Indian Politics – The meaningless Youthful Propaganda.

Syed Shoaib

 

 

 

May 16, 2009. India’s Election Results are out. UPA swept the majority and is set forth to remake its government for another term.

The Day long news channels ran their repeated assessment of the elections. However one thing to be worth noting was that there was the propaganda that UPA did well to represent the youths in the country, that it did enough efforts to involve youths into the political arena. One of the major consensus which is being propagated through the media is that the big-wig white mustached politicians in India need to be replaced by young enthusiastic Indians. The hoo haa is such that as if this solution is the only and main solution to most of India’s problems.

One doesn’t need to use much of intellect or do deep research in order to understand the truth. The notion propagated in the name of “youthfulness” is chiefly  a foolish contention that easily seems to brainwash people’s mind and divert attention from real time agendas. Today only one of my friend’s called me and wished how good it were if Rahul Gandhi was to be the new Prime Minister, since he was a younger contender than Manmohan Singh (who is believed to be a honest man and is a Harward Economist). It is as if being younger is a passport to being more intelligent and dedicated towards better and effective policy making.

It is wonderful for people to believe there nation being led by young dedicated enthusiastic youths. It serves music to the ears.

However, side by side, it seems not only a political propaganda it can also serve as a boon for making the Indian culture more consumerist. It can very well be a corporate agenda as well. In today’s society youthfulness is also a representation towards being more westernized in the way of thought. Youthfulness has little to do with maturity of intellect, then it must have other realms which it has to do with. And these realms essentially represent the interests of  people who have been involved in creating this system of propaganda. These are the politicians themselves and may be some of the corporate conglomerates who envision this propaganda for their own gains.

However one of the popular notions and a valid one against my contention can be that India strongly needs a change in the system of leadership in order to break free from the chains of corruption and narrow mindedness. However it must be kept in mind by every reasonable individual that the stream of young leaders in India have no weaker records in corruption and crime than the elder ones. In fact the younger ones are in some way or other are simply related to the white haired big wigs.

In a democracy it is fundamentally pressing for people to be heedful and make informed choices rather than falling for delusive practices which tend to manipulate the information on which the people exercise their choices. People’s lethargy in dedicating themselves to making right choices and then the ensuing vulnerability to fall to vicious propagandas (like this one) can create havoc in regard to channeling unlimited goodies towards the privileged who have the privilege of creating these propagandas and manipulating minds and wealth into their favor. Such heedlessness has chiefly been the reason for widespread failure of democracies.

It is the pressing need of time for Indian people to realize the truth and be focused toward more pressing issues (which are nearly uncountable) than the youthfulness of politicians.

One of successive articles, God willing, would focus on the need for being politically heedful in our times and how indispensable a necessity it is, if we are to secure our planet and secure the people and their rights in it.

The Rational Economist with irrational Models…

I remember once I asked one of my teachers, madam Apala Panda, regarding the use of pervasive models we study in economics most of which are based on imaginary world axioms and extended (beyond reasoning) assumptions of rationality of economic agents. It was then the beginning of my third year in economics honors and today whilst I pen this, it is almost the near end of the same year, with one examination paper remaining and due on 20th of May.

Economic models never fetched much of my interest mostly for their distance from reality and incompleteness they represented. When I asked my teacher the use of studying such incomplete models, she replied that these models were here for our understanding of basics of how economic mechanisms take place in society. However it had always been my contention since then and it is: most of macro economic mechanisms are not so complex in their complete sense that students would be required to learn them in years through the means of imaginary world scenarios.

Moreover these models over years have not been used solely for teaching economic fiction to students but it is conspicuous that they have been applied in the real world, they have been accepted as established economic theories and have brought overwhelming failure in regard to their application. For e.g. the case of rational expectations hypothesis; this exaggerated hypothesis which adds the notion of rationality to each economic agent and goes on predicting outcomes ensuing from this rationality has not only been present inside the classrooms but was one of the single most important reasons behind emergence of the present economic Crisis. The policy makers simply believed that individuals (economic agents of course comprise of individuals) are far too rational to let major price bubbles appear, let alone go out of control. One only needs an idiot to take such an assumption, or is there something severely different about the rationality of policy makers and economists?

