Calcutta Notebook
MSPVT
On December 5, 2012, Wednesday, after 2 days' debate
the lower house of the Indian Parliament, Lok Sabha, passed by majority vote (253/218) the FDI bill on its way, after some follow up steps, to making it a law whereby foreign investors will be able to do retail businesses inside the territory of India without any constraint just as Indian traders are doing the same. Finally, if and when the bill gets the assent of the President of India, it becomes the FDI law. And the President's signature marking his assent to the FDI bill that will be referred to him in whatever form can be taken for granted since in his previous incarnation as India's Finance Minister, he declared and initialised the bill. It can therefore be safely assumed that the Indian ruling elites’ coveted FDI law and its swift enforcement is a matter of days only. Since there was debate and voting in the end, it is assumed that there is also opposition to the law allowing open entry of foreign retailers in the Indian market. And the 218 opposition members said, "No" to the bill. But is this opposition real? No, because the current Parliamentary opposition, in their previous incarnations formed the treasury bench in some way or the other and during their tenure they consciously became unconscious of the scope of this kind of bill coming out of hibernation in a draft form owing to conditions agreed upon while entering the liberalized privatized global market some 21 years ago. Like the hare they closed their eyes and thought that nobody would see through their design. They kept the problem in suspended animation, they did not undo it. Internally the government often made tall promises and did the opposite things and could easily get away, because the people are non-violent. But the overseas corporate world and the imperial finance capital who are actually roaming under camouflage for pretty long time, first as finance-technology collaborators during socialistic pattern days and then as minor partners of all investment projects in both private and public sectors after liberalization–these transna-tional corporate and finance bodies are not meek, they are rough, tough and turbulent, they will never let the Indian rulers get away without taking their pound of flesh. The opposition parties tried to buy time when they were at the helm of administration in Delhi and the imperial finance capital allowed them some respite. So, they argued, it is still possible to keep the transnational corporate and financial bodies camouflaged while they are operating in the Indian territory but the government is hell bent on allowing them to come in the open. ‘You people in the government know as well as we do that we both sides together with the international bodies' Indian collaborators made assets worth billions of US dollars, a significant part of the assets were transferred to foreign countries as what we collectively call, "Black Money" and we all parties help money launderers return millions of rupees which are now being invested to build infrastructures, real estate etc, and we are all mopping up the returned investible pool and making a good fortune out of the business that is the parliamentary politics in India! The international corporate and financial bodies are allowed to hide in camouflage here and in return they allowed us to hide in camouflage there. So why can't you, the ruling congress party, tell them to wait just as we did while we were in power?’ The sum and substance of opposition arguments in Parliament is thus in favor of maintaining the status quo in so far as FDI in retail business in India is concerned.
The arguments from the ruling bench ran like this: since you people in the opposition in Parliament acknowledge that we the people in Parliament have been hiding the truth from the real people of India for much too long that we in effect are all serving the interests of international finance capital and are duty bound to let them come into the open step by step, allow us, the Congress Party, to move and pass the resolution to take the final step for them to come into the open. You performed 'total revolution', previous to that you and we together performed "Bhoodan yagna" revolution—all these in order to cheat the gullible Indian people into believing that they are having ownership of the land while in reality their ownership of land is a figment of imagination and you know that as we do and out of all these complicated operations we made fortunes and we are all running out of ideas to go on cheating in old ways since the soil underneath is burning with rage which will soon turn into tumultuous fire that our intelligence foretells can sweep us all out of these cozy palaces of luxury and throw us all into the garbage bin unless we together act and act now. So please let us make the final move. Some of you will abstain in order to reduce the magic number significantly, some others will vote against the motion in such a way as to help us, the Congress Party, sail through the imbroglio that we tried to avoid in order to show to the world at large what we really are, that is, that we the parliamentarians of India are quite friendly to foreign direct investments in all spheres of life in India including retail business. Look, however seriously we tried we failed absolutely to hide inflation. We tried to buy one fixed income group of households by doling out dearness allowance, but it is not working now since income as a type has become variable. Recently inflation has raised its ugly head so menacingly that even our committed central monetary authority, the Reserve Bank of India, has turned hostile and is trying to squeeze us all into monetary discipline from which we were immune so long. Please note that along with 50% participation in stocks and trade in India that you had opened up and we supported earlier came also many international watchdogs who have already unearthed almost all of our secret misdeeds here and there and are bullying and browbeating us by several means at their disposal including divulging some of our secret dealings through their men whom we thought non-violent, benevolent ascetics in open press conferences and are warning us all the time of bringing more of our misdeeds into the open if we do not act now. Look almost all of us are already feeling the heat of their 'constitutional' fire and brimstone and imagine what the hell that we will be thrown into if the people of India dare to rise in rebellion with arms! So let us all join hands to pass the bill and comply our obligations to the international finance capital- the treasury bench by voting in favor of the bill and the opposition by keeping the opposition tag in the interest of maintaining decency and democracy! Let the people rot and fend for themselves!
Frontier
Vol. 45, No. 25, Dec 30-Jan 5, 2013
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