That 'Feel Good' Feeling

Remember SatyendraDubey? 

He was the engineer working on the golden quadrilateral projectwho had sent a letter to the Prime Minister complaining about massive corruption in the 30,000 crore project.He was shot and killed after his identity was casually disclosed by the PMO despite his entreatiesthat such disclosure would endanger his life. 

Remember Manish Mishra? 

He was the Prime Minister's nephew whowas thrown out of a running train with several friends when they objected to the harassment of some girls inthe train. 

Remember Sarita and Mahesh? 

They were two of our finest young activists working in the villagesnear Gaya in Bihar on water conservation and for restoration of the lands of Dalits which had been grabbed bylocal landlords. They were recently shot dead while returning home after a meeting with the villagers. 

Theseare merely some well-publicised but stray examples which illustrate the law and order situation in the entirecountry.

Several hundreds of people belonging to the minority community were butchered in a gruesomemanner in broad daylight in Gujarat two years ago with the full complicity of the police and the government.Not one of the persons involved in the brutal killings, which included police officials andministers, have been brought to book. At the same time, thousands of the minoritycommunity whose houses were burnt and belongings looted are still unable to return to their homes because ofthe continuing terror.

Over a thousand of the more than 20 lakh citizens who have no shelter and sleep out in the open (according to the government census), died in the recent cold wave in the country. More than a thousandpeople had died in Andhra Pradesh alone in the heat wave this summer, also mostly people without shelter.Thousands of farmers died of starvation and several hundred even committed suicide this summer, being unableto feed themselves and their families. Most of these deaths went unreported by the mainstream English-languagemedia where cuts in the fees of IIMs, cuts in customs duty on cars and computers and even gossip about modelsand film-stars make headline news.

We are told that Telgi and his gang cheated the public exchequer of at least 3,000 croreby his forged stamp papers while all in the establishment slept or connived with the scam. The Tehelka tapesgraphically showed (despite the Honourable Justice Phukan’s clean chit to our Honourable Defence Minister)how easily penetrable and thoroughly corruptible the Defence establishment has become. 

The non-performingassets (a euphemism for money stolen) of public financial institutions has come to exceed one lakh crores. Andeven this is likely to be a gross underestimate. 

In the UTI scam alone the public lost more than 10,000 crores. 

More than 10,000 crores of irregular loans (without proper appraisal) were given away last year by HUDCO, oneof our smaller public financial institutions. Out of this, more than 5000 crores was handed over to 50different corporations in one-day through a board meeting in which only three part-time directors werepresent! 

It is hardly surprising that Transparency International should continue to rank India as amongst themost corrupt countries in the world.

Public sector companies having assets of tens of thousands of crores have been sold off foramounts less than even their free reserves (which is like cash in the bank), as in the case of VSNL and IPCL.In the guise of privatization, huge chunks of public assets such as oilfields, gas fields, mine reserves, andeven forests and water have been and are being transferred to private corporate and often foreign interests. 

Our public debt has more than doubled during the last five years and stands at more than 16 lakh crores, morethan 65% of our GDP and much of it owed to foreign institutions. Much of our record foreign exchange reservesare on account of short-term and speculative investments in our stockmarkets, money markets and securitiesmarkets. 

All this is hot money which can disappear as quickly as it came as was seen in the Southeast Asiancrisis in 1997. Most of this speculative investment is being routed through post box companies in Mauritiusbecause the government has instructed our income tax department to give them a tax holiday. Feeling good aboutsuch foreign exchange reserves in these circumstances is not unlike the feeling of one who is on a splurgeafter pawning off his assets and borrowing from a rapacious moneylender.

Unemployment is at an all-time high, with 27 million (7.32%of the workforce) jobless. Theincrease of unemployment is greatest in rural areas where the rate of increase of employment is only a thirdof the growth of the labour force. 

At least 24% or 47 million children continue to be deprived of elementaryeducation as government spending on primary education continues to decline as a percentage of GDP. In the 10thplan, the planning commission has allocated only .15% of the GDP for elementary education as against the .47%stated to be required for universal elementary education. 

Whatever be the claims of the government regardingpoverty reduction, the fact is that between 1997-98 and 2003-04, the per capita consumption of foodgrains hasdeclined from 174 kg per annum to 151 kg per annum. 

Thus while the government cites the 8% growth raterecorded in the last quarter and the booming sensex (where stock market manipulators routinely create virtualmoney which eventually disappears just as surely) as evidence of India shining, hundreds of millions cannoteven buy two square meals a day. And clearly this number has grown in the last 5 years as is evident from thedecline in foodgrain consumption.

Yet this government has issued advertisements worth hundreds of crores in the last month toconvince people that India is shining and that the common man in this country is feeling good. It hopes to winnext elections, which have been prematurely declared, on this so-called "feel-good factor". 

Of coursethese hundreds of crores, spent on this advertising blitz to make us feel good, have come from the publicexchequer, which means your pockets and mine. It is like taking starving men to a laughing club to make themfeel good while their last penny is squeezed out of their pockets.

Welcome to the political world of the whiz kids of the brave new world. The world of mediamanipulators and spin masters. A world where the advertising agency becomes the cutting-edge of a party'spolitical campaign. Welcome to the world of the Mahajans and the Jaitleys, masters of spin (the art ofdeflecting attention from the real issue) and media management.  No matter how inconvenient or horrendous thefacts might be, they can be trusted to give it the right spin and manage the media (through ad agencies orotherwise) so that the government comes out shining white. 

In this world, every fact or fiction can be sold.You just need the right spin or a compliant media or a good ad agency. We all know how George Bush was able tosell the war on Iraq and convince the American people of the lie that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of massdestruction which could obliterate America within minutes. He even convinced them that Saddam was behind theAl Qaeda (though he hated Islamic fundamentalists even more than Bush did). He accomplished this by repeatinghis lies at every opportunity which were dutifully peddled by a compliant media which is owned by the samecorporate interests represented by Bush. 

It was Goebbles who first used propaganda to such devastating effect. Bush, Blair, theJaitleys and the Mahajans of today are the political heirs of Goebbles, except that their power has beengreatly amplified by the reach and concentration of the mass media (into the hand of a few giganticcorporations) and the professionalism of the ad agencies. We seem to be approaching an era when politicalparties and governments would be run by advertising agents. The political education of such "leaders"would take place not by observing society, the people and their problems, nor even by studying history,political science, sociology or economics, but in the schools of the ad agencies which teach the art ofdeception and propaganda.

Prashant Bhushan is a public interest lawyer in the Supreme Court.