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Newsgroups: alt.hindu
Path: kumar
From: kumar@caddac1.uwaterloo.ca (M. Jagadesh Kumar)
Subject: Restructuring India's Economy: The Swadesh Way (3/4)
Message-ID: <CnAMnn.1Iv@watserv1.uwaterloo.ca>
Sender: news@watserv1.uwaterloo.ca
Organization: University of Waterloo
Date: Sat, 26 Mar 1994 22:33:22 GMT
Restructuring India's Economy: The Swadeshi Way (part 3/4)
----------------------------------------------------------
Recently the U.S. Trade Representative Ms. Carla Hills called
us thieves. We have pocketed the insult. Because we have no other
go; because we are a debtor country.
Many say that these multinational companies will give us the
latest technology; they will also be providing employment to our
people. But the Hathi Committee which was instituted for studying
the impact of multinational drug and pharmaceutical companies ob-
served, "Rarely are new and novel technologies permitted to flow
either free or on payment. Most technologies that flow from
parent foreign companies to Indian subsidiaries or partners are
well established over the last 15 to 20 years and would as well
have been imported into the country without taking recourse to
equity participation".
So new technology is not coming in. Similarly employment is
also not generated. The latest case is of Pepsi-cola which as-
sured jobs for 50,000. So far it has provided Jobs for only 489
persons. They said their products would be exported. But now they
are providing only for domestic consumption.
They have now entered into the fast food area which we do not
at all need. Because We have superfast foods in our dishes like
Idly, Dosa and Uppuma. These multinational companies are entering
this area because only in this area will they be able to earn
huge profits. They will try to displace all local companies with
the help of money power they possess.
One thing is certain. These multinational companies have
created a market ideology. In this ideology the people are de-
fined as poor and backward. They have created culturally induced
poverty in the minds of people. Advertisements make us feel, we
are backward and poor - a situation engineered by these so
called "market forces" only to distribute their own products.
What is the way out?
Our distinctive approach
First of all, we will have to decide what type of life pat-
tern do we want. There is the Western pattern. In this Western
pattern there are variants: communism and capitalism. The Western
pattern was developed on the basic postulates of i) struggle for
existence, ii) survival of the fittest, iii) exploitation of na-
ture and iv) individual right.
On these postulates has capitalism developed. Adam Smith and
Keynes are considered to be the prophets of capitalism. Adam
Smith has said, "Don't try to do any good. Let good come out as
the by - product of selfishness". Keynes said, "For another 100
years let us persuade ourselves and others to believe that good
is evil and evil is good. Because evil is effective, good is not.
Let greed and avarice be our Gods for a little while longer, be-
cause only with the help of them we shall be able to cross the
tunnel of poverty and see light". One can very well imagine what
kind of men these systems can create.
They have been able to create a highly acquisitive and
exploitative society. Not only that. It has ultimately des-
troyed all life values, the family system and even human rela-
tions. In the U.S, which is the most affluent country of the
world, the "other side of the picture" is simply horrible. No
love lost between the parents and the children. Everybody
thinks that they have to bother only about their own generation.
"I don't have to bother about my older generation or the
coming generation" This is termed Homocentrism, i.e., thinking
for one's own generation.
As a reaction to this, the communist system came. It overcen-
tralised everything. While capitalism gave complete freedon to
the individuals the communist system took away all these freedoms
and brought in a highly totalitarian society.
This experiment has failed today. So we have to have our own
approach.
The Western approach believes in struggle for existence. We
say there is no struggle in this universe because the same Ulti-
mate Reality everywhere.
[To be concluded]
--
(As a part of VIGIL's eleventh anniversary celebrations,
Sri K. S. Sudershan, a senior All India leader of RSS delivered
the above lecture at Madras. Sri Nikhil Chakravarthy, an eminent
journalist delivered the Presidential address)
--
