and ban or disband Salva Judum. Otherwise there shall be no hope. Anyone who knows tribes should know that , tribes by nature fight throughout generations !! only you would get tired , they will not.
Jahangir’s army was exhausted, Nizams razakars were exhausted and American army was exhausted. So, will be Indian Army.
Behind evey problems, lies and opportunity for improvement. PNASERY GURGAON,
Following the recent Tsunami, it is said, Japan had found many areas where they could improvise and tackle the problems themselves than cry in despair.
The Click program on the BBC elaborated how the Japanese turned the crisis into great opportunity for innovation by improvising the mobile phone to enable it detect radiation of goods and foods wherever it is desired to measure the radiation. It means each individual takes the responsibility on him/her rather than depend on a beleaguered Govt agency and keep cribbing like the cry baby Roy.
They, it was further told, developed special social network web sites to help trace missing individuals by exchanging the details about them.
Here I would like to ask Ms.Roy what is her contribution to the nation building.The one novel wonder that she is is more arrogant than any one she accuses of. And for all his wealth and the power that commands, Mukhesh is a much humble person than she. He is no saint but more useful to this country by generating wealth and employment and contributing to country's exchequer than she, a lady with sympathies only to anti-national elements. To hell with her silly ideology and idiotic charade on capitalism. She can seek migration to North Korea and spare us her silly tirades.
I wish Outlook took the initiative and publish such positive news as described above about Japan and the way they handled Tsunami rather than indulge this for ever cribbing lady to spread only negative news for which there is no dearth in India.
been struggling to sleep for the past two days, this article gave me a good sleep last nite..just read a couple of paragraphs...
Anyone who follows what's going on in the world today knows that this article has been written by a fiction writer and should not be taken seriously, either she is part of a hideous social engineering which is for reppeling the middle and rich class towards corporatism, and the poor towards Stalinism or she is just plain crazy(looks like both in this case).
My take on this.
1.The worst regimes in history have been communist regimes, Hitler doesn't even make it to the Bronze medal position.
The reason for this being that instead of the workers controlling the means of production, in Stalinist communist regimes, they are controlled by the communist party, and because there are no other alternatives to this party, the party bosses are NOT held accountable for their incompetence and corruption, they are also extremely brutal to those opposedtto them, the cultural revolution in China and the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia.
This is what you get from a Bolshevik central planned Communist govt, and the results are for you to see.
Social democracy is not the worst idea that anyone can come up with, it is still dependent on the competence of the ruling party, and we can see for ourselves how incompetent politicians are held accountable in India.
So unless, the culture in India changes from a the repsent one to a more progressive one, any centrally planned economy is a bad idea.
2.Welfare state like in Europe?, yeah, you can see for yourselves what happened in Europe, their deficits are of Titanic proportions and if, it doesn't make any differentiation between the unemployed and the unemployable, it turns out into a deadly slow poison that result a very painful death for your own nation.
Like all Marxists, this woman fails to mention the different forms of Socialism,Nationalist and Marxian(one believes in class warfare, while the other doesn't )
There are so many questions to ask this Espresso communist and the Champagne Socialists that beat off to what is obvious pornography for them, but there ARE other solutions.
We could educate the country on several idelogies, left wing Communism, Right and left wing Socialism, Libertarianism, Corporatism and Social Market economy(like the one in the US) and divide the nation on the basis of these ideologies.
God help the megalomaniacs who wish to play the 2nd cold war fantasy of the American neo cons.
Live the idelogies live and let live.
OR
Instead of dividing wealth, divide the means of productions, help hundreds of millions of cottage sized industries which will be controlled by Capitalists.
Their shrieks will certainly expose their subversive and subhuman-vile intentions.
59 D
I dont know if I can agree with you that VM and AR were in a 'relationship', but women journos are any male editors 'perfect' match anyday. The ranting women journos ( mostly anti-male ), are then goaded by non other than male commentators who 'find something good' in any idiotic thing they rant. However, with age showing, AR is less likely to influence her male readers, than ever before.
58 D
Why do you compare the Antilla to an 'erection'? Have you heard of MISANDRY? Dont all these words simply qualify for misandry? Would nt such comments against a womans orgasm pass the editor?
As for Antilla itself, 'beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder'. What if the super rich man wanted a house that looked like an oil refinery in the night, all lighted up ( the infrastructure from which his dad made his money, thanks to Indira Gandhi )? Why should we judge the mans tastes - just because he can afford to build it - as long as it was not corrupt money ( which I am sure it is. )
I cannot believe this mindless drivel that is allowed spew forth from the fetid cesspool that is Arundhati Roy's mind.
What does Vinod Mehta (who's no longer directly involved with Outlook, I understand) see in her?