Models of such vagueness can be found profoundly in the economic arena, both in literature and in practice. It is no doubt that these models can be completed and being directed in their completeness they can be put to successfully achieve well desired goals and objectives, but that is not the case often. Neo Classical and Classical literature in spite of its bizarre assumptions has been in the mainframe of economic practice since decades and has successfully made cases for elusion of government intervention in various ways.

In this theatre of rationally driven economics there is no reason behind carrying out errant and flawed concepts when there errors and flaws have been openly documented over years both in theory and in practice.

Rationality is not best explained by outcomes, but it is explained by intent. It is clear over years that unbridled classical capitalism has not been able to bring stable prosperity to the world, it has driven the world through bubbles, wars, crisis… But what if bringing stability and prosperity has not been one of its intent. As Prof. John Cozy argues in one of his articles,

But what if its intent has never been the promotion of the people’s prosperity? What, if any, result has it attained consistently? Well, it has consistently protected the wealth of the privileged; it has preserved the status quo. The wealthy privileged increase their wealth in good times and in bad. The system works for the privileged just as the market works for stock brokers who make money when prices are rising and when they are falling. If this is capitalism’s intent, and the evidence for it is overwhelming, understanding the Obama administration’s, and the developed world’s, response to the current economic downturn is easy. As the meager apparent wealth that the common people acquired during the better years now disappears, as they lose their jobs and homes, the wealthy institutions and the people who manage them and created the downturn are rewarded and prevented from failing by obligating the common people to someday repaying a growing colossal national debt incurred for the sake of those privileged. None of this makes sense unless capitalism’s intention is to preserve the status quo at the people’s expense.

This goes on explaining the rationality behind myriad irrational and unnecessary axioms of economics. Books are written, laurels are made, awards are given often to some of the most errant texts written. All this is facilitated primarily by a wealthy few in order to sustain their hegemony in the world.

Today we hear a lot about maintaining the strength of financial markets and maintaining the availability of cheap credit in order to reach higher levels of production and consumption. But it is so that businesses should be financed by investment and consumption by earning? What is the need to finance these by debt? One of the columnists at Global Research pens as under:

The answer is really very simple. The wealthy increase their wealth by lending and they do it without even having to use their own money by means of the Ponzi scheme known as fractional reserve banking. And when debtors cannot meet their obligations, their assets are acquired by the wealthy at fire sale prices who then become even wealthier. This is what capitalism does; it does it consistently and spectacularly. It really can have no other purpose. Credit is good only for creditors; debtors always lose.

I would just like to end with few important words from John Cozy:

What is there about this that economists cannot understand? Are they absolutely irrational or complicit? Each must answer for him/herself. But the economic system they advocate is nothing but an irrational tower of Babel that is based on principles derived from simplistic, imaginary situations and assumptions about rationality that are contradicted by hundreds of years of evidence, and is devoted to the worship of Mammon which benefits only the rich. Capitalism has been very successful; it has impeded the improvement of the human condition for two hundred years, and unless it is scrapped, it will continue to do so. No mere change in government can stop it.

It is complicated for a student today to understand these concepts. Specially in our age when even education is commercialized and what aspiring economics students aim for is degrees rather than pure knowledge amidst the realms their rational lives dominated by the motive of self centeredness. What the ongoing academia churns out is more and more economists walking the same deluded lines, sustaining the same unjust and corrupt system, gullible to believing that the self centered economic agents would contribute to the development of this world.

There are countless cases to justify the above points though i don’t think more are needed. What is needed is for people to realize the need for change and escape this virulent brainwashing and be heedful individuals.