Thinkers and students of Indian civilization and dharmic philosophy often justly criticize the communists for their anti-dharmic thought. At the same time we also find new thinkers from corporate world with keen interest in dharmic philosophy and value paradigm pitching for capitalism.
Gurcharan Das, a popular writer, who had served Proctor and Gamble India as chief executive, claims in a paper titled ‘Dharma, Markets and Indian Capitalism’ : “Many Indians still believe that the market makes ‘the rich richer and the poor poorer’ and leads to corruption and crony capitalism. Despite the market having generated broad spread prosperity over two decades, people still distrust it and the nation continues to reform by stealth. India continues to reform furtively because no political party has bothered to explain the difference between being ‘pro-market’ and ‘pro-business’, leaving people with the impression that liberal reform mostly helps the rich. They do not understand that being pro-market is to believe in competition, which helps keep prices low, raise the quality of products, and leads to a ‘rules based capitalism’ that serves everyone. To be pro-business, on the other hand, means to allow politicians and officials to retain power over licenses, which distorts the market’s authority over economic decisions and this leads to ‘crony capitalism’. This confusion explains the timidity of reform and prevents India from performing to its potential.”
In writings like above, we invariably come across capitalism as a great liberating force for India and its civilizational values. It is not that such thinkers are unaware of limitations of Abrahamic morality, they openly assert the superiority of dharmic ethical values, but strangely when it comes to economic policies they stop short of connecting the dots and present the true picture. This breed of new thinkers stops short of presenting the dharmic thought in a totality which among others maintains that ecology is sacred and inviolable and greedy wealth creation at the cost of sustainability is dangerous and stupid.
In an article ‘Elect to transform India with these eight big ideas’, Das opines, “Pessimists worry about problems - inequality, crony capitalism, degrading environment, etc. The problems are real, but optimists focus on opportunities and lead nations to success.” Now even a novice knows that such success is derided in dharmic tradition.
It is crucial that we understand the capitalism with its outline, influences, effects and logic. How it controls the flow of wealth and resources? How it affects the major and minor players and bystanders? Here is an attempt to understand the same.
The world order that exists today, drawn by multilateral institutions and treaties can be termed as Capitalist Financial Colonialism.
This Capitalist Financial Colonialism is an extension of erstwhile political and military colonialism lead by European and even Arabian states. Root and identity of this order lie in Abrahamic tradition. The anthropocentric conception of this steam sees the world produced for human consumption. Thus behind big theories on ethics, environmental concern there exists a Capitalist Financial Colonialism (CFC). which through policies and negotiations aims to maintain the lead of former colonial (European) powers, their allies and aspirants (US, Japan, Saudi Arabia, China) etc.
The three most potent instruments with CFC to attain its goal are
1) Economic and trade policy
2) Constitutional political interventions
3) Military interventions.
Through Economic and trade policies CFC attempts to make consensus on below mentioned points:
1) Countries go for higher monetization in all spheres of life.
2) Pro monetization policies don't get hampered by counter effects of inequitable distribution in democratic of communist set-up.
3) Countries accept all multilateral agreements promoting free trade, intellectual property regime, technological advantage and monetization.
4) Prices of agricultural, mining and forest products remain low and rich nations maintain their lead through technology. As against this low price, technological innovation in products and services need a control.
5) Countries follow inequitable distribution of wealth and consumerist policies as to life-style and infrastructure because only this leads to expansion high-tech product market which are invariable costly and extravagant. This shall ensure the advanced nations to reap benefits of technological edge.
6) Environment friendly, labor intensive and sustainable policies in developing countries are anti-developmental for industrial development across the globe.
7) For market augmentation of high-tech, military-industrial complex and urbanization. A certain level of insecurity, suppression and even wars are necessary for this order.
8) Preference to technological solutions in place of community based organic ones.
From dharmic paradigm and perspective, this is morally repugnant. It stands diametrically opposite to the sacred brahman based conception of Dharma. Thus, it is imperative that student of dharmic values critique the economic and political thought from the genuine dharmic perspective. It may not appeal to the masses and even so called academics may find it impractical, but one shouldn’t compromise the truth for the sake of mere acceptance.