My bet is they were involved if not now, may be some time before in a relationship. He is just gaga over this dingbat with no solutions! Now his trusted flunky who's been promotoed to oversee Outlook is loyally following His Master's Voice.
This drivel should be castigated, not because it's lack of substance (there is a grain of truth even in any fool's rant) but for it's sheer uselessness.
Arundhati "I dont have to provide solutions" Roy should be stripped bare of her media-anointed crown as an intelligent commentator. SHe is neither intelligent enough, nor acute enough to understand today's complex problems, let alone be trusted to provide balanced judgements or solutions.
as a friend once said: antilla is like an erection hanging in the wind.
@ KEL SHOREY
" It is very hard to change one's ideology, howsoever stupid it may be. That is the case with you."
The same applies to you too. You have an ideology and she has a different one ( I do not subscribe to her ideology in any case and find her overtly critical on some issues). But, she is entitled to draw her own conclusions based on facts which are not distorted. And you cannot abuse her just because her conclusions are different from yours.
Ambani's house at Mumbai is a brazen display of wealth inherited & acquired through not so transparent means. Being in the US for a long time, I can't imagine an American capitalist builds something like this in New York just for his own consumption disturbing the life of his fellow citizens around him many of whom are his customers. Look at Indian capitalists ( not all of them, but most of them ) - you need to look at the middle layer - how did they amass so much of wealth and how much are they giving back to their country?
Any American capitalist, big or small , do contribute in charity - they build schools, colleges, hospitals, universities, research centers and take utmost care of their employees. Just compare them with the middle layer of indian capitalists , they use taxpayers money to enhance their profit, cheat the government by fudging accounts, cheat their employess by not paying PFs , cheat their customers by overcharging them with inferior quality product and displace people from their livelihood. What a great service to their own country & countrymen!
Its not a debate about capitalism & socialism - its a debate about being patriotic & giving back to your own country. Indian crony capitalist class ( with the exception of Tatas ) extracted every bit out of a corrupt government and hand in glove political class. They give a damn to their own countrymen and thats the reason they build a 27 story hours for just one family when half of Mumbai lives in slums.
The architecture of Antilla is more courser and uglier than the sell-n-kill images of capitalism.
It was better called Capitalism: A Toast Story or Capitalism: A Lost Story for its crisp and categorical attack on deceptory diseased game of capitalism; as it dealt with no ghost or ethereal but with the very materialistic ,very real .Though the article is a clever take on assemblage of scattered spilled –organs of capitalism it lacks grey matter stuff. Seems like Arundhati Roy was in hurry to compile the facts showing ideological coherence .Despite that it should become clear to common consumerist –type middle class automatons (most of ‘Outlook’ readers must fall in this category) that what seems simply the fractured pieces of life across the globe, they are planned so by the cynosures of capitalisms and their doctrinaires meticulously .The decimation of movements fatal to the antagonistic paradoxical nature of capitalism like Blacks and Dalit movements how they could be tackled tactically shows prowess of financial Dynasaurs .The capitalism is multi-faced hydra ,most of which are invisible and contrived . The Buffets (philanthropist breed) are not buffoons they are the magnets who acts as financial pimps to siphon money from one capitalist body (animate or inanimate)to another and help capitalism survive the generations after generation to swinger after simplistic charisma of Three penny Opera alias Capitalism.
Zafar Saheb... all I am willing to disclose is that you know me well...from years of internet past. We haven't come across each other for 5-6 years though. Of course, I used a false name in those days as I did not want to be associated with controversial views which could easily be google searched by prospective employers or colleagues. Nice to see you find a home for yourself in this Outlook forum. Hope all is well with you and family.
While Arundhati roy talks about the Capitalism, she has forgotten abt the horrors of socialism around the world. Even communist china has dumped the idea of state ownership while USSR and eastern europe are trying to undo the horrors. Infact the financial crisis of 2008 and its exacerbation is also a function of govt intervenation. A freer country with less govt. and less state interventation is the only path to prosperity.
""Roy dishonours and devalues India by making India's narrative secondary to the American one.""
"This is blatant distortion of Roys views & typical of the priviledged living in denial. If anything, its other way round. Right or wrong , Roy's complaint is that India's narrative has been made subject outside interests. That view of course is debatable."
India has genuine, real concerns about Pakistan, Islamic terrorism and China. These are linked to the American narrative only insofar as the US has not shown much empathy for India's own, distinct issues. But Roy does not acknowledge the issues at all! Instead, all that matters to her is the communist narrative of the hegemony of capital and big business houses.
There's nothing really Indian about her articles, except a few content specific observations. They are just roving international socialist polemic about India and the haves/less haves divide.
