Subhas Chandra Pattanayak
POSCO has declared to fight against the people of Orissa to proceed with its project only a couple of days after it had aired its intension to quit the State if the government fails to extinguish the ongoing mass opposition. And, Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik has simultaneously declared that his government will not tolerate peoples opposition to POSCO any longer.
If our democracy would have been real, POSCO could never have dared to fight against our people on our soil with our own government at its beck and call.
But our democracy has changed into plutocracy and plutocracy is always managed by commission agents. So commission agents in power have helped and have been helping POSCO against our people. And as long as commission agents are in power, in the State or/and in the Center, there is no dearth of official support for POSCO or for any of its kind.
Plutocracy does not replace democracy through political machinations alone. It first injects a false sense of superiority into the minds of intellectuals in a democracy, thereby creating a wedge between the common people and the educated so that the common people are bereft of educated support in determining their path or deciding their affairs.
It sabotages the public sector into avoidable but chronic losses and uses public administration to curb job-scopes in public offices thereby pushing more people into an environment of lack of ideal employment and simultaneously organizes campus recruitments offering lucrative pay packages to certain students and helps them acquire foreign postings so that from foreign soil they can look like shining stars enough to overawe toiling people in their homeland to make them acquiesce in the culture of industry in private sector.
It advocates for and ushers in a climate where whosoever accumulates massive wealth notwithstanding in howsoever clumsy a manner becomes worth national importance and reference.
It enhances a cultural decadence whereby criminals are worshiped like heroes or heroines if they are cine-stars, sports-stars, yoga-teachers, scripture-chanters, sermonizers or political right-wingers.
When the Constitution of the country emphasizes on secularism in order to maintain unity and solidarity of the people, plutocracy engages its agents to interpret secularism as a mere mechanism of tolerance to superstitions and thereby obstructs sociological study of scriptures and religions and relegates the nation into obscurantism.
Its agents, in order only to help revivalism, prostrate before a Satyasai or a Samkaracharya even while holding office as a Prime Minister or a President, oblivious of how thereby the august offices they carry on their body at that time, would be prostrating before a person not recognized by the Constitution.
Willfully using such matrices, Plutocracy estimates as to how far the toiling majority of a country tolerates anti-people activities of the persons placed in advantageous positions. And eventually takes over democracy.
In India this has happened.
So, we are hearing what POSCO wants us to hear. We are seeing, how a government of our soil is eager to assist POSCO in its fight against our people. We are seeing, how the blue colored jackals of our society are raising war cries against our people who are fighting against POSCO.
To these jackals, POSCO is more important than our people. Like prostitutes use the best of their techniques to satisfy contract masters, these jackals are displaying the best of their acumen in seeking satisfaction of POSCO.
If what the Pricewaterhouse Coopers says in its 4th Biennial Global Economic Crime Survey is trustworthy, (and it is), 66% of the companies operating in India are in their business because they have succeeded in vanquishing their competitors by bribing the authorities. 34% of the companies have said that they have lost an opportunity to a competitor, who may have paid a bribe whereas 38% of the companies have admitted that they were asked to pay a bribe. Top politicians and bureaucrats in decision taking positions have asked for and fetched bribes in India.
Naveen Patnaik, who has declared to go against our people to help POSCO, is a politician in power. And in the survey report on economic crime quoted supra, politicians in power are, as a category, noted for demanding and accepting bribe in order to help industrial companies. The role of Subas Pani and the gang of three IAS officers before Naveen was roped into POSCO network also attracts the needle of suspicion in view of the cited survey.
So, before proceeding to use State force to suppress peoples opposition to POSCO, it will be better for Naveen Patnaik to convince the people of Orissa that he has not taken any bribe from this foreign firm.
For this, he may start with saying how he came in contact with POSCO. He may simultaneously say, who first prevailed upon him to support POSCO. And from there we may proceed to see if Orissa functionaries have been bribed by POSCO and to its resultant ramifications.
Before clearing the cloud of suspected bribe, which, following publication of the economic crime survey, has now shrouded over politico-administrative sky of Orissa, Naveen should refrain from proceeding further in POSCO matter.
People of Orissa will never tolerate that a gang of IAS officers and a political autocrat donning a brand of democracy would dupe them in the name of industrialization and destroy their citizen-rights in order to help a foreign firm like POSCO, if they are not convinced that the foreign firm has not bribed them like what has been exposed in the cited survey.
There is a brilliant note on POSCO agenda in Radical Notes. it should be noted by everybody interested in the subject.
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