The Gripe against Greed

What started as an encampment by a bunch of disgruntled individuals on September 17 in the financial district of New York City, has spread like wildfire across several nations within a span of 30 days. The “Occupy Wall Street” protest itself was inspired by the Arab Spring and the Spanish acampadas. An idea instigated by the Candadian activist group, Adbusters, it was initially dismissed by the media as a “circus” with a lack of clear message of what the hullabaloo was all about.

Indeed, I too am quite puzzled by this spontaneous spread of “Occupy” protests all over the US and internationally. Who are these people ? What are they protesting for ? What are their demands ? What will happen next ?

Are you as intrigued as I am ? Then let’s find out what we know so far about this ongoing, non-violent, “Tahrir Square” type demonstrations.

Who’s whining ?

To put it very crudely, it all seems like a rag-tag spectacle to me. At the time of writing this, protests were held from North and South America to Asia, Africa and Europe, with over 1,500 events in 82 countries, as part of a global day of action. Occupiers of different ages, races, walks of life, and political beliefs have joined the movement. The mix has grown quickly to include students, elderly people, families with children, construction workers on their lunch breaks, unemployed executives, war veterans, moms, and many others. So, right now anyone to everyone, from desperados to anarchists to socialists to liberals – anyone who wants to moan is jumping into the bandwagon.

Perhaps the most significant message of the protests is the slogan “We are the 99%” – which alludes to the recent trend in the US of increase in the share of annual total income going to the top 1% of income earners. (Of late, the top 1% of the US population accounted for nearly 25% of the total annual income).It is therefore, at its core, the squeezed out middle-class and poor who are leading the cry against an unjust and unfair system, which fosters economic polarization and skews the distribution of wealth towards the super-rich.

What are their demands ?

The most perplexing part of these “leaderless” protests is the amorphous, unclear nature of demands. The participants are mainly protesting social and economic inequality, corporate greed, as well as the power and influence of corporations, particularly from the financial service sector, and lobbyists over government. But, believe it or not, there is NO official list of demands !

No leader, no clear demands and no particular endpoint. This is certainly a new way of launching a revolution. All one can make out from this bizarre show is that disparate people are coming together with an egalitarian vision of a more inclusive progress.

Amongst the participants at Zuccotti Park (now called ‘Liberty Square’) in lower Manhattan where it all started, there is a collective revulsion against Wall Street’s oozing corruption, unrestrained political power and crony capitalism. The outrage stems from the fact that while the pay cheques of the wizards of Wall Street are burgeoning, ordinary workers continue to suffer from high unemployment and falling real wages. This is despite the fall from grace of the hallowed financial whizkids during the crisis of 2008 starting with the collapse of Lehman Brothers.

There is a list of proposed "Demands for Congress" proposed by the website (occupywallstreet.org) which does not entirely represent the Occupy Wall Street General Assembly. People can vote on these demands and also add to the demands. The laundry list so far includes demands such as ‘Return to prudent banking Act’, prosecution of Wall Street ‘criminals’, passing of Buffet rule of taxation, revamp of Securities & Exchange Commission, and limiting influence of lobbyists.

As the montage of demands is being weaved, perhaps there will be different phases and possibly fragmentation of agendas will take place before crystal-clear demands emanate.

What next ?

Though the protests have snowballed into a global phenomena in a fairly short period of time, it is still at a very nascent stage to fathom as to what shape this new animal will take. The current wave does have some left-leanings and shades of socialism, although it is not the Ayn Rand type anti-capitalism per se.

The frustration pouring out into the streets is a direct result of too many people out of work and a very uneven distribution of wealth. It is a true internet-generation protest, very unlike a traditional campaign, where raising more questions than answers, debating internal inconsistencies and taking time to articulate their problem seems to be the new normal. And that is really confounding the defenders of Wall Street, politicians and media persons alike.

Is the “Occupy Wall Street” just a phase or the dawn of a new era ? If the movement is able to build consensus on a coherent set of demands, will we see a change in the way Corporate America conducts itself in the future ? Will there be a more appropriate fiscal operating system on which the economy is run, correcting somewhat the disconnect between the rich and the poor ? Will then the other nations of the world emulate America’s transformed policies ?

Nobody can tell as to where this strange and bewildering movement will lead to.

All I want to say is this - we should not dismiss this fledgling movement, rather we should nurture the democratic awakening which wants to shake a deeply flawed economic system. With so much at stake, we cannot afford the luxury of cynicism.

Remember, the American Revolution started with a single event of dumping 342 chests of tea at the Boston Tea Party. Closer home, the Indian Rebellion of 1857 started with the mutiny of just one foot soldier, Mangal Pandey. Small incidents, big aftermath.





Endpiece : The wisdom of man never yet contrived a system of taxation that would operate with perfect equality – Andrew Jackson

The United States of India

The conundrum called India today is a miscegenation of far-flung, diverse lands and people sprinkled across 3.2 million sq. km. of area. A federation of 28 states and 7 Union Territories stand united as a country called ‘Bharat Ganarajya’.

Or do they ?