Also, the problem of Islamic fundamentalism and terrorism will remain, regardless of how India resolves the poverty and displacement that she waxes so passionately about. She will of course take the easy course, and merely say that all fundamentalism is bad, terrrorists are there in every religion( and they feed off each other. Standard, stock-in-trade rubbish.
I find that most are up in arms against Arundhati. She has arranged the facts already known to all, there is nothing new. No one can grow as fast as Ambanies except, perhaps people like Vadras. Yes solutions have to be found before its too late. Unfortunately money and muscle power ti too strong for people to react.
I am pleasantlysurprised by the spate of conciliatory and mild responses from these "Educated, Well-fed, Well-satisfied, Self- Centred Middle class Babus", who would otherwise love this Modern-day Goddess--Coporate Capitalism and hate the Liberal and Left ideologies.
Rather, I expected from them a much more vitriolic polemics on Arundhati Roy- --both on her as a person and what she stands for. This certainly is a welcome and positive development. For it means that people began to think and assess the havoc that the Corporate Capitalism is bringing on people's heads--especially on the small farmers and tribal populations of India.
Good going Ms Arundhati Roy. You have made a dent into the insensitive thinking of the anti-Liberals. Keep it up !
Yet, I must admit that your hostility to the anti-corruption movement led by Anna Hazare puzzles me no end !!
A truly Indian narrative would lay emphasis on the distinictiveness of India,
Part of the Indian story is it poverty, destitution , deprivation, all pervasive corruption, inequity. That regretfully is part of the narrative of distinctivenhess.
The ostrich like attitude itself is not conducive to equitable development as one has to recognise in the first place that the India story is fractured. As a matter fact this attitude is part of the problem.
the autonomy and autarchy of the Indic culture and outlook, and a kind of cosmological way of looking at the development of India, both historically and in the present.
Longwided meaningless verbiage also need be recognised for what it is - longwinded meaningless verbiage.
All the while, of course, acknowledging the issues that have to be dealt with.
Lets begin with the 'acknowledging' part first because thats were the penny is pinching. In this article & in many before this Ms. Roy has been doing exactly that - 'acknowledging' what went wrong. ( her sometime going overboard & dramatic exaggerations need not distract us ).
Roy dishonours and devalues India by making India's narrative secondary to the American one.
This is blatant distortion of Roys views & typical of the priviledged living in denial. If anything, its other way round. Right or wrong , Roy's complaint is that India's narrative has been made subject outside interests. That view of course is debatable.
Why Mr Ved Mehta is committed to give Ms Roy a cover story atleast once every 4-6 month for no good reason.Has she got business interest in this publication?Some people think they got less than they deserve from society and become permanently negative personality out of frustration.I think she belongs to one of those class.
Roy's narrative is not an Indian one. A truly Indian narrative would lay emphasis on the distinictiveness of India, the autonomy and autarchy of the Indic culture and outlook, and a kind of cosmological way of looking at the development of India, both historically and in the present. All the while, of course, acknowledging the issues that have to be dealt with.
Instead, Roy's article is a rant about Indian industrialists, inequalties within India, and the ever present alleged danger of India becoming a junior partner to the US. Here, Roy really trips up badly. What about India's own concerns, both regional and global. Indian has genuine concerns about China, that have nothing to do with supposed American geo-political perceptions. Roy dishonours and devalues India by making India's narrative secondary to the American one.
Mahatma Gandhi would stay at Harijan bastis and not just lecture on upliftment of the down trodden Harijans.Has Arundhati Roy has ever shared the life of poor people by actually living with them?Does she dare share photogrphs of her drawing rooms with the public?Like Manmohan Singh declaring his assets,will Arundhati declare her bank balance?How much of her wealth has gone for the welfare of the poor?People like Arundhati live a seven star life,but have the gal to write on the condition of the poor.
(By the way Zafar Saheb, we are old friends, at least on the internet. Pehchaana ? :) )
I'm afraid not, Raghav Hegde - you must have been using a pseudonym in the past. Whom do I know you as? It's always (always) a pleasure to meet old friends in the cyberworld.
In the meantime I will go and see what rules there are about setting up helicopter pads and air traffic in downtown areas...
Capitalism runs on a basic human instinct which is greed (Greed is freely distributed to run the engine of capitalism). Communism on the other hand runs on the human instinct of fear (Greed is monopolised by a select few who in turn freely distribute fear). Socialism to an extent being reasonable runs on the creed of living on open-sesame (Entitlements are freely distributed).
The best way of human existence has always been the vedic way of living, a life lived and practised for thousands of years in India, until invasions, wherein a breed of McCaulay inspired factory produced middle class started feeling ashamed of their own ancestory and rendered the life of "simple living, high thinking" into a decadent way of living.
