The Vision

You might also like

Download as pdf or txt
Download as pdf or txt
You are on page 1of 14

Searching Alternative

The Vision Of A New World

Gian Singh

Searching Alternative

Publisher:
TEHRIK Publications
383/6 Fatehpuri Colony
Rohtak-124001 (Haryana)
India
+919416358044. +919729961518

Circulation is the best value paid

Searching Alternative

II

The Vision

The Blind Spots


Pursuing a feasible dream needs to be translated in
reality, especially one which serves future of humanity. That is the current agenda worth working for by all
those who love living a worthy present that is free
from squalor and indignity. A bright dream to fulfil.
Let us now start probing our issue with a question:
How to look at things; read the problems to their real
meanings and possible solution? My fresh student
does not answer. He is good at theorems but does not
understand philosophy that provides insight to prob
things in their varied dimensions. He is satisfied to
move around under illusion of a sponsored vision
knowingly. Social sciences do not attract him any
more, much less the philosophy as its good part. At
present he selects his subjects that are saleable in the
market and prides in specialisation without bothering
whom it benefits best to turn personality of a man
sectional and torn, while getting some crumbs to
his lap too in exchange. These go to satisfy him with
a notion of self negation in a world of competition
where unemployment reigns. He finds no use for
philosophy; where is the time to deliberate or ontest
on right and wrong, he argues.
(5)

The Vision

Searching Alternative

But, where is the need of destructive competition and


where has gone his time to analyse? Do you think the
world, or India is short of resources enough for
employment to all? He shrinks his shoulders in despair.
Clearly he has not given thought to such aspects of the
problem. Whom his theorems help, I ask. Again, he
remains silent. OK. This is one aspect of the problem.
Lack of interest in philosophy that made him blind to
realities apart, how he fell out with his parents who
did their best to finance his studies so far going out of
their means with faith in the best of his career, my
new student is not ready to open. What made him sick
and alone in the midst of a good package, he is dumb.
His sickly face frightens with sleepy eyes and negative
tendencies to hide after a short live-in-relationship
broke; the charmed beauty was his colleague in the
same city of fortunes. He is from cyber city of all
modern gadgets to entertain. But the fleeting fortunes
do not smile on him any longer. Desperation brought
him for counselling lessons. Sad, indeed. This is another
side of the story that unfolds.
What is wrong with usual marriage? The estranged girl
student flares up in rage to my question. Her answer
stuns; why a girl has to be a machine for producing
children, she counters. Do you love your mother? Yes,
very much, more than my father and she loves me too.
The claim comes proudly, from a girl, who fell victim
to modern education with feminist flavour. Was your
mother a machine to produce you? She angrily keeps
(6)

The Vision

Searching Alternative

silent. That was her mothers choice; perhaps the


answer from a modern girl would be, without realising
that the choice of an individual emanates from a given
milieu. Universities and colleges in the times of her
mother had not taken up the job of creating trained
cogs out of students for the market to serve corporate
capital engaged in earning maximum profit through high
tech industries at the debilitating cost of human society,
my girl student did not realise. The state did it for her
at the call of capital by changing the whole gamut of
educational system, as Indian government formalised
the change in the object of education under its New
Education Policy 1986, if told my both students are
likely to react and brand me a political enthusiast
in a moment spontaneously as if intuitively.
There is a reason: bereft of analytical capacity due to
lack of interest in philosophy of life as their guide, the
young generation stands conditioned to a given
philosophy of rulers, mostly without their knowing it,
through universities and colleges, duly hammered by
constant blare from an embedded media at command.
Media-men/women too, conditioned themselves as
products of the same education, work as convinced
enthusiasts to uphold values that go to serve corporate
capital and not the society they came from, like
any John Perkins of Confessions of an Economic Hitman.
So, who changed the previous milieu of a mother to
new set of the defiant daughter and why, without their
knowing it or conscious consent? For both students this
(7)

The Vision

Searching Alternative

explanation is philosophy, which does not interest them.


If it is explained that the question relates more to the
ups and downs in your own lives that affected their
mental faculties, both students may feign fatal
ignorance. This is another disturbing part of the issue.
Without clear vision, we then go by others without
examining motives/parameters involved and do not
try to know generally our surroundings we live in. This
makes us half blind to take things granted, while
remaining more concerned about specialised knowledge
good enough for saleability for mere survival or some
addition to riches of dubious value, while at the same
time moving with a sense of half-backed superiority
over our own specialisation. We do not remain realists,
but chasers of fleeting dreams/ mirages. This leaves a
big gap in life and ultimately turns society poorer and
the man a dud. The deficit ultimately tells upon both
individuals and the community we live in telling upon
the health of society. Who has made the situation slide
back in terms of overall social necessity? Again, there
is a long silence from both of them. Perhaps prudence
of the self dictates it!
Money begets money; and more money makes one mad
for it in a strange world where dog bites dog. My both
students take courage and express confidence that the
state regulation is a good remedy here to keep the
market going, keeping the dog at bay. When asked to
explain the rapid economic growth and rising graph of
crimes direct in proportion despite having a highly
(8)

