The Wall Street protest that is spreading across the world is against a system that goes against the grain of democracy. The protest is against a system that has turned exploitative. A system that is making the rich richer and poor poorer. A system that has benefited less than five percent of people while billions live on margins. These are facts that have been documented for decades now. Till recently the richer countries were cushioning these exploitation, and so the impact of these skewed system was least felt. It was pushed to poorer countries across the world. As many societies slipped into exploitation the economists called them as ‘cheap labour’. Despite the fact that they put in the same work, a worker located in developed country stand to gain many times more. With globalisation ‘cheap labour’ became natural option for ‘cost cutting’ and ‘profit’. Therefore jobs were shifted to poorer societies and therein lay the seeds of the problem. The richer society who till now were enjoying the fruits of exploitative system start to lose. Their advantage was turning into disadvantage, while the sweat shop in poorer countries went in the ruse of creating jobs. If at international level globalisation is unleashing imperialism then at national level (in countries like India) it is consolidating feudalism. Capitalism that channelizes ideas, entrepreneurship and enterprise is how it should be, and this is what it was meant to be. Capitalism that values labour, hardwork, innovation...Alas Capitalism now thrives on manipulation and exploitation. It’s about ‘seizing the moment’ (thanks Crude Woman for the insight), it’s about nepotism and shady dealings that seems to define 'financial system'. At the core Capitalism is reduced to gambling (also referred to as ‘speculation’), greed of few who play with people’s hard earned money. And quite startlingly they don’t pay for nothing. The losses are transferred to people, and leaders around the world scramble to save the system (also called ‘deficit’). The Stock Exchange across the world epitomises these manipulations. It is in this world of manipulation and exploitation that crony capitalism thrives. Poorer societies where feudal norms are intact these system severely undermine any attempts on democracy. Capitalism has only added fillup to feudalist norms in the garb of development. It’s reduced to a sham. Exaggerated importance on Stock Exchange are fuelled by these very exploitative system to have a manipulative space, indeed they hold (blatant in many case) a threat to elected government and are used for forcing favourable policy decisions.
In India where the ‘fundamentals’ seems to be always ‘strong’, the crony capitalism has reached new high (India definitely is a case study on crony capitalism). With technology induced transparency more corruption cases are in open (a clear indication on how much loot must have happened in last many decades) but what ‘honourable’ Minister is concerned is as to how it will affect business!! Thankfully for us ordinary mortals Supreme Court ticked him off to restore some sanity. These are zombies of crony capitalism who don’t even know what they are talking about. Crony capitalism has the habit of creating self sustaining logic. In India serious issues that affect millions of people are only alibi for self serving people to create system for exploitation. It is in this context, it is not surprising that some crony capitalism driven media in India has sought (sought is the wrong word, manipulation is the apt word but I cannot keep using the same word again and again) to see Wall Street protest as agitation against price rise (incorrigibly cute).
These protests in the richer societies are significant; it is an indication of how things have reached its limit. And change could have come from West only. Countries like India have elite who are mostly direct beneficiary of crony capitalism –an extension of feudalism, they are co-opted. They have even co-opted democratic norms. This blogger sincerely hopes that these protests lead to some major systemic changes. Few people shouldn’t be allowed to play around with the lives of billions of people.
