Capitalism: A Ghost Story, by Arundhati Roy
Haymarket Books, 128 pages, $14.95, ISBN: 9781608463855
We all share one planet. Its resources flow from one end to the other. This organism that supplies us with air, water, food is in peril of destruction. Human beings living on this earth have many things in common. The main one being that many of our countries are ruled by oligarchies. Third world countries, especially, are led to believe that they need to achieve “the American way of life”. But what is the American way of life? It’s a form of capitalism practiced in the United States, one in which a minority own and control most if not all the resources. It’s a free market economy that creates huge inequality for the majority of people. Arundhati Roy in her book Capitalism: A Ghost Story details concisely how this way of governing has affected India since the 1990s.
The book is a lesson in history, especially the role the U.S. has played in instructing those few at the top how to run India. The Indian government worships U.S. economic policy. The book was written in 2014, and if we measure India’s growth by “the American way of life” it has indeed achieved immense progress. Already it’s considered a superpower, with nuclear weapons and obscene inequality. India is a nation of 1.2 billion, yet one hundred of India’s wealthiest people own one fourth of the country’s GDP, while more than 80 percent attempt to live on less than fifty cents a day. 250,000 debt-ridden farmers have committed suicide. And this is called progress. Another thing India has learned from the U.S. is how profitable war is.
Kashmir is in that beautiful valley on the border with Pakistan and is home to three great civilizations: Islamic, Buddhist, Hindu. Now it’s the most militarized zone in the world. There have been uprisings in Kashmir in 2008, 2009 and 2010. For more than 20 years Kashmiris have endured a military occupation. Tens of thousands were killed in prisons and torture centers. The Indian war has left seventy thousand dead and tens of thousands debilitated by torture. Many have been “disappeared.” This is what the young have seen of capitalist democracy at work. They have watched the government, police, courts, politicians and the media deep at work to control this segment of the population. But Kashmir’s youth are taking back their streets. For three years in a row they have been protesting India’s violent occupation. They have risen up against Indian forces with nothing but their “fury.”
This is a region where wars are always welcome since it “fattens the bank accounts of arm dealers.” The war in Kashmir is shown to the world as a battle against radical Islamists. They’re trying to present it as an evil society. Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia (one of the U.S. main allies in the region) is pouring money into Kashmir’s seaports while India just looks the other way. Back in 2008, Obama promised to help solve the dispute over Kashmir’s struggle for self-determination, but after India bought ten Boeing C-17 Globemaster III aircrafts worth $5.8 billion, he remained silent on the subject.
Stories like this abound in the book, all connected to corruption, power, the rising violence against women, the poor, and the minorities in India: Manipuris, Nagas, Muslims, Dalits, Advasis, and Kashmiris.
Capitalism is destroying the planet. War and consumerism are not the answer. Poverty like feminism is often portrayed as an identity problem. As though the societies we live in do not create these injustices. India is now being portrayed like an example of a country on the rise, on its way to prosperity. But who created this mirage? The many institutions, foundations, NGOs, organizations, committees funded by the billionaires of India, by think tanks and institutions from the United States and companies like Coca Cola, Raytheon, Lockheed Martin and the Gates, Ford, and Rockefeller Foundations. The list goes on and they’re not investing their millions in India without expecting something in return. India has a 32 billion annual defense budget and will get most of its weapons from Raytheon and Lockheed Martin.
Roy writes that there are millions of non-profits, connected to larger foundations. There has been a privatization of everything, and as jobs have disappeared, NGOs have taken over. The Gates’ Foundation is in pursuit to build digital databases, numerical targets, and “scorecards of progress” as if it were a lack of information that is the cause of hunger and not debt and colonialism.
Mukesh Ambani, is India’s richest man. He’s worth 20 billion dollars. He owns Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) which holds interests in petrochemicals, oil, gas, fiber, high schools, stem cell storage, polyester. He owns 95% of Infotel which controls 27 TV news and entertainment channels in every region and language. Infotel owns the only nationwide license for 4G broadband pipeline. There are other corporations that run India: Tatas, Jindals, Vedanta Mittals, Infosys, etc. Their growth has spilled into Latin America, Africa, Central Asia and Europe. These mega corporations’ main exports are minerals. This has led to the displacement of many people, mainly Dalits and Adivasis who are driven from their villages. This has created ecological devastation, including the destruction of rivers, mountains, forests all in the name of progress.
India’s billionaires have learned from the likes of the Rockefellers, Carnegies, Ford, etc., how to administer trade, channel their power and present their country to the world. What is and has been going in India is structured in a way that mirrors what’s been done to the Earth. As she writes of the disastrous consequences of an unchecked capitalism that has reached and devastated India’s majority she ends chapter 1 with, “our lungs are being gradually depleted of oxygen…” And at the heart of the matter is what the corporations that own the goods of the country are doing to India.
As the world’s largest “democracy” the most remarkable thing about India is a resistance movement where the poorest people in the world are resisting the richest corporations. They are putting their bodies on the line and asking the world to listen. They are redefining the meaning of civilization, happiness, and modernity. In a country where the elite is fused with the state and believes itself to be the state, many people are fighting to preserve India and the wilderness that still lives. “They’re fighting for freedom.”
In her book, Arundhati Roy tells the story of how the dispossessed, underclass, and Occupy Movements from all over the world are challenging the heart of the empire. Among their demands are “an end to cross-ownership in business; natural resources that cannot be privatized; everybody must have the right to shelter, education, and healthcare.” And last but not least, “the children of the rich cannot inherit their parents’ wealth.” In her lyrical way, Roy is telling us that it’s time for all of us to take back the night. Now the world must start to listen.
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Leticia Cortez. Born in México and grew up in Chicago. She worked as a teacher at Truman College. She is a writer, educator and activist who currently lives and teaches in Santa Fe, Nuevo Mexico. Cortezruiz2005@yahoo.com
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