Arundhati Roy has spoken again. She has lied again, which is of course the same thing. <\/p>\n
It is not a coincidence that the Prime Minister, the Home Minister, the Disinvestment Minister -the men who signed the deal with Enron in India, the men who are selling the country’s infrastructure to corporate multinationals, the men who want to privatize water, electricity, oil, coal, steel, health, education and telecommunication – are all members or admirers of the RSS. <\/font><\/cite><\/p>\n The fact that the RSS is actively obstructing the privatisation and is in fact on her side in this matter is just an inconvenient matter of detail which can be ignored. <\/p>\n The good news is that we’re not doing too badly. There have been major victories. Here in Latin America you have had so many – in Bolivia, you have Cochabamba. In Peru, there was the uprising in Arequipa, In Venezuela, President Hugo Chavez is holding on, despite the U.S. government’s best efforts<\/b><\/font><\/cite><\/p>\n Notice the difference? Hugo Chavez is the Marxist President of Venezuela who wreaked his country’s economy and is facing street protests<\/a> as a result. Other countries are facing spontaneous uprisings, but Venezuela’s is orchestrated by the US!<\/p>\n Let me illustrate what I mean. India – the world’s biggest democracy – is currently at the forefront of the corporate globalization project. Its “market” of one billion people is being prized<\/font><\/cite>[sic] open by the WTO. Corporatization and Privatization are being welcomed by the Government and the Indian elite.<\/cite><\/p>\n Let me <\/i> illustrate what she means. A few among the “market” of a billion people squat outside Dadar railway station in Bombay. I see them everyday. They cannot afford a house because the government has tried to provide them with affordable housing using a law called the Urban Land Ceiling and Regulation Act. But they can afford Chinese made radios and television sets available for 1\/10 th the price of Indian made ones. Arundhati Roy wants to put a stop to all that. That is what she means. <\/p>\n There is more at Kakistocracy<\/a> from whence I got the link. <\/p>\n
Chinese made drills and other pieces of machinery, available at similarly low prices, are helping India’s manufacturers produce cheaper goods.
These drills and other trinkets can be bought now because India has foreign exchange reserves of 71 billion dollars, which she (India, not Arundhati Roy) has earned by selling software and services to other countries.
The raddiwala outside my house does not have a proper shop, but he can afford a mobile phone now, because private players have competed to give him a good deal. He gets a better deal than any villager got during the past 50 years when telecom was a public-sector monopoly<\/p>\n