The state of Jammu & Kashmir in the North, which is the only state to enjoy special autonomy under Article 370, has long been rumbling with secessionist calls of ‘Azadi’ in its picturesque Kashmir Valley. The state of Manipur in the far North-East is nearly forgotten, and in the simmering battle between the Kukis and Nagas, the Government is reduced to a mute spectator. The other North-Eastern states of Assam, Mizoram, Arunachal Pradesh and Nagaland, though not currently raging with trouble, have had violent movements in the past for their own ‘independent lands’. Most of Tripura is infested with Maoist rebels and is ungovernable. By and large, the entire North-East belt is alienated from the mainstream Indian polity and receives only step-motherly treatment from the Central Government.

West Bengal has had a long-lasting agitation for ‘Gorkhaland’ in its northern hill territory. The scourge of militant Naxalites spreads from parts of West Bengal to Chhatisgarh to Jharkhand and then southwards to Orissa and Andhra Pradesh. This insurgency has become progressively more lethal, claiming thousands of innocent lives and destroying hundreds of crores worth of public property. It seems that this country is perpetually at war with itself, and engulfed in internecine battles which show no signs of abating.

The newbie states of Uttarakhand, Jharkhand and Chattisgarh were formed after peaceful and not-so peaceful mass movements, all in a bid to wrest power for a better represented government. More recently, the movement for a separate state of Telangana, to be carved out of Andhra Pradesh, has reached a feverish pitch. Who knows in the future there could be cries for Harit Pradesh in UP, or Vidarbha in Maharashtra. There is no end to this ‘Balkanization’ of the Republic of India and its constituent states.

This is not a picture of a coherent, integrated and united ‘Mera Bharat Mahaan’.

But let’s step back a little in time, to the glorious day, 64 years ago, when India achieved its independence from the British Empire. Just to get a little perspective.

There were as many as 568 princely states in India in 1947, under the suzerainty of the British Imperialists, but ruled by kings with such honorary titles like Raja, Maharaja, Maharana, Nizam and Badshah. Besides these, there were 11 provinces like Bombay, Madras, Bengal and United Provinces, which were directly under the British rule. In addition, there were several colonial conclaves controlled by the French (Pondicherry, Chandernagore) and the Portuguese (Goa, Daman & Diu). So, to begin with, India was never one – on the contrary, it was quite disintegrated, strewn with hundreds of monarchs clinging to their kingdoms, guarding their own vested interests with their parochial mindsets.

The onerous task of stitching and welding together the provinces and princely states fell upon India’s first Dy. Prime Minister and Minister for Home and States, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel. He couldn’t have found a more able assistant in his mission than V.P. Menon, the astute and adept civil servant of the British Raj, who was an advisor to the last three Viceroys of India, including of course Lord Mountbatten.

Patel and Menon launched a remarkable diplomatic endeavor in negotiating with the princes and convincing them to join the new Dominion of India. They backed up their diplomatic efforts by producing treaties that were designed to be attractive to rulers of princely states. So successful was this seemingly impossible task, that between May 1947 and the transfer of power on 15 August 1947, the vast majority of states signed Instruments of Accession to India. Certainly no mean feat by any standards, given the fact that India was always a fragmented realm ruled by kings living in lavish lifestyles, their dynasties claiming the throne through ‘divine rights’.

Of course not everything went smooth. We all know Maharaja Hari Singh announced that Kashmir would remain independent, the Nawab of Junagadh chose to accede to Pakistan and the Nizam of Hyderabad also declared its independence. But when invaders from Pakistan threatened to overrun his palace in Srinagar, Hari Singh quickly signed the Instrument of Accession. Junagadh and Hyderabad were absorbed after swift police and army actions.

And, for the first time ever in history, India was truly weaved to emerge as one vast nation, shedding its monarchical past and tasting democracy in its new avatar.

The integration of India continued for quite a few years after independence. The French enclaves, including Pondicherry ceded to the Republic of India in 1956, but the Portuguese resisted giving up its fiefdoms. In December 1961, the Indian Army marched into Goa to liberate it from its colonial masters and annexed it as a Union Territory of India. Sikkim became the 22nd state of India as late as in 1975.

Back to the present.

Today, this nation, so painstakingly built brick-by-brick to count as a formidable force in the world, is in danger of being mortally weakened by smolders of secessionism. The multi-ethnic fabric of India is being torn apart by insurgents and separatists. Whatever the cause of such rebellions, the regionalism boiling over into acts of extremism and terrorism threaten to break up India once again into pieces. If these fires are allowed to rage on, its black smoke with darken the bright future of a promising nation.

What is to be done to douse these flames and forge together a stronger, fervent and more progressive India ? I will leave that discussion for another time, as this article would otherwise become too stretched.

I am just imagining a day when Kashmir will as peaceful as Punjab is today, when all the North-Eastern states will truly feel that they are a part of India, when the Naxalites will lay down their arms and join the mainstream of politics, when there will be more inclusive development penetrating deep into the rural heartlands, when economic progress will take precedence over petty power-plays and when the heartbeats of 1.2 billion citizens will reverberate as one.

It’s only then that the United States of India will truly realize its full potential and meet its ultimate destiny.




Endpiece : Patriotism is not short, frenzied outbursts of emotion, but the tranquil and steady dedication of a lifetime. - Adlai E. Stevenson