[Assam] [WaterWatch] How the neoliberals stitched up the wealth of nations for themselves

[mc mahant]

<who may not be interested ---->
But then ,they may be!
Natwar Singh brought in  5000Cr for ???
Pramod Mahajan shot for taking 3000Cr for???
mm


To: WaterWatch at yahoogroups.comFrom: pcsharma_bpl at bsnl.inDate: Mon, 3 Sep 2007 16:28:37 +0530Subject: Re: [WaterWatch] How the neoliberals stitched up the wealth of nations for themselves





Eye opener data.The lines of the note "How the neo-liberals....for themselves.A cabal of ....catastrophic effects." are very apt and  require urgent attention of our policy planners( who may not be interested in stitching the nations wealth for themselves?)
Piyush C.Sharma

----- Original Message ----- 
From: mediavigil 
To: WaterWatch at yahoogroups.com 
Sent: Friday, August 31, 2007 11:14 PM
Subject: [WaterWatch] How the neoliberals stitched up the wealth of nations for themselves


Moderator's Note: Mukesh Ambani's annual salary of Rs 24.51 crore as Chairman and Managing Director (CMD) of Reliance Industries Ltd is the highest among more than 10,000 top executives and directors at some 1,200 companies that have disclosed remuneration figures for the year.Sun TV CMD Kalanithi Maran and joint MD Kavery Kalanithi, whose annual remuneration stood at Rs 23.26 crore each in 2006-07.Bharti Airtel's CMD Sunil Mittal ranks at fourth position with close to Rs 15 crore, followed by Dr Reddy's executive chairman K Anji Reddy at the fifth rank with Rs 14.4 crore.Hero Honda's chairman Brijmohan Lal Munjal and the company's MD and CEO Pawan Munjal are ranked at sixth and seventh positions with Rs 13.99 crore and Rs 13.88 crore each. Jindal Steel's executive V-C and MD Naveen Jindal comes at eighth position (Rs 13.5 crore), followed by Hero Honda's Joint MD Toshiaki Nakagawa (Rs 13.44 crore) and JSW Steel vice chairman & MD Sajjan Jindal (Rs 13.24 crore) in the top ten in terms of pay package.The remuneration of as many as 15 executives stood at more than Rs 10 crore. These included Cadila Health CMD Pankaj R Patel (Rs 12.43 crore), Dr Reddy's MD and COO Satish Reddy (Rs 10.87 crore), and CEO GV Prasad (Rs 10.87 crore), Mercator Lines CMD Harish Kumar Mittal (Rs 10.07 crore) and joint MD Atul J Agarwal (Rs 10.07 crore). Dr Manmohan Singh's present annual salary is Rs 3,60,000 ..Moderatorhttp://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,2157197,00.htmlHow the neoliberals stitched up the wealth of nations for themselvesA cabal of intellectuals and elitists hijacked the economic debate,and now we are dealing with the catastrophic effectsGeorge MonbiotTuesday August 28, 2007The GuardianFor the first time the UK's consumer debt exceeds the total of itsgross national product: a new report shows that we owe £1.35 trillion.Inspectors in the United States have discovered that 77,000 roadbridges are in the same perilous state as the one which collapsed intothe Mississippi. Two years after Hurricane Katrina struck, 120,000people from New Orleans are still living in trailer homes andtemporary lodgings. As runaway climate change approaches, governmentsrefuse to take the necessary action. Booming inequality threatens tocreate the most divided societies the world has seen since before thefirst world war. Now a financial crisis caused by unregulated lendingcould turf hundreds of thousands out of their homes and trigger acascade of economic troubles.These problems appear unrelated, but they all have something incommon. They arise in large part from a meeting that took place 60years ago in a Swiss spa resort. It laid the foundations for aphilosophy of government that is responsible for many, perhaps most,of our contemporary crises.When the Mont Pelerin Society first met, in 1947, its politicalproject did not have a name. But it knew where it was going. Thesociety's founder, Friedrich von Hayek, remarked that the battle forideas would take at least a generation to win, but he knew that hisintellectual army would attract powerful backers. Its philosophy,which later came to be known as neoliberalism, accorded with theinterests of the ultra-rich, so the ultra-rich would pay for it.Neoliberalism claims that we are best served by maximum market freedomand minimum intervention by the state. The role of government shouldbe confined to creating and defending markets, protecting privateproperty and defending the realm. All other functions are betterdischarged by private enterprise, which will be prompted by the profitmotive to supply essential services. By this means, enterprise isliberated, rational decisions are made and citizens are freed from thedehumanising hand of the state.This, at any rate, is the theory. But as David Harvey proposes in hisbook A Brief History of Neoliberalism, wherever the neoliberalprogramme has been implemented, it has caused a massive shift ofwealth not just to the top 1%, but to the top tenth of the top 1%. Inthe US, for instance, the upper 