DEVELOPMENT OR SUBJUGATION?

Government will have to promote industrialization and mining activities and simultaneously develop the required infrastructure to satisfy and cope with the demands of modernization and economic needs of the people at home and the requiem of international markets. In the present context it has become an imperative because of rapid urbanization and phenomenal surge in rabid consumerism mainly arising out of opening of societies due to information explosion. The heightened pace of the acceleration process is compounded since we have already entered the globalization era under the auspices of the World Trade Organization (WTO) remotely controlled by few of the developed countries.
The avowed aim of these forces is to pursue an exploitative policy by various devious means and to bring the poor developing countries to their knees helpful in creating an unequal world just ripe for them to harvest. In plain terms it is a blueprint for loot under the grab of international legality. The vast untapped natural resources and the mainstay economic backbone of majority of the countries—agriculture is the prime target of the pro-rich countries for reasons not very difficult to find out. Here lies the real potential for reaping huge profits, though sadly at the cost of the defenseless billions of people, who equally own the earth along with rest of the affluent.
Many governments of the Third World countries have gone bust with empty coffers and the inept and corrupt bureaucracy. In the fast lane of ‘external assistance, liberal loan and reform’, very fast these poor countries are moving towards a cage of dependency. It is an attempt to take away their independence through the back doors by the neocolonialists. In India, for example, the (in)famous East India Company and its consanguineal and affinal relatives are already in, to make hay and stir mayhem ready with new text and context.
As a fallout of the slowly unveiling new world order, in order to prepare the grounds for rapid decimation of the developing countries, new exotic and intellectually stimulating development mantras are being doctored and churned out by experts that are blatantly perverse and suffer from any legitimacy or validity.
Through these sick concepts and tools of progress and development, the fragile backbones of the governments in the developing countries are being broken so that they will succumb to the diabolical machinations, paving ways for their entry. They are told to abandon their social responsibilities and to concentrate on creating wealth for domestic and international trade and business interests. They are also further told to facilitate the transfer of the common resources of the people, including the forests, lands and water resources. And that too, as soon as possible and at the lowest rate which simply translates to no rate. What will happen to the uprooted people in the process, no body knows.
While the multinational business, mining and industrial interests are rapidly cornering the natural resources for paltry sum of money and rabid comical obligations, the people who actually won it; continue to suffer. It is a fact that rapid increase in industrial, mining and infrastructural activities has, in recent times, uprooted million of people from their home and hearth and violated the local environment, which may not be possible to repair again. It certainly is a permanent loss for all of us. In this scenario, neither the cash starved governments have bettered their condition nor the people gained in any positive manner. Even as the per capita income of the people of Third World falls sharply, the incidence of poverty, impoverishment and disease is increasing exponentially. In this context, it is required that the countries of the underdeveloped and developed Third World must ponder about their very survival in this new world order. True power remains with the people and not with anyone else. They can win and will win, by acting together.

A TEMPLE AND THE BEWITCHING BEACH

I live near the seashore that touches a small town, full of aberrations and a deformed god, supposed to be the reasons of creation and whatnot, according to the local pundits and the gullible seekers of wealth, health and salvation. The dwarf temple is swarmed by fat rodents and their cronies and the only door remains perpetually closed for the hungry siblings who are accused of witchcraft. At times, I turn into a nincompoop rodent to search for truths inside the temple and later become anemic for years.
The shallow sea near the town I live, is what I like most. At nights, I purposefully sleep late to intently hear the distant hissing euphonies coming from the nearby sea, after the day’s hubbub ceased. The shifting rages which reverberate the ether are so mysterious that I always go limp. As the dog-tired creatures of my town snort hard to habitually ward off their precariousness after adequate supper and sex, I come to realize in the dead of the nights, how vulnerable they are and their gods of every descriptions; including the mythical obese guardian angel, fast asleep nearby. Though, nights after nights, I have been trying to be the self appointed mediator between the sea and the hapless souls, the black magic of the about to be ferocious sea, makes me acutely anesthetic.
The mornings bring fresh summons for me and I habitually run to the shore. I roam the shore for sustenance and assurance for a day, putting my other futures to jeopardy. I find the seashore fascinating, amidst the leisurely congregation of the recuperating tourists and a baby faced sun or a surreal dainty moon that remain the cynosures of the onlookers at the shoreline. These occasional visitors come in all shapes and sizes to eke out fabricated memoirs by turning, crude entertainers on the filthy and partially quicksand, facing the unperturbed sea. They fade away soon, with loads of frivolous luggage; flabbergasted and asphyxiated by the high noon to their erstwhile incarnations via the widest temple road. I often meet them at the local bus stand or railway station, as humble de-motivated mortals, bereft of god consciousness. They take delayed postures to sip adulterated tea from nose picking vendors, with measured thanks on their lips.
On the far ends of my popular beach, the melanin saturated and coal-faced fishermen have set up dingy empires, where they listen to the weather reports and cheap cinema songs from their battery powered radios, round the year, subsisting on out-of-shape women, fishes and vegetable tidbits. Though, the fishermen routinely beat their haughty wives after bouts of booze in a matter fact manner with traditional skills, nevertheless, I find their family relations to be extra cordial and emulative.
The thatched houses on the beach look long rows of compartments, where they cram all together, bypassing incest rules. They cheat on the extra dark nights near the piles of surplus rotten fishes, to be passed on tomorrow as fresh. The wee hours turn frenetic as they compete with each other to reach the wet shore half-naked to cannibalize under the tepid darkness. This is the only time when they refuse to recognize each other. The mass ritual ends in a hurry as the men folk take to the waters mounting on the crapulent dinghies near exasperated. When they return back by the noon with the cache of dead fishes, they themselves look like repenting corpses with forced smiles. They immediately smoke stunted cigarettes and abuse their fate surrounded by eager hawkers. Soon they retreat to their huts to count the secretly kept coffer and turn pale.
The amorous daughters of the fishermen long to tame men from distant lands devoid of love; to get impregnated by the holier-than-thou future husbands. These gentlemen stash genuine dollars and yens inside their undergarments drenched with pheromone fortified perspiration. Eventually, much married daughters of the fishermen village become the deities of the crestfallen beach waiting for the tsunami.
The small and big hotels on the shoreline do hefty unaccounted business facing the deep blue sea that stretches till the meaningless hazy horizon. They try to look exotic, boasting of their heritage and noble ancestries to impress the oxygen starved gullible and pliant yet crooked guests. From nowhere, they descend to infest the murky hotel rooms and the private sliced beach. They derive status from the sea-facing suits and hot massages on the encroached beach sands. They bath, after years, to their perfection and appear to look innocent under the special beach umbrellas. With inflated egos and bland aphrodisiacs the beach werewolves rejoice, to the utter amazement of the bellboys, till they pay up their sins at the cash counter of the hotel. Thereafter they never return back for eons.
The sea beach near my small town is suitable adopted by the lanky bootleggers, athletic holy men, cunning mendicants, sentimental dogs, rowdy crows, slippery racketeers, miserly swindlers, juvenile valetudinarians, cute vagabonds, small time shrewd itinerant merchandisers, extra-smart eunuchs and curious onlookers; who mingle together to conveniently forge an aesthetic crowd on the visible shore, as if they have come to swear by the etiquette of a supposedly serene and tranquil den. It is, however different in the casuarina thickets, nearby.

