Three persons met in a conclave at the ‘swimming city’ in the Pacific to deliberate on the affairs of our world. They assembled in this ship. They were advertised in the media as the three flowers out to herald a new spring all around. One was with the highest Business Management doctorate from the world’s most prestigious university; the second was an economist flaunting gaudy academic distinctions; and the third had a distinguished career as a financier reigning with his wizardry the world of finance. Each claimed to be in hand and glove with the government which pretended in the public domain to work as the parens patriae for the ordinary mortals. People somehow believed that their government was an institution, set up through elections, and was, therefore, surely faithful to people as was Penelope to her husband! So the modern versions of Medicis and Sir Basil Zaharoffs were there on that swimming ship assembled to forge how best to exploit the ‘great beast’, as common ‘people’ had appeared to Alexander Hamilton then, and as they appear to the leaders of the present-day of the Economic Globalization.
They thought of three Indias. One India, called ‘India Incorporated’, of the nouveau riche, the high net worth individuals, the most successful looters, the most successful crooks, the MNCs and creatures of the similar stuff. Mammon is their guide and Lucre is their love. They need a country on this planet because some stellar world is still to be discovered or explored. They feel that all others beyond their circle are mere commodities to be turned into the grist of the mill of their greed. They feel the world exists for them. Not to say of a government, even God exists to promote their welfare. The Second and the third Indias exist in the spheres away from the first, separated by the thickest smog ever seen. These two constitute Bharat, itself vivisected into two realms, one working for the first India as their workers, lobbyists, advertisers and cheerleaders. Some of these have before them inviting carrots for which any donkey is accustomed to bray, and move towards. The Third India is the Bharat of ordinary mortals whose destiny makes them either to become the instruments to run the market, or to become raw materials for creation of new products, or to become what the lawyers say res commercium. Most of them, about 80% of the 90% of Bharat can be just dispensed with by devising protocols to turn them to profits, which is the sovereign goal of the majestic Market. The conclave on the swimming ship unanimously decided that the best solution was to turn them into the ‘beast of burden’, or better still, into an animal farm for harvesting human organs etc. so long such resources could last. They has refused to learn the wisdom which the poet ‘Dinkar’ so felicitously express in his epic Kurukshetra
जो कुछ न्यस्त प्रकृति में है
वह मनुज मात्र का धन है,
धर्मराज, उसके कण कण का
अधिकारी जन जन है.
[Whatever is the endowment of nature is the property of all. O Dharmaraj, every being is entitled to all the resources in nature.]
Justifying their ideas they drew on the wisdom of J.B. Priestley who discovered three Englands in his English Journey (1934). He discovered three Englands (A.J.P.Taylor, English History 1914-1945 p. 301): (i) the traditional England rich with wealth; (ii) the “bleak England of harsh industrial towns,” and (iii) the “England of dole”, a subdivision of England No. 2.” But the delight of the experts in the conclave found no bounds, when a professor from a prestigious Business School getting salary in lakhs and lakhs pointed out that there existed precedents even in ‘the best of all times’. Even Benjamin Disraeli, who worked to make Victoria the Empress of India in the 19th century, had witnessed two Englands:
“Two nations; between whom there is no intercourse and no sympathy; who are as ignorant of each other’s habits, thoughts and feelings, as if they were dwellers in different zones, or inhabitants of different planets; who are formed by a different breeding, are fed by a different food, are ordered by different manners, are not governed by the same laws…the Rich and the Poor.” ( Nehru, Glimpses of World History 403)
Shiva Kant Jha 