No, not quite.
Forbes is the authentic voice of the corporate world. Big Business, not America or Europe, rules humankind. Big Media is the voice of Big Business. It is the only window open to people for information. It shapes their thinking. It can market almost anything to ram it down the throats of people at large.
Last week, a men’s weekly polled a new young Indian actress as the sexiest in the world. Omigosh! In the whole wide world? Without hurting her feelings, that’s pretty sweeping, isn’t it cutie pie?
But let’s focus on India. Will India emulate China? Corporate power calls the shots in India. Corporate power calls the shots in China. Olympics 2008 dazzled the world. It was a mega creation. Like the pyramids by the Pharaohs, the coliseum by the Romans, or the autobahns by the Nazis.
The Chinese, like the Japanese and the Koreans, are amazing, disciplined people. All credit to them. But eighty per cent of China’s industry is owned by foreigners. Almost a hundred per cent technology that built China is foreign, a great deal from America. So let’s not kid ourselves. Big Business is committed to no one nation. The world is its oyster. It is committed to profit and power from wherever the world provides it with these.
So, if corporate power wants to present India as an emerging superpower, that’s great. Let’s not ignore reality, though. According to the latest World Bank estimates, regardless of its richest billionaires and most powerful women, India has one-third of the world’s poor. Forty-two per cent of India’s population is below the international poverty line. After economic reforms, the rich grew richer than during the previous decade. But the percentage of poor people increased.
So, what are our two most powerful women politicians doing? Or do they understand too little as they read from prepared scripts? About their power: one of them, according to responsible sources, is alleged to have received money from the KGB, stashed in foreign banks; the other has CBI cases pending against her over disproportionate assets. Under continuing threat of exposure, how much power can they exercise?
This isn’t opaque conspiracy. It’s transparent reality.
(Puri can be reached at rajinderpuri2000@yahoo.com)