THE JOY OF REDISCOVERY

As the most dominant species, in terms of visibility and not otherwise, the Homo sapiens have put their footprints on about 60 percent of the surface of the earth. There is no denying of the fact that men (…and of course women) rule the roost, competing against all other species and micro-organisms to its advantage, including nature; of which it is but a tiny and insignificant part. As thinking and reasoning animal, certainly it has the inbuilt potential to dominate the earth by propagating anthropo-centric erroneous ideologies that also includes religion. With this unilinear quest, we have reached a stage now even to colonize other planets and crack the code of human genes and most probably, life itself. Scientific knowledge has made rapid strides in all most all the fields, breaking the barriers on our own narrow terms. It gives us a false sense of win and achievement, though we are in fact stand defeated. Now, there is no limit to discover the laws of nature and to utilize it to solve our problems. But the truth is that we equally go on adding more and more problems to be solved. As if we run for the carrot that hangs on our face!
This is but one side of the reality. Our achievements and gains are just apparent, for the simple reason that in the face of solutions we have created more problems and it seems to multiply. Negating the innate and conscious wisdom of evolution, we have chosen to and are rendering our growth to become stunted and progressively less adaptive. We are divorced and drifting. Psychosomatically, we are falling prey to antithetical forces making ourselves more and more vulnerable. As if we are bracing to preside over our own catastrophes, triggering the avalanche, wittingly and unwittingly. We live in moth eaten social cocoons with split identity crisis and abjectly false prides. It certainly is a case of epistemological breach between us and the other us—nature. It is just plain suicidal, to the least.
The truth is, the contemporaneous victories only make us defeated by the day; yet there is no reason to panic. We can reverse many of the aberrations with simple realizations and small actions. It is just about understanding ourselves and anything or everything that exit beyond us. Is not it that everything has a value not exactly dependent on our definitions? We need to have multidimensional visions, of the present and future. Paradigmatic shifts in our attitude would bring in the desired results. We can then build on our futures on perspectives capable of correcting the now existing abysmal situations. It would make us to survive better as compassionate beings in unison with the ‘others’.
It is imperative that for this, we get ready to return to nature again, of course, without compromising much. We need to accept that science & technology has its limitations and can not be stretched indefinitely for our benefit and comfort. By unleashing the limiting power of science & technology, neither can we subjugate the externalities nor effect progress or development at the societal level. This is much in evidence in the present context, directly or indirectly translating into poverty, inequality, disease, destruction and death. They appear to grow exponentially after years of our efforts for a secure future. These are necessarily man made and a sad reflection of the other side of our, unreal nature. Greed, deceit and selfishness, coupled with all pervasive utilitarian attitudes, like before; would only take us to this plane of emptiness in still greater degrees. It is like going nowhere, collectively.
We can make actual progress in viewing ourselves as a component in the niche of nature and not outside it. While progressing materially, it is also equally important that we are also spiritually enriched. This will end our alienation making us fuller and richer, from within. As we empower ourselves to accept and love others, animate and inanimate beings and things realizing their importance; we shall be equally reaping boundless love and oneness. This will propel us from the present state of our part-realities to the state of bliss, a complete cosmos in harmony. It certainly will be a joy to rediscover ourselves again and to be the divinity.