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September 18, 2001

POVERTY AND HUNGER

 

Poverty and hunger in India is worse than that imaginable in the worst capitalistic societies, that believe in and blatantly allow the practices of unadulterated market forces, and the hidden pulls and invisible pressures of an otherwise free economy!  It is thus that the workers are deprived of all their profits and comforts, wages and food, and the luxury of utilising and or consuming what they produce.  So it is that they remain hungry and in poverty always.  To understand the Roots of Hunger, one has to understand Poverty.

 

Why is Poverty a reality?  How does Poverty become a fact of life amidst us, and amidst apparently plentiful production, massive storages and criminally huge wastages in transportation, storage?  Where do all the large and immense wealth of the Society go?  Who hides them?  How they are all hidden?  Well, they used to be hidden in the past, afraid of the people, afraid of the society, afraid of the thieves, afraid of the police, afraid of the Govts, afraid of the tax-men!  Today no one is afraid of any one.  All the stolen wealth are there to be shown, shining glittering shamelessly.  It is the stolen wealth that finances their gaudy colours, shining clothes, thick tasteless jewelleries, cheaply done big houses, flashy cars, and the money to pay for the petrol and diesel that drive their cars, zoom .....

 

How is that the People are hungry in a Country where the land is fertile and rich with plentyful of regular seasonal monsoon rains, with a potential for producing more than enough food for the population?  Where have all the Natural, forest, water, marine and mineral resources gone?  Who makes use of the bounty of solar energy?  Where goes the huge wind energy? 

 

For an answer, we have to first understand the Process of Development of the Nation.  The entire Process of Development is so closely linked to that of the interests of the elites in the Country!  If the elites interests are taken care of, there could be a Development Project or a Scheme.  Otherwise, no Scheme or Project, however good is even concievable!  The interests of the elites are important.  Who are these elites?  They were all those brahmins, baniyas, kshatriyas and kayasths who were till recently, to be specific just five or six decades ago used to be unemployed and run behind the slightest shade of white skin, hoping it to be the ruling colonial British or French or Portugese.  It is the children of those unemployed good for nothing bloody fellows!  They are those in Politics, Govts, Administration, Police, Foreign Service, Acdemics and Field Units like the Revenue Fellows, Engineers and Doctors!  The requirements needs and aspirations of the poor or the masses is not the requisite factor for any Developmental Programme!

 

How can the elite Development be ensured, when they shy away from work that requires physical efforts and causes stresses and strains?  How then to develop, or evolve a Project or a Scheme for elite development without physical work, and without causing any stresses and strains?  Elites development is still possible only when the People are forced to work as in the past, lured or fooled to work as in the present, and be sucked in to work in the future liberal globalised market where the people will not be allowed both the freedom and time to think!  So, the single common factor in the past present and future is that the People must work, and work the poor, a must!  That is essential and inevitable, not only for their own poor miserable living conditions, but also for producing sufficiently more to facilitate the luxuries of life and the comfortable living conditions of the elites, and also to meet the elites other needs!  So everything that happens in this Copuntry is for the well being of the elites and their development.  The wretched of the earth - the poor and the Dalits must work, toil, and suffer patiently and in silence!  This can only be ensured in a Country where there is no love for work, or respect for the workers.  How can one ensure this?  Simple!  By keeping the Workers Poor Sick and Hungry! 

 

The entire Economy of any Nation depends on the work and production of their Workers!  And hence the health and well-being of their workers!  We all know this!  If the elites do not work, someone else has to do their shares of work also.  That is why the workers work more always and endlessly, while the elites don't work, gossip, chit-chat, go to movies, clubs, theater, music, and if nothing else, for a walk!  They try to digest the indigestible food they had stolen from the workers and eaten for taste, without even feeling hungry!  Hence the need for workers and make them do their work and also more and more work - the elites share, for the elites luxury, greed and for the elites perversions!  Since the workers work and a few others don't, the few cheats who avoid work become the elites! 

 

If the workers are to continue their work, then they should not be allowed to become happy comfortable and self-sufficient by any chance!  Hence they have to be kept poor and suffer shortages!  Therefore it is inevitable that the poor are the workers, and the workers are the poor!  This, the logic of reality, and the basis of poverty and hunger!  All the poor, even though they are poor, because they are workers, are the foundations of the Nation and its economy!  The moment one ceases to be a poor, one will refuse to work.  That is the order of the Indian Society!  In fact the rewards of the economy is such that a worker is paid less, and kept poor deliberately, when compared to his supervisor, who does not work, but supervises the work, or polices the worker working and work!  The superviser does nothing, but plays the role of a middleman between the worker and the elites.  He is basically a worker, or generally hails from the ranks of the worker, but is now an agent of the non-working elites.  He is thus a policeman, or a watch-dog.  This is the root cause of India slowly emerging to be a Police State, and silent Dictatorship under the Cover of Democracy, the most populous Democracy in the World!

 

The moral and incentive is, stop work to earn more, cease to be a worker to grow rich!  And the cultural ethos of the Country is such that, if one is not poor, then there is no need to do any work!  Since there is the need for the elite to ensure that the people work, there is an inescapable need to keep the people poor.  One can keep the people poor, only by by denying them due and adequate wages.  Also there is the need to take away their produce by force, compulsion and lure of a good price, even if it is otherwise much low.  They should be stopped from going to the market and fix or demand their own prices!  And even if a worker goes to market to sell his produce, he should not be allowed to become a trader or a regular businessman, but be kept an helpless seller looking for a some buyer at some price!  In short the worker should not be allowed to have his way, or any say in fixing the prices, or in selling his goods and services!  He should not be allowed to have a fair price, a reasonable income and adequate money!  Otherwise, the worker will no more be poor!  When they are not poor, they will cease to work!  Even if they work, they will not work for the evil elites.  Hence, it is inevitable for the elites that the working people of our Country had to be kept poor for ever!  Thus even the market forces are not to be really allowed in our Country! 

 

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 Adopted from the Telugu Weekly, JANAMITRA, published from Yanam, Union Territory of Pondicherry, located in the midst of the East Godavari District of Andhra Pradesh.

 

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