The crux of the vedantic way of living was that one lives, thinks, acts and speaks not for the self but for the interest and welfare of others. It calls for a transformation of thinking to one that constantly seeks the welfare and harmony of others so that it results in the expansion of current human consciousness to a higher level of existence. The current generation cannot even understand this philosophy, let alone follow.
We have read many of Ms. Roy's articles that are a combination of literary criticisms combined with a deep sense of nihilism. Criticism of everything and anything for the sake of criticism is no way constructive. By now we have enough understood what Ms. Roy does not like. Is it not time that she writes an article about what she likes, what her vision of the world and India in particular is and what are the practicable ways of implementing that vision ?
I hope she does not bring in the "ism" of Marxism as a solution as the world has seen with its own eyes the horrors of Maxism where dictators where found with gold faucets and diamond chandeliers in their palaces while people outside were crying for food and the right to think (forget about the right to speak) !!!
If there is a problem and a solution is proposed, people can debate on that solution. Instead if some one proposes a not-a-solution as a solution to a problem, how can one debate on a not-a-solution?
Looking at the mirror will do one world of good. One sees things worts & all. So peeling off the veneers & some of the window dressings are positives - though in negative light.
So Arundhati , as the drain inspector, here done a meticulous job. She worked hard with her research, dug up known & unknown facts & went to town to with all the stinking sludge.
Capitalism & democracy are best of some of the worst choices available. That does not mean occassional catharisis is not needed. Who else but Arundehati Roy do it best? That she goes the whole hog unrestrained by accepted norms of this dialogue must also be seen for what it is . An way towards correctives with whatever pull the citizenry might muster within the system.
A good job done Ms Roy. Good of Outlook to render a platfom.
Hemamalini or any other film actress who are used to pull the crowd at particular place later it is called gatherings. So are Arundhati and saba for OLI. I suppose many of us do not even read their whole article but just overread. Knowing that what is in it and most of the times we are right. But we get a vast platform to comment on their ideology, and biased preachings, to share our thoughts and have comments on them what we do we discuss ourselves amongst us and this we do seriously. So they deserve bashing for their main products and praise for their byproducts.
Good Article. Shows the other side of the coin of capitalism.
@Santosh
""But which of us sinners was going to cast the first stone? Not me"" Exactly. She is too enamoured by the comforts of life to actually live her philosophy. Which is why she should be taken that less seriously.
Santosh from Columbus, United States : Dont you see the stupidity of Ms.Roy in that statement ? Tata is not forcing her to buy their various products. Obviously she sees some value in Tata products and chooses to pay money for them. This is how the markets work. If I have something to sell and you see some value in it, you pay me money and get my product in exchange, and as a result both of us are better off. But if you think I make poor, faulty products, that my products are far too expensive, or even that I am a bad person by character - you can choose not buy from me and buy from my competitors, who in a free economy will be many. No point in calling me "Hitler" and behaving as though you are mutilating yourself just by the sheer act of buying my products - buy from somebody else. Simple.
Capitalism gives you that choice. Or would you rather have socialism, where the government decides who gets to sell what, and thus you can have one or maybe two brands of tooth paste to choose from rather than 20 or 30 ?
Zafar Saheb from Sydney : You seem to equate bribe givers with bribe takers, as tough both have the same kind of power. Do you have any evidence to prove that Ambani's house is in violation of any laws ? Bring out the evidence then. That will make a hero out of anybody who does that and takes on the Ambanis. So far, the accusations are about Mukesh Bhai's poor astheitic sense, that is all.
Regarding bribing : Every single person, myself included, who has to get a building plan sanctioned in India has to pay a bribe. Indeed, Mukesh Bhai may well have been one of the few people has not been asked to pay bribes because of his celebrity nature, if anything.
The problem in India is that there are too many laws and legal hurdles, very little transparency, a lot is left to the discretion of government and bureaucracy, which gives too much power to petty bureacrats. This is a direct consequence of socialism in which power is taken away from the individual and given to the governing authority.
People like Arundhati Roy talk of "corporate power" as though it is a disease, but the truth is, the only real power in India is government power and the only people with real power in India are the politicians holding various positions, their agents, and the multitude of bureacrats, high and mighty as well as petty, from IAS officers to traffic constables - all of who are very rich people, and powerful in their own right, having the power of life and death over other non-sarkari job holding Indians.
If people want to talk about how bad and how evil capitalism is, let us first have capitalism in the first place in India. It is a fallacy to say India has capitalism. We have never had it. We have some private companies which are doing well mainly because of the entrepreneurial genius of some Indians - which has given jobs to millions of people. But not capitalism. All we have had is a government and bureacracy which controls and monopolises resources and and decides arbitrarily who gets what, as per its own discretion. This is entrenched socialism, not capitalism.
Those who are spewing venom against Arundhati Roy, probably did not this paragraph in article.
