Of Millionaires and Millions:
Did you know?
That India is producing millionaires at a record rate?
That in 2003, 11,000 Indians became millionaires?
That the richest five in India are richer (worth $ 24.8 billion) than the richest five in Britain (24.2 billion)?
BUT
That India accounts for one quarter of the world’s poorest?
That 300 million in India subsist on less than $ 1 a day?
These are some of the facts in the cover story of a recent issue of Time magazine, titled A Tale of Two Indias. The first set of facts, bolstered with approving stories of how urban consumption has shot up by 16% in 2003, accounting for three quarters of India’s total growth, and gushing statements by Simi Garewal about how “Suddenly, India is a candy store!” corresponds to the ‘India Shining’ hype peddled by the BJP. While the latter set of facts point to the reality that punctured that balloon. What is interesting is how Time chooses to explain these facts.
The Time story begins with descriptions of the lifestyles of two billionaires, and right at the beginning, it repeats a hackneyed old Orientalist stereotype, saying that the likes of Godrej and Mallya are “light-years from that old India of saris, slums and snake charmers.” India, according to Time, is certainly shining; the only problem is that the silver lining has a dark cloud – all those millions of poor people who are spoilsports in that joyous party that is India today.
According to Time, the problem is one that “closed economies” like India, “which stressed equality of misery”, face when they go global in search of growth. Clearly, Time believes that unashamed flouting of obscene inequality is far superior to the so-called “equality of misery”! But the “unrest” provoked by such inequalities can, according to Time, be headed off if only the rich “spread their wealth”. How? Are they supposed to surrender their black assets to fund unemployment doles or food for the starving? Oh no! The model is Parmeshwar Godrej who has “roped in” film and sports stars for an ‘AIDS-awareness programme’! And guess who is the greatest charity donor to ‘good causes’ in India – none other than Bill Gates!
The article upholds Subroto Roy as a model of how “wealth can benefit more than just the wealthy.” This king of dubious earnings is held up as a fairytale rags to riches story, whose jingoism is upheld as an instance of how “money can buttress Indian traditions”! And he is a noble benefactor because he generates employment. What the article forgets to mention that Roy does not run a single productive industry. For every job that a Roy creates, hundreds of jobs are lost each year, with the crises in the basic sectors of our economy and the sell-out, for a pittance, of profitable PSUs.
And here we come to Time’s basic contention; an economist is quoted who says, “it’s only by opening up, by growing the economy and, yes, by producing the odd billionaire who creates thousands of jobs, that you can really pull people up.” India is compared to Vijay Mallya’s stud horse who needs to be allowed to “run free…do exactly what he wants…then he’ll show you what he can do”. This prescription comes as an answer to the World Bank’s India director who says we need to “bridge the gap between the two Indias”.
Conveniently forgotten is the fact that “freedom” as defined by the World Bank and the millionaire Mallyas of the world, (i.e. that the only path for a third world economy is to allow the “animal spirits” of private investors and global capital “free play” [India’s Post-Independence Economic Strategy, www.macroscan.com]) only spells being shackled to the dominant nations, as far as the poor millions go. ‘Opening up’ of the Indian economy has meant IMF-WB-dictated cuts in social sector spending, depriving the poor of basic education and health. The WTO regime left Indian farmers at the mercy of the world price crash, while imposing curtailment of subsidies and rural development expenditure, and ending low cost credit; the first world nations however continued to subsidise their farmers heavily. The result was a huge agrarian crisis and mass suicides of farmers in India. Large-scale rural unemployment was another fallout, resulting in starvation in the midst of plenty.
Time may want liberalization in India to “run free”, but India’s millions are determined to rein in the runaway horse of imperialist globalisation that is riding rough-shod over their lives and aspirations.