Condemning India And Flattering The U.S.
By Vidyadhar Date
23 December, 2013
Countercurrents.org
True, Devayani Khobragade, the Indian diplomat, deserves some flak. One can understand the virulent criticism leveled against her by some critics.. But how come some of these worthies are so desperate to give a clean chit to the U.S. when this is totally unwarranted. And some have circulated a video ridiculing Devayani which is in very poor taste. She is shown dancing like a demon, as a sub-human figure. The Americans are shown as good guys in the video.
It is good that the diplomatic row has raised a number of issues which need to be widely debated . The elites in both the countries are anti-labour, anti-poor. This controversy should serve to expose both. In India the media, which is going all out to please and defend the Americans, blacked out a huge demonstration of workers in Delhi on December 12. And this goes on quite systematically. The Indian media has virtually abolished the labour beat in the newspapers . The record of Americans is particularly appalling when it comes to workers. The U.S. is currently in the midst of a turmoil over lack of payment of even subsistence wages to millions of its workers. U.S. president Obama himself has been talking of this for some time but has been able to do little about it.(Guardian 4 December, 2013).
The current crisis in the U.S. should serve as a lesson for its sycophants in India who have always portrayed it as some sort of a paradise though for decades intellectuals in that country have been pointing to the mess that naked capitalism has created there. Yes, the Indian government’s policies deserve the severest criticism from critics in India but when they refuse to condemn the worst atrocities by America and go all out to flatter America , they suffer from a serious deficit of credibility.
Workers in America are living barely above the poverty level. These are the exact words uttered by President Obama. Is it not a shame that the workers of such fancied brand names as Walmart and McDonald, are poorly paid ? Walmart is one of the biggest employers with tens of thousands of employees and this is the brand some of our worthies are so keen to bring to India.
Some of the worthies would do well to read Barbara Ehrenreich’s classic 2001 book Nickel and Dimed in which she has written about her personal experience of working as a Walmart clerk, waiter in a restaurant and hotel maid. She deliberately did these jobs to understand what it means to be an ordinary worker and how difficult, almost impossible it is to survive in that country with hard work.
Now, for some of the worst abuses by American diplomats in different parts of the world, have a look at this web story http://dissenter.firedoglake.com/2013/12/18/diplomatic-abuse-of-servants-not-just-for-indians/
And there are some other sites with very damning revelations about American officials. That apart The point is, as one Indian diplomat pointed out in a television programme, it is the Americans which need India for its strategic needs, India does not need America. But a bogey is always created by sycophants in India that if we do not encourage foreign capital, it will flee. That is how these people demanded that Enron stay on in India even when it was being roundly exposed in America for its nefarious role.
The United States had a glorious history of workers’ militant struggles in the early years. This movement was systematically attacked for decades and now there are few organized unions in the private sector in America. America swears by democracy. But where is the democracy at the work place where it is most needed ? It is being systematically denied there and in other countries. America is the very fountainhead of spreading anti-labour ideology through numerous think tanks and foundations. Susan George, the eminent social scientist and activist, has written very well on how the U.S. conducted its ideological warfare and brainwashed many thinking people. Americans are notorious for union busting and strike breaking. Henry Ford was very close to Hitler, his great admirer, and he used a Gestapo like force to keep an eye on workers. All this is well on record.
Yes, there are many great things about America and one needs to admire them. That apart two of the greatest American literary works are about work experience and both expose the work culture of America. Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath is seen by one critic as a Molotov cocktail thrown at the American establishment while Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman is seen by another as a time bomb. Great writing invariably has a very good social impact and this is exactly what the system does not want and so it is condemned by its henchmen as propagandist. And here again The American establishment has remained in the forefront in launching a cold war against progressive literature and art.
People in various fields are so swayed by the Americans because of their power of patronage that few want to take on the Americans, or even question them.
One U.S.-based Indian writer has touched the lowest depths by justifying the strip search of Devayani Khobragade. But there is another strip tease. The ruling classes of both the countries need the kind of strip tease that Sartre mentioned while condemning Western hypocrisy and exploitation in his foreword to Fanon’s classic The Wretched of the Earth. The whole Western edifice is based on the plunder of other countries and the evil ways of the Western world need to be exposed, Sartre argued when he mentioned the strip tease.
(Vidyadhar Date is a senior journalist and author of the book Traffic in the era of Climate Change.)
Comments are moderated