"But which of us sinners was going to cast the first stone? Not me, who lives off royalties from corporate publishing houses. We all watch Tata Sky, we surf the net with Tata Photon, we ride in Tata taxis, we stay in Tata Hotels, we sip our Tata tea in Tata bone china and stir it with teaspoons made of Tata Steel. We buy Tata books in Tata bookshops. Hum Tata ka namak khate hain. We’re under siege."
Ms Roy is doing dirty hit job for congress by blaming Anna for taking Ford Foundation's money. She just critize every one and every thing but never offer solution. She don't have solutions. But this latest article is to wean away people to coming Anna's protest.
Its simple , she will critize congress for what middle class loves and to prove she is anti congress, and then she slowly want to disparage Anna or Kejriwal.
By taking Ford's money, doesn't change fact that congress or our ruling class is corrupt to core and we have every right to raise our voice against corruption. If tommorow Kejriwal or Kiran bedi come to power and behave like congress or Bjp, people will change them too.
Sadly Ms Roy is as much puppet of ruling class as mr. Mehta or Burkha Dutt.
Usually people pay money to buy magazines or access websites to read articles. After reading the latest article in Outlook by Arundhati Roy, I am willing to pay her not to write anymore. Just think - if each middle-class Indian who has benefitted from the economic reforms contributes 10 paise to this worthy cause, it wouldn't cost each of us very much and you wouldn't keep running into this stuff every time you logged in to check out the cricket scores or election results.
This is cry (or croak) bubbling out of a scarecrow of a strawman fearing her unstoppable descent into irrelevance and ludacrity. In the days to come as SuzieQ unleashes her next few 100 pages of garbage, many will read her and refute her writings into a worthless pulp. But before that a few things, from here and there.
The JD Rockefellers and Carnegie Mellons were not the TATAs of yesterday. The TATAs were the TATAs of yesterday, and by the 2nd decade of the 20th century had already established a name for themselves for their charitable work. Neither history nor honesty is Suzie's strong suit!
But I am thrilled Suzie is throwing a fit. None of her objects of patronisation, not dalits not Mandela, not the rural folk or the tribals (whom she calls indigenous people) are interested in her hectoring and charlatanry. Everyone of them is taking their own way out. Which is why Suzie is singing Kolaveri!
Goodnight harridan. If all else fails your jihadi pals in the Kashmir Valley (Geelani) and your jihadi pals in Islamabad (for whom you shill while they are ethnically cleansing Balochistan of the Baloch) will reward you well. Unfortunately the world at large has no use for mountebanks. Your time is long over. Confine yourself to your fancy pad in Jor Bagh and IIC!
The whole piece sounds like a communist propaganda item from a mid-70s "Soviet Land" magazine!! Seriously, what is she talking about? Communism has been discredited and has proven to be a false and deadly ideology over the years. Countries after countries from Europe to Asia to Latin America tried this deadly ideology and FAILED- FAILED BIG TIME. Communism only managed to make the people poor and killed them in millions.
Meanwhile "capitalism" or "free market economy" or whatever you call it has succeeded in countries after countries in creating wealthy educated stable societies. It is just a matter of choosing red or white. At the turn of this century many countries chose red- Russia, China, North Korea, East Germany, Vietnam, Cambodia, Cuba, Poland, Mongolia etc- After 50 years we all know what happened (or happening) to these countries. Millions dead of hunger and "Class war", freedom suppressed, and dictators -and their sons- thrived!!! Some countries- USA, UK, Norway, Australia, South Korea, Japan, etc chose white- look where they are now- all stable & successful nations.
Now, our lady wants us -hapless Indians- to choose Red!!! Is she out of her mind? Seriously!!
If India still has 700 million poor, and if our streets are filthy & full of terrorists even after 60 years of independence the reason is not 1991 reforms or capitalism. The reason is our corrupt, vote bank loving, politicians and an ultra-liberal constitution founded by hopeless romantic secularists like Nehru. I believe (contrary to popular belief) our constitution and current federal structure and current model of democracy failed India. Such a constitution and democracy will work in a Norway or Finland where the general population is educated and enlightened. An average Norwegian will never vote for a rapist or a thug- but an average Indian will (check out our MPs in Parliament) That's because an average Indian tend to be semi-literate and poor, his only concern will be finding food for his hungry children (not economic/ foreign policies or secularism) hence he will vote for anyone who gives (or promise) him 100 rupees and a colour TV-even if the offer comes from a thief. Hence we see Mulayams & Raja Bhayyas coming back to power (and I am sure DMK will be back in power in 4 years).
None of the poor nations in the world became developed because of liberal democracy (South Korea, Singapore and Taiwan all were ruled by market friendly non democratic nationalist governments- they became liberal democracies ONLY AFTER they have become wealthy and became educated). I think India should follow the same model.
