In the midst of the current financial imbroglio, there appears to be a gloating attitude that we have not suffered much because we have not reformed totally and that our regulatory framework is ‘strong’. The real truth is that we have instituted a framework where our regulatory regime works best on the platform of fear and harassment.
Further, our cultural makeup is such that we have an inbuilt inability to punish because the wrongdoers have the backing of those who regulate and have to punish. Our reluctance to reform is because it brings on even more responsibility — both for the market and the regulators.
A controlled market has its own rent-earning ability. Lastly we have a confused hybrid sense of what we are and what we want to do — we say one thing and do the other. The Constitution proudly proclaims that we are a socialistic republic. But the number of billionaires and millionaires is exceeded only by, of all countries, Russia — until recently the so-called motherland of socialism.
We call our stock market a ‘domestic’ market but look who is controlling it. We want jobs for everybody but nothing is done to control the number of “everybodies” who add to the population because that adds to votes. People can be hired but not sacked — and this one-way traffic is to ensure the fragile structure of democracy.
To sustain this façade of democracy, poverty and illiteracy are the other two pillars, which are patiently suffered because from birth you are brainwashed with karma — that you are enduring what you earned in your last life and will benefit in your next birth if you behave well in this one. All violent forms of peoples’ movement against the establishment, which is also in a sense a mafia of its own, comprise those who have ceased to believe in such fraudulent beliefs.
T R Ramaswami, on email
