Dec 26, 2024
Dec 26, 2024
The year end of 2012 is fast approaching and so is the sinking feeling that is India is heading towards being a ‘Banana Republic’ in the political sense? On the Wikipedia website from a host of definitions the one that appealed to me was that:
“In practice a banana republic is a country operated as a commercial enterprise for private profit effected by collusion between the state and favoured monopolies whereby the profits derived from private exploitation of public lands is private property and the debts incurred are public responsibility.”
Main features of a banana republic reflected on the same website are:
- “Banana republic is a politically unstable country”
- “Features a society composed of stratified social classes.”
- “Ruled by a plutocracy who exploits the national economy by means of a politico-economic oligarchy.”
India in end-2012 may not be the stereotype banana republic commonly referred to small size countries in Central America with endemic corruption. India has sub continental geographical proportions. But India in 2012 is plagued politically and economically in sub-continental proportions by many of the worst political and economic manifestations of a “Banana Republic’.
During the second term of the Congress-led Government in power, political corruption has transcended ‘Himalayan Heights’ and has become ‘Deep Rooted as the Deepest Oceans’.
India today also suffers not only from politico-economic collusion but also from politico-bureaucratic collusion and bureaucratic –economic collusion. This stands reflected from the all Spectrum Scams, the CWG Scam, and the Coal-Gate Scams. All of these have touched the steps of India’s political high and mighty.
Political instability is very much to the fore where the minority regime in power sustains itself on lifelines thrown by regional outfits who themselves depend on the Government to soft-pedal pending corruption cases against them.
India’s descent into a banana republic ignominy cannot be arrested by the present governing dispensation. They are on a ‘political high’ trumpeting that they were elected by the Indian people for five years and give the impression that they could not care less for all the criticism heaped on them currently.
The year 2014 is fast approaching when fresh General Elections would be held. Is it not then incumbent on India Great Middle Class to honour the constant exhortations made in my columns that on Election Day they must turn-out in large numbers to vote and reset the distorted electoral arithmetic of captive minority-cum backward classes vote-banks imposed on India’s body-politic.
06-Oct-2012
More by : Dr. Subhash Kapila
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Dr. Kapila, your analysis of the present chaotic situation in India is appreciable. You deserve accolades for your courageous exposition of the powers that are in collusion to quicken the process of loot and plunder. This is a very unfortunate and depressing situation for the sensitive. However, such periods do appear in history leaving behind the prints of their conspiratorial mess. Hopefully, some forces emerge, by the hand of destiny, to clear the mess and correct the situation. Indeed when we view the situation in South-east Asia in historical perspectives, our mind is seriously apprehensive reagarding the threats and challenges. Let us pray that all goes well for our motherland! |
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It would be Banana republic with mango people. I don't think India will survive.It may disintegrate in small republics like Kashmir,West Bangladesh,Bodoland, Nagaland. etc. The intellectual class is migrating to countries like US UK New Zealand Australia while the the common people have no eneregy and courage to fight.India of the last century was different than India of today. |
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Thanks for the appreciation of my last Column. I do not think military rule is the answer. That is one institution which has held the Indian Republic together without demanding a constitutional role for itself as in other Asian countries. Your last sentence is meaningful in that the solution has to come from within and with a Revolution.. Political and social transformation can come with a peaceful Revolution of a Mass Civil Disobedience Movement like Mahatma Gandhi used against the British or a violent Revolution. Mass Civil Disobedience Movement is preferrable but then it was successful against the British because the British despite being a colonial power had a conscience and had not lost their sense of Political Shame. India's rulers have lost both their conscience and Political Shame and hence the rampant corruption which now stares at the doorsteps of India's apex ledaership. The dange is that when people are so pushed into a corner due to lack of political sensitivity, A VIOLENT REVOLUTION then lurks in the shadows Dr Kapila |
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Great article. I think Indian population who successfully threw British out of country can stand up and throw these corrupt officials. But the big questions is there is no Party in the country who can claim to take the reigns of power and deliver what People want. Does this show that a Revolution will only cure the culture of corruption and Banana Republic? My generation will not neccessarily see this but it has to come and it has to come sooner than later. My father who died in 1977 wished that the time of Revolution had come in the seventies. The condition at that time were such that the Democracy ceased to exist. No the entire Governance has ceased to exist. People talk of Military Rule but Pakistan and Egypt have provided such a poor examples of Military Rule that one can not even think of this at all. So the solution has to come from within and with a Revolution. |