@ Raghav Hegde
[These guys have done nothing to me. If Mukesh wants to build a 2 billion dollar house, (a fact which distresses Ms.Roy so much) what goes of me ?]
Do you know how many laws were bent, twisted and just plain ignored in order to put up a building that size (and with nine helicopter pads no less) in the middle of a residential part of Bombay? How do you think that happened? It was a larger version of the roal level bribery that you described as affecting more ordinary people.
Who benefited? Ambani, and the Govt officials who took the bribe.
Who paid? Ambani's neighbours, who lost their sunlight, lost their evening darkness, lost their view of the sea, have to deal with hugely increased road traffic, who have to deal with helicopters landing and taking off in the middle of the night, the list goes on and on.
Just like in the case you gave, the police gain, but the people who lose are ordinary drivers who are either have money extorted for no reason, or who have to stay on the road with drunken dangerous louts driving next to them who also benefitted because they have have kept their licenses by bribing the police.
It's a single system of corruption - you cannot object to one and say that the other part is okay. jmho.
Fine Ms.Roy. Now, having bashed out Corporates, Capitalists, Economists, Government, Media, NGOs, Computers, Thinks-tanks, Databases, Bill Gates, Nandan Nilekani and et al, can you explain us how your going to save the poor from poverty. As long as magazines like Outlook patronage ur irrational, over-emotive, illogical crabs you might pose as a demigod and can attain media attention. But, your none otherthan an intellectual fraud and remember, if not for the "The Booker Winner" tag, India would have banished you to hell by now.
Irreverent,
>> When people are on a life-long mission of finding ugliness...
This from the a character so ugly that he once actually suggested "permissible genocide"!
>> Not really. You can ignore her
Very true. I haven't read an article by her in a very long time. Once or twice, did make an effort; but the senseless verbal diarrhea soon made me realize that my time was better spent on more useful activities, like watching grass grow or paint dry.
Capitalism has its faults and they are not small. It is important for writers to attack the social crimes of their time. But you have to do it with talent and intelligence and integrity and that Roy lacks miserably.
She denounces Hazaare with a sure instinct: she knows that if the HIndu middle class has enough sense of survival to follow a man like that in curbing the suicidal corruption in India, then India as Hindu democracy has a chance.
Corruption in the West was attacked too, during its era of industrialisation, and it was done not by flaming revolutionaries who repudiated the whole social and economic order but by the middle class intellectuals and journalists and conserhvative politicians.
Why should India be different?
>> "Let me add, Antilla is one of the ugliest buildings I have ever seen." - Anwaar
When people are on a life-long mission of finding ugliness, they will find ugliness everywhere, and in everything, except the mirror. Jokers like you, Teesta and Arundhati belong to the same breed!!
Let me add, Antilla is one of the ugliest buildings I have ever seen.
Capitalism is an easy target when capitalism is down in the dumps. But Arundhati's cudgels have, as usual, a ring of truth to them. Her friendship with Chomsky is having visible effects. She sounds more like Chomsky in this article then in any of her recent articles.
" Now, we have to undergo the pains of listening to her lousy cribs!!"
Not really. You can ignore her.
the comments. wow. who says the indian education system is not working? it's working exactly the way it was made to.
So, Arundhati is back after being kicked out for her 'Occupy Wall Street' dramatics? Now, we have to undergo the pains of listening to her lousy cribs!!
When moaners ( whether communists or femiists ) write in the media, it is essential for the editors to present the OPPOSITE veriosn of the story too.
In this case, capitalism has a case, in that it rewards the hard ( not hardly ) workers and risk-takers and leaders of society.
IF Arndhati has a specific grouse against CORRUPT capitalists ( like the Ambanis ), she must state the reason too.
As for the women tortured with 'stones up the vagina', why dont these feminists realise that males are tortured too - cases of genital violence are even ritualistic!
Why do the moaners pick and choose what they are angry against ( and then present no alternative? )
I believed [ not blindly] what Roy wrote is correct but she did not suggest solution for this tragedy.Night fall she return to her cave.I ask simple question who is real culprit of this tragic drama?System or personality.?Suppose we eliminated all heroes of this tragic drama can problem solved?New personality came on stage.Then only solution is we must change the most evil capitalism.Which new system we can replace.instead of capitalism?Communism out of date.Plato`s regime of philosopher?From where we can borrow philosopher?Who will give grantee of their honesty and capabilities to run the government?I think both system are not useful .Now I am exhausted please those who read Roy`s essay suggest new solution
Capitalism, like democracy, is the worst possible system, except for all the alternatives.
As always, earn money by complaining but present no alternatives. No one can deny the problems caused by capitalism and its blind application in an even playing field. But where are the alternatives. It’s just like democracy. There is no better alternative.