The Vision

Searching Alternative

centralised state structure during the last seven decades


of independence in India, the boy keeps mum, while
the girl seems ignorant. Both lack courage to analyse
their half-baked conviction and court tragedy of sorts.
There is another incident recently that throws ample
light on what we are faced to at present. A family
groomed its daughter well and she, like my students
above, dreamed high perhaps unaware of rules of the
game in a world of competitive market so let loose a
few decades earlier by adherents of globalisation as a
creed. Exercising her new consciousness of freedom,
she somehow reached Mumbai to try her luck in the
murky but glamorous field of films. Despite her physical
assets, she could not rise above the level of a smalltime actress and faced unemployment bouts off and
on. In the meantime, she was lucky to have an airman
buddy loving her who was soon posted outside.
However, she was desperate to be on the high screen
and tried to groom a film-journalist to help her in the
bid. At one point, her lover could smell presence of
someone with her while talking on phone at dead of
night and took a flight to reach the rented flat. In a
rage over betrayal of faith in love, the airman killed
both of them in bed, without him realising the bigger
tragedy involved in an episode behind a curtain that
drew a girl to a murky market. He could not reach the
real enemy to avenge, hidden in a much darker corner.
Hopeful on the weight of her assets, she tried to play
game of the market without understanding its impli(9)

The Vision

Searching Alternative

cations, particularly in her case that overflows with


supply, and where bigger fish swallows smaller one for
survival. The grim tragedy occurred where an ignorant
girl fell victim to the allurement of money and fame let
loose by a larger group of dubious forces for people
like her duly tutored of freedoms and rights of an
individual to choose in a wild web of the powerful.
This was not the case of a newly enlightened girl of
her fictitious right to choose her partner at will; it was
a case of finding her way in the blind alley of market
forces that took an innocent young life extinguished
ultimately in a useless pursuit of low value gamble. My
girl student sympathised with the female victim, while
the boy could not defend the journalist who was out to
exercise his position for sex as an individual liberated
by market economy, neither the airman who valued
faith in love rather than indulgence in available sex.
The boy surmised that Mumbai is a different world
with paradoxes. OK.
Another incident nearby from an area which prides in
its rich cultural heritage of a community feeling: on
18th September, 2009 the world woke up to a shocking
news of a frail girl student in University nearby who
killed her full family of children, young and old one by
one at dead of night throttling them in induced sleep
by poison. She was removing them from her path to
remain free with her neighbourhood buddy in the
village and went to enjoy life in midst of dead bodies
lying around. Her dotting father was away to earn
for her studies, girl remained busy learning lessons to
be bold on sex, sexuality and freedom of choice.
(10)

The Vision

Searching Alternative

My students stood stupefied for a while on grim details


of happenings so close. Both at face value stood perplexed, but took it a case of individual degeneration.
They are as ignorant of a philosophy working behind
market as they are unaware about philosophy of life.
They are ignorant on another aspect: the situation
working behind these happenings is not a natural
outcome of infantile choice of individuals alone. It is
the net result of a definite cultural mould being pursued
laboriously of late by those who command governance
and worked upon citizens, young and old.
Total education system is designed on purpose to make
one poorer while another zone richer hinged on market
compulsions. And market in turn is controlled by the
requirements of the finance/corporate capital and its
owners. Alluring film-land to an aspiring girl and
university campus for a budding student of modernity
is doing the assigned job well. The recent spurt in sex
crime is not without reason when family, community
and its web of relationships are made irrelevant. In the
s c h e m e o f t h i n g s t h es e a re c o m m o n m e n /
women who are commandeered to follow the laid
rules ordained by a patriarchal state establishment.
The sad story of all the unfortunate victims, however,
underlines a tragedy under estimation of these modern
cities of fortune. They fell for it and suffered. The family of Mumbai girl had not visualised perhaps what is
in store for their beloved daughter who had set her
foot in a wild world of market driven beasts.
(11)

The Vision

Searching Alternative

The victim girl and the status drunk journalist were


propelled to chase wild goose, while old-fashioned
airman misunderstood this world of freedom in sex for
love while the lovers in village were seeking bliss in
freedom for self with no mind for others. My half-ignorant students are no exception to a game of the
rich; who for the rest are intelligent enough for jobs
assigned to them under market mechanism.
Another big stakeholder in this big business of half
ignorance is the state machinery that is designed to
control /enslave mass of followers in perpetuity to
serve masters of capital. The half ignorant students do
not understand this law of opposite interests and have
no incentive left to understand the particular philosophy
behind the market that is working constantly for this
deluge, while serving ultimately the forces inimical to
social good. It signifies though the level of success the
establishment has achieved in fulfilling a design. It can
not be a fault with half ignorant boy or girl on way to
school; clouded vision due to deeply sponsored haze.
Later in life, one will have less chance to know the
bluff behind living with theorem centric mind to guide.
Still, the first question remains. The answer starts with
the decision where one remains on side of the fence
that separates opposite interests consisting of traders
in darkness and the camp that relishes truth instead.
Those who do business in darkness and ignorance are
mortally afraid of those who cherish light and wisdom
to dominate. If one decides, in ignorance or by
(12)