0.1% has already regained the positionit held at the beginning of the 1920s. The conditions thatneoliberalism demands in order to free human beings from the slaveryof the state - minimal taxes, the dismantling of public services andsocial security, deregulation, the breaking of the unions - justhappen to be the conditions required to make the elite even richer,while leaving everyone else to sink or swim. In practice thephilosophy developed at Mont Pelerin is little but an elaboratedisguise for a wealth grab.So the question is this: given that the crises I have listed arepredictable effects of the dismantling of public services and thederegulation of business and financial markets, given that it damagesthe interests of nearly everyone, how has neoliberalism come todominate public life?Richard Nixon was once forced to concede that "we are all Keynesiansnow". Even the Republicans supported the interventionist doctrines ofJohn Maynard Keynes. But we are all neoliberals now. Margaret Thatcherkept telling us that "there is no alternative", and by implementingher programmes Clinton, Blair, Brown and the other leaders of whatwere once progressive parties appear to prove her right.The first great advantage the neoliberals possessed was an unceasingfountain of money. US oligarchs and their foundations - Coors, Olin,Scaife, Pew and others - have poured hundreds of millions into settingup thinktanks, founding business schools and transforming universityeconomics departments into bastions of almost totalitarian neoliberalthinking. The Heritage Foundation, the Hoover Institute, the AmericanEnterprise Institute and many others in the US, the Institute ofEconomic Affairs, the Centre for Policy Studies and the Adam SmithInstitute in the UK, were all established to promote this project.Their purpose was to develop the ideas and the language which wouldmask the real intent of the programme - the restoration of the powerof the elite - and package it as a proposal for the betterment ofhumankind.Their project was assisted by ideas which arose in a very differentquarter. The revolutionary movements of 1968 also sought greaterindividual liberties, and many of the soixante-huitards saw the stateas their oppressor. As Harvey shows, the neoliberals coopted theirlanguage and ideas. Some of the anarchists I know still voice notionsalmost identical to those of the neoliberals: the intent is different,but the consequences very similar.Hayek's disciples were also able to make use of economic crises. Anearly experiment took place in New York City, which was hit bybudgetary disaster in 1975. Its bankers demanded that the city followtheir prescriptions - huge cuts in public services, smashing of theunions, public subsidies for business. In the UK, stagflation, strikesand budgetary breakdown allowed Thatcher, whose ideas were framed byher neoliberal adviser Keith Joseph, to come to the rescue. Herprogramme worked, but created a new set of crises.If these opportunities were insufficient, the neoliberals and theirbackers would use bribery or force. In the US, the Democrats wereneutered by new laws on campaign finance. To compete successfully forfunding with the Republicans, they would have to give big businesswhat it wanted. The first neoliberal programme of all was implementedin Chile following Pinochet's coup, with the backing of the USgovernment and economists taught by Milton Friedman, one of thefounding members of the Mont Pelerin Society. Drumming up support forthe project was easy: if you disagreed, you got shot. TheInternational Monetary Fund and the World Bank used their power overdeveloping nations to demand the same policies.But the most powerful promoter of this programme was the media. Mostof it is owned by multimillionaires who use it to project the ideasthat support their interests. Those ideas which threaten theirinterests are either ignored or ridiculed. It is through thenewspapers and TV channels that the socially destructive notions of asmall group of extremists have come to look like common sense. Thecorporations' tame thinkers sell the project by reframing ourpolitical language (for an account of how this happens, see GeorgeLakoff's book, Don't Think of an Elephant!). Nowadays I hear even myprogressive friends using terms like wealth creators, tax relief, biggovernment, consumer democracy, red tape, compensation culture, jobseekers and benefit cheats. These terms, all invented or promoted byneoliberals, have become so commonplace that they now seem almost neutral.Neoliberalism, if unchecked, will catalyse crisis after crisis, all ofwhich can be solved only by greater intervention on the part of thestate. In confronting it, we must recognise that we will never be ableto mobilise the resources its exponents have been given. But as thedisasters they have caused unfold, the public will need ever lesspersuading that it has been misled.Monbiot.com
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