Has she talked to Russians, Chinese or others who have experienced communism? Why doesn’t she write an article on the failure of alternatives to capitalism? What about the millions who died in China in name of communism? What was the situation of formerly communist bloc in Europe?
May be it is time for her to distinguish between Capitalism as an economic policy and crony capitalism / corruption. And lastly, capitalism does not replace the duty of the state to provide for its less privileged citizens. Therefore, the Indian middle class supports Anna Hazare etc. The socialist policies of the government need money and transparency to be implemented successfully. Capitalism usually generates that money and laws like Lokpal would hopefully bring the transparency.
You are a nihilist par excellence. Now that you have entered 50s please look around and try to see some bright things happening everyday in many corners of this country. Your acerbic lamentations state the obvious but do not suggest practical solutions to our million problems.
It seems Outlook thinks there is a shortage of intelligent people to write in a country of more than a billion.. How long shud we suffer this stupid lady?? This lady knows only to scream and not even to put it sensibly. Please stop pushing such creatures to us, just because we buy your magazine..If you really want someone to write 'different', some of us may do it better..do you want to try it? Well, lets try. After all, this lady is just a stupid experiment..
Now , now Arundhati Roy chill it out. Its not that bad. O. K . yes he built the Antila. Taka chhe , taste nathi. So why do you go over board ? If the Antila is your grouse, is the Taj Mahal on offer ? He will buy it . That quits , doesn't it ? Don't you lady complicate simple matters. You better tell us where is that promised second fiction.
@ Suraj,
<Now here is a (short) list of problems in this country and under is a list of comments that say "a vomit of problems without any solutions", "another cry from arundhati" etc etc. Well, if you doubt the credibility of Roy, then go and found out for yourself if she is a trustworthy person. And if yes, go and think about how you can contribute (in the tiniest way possible) to solve (or at least bring about a tiny difference) to the problem. Its a shame to complain that complaining is not enough!>
Behind evey problems, lies and opportunity for improvement. So goes the thinking of the really brave and innovative people. There are plenty of examples of such people in the country who have demonstrated it in beautiful ways through their innovative thinking, dedication and hard work. For example, the farmers of Magarpatta, workers of Kanan Devan Hills Plantations Company Pvt Ltd (http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?267494), Arvind Eye Hospital, Sri Mahila Griha Udyog and yes the work done in Ralegan Sidhhi by Anna Hazare (even if you don't agree with some part of it, afterall there is scope for improvement in everything).
Has Aruandhati done anything of this sort?? She has merely cried about problems and openly supported the most distructive ideology of the Maoists as panacea. You can judge her credibitliy / trusworthiness yourself.
What we can do in our tiniest ways to contribute towards addressing these problems?? As a first, condemn the nauceating writings (vomit of problems) by this useless intellectual and ask Outlook to give more space to the positive and inspiring stories like the one mentioned above. Second, learn creative thinking, innovation and problem solving methods (there are plenty of them like TRIZ or Theory of Inventive Problem Solving). Make community groups for solution oriented thinking and stop idolising idiots like Arundhati. For me, the unsung heroes mentioned above are more credible than this lady who controversially got an international award instituted by Booker Group plc, (the United Kingdom's largest food wholesale operator) - very much a capitalist entity, which she hates. She also accepted an award from Lannan Foundation which was set up by J. Patrick Lannan, Sr., entrepreneur and financier - a CAPITALIST in block capitals!! So much for her credibility!!!
Suraj - what is the solution ? Do your job, whatever it is and obey the laws of the land. That is the only solution. Of course there is always the option of pointing at those who are more successful and richer than you are and shouting at the top of your voice, "OFF WITH THEIR HEADS !!" .... I know the second option sounds comical, but that really desribes best the raison d'être of Ms.Roy and her gang of leftists, communists, anarchists, revolutionaries and other do-gooders at large.
G.Natarajan - Mukesh Ambani does not ask me for a bribe at traffic junctions for no reason at all. Ratan Tata does does not ask me for a bribe at the local corporation for getting my housing plan sanctioned. Narayan Murthy does not ask me for a bribe to give me my driving license. I am sure these guys and other business people of their ilk, are very greedy and arrogant - I have not had the occasion to personally meet any of them - but since you and your heroine Ms.Roy say they are arrogant, greedy etc. etc. I will believe you and bow down to your better judgement.
Its just that, I am but an ordinary Indian. These guys have done nothing to me. If Mukesh wants to build a 2 billion dollar house, (a fact which distresses Ms.Roy so much) what goes of me ? He is not among those who I have to bribe a couple of hundred every other day to get things done... and what goes of you ?