The Vision

Searching Alternative

deliberate choice, to be part of the ugly business and


joins the termite brigade out to crush society from
within and enjoys destruction of homogeneity in
community, it is a choice of self negation.
The society, which includes respective community and
the family where one learnt the art of taking first
step ahead, goes bust to the advantage of corporate
capital. If one decides to remain with kith and kin in
turmoil around, the forces of reason go gaga. In that
case, one can see problems from a point of view that
helps to determine the interests of your fellow beings.
The other is a view point of the ruling establishment.
The grey area between two is very slippery at core.
One has to be careful to wade through muddled waters for safe landing. One has to be made. The
state is never neutral in a divided society of opposite
interests or honest to some social contract theory. It
has already turned into an armed instrument in the
hands of capital to coerce the ruled. All fine trappings
to hide that reality have fallen asunder.
My students are very hopeful on democracy, but have
little clarity what it signifies in the real world. They
are conscious on their right to adult suffrage and feel
free to exercise it for answerable governance. However,
both are pathetically patchy about its story of past 70
years in independent India on the point. When told to
correct on deficiency in knowledge, they agreed to
listen a bit on democracy for the present.

(13)

The Vision

Searching Alternative

Concept of Democracy
Democracy is the outcome initially of equality, liberty,
fraternity slogan first in French bourgeois revolution.
It rests on the concept of individuality at its core to
facilitate emergence of trade, commerce and industry
independent of agricultural pursuits in community life,
perceiving individual as the founding block of a nation
to work as its market, effectively replacing family and
its neighbourhood community. Later, democracy was
invested with supremacy of people in governance when
another slogan was coined; government of the people,
by the people, for the people based on representative
character instead of participative democracy on selfgovernance mode. This later version gave rise to
emergence of political parties as an instrument of
representative democracy to operate effectively.
Representative democracy was again asked to firm up
to constitutional form. Philosophically, the term
constitution refers to the idea that a government should
be legally limited in its powers and that its authority or
legitimacy depends on it observing such limitations.
Constitution or the state reversely cannot limit the
society to which it is answerable.
By now, both the state and its system of representative
democracy, as institutions of governance, have come
to be associated with a philosophy which has the
individual as its corner-stone, debunking family and its
community as worthless in matters governance; and
not without reason. The basic unit of governance in
(14)

The Vision

Searching Alternative

Indian Constitution is the individual in place of family/


community. This core feature of conflict between the
two permeates their respective field of operation.
K. Marx once in May, 1842 underlined the lack of control
of the electorate over their representatives in
democracy once they are elected. He had argued that
freedom of press will make it possible for exercising
necessary control from below without which there could
be no true representation. That was in nineteenth
century. In present phase of corporate capital, media is
another capital based industry and operates in
subordination to its owners. The interests of capital
and media stand now fully converged leaving no scope
to serve the interests of people on basics.
The scope of independent/neutral media has gone
wrong. It is merely a carrier of sponsored news/views,
more or less to the detriment of peoples interest.
It is no longer a free vehicle of pressure in hands of
people categorised as the ruled. It is a drastic change
in situation since then. There remains no ground for
formulation from Marx to operate any longer as check
on unruly representatives in favour of people.
To get a clear vision another facet recently added to
its philosophic kitty by rulers need be taken note. In
pursuance of New Education Policy-1986 Indian
government shifted emphasis on human development
as resource. Man is not labour power alone; he/
she is a unique product of nature with extraordinary
characteristics of a living organism capable to shape
(15)

Searching Alternative

The Vision

social values. It is not open to anyone to turn him/


her into a resource for any other man to use for
sectional purposes and covert these characteristics.
Human resource is a distinct category of input where
question of dignity is vanished and where individual
worker remains merely a cog to produce. If ministry
of human resource development (HRD) includes
education, it merely underlines a fact that role of
education is reduced to suit demands of corporate
capital; turning interests of corporate capital coterminus with social/national interests, saying in a way
that corporate capital is India, India is corporate capital.
And the rulers did it surreptitiously and unilaterally without any popular mandate. Later, through a
crafted media blitz they built public opinion for it, as
perusual tactics of rulers in the game of deception.
Here media played a nasty game; it utilised vehicle of
expression in its hands for a wrong purpose and to
advance a sectional interest. The media is another
handy but powerful tool in their hands to shape opinion,
in addition to what education performs. The rulers know
it. They are out to make both totally subservient to its
dictates. The masters meanwhile have sharpened their
skills in manipulating news/views to their advantage
and keep their business of ignorance bloom.
It is evident that to remain alert and free from
prejudice, one has to be equipped with a visionary
approach having a scientific bent of mind. The clear
vision of a conflict free society alone can be a guide to
wade through the dark alleys.
(16)

You might also like