We are in Colonial Times — It has only gotten worse
The Colonial era continues to be a blot in History of Modern India. But since gaining Independence, are we better off or worse? Has Colonial era ended for India or morphed into something worse?
Inequality in a society is the result of the politico-economic system prevalent in it. But how to identify the flaws causing this divide in a seemingly just and fair society? Well, we shall turn the pages of our history to seek the answer to these questions.
The Early Nationalist Leaders faced a similar challenge — to establish and propagate an anti-colonial nationalist ideology. They overcame this challenge by cross-examination of the prevalent economic, political and social environment. For this, they answered the following basic questions:
i. Is the British ruling India for India’s Benefit?
ii. Are the interest of the rulers and the ruled in harmony?
iii. Do the ruled enjoy civil liberties and right to question the rulers?
The culmination of this critical reasoning enabled to define the true character of the Colonial regime in India, which were:
i. The eldest of our Nationalist Leader — Dadabhai Naroji — through his work “Drain of Wealth” was able to establish that the sole motive of British power in India was drain of India’s wealth and the wealth accumulated by Colonialists were at the cost of Indian Masses.
It was effective in establishing the presence of 2 distinct classes, with one benefitting at the expense of other.
ii. The colonial power ensured strict ‘maintenance’ of Law and Order and strict ‘administration’ of Justice in their colony.
However, the class divide was starker here. The Law and Order was maintained through supposedly elite British class over the ‘uncivilised’ Indian Class. Therefore, all the organs of the bureaucracy were headed by British officers, whose single motive was furtherance of Colonial interests.
The administration of these laws was done with iron fist using the government institutions — police and even military when needed.
iii. To achieve the dark motives, the colonist machinery constantly needed to devoid the masses of civil liberties of free speech and expression. The Sedition Act, Vernacular Press Act, Official Secret Acts and many of the dark laws were born out of the above motive.
Even the access to Justice was also unequal for the 2 classes. Justice was administered by only British Judges. Even when Indians were allowed to be judges, they were prohibited from trying Britishers.
Thus, the true nature of the colonial era could be defined as — a profit-motivated, non-responsible, anti-liberty dictatorship.
Defining today’s setup
Cutting to the current Indian time, the cross-examination doesn’t seem to be required as there are no ruling and ruled classes and definitely no one is benefitting at the expense of other; everyone is equal — Right?
Wrong.
The 2 highly distinct classes with exactly the same colonial era is prevalent. The degree of the divide is clearly worse than the colonial times. To establish the presence of this class, we have to extend the cross-examination of the nationalist leaders a step further -
i. Is there a “Drain of Wealth”? If yes, then from which class to which class?
ii. Is there a ruler class who is curbing the Civil Liberties and Freedom of Press?
iii. Towards whom is the balance of Justice and Bureaucracy tilted?
Well, to answer who is being benefitted, we have to find out whose wealth has increased continually since the independence. At a rudimentary level — we can label the classes as ‘privileged’ and ‘under-privileged’.
However, thanks to the detailed study and research available on wealth and incomes distribution, the classes divide manifests itself as clearly as the sun. Some of the notable findings and observations defining the classes are:
i. Wealth: The wealth of 16 Indian people is equal to the wealth of bottom 60 crore people.
ii. Wealth: The combined total wealth of 63 Indian Billionaires is higher than the total Union Budget of 2018–19.
iii. Wealth: The top 1% own 77% of India’s wealth.
iv. Weath: India’s richest 1% hold more than 4 times the wealth held by the bottom 70% population of 95 crores.
v. Income: In 2014, the share of National Income of top 1 % Indians was 22%; in 1981, the same number was at 4.4%.
vi. Income: Since the beginning of deregulation in 1980s, the top 0.1% have captured more growth than all of the bottom 50% combined.
- ‘From British Raj to Billionare Raj’ — Piketty and Chancel
vii. Income: With earnings pegged at Rs 106 per second, a tech CEO would make more in 10 minutes than what a domestic worker would make in a whole year.
These statistics can send a chill down the spine and shatter the misconceptions of an equal society. However, the gains of a particular section of society in a democratic country still doesn’t justifies the equivalence to other aspects of the classes of colonial era.
It is this tact of the privileged class which deprives the common subject from questioning their deprivation. So, well-camouflaged is this class with the fellow brown Indians, that their method of loot and perpetual subjugation seems to be rooted in nation building and nation protecting; when they are only thing they are ‘building’ is their personal wealth and only protecting themselves from any criticism.