Now here is a (short) list of problems in this country and under is a list of comments that say "a vomit of problems without any solutions", "another cry from arundhati" etc etc. Well, if you doubt the credibility of Roy, then go and found out for yourself if she is a trustworthy person. And if yes, go and think about how you can contribute (in the tiniest way possible) to solve (or at least bring about a tiny difference) to the problem. Its a shame to complain that complaining is not enough!
G.Natarajan - Mukesh Ambani does not ask me for a bribe at traffic junctions for no reason at all. Ratan Tata does does not ask me for a bribe at the local corporation for getting my housing plan sanctioned. Narayan Murthy does not ask me for a bribe to give me my driving license. I am sure these guys and other business people of their ilk, are very greedy and arrogant - I have had the occasion to persoanally meet any of them - but since you and your heroine Ms.Roy say they are arrogant, greedy etc. etc. I will believe you anf bow down to your better judgement.
“Arundhati’s article makes me recall a beautiful couplet of Waseem Barelvi Saab which describes the irony in two lines:-
Banenge Oonchey Makaanon Mein Baith Kar Naqshey, Toh Apne Hissey Mein Mitti Ka Ghar Na Aayega.”
All the talk about how India's greedy and arrogant businessmen, in cahoots with the government, are undermining every institution in this country is unfortunately, very true. Never mind even if it comes from someone with the crediblity of Arundhati Roy.
In other words, the lady dreams of the day she can direct the poverty stricken multitudes at Mukesh Ambani, Ratan Tata and Narayan Murthy and say : "OFF WITH THEIR HEADS !!!"
Why is this woman so bitter ? Guess it really is a case of hitting your middle age and finding out that nobody loves you or cares for you. Hence there is a lot of angst. What better way to give vent to one's frustration than to lash our at poor Mukesh bhai and his pathetic astheitic sense and daydream of a revolution by the proletariat in which the rich and successful who she hates with such passion will get tortured, decapitated and hanged, and thereby giving the lady uncontrollable spasms of ecstatic joy which otherwise only a man can provide her with.
<Marx said, “What the bourgeoisie therefore produces, above all, are its own grave-diggers. Its fall and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable.”>
It can also be reversed equally to say "What the communism therefore produce, above all, are its own grave-diggers. It's fall and the victory of the capitalism are equally inevitable".
Examples of communist grave diggers, USSR (which is a history), current day China (which has embraced capitalism though retaining authotarian rule of communism), communists in West Bengal, and Pol Pot.
As for victory of capitalism is concerned, how about considering countries like Sweden, Norway, etc. which are at the top in the Human Development Index rankings? How about considering Bhutan with its unique approach towards Gross Happiness Index??
Ms Arundhati, please stop crying and trying to tout communism as the panacea. It is a failed ideology all over the world. Only the morons like you are burying your heads in the sand and expect others to call them intellectuals !!
As usual a long verbal diarrhea from the cry baby without any solutions. Her only intellectual prowes is to criticise one and all to prove everyone is nacked in the bathhouse (Hammam mein sab nange!).
For God's sake why she doesn't cut it short and openly say that Saloth Sar (better known as Pol Pot) is her ideal and the ideal solution for India (and other countries around the world) is to build an "agrarian communist utopia" for which only a few millions of people (far left intellectuals) are required and as for the others, as Pol Pot put it, "To keep you is no benefit, to destroy you is no loss". China will definitely support Ms Arundhati as it did support Mr. Saloth Sar (better known as Pol Pot).
Come on lady stop beating around the bush. Be direct and say it openly and clearly!! It will save everyone's time!!!
There’s a lot of money in bulshitting, and a few Booker Prizes too.
ArunDhati Roy - It is very hard to change one's ideology, howsoever stupid it may be. That is the case with you. Nobody can change your illogical, stupid ideology. Let me say that you have not an iota of problem solving, but you have a plethora of ostructionism.
I find that you do not see wood from the trees, howsoever intelligence you might claim to have.
Most of the problems that you describe, and are in India, are byproduct of the Indian Culture and Indian Character.
You give an example of Ambanis. We Indians, me included, want to give everything on a plate to our childrens; who in turn do not learn the value of money through hard work. Warren Buffet said, the inheritance should not depend upon the womb you come from. He is right. We Indians do not believe in it. For us money is not means to an end but be all.
Next Indians in India do not have the concept of "problem solving", and you included. Either you want to go to the temple/mosque/church/gurdwara for the problem to be solved, or you sweep the problem under the carpet saying either it will solve itself or somebody else will solve.
Indians in India, and you included, are never constructive but always obstructive and have an attitude of confrontation.
Lastly part of the Indian character is: Never admit your mistake.
Why Indians in the West are far more successful that in India! I have discovered that we are second to none but are hampered by vicious people like you.