-Vidya Bhushan Rawat
(Asian Independent)- Srilankan crisis is the story of accumulation of public wealth by powerful individuals who do not offer economic solutions to their people but give an excuse which makes the minorities the villain. This has become the favorite understanding and analysis of the politicians in South Asia. They easily find a way out to ‘resolve’ the crisis of people. They don’t offer jobs, economic growth, social security but provide ‘religion’ as a tool to resolve their crisis.
This ‘religion’ as a tool is nothing but a politics of hatred and prejudices towards the minorities. Sri Lanka’s powerful Sinhalas suffered in hatred against Tamils and later the Muslim minorities. Every day, they used to bring out issues that would actually humiliate the Muslims and put them on defensive. In the name of national security, Srilanka’s politicians actually were enjoying the power of selling false supremacy ideas to their Sinhala public.
People too were mad in their prejudices that they did not see that their leaders have amassed huge wealth and money. The politicians were living lives which our kings too never lived. Today, the same crowd of ‘.devotees’ of the ruling establishment is in the street looking for politicians and burning their properties.
How has Sri Lanka come to such a sorry state? It was a country, which I also felt, the best in South Asia. It was a country which should not have had that crisis. A beautiful island country which recuperated from the internal strife but not the Sinhala nationalism made the leaders so powerful that they refused to address the economic issues of the people. Today, the tiny island nation is in total chaos and the prime minister and his family has to flee to a naval base while many other ministers and members of parliaments face public anger. Many houses belonging to Ministers and Members of Parliament were burnt and many members faced life threat. The president is asking for people to be quiet but it is a fact that people are not going to be satisfied unless the president too resigns and is tried for treason.
What are the lessons from Srilanka’s crisis with India?
The first and foremost is don’t abandon your own market, your own farmers and farm production as per the powerful World Bank and IMF which are meant to strengthen the western monopoly and ask for private corporations to decide your fate.
Russia has managed to counter the so-called sanctions because it has natural resources. You can not download wheat from google. So, the stock market does not really represent the crisis of a country. Indians must understand that the economic crisis is looming large over our heads too. Unfortunately, political leadership here too aggravates that and deliberately creates artificial social and cultural crisis to evade answering the economic issues. So, for our politicians, the issue of a temple or the priests are more important than the issue of hunger and malnutrition. Every day, we are being fetched with the greatness of this temple. Every day, we are being told to change names of places. every day. you are compelled to discuss these issues selectively which put the minorities particularly Muslims on tenterhook.
Hatred has become their best weapon while ignoring the hard issues which might befell us in the coming days. The economy is in the worst shape and the only attempt is to capture people’s resources. The netas are becoming kings with obscene wealth while people are suffering. Interestingly, in all this, the role of our media is that of a conspirator, a partner in the crime against fellow Indians in denying them the correct information and deviating from discussing the real issues while giving them false religious solutions for their economic crisis.
India media remains the stooge of the powerful ‘jaatis’ and business interests of the cronies but despite that India still has the resilience to fight against such things. We still have local modes of production and remain powerful. Please continue to encourage and patronise the farmers, the local vegetable vendors, street vendors as they will survive India. India’s strength is its farmers and their local production. Once the country depends on external countries for their basic needs then survival would be difficult as government’s borrowings for their own purposes ultimately create chaos but all nations and societies who have their own means of productions and who are not dependent on private cronies and import from outside will survive. Our citizens must learn that no nation can become powerful by just becoming a ‘service’ country for others. We may have glossy international products, big cars but it will not survive unless the farmers are allowed to flourish and people patronise them.
Wishing Srilanka to come out of this crisis soon. Hope this will give enough ideas and thinking to their political class to not consider their people as cannon fodder and listen to them, strengthen the local mode of product and keep away from giving false religious solutions for your socio economic crisis and most importantly, politics of hatred and exclusion can only take you towards disaster.
Vidya Bhushan Rawat
May 11th, 2022