To look through this camouflage, one must follow the modus operandi of the ‘White’ British Colonist — they were both the profit-extractors as well as the law-enforcers. In the current scenario, the 2 roles have been compartmentalized and then harmonized for mutual benefit through crony-capitalism, wherein the capitalists are perpetual concentrators of profit and the corrupt executive setup looks after the implementation of statutes framed to further this sacred motive of profit extraction.
To masquerade this further, voting rights have been ‘universally’ granted to Indians in a single stroke, however education infrastructure, healthcare and social security have been consciously restricted since independence to keep the masses hungry, malnourished, unhealthy, under-educated impairing them both cognitively and educationally, thus un-empowered to comprehend that how the fellow ‘brown’ is as dominating as the historic ‘white’.
The cronies by sharing their portion of the profit (read loot) with the Raj ensure that the favor is returned through proper budgetary allocations for ‘Non-Performing Assets’, ‘research incentives’, ‘special economic zones’ to lease out sovereign assets for free.
Thus, the dual class divide is evident — at one hand we have the CRONOLISTS comprising of the crony capitalists and the collusive government machinery, and at the other hand, we have the BOTTOM MASSES.
CRONOLISTS versus COLONISTS: An eerie resemblance
Now, the initial premise of the article can be easily answered — the CRONOLISTS, like their spelling, are cast in the image of the COLONISTS. The cross-examination of the nationalist leaders can now be simulated:
i. Are the CRONOLISTS ruling BOTTOM MASSES for masses’ benefit?
ii. Are the interest of the CRONOLISTS and BOTTOM MASSES in harmony?
iii. Do the ‘BOTTOM MASSES’ enjoy civil liberties and right to question the CRONOLISTS?
The answers to these question for the Indian setup today have an eerie resemblance to those in the Colonial India.
i. The sole motive of the CRONOLISTS is profit maximisation, and therefore not in the masses’ benefit. This can be evidenced in the deprivation of basic life necessities — fooding, healthcare, education for the BOTTOM MASSES even today, when the CRONOLISTS make budgetary allocations for corporate loan waivers and tax breaks more than the expenditure on these basic human necessities combined.
ii. The interests of the CRONOLISTS are premised on the subjugation of the BOTTOM MASSES.
The concentration of profit in hands of CRONOLISTS is derived from the BOTTOM MASSES who are made to undersell their labor and expertise to the the benefit of corporates, all the while feeling privileged for being able to do so.
The collusion among CRONOLISTS ensures asymmetrical and unfair wage and labour legislations making the distribution of profits more and more unequal and providing more and more domination leverage to THE CRONOLISTS (corporates) over THE MASSES (employees).
iii. Any criticism of the machinery and the deep collusion among CRONOLISTS is met equally harshly using the same dark laws procreated in the colonial ages, whose sanctity have been maintained to this date. The use of sedition laws, selective media-censorship, institutional bodies like ED and IT, to maim the BOTTOM MASSES for any criticism would have put even their colonial counterparts to shame.
The CRONOLISTS can procure legislations, bend the system to their will, win over auditory and surveillance mechanisms through the only valid argument today — money. It is only logical — for a machinery premised on manufacturing profits, money will act as grease.
Even the access for justice in this CRONOLIST-BOTTOM MASS divide is unequal and manifest. The CRONOLISTS enjoy a fast-lane ticket for justices through Senior Advocates who have unequal access to the gates of judiciary. The lack of money for the BOTTOM MASS keeps them devoid of even the last resort of seeking what is rightfully promised to them — equality.
It took a sustained, long drawn-out struggle and the collective conscience of a nation to wrest itself out of a profit-motivated, non-responsible, anti-liberty colonial dictatorship to give itself a Socialist, Sovereign, Democratic Republic.
The BOTTOM MASS of today needs to see through the mask of colonial era which we are living in. And then initiate for itself a sustained struggle for an legislations and institutions to ensure equitable, free, truly democratic society, which the nationalist leaders envisaged, struggled, provided and labelled in the preamble of the Constitution. The action guide to the current deprived BOTTOM MASSES would be the first step that the early nationalist leaders took — identifying and calling out the regime for it is.
To modify the words of Shashi Tharoor — ‘If you don’t know where you came from, you will never acknowledge where you are standing.’
