Capitalism…was always a fairytale for India.Atleast for people of x generation who always dreamt of AMERICAN lifestyle where everything is fast,beautiful and glamourous.A system which was supposed to be free from all SARKARI corruption.A system with everything RIGHT.X generation considered Nehruvian socialism as the chain that was stopping growth of India.I was part of this x generation who believed in this fairytale too.I still believe in human urge to grow which lays the founding stone of capitalism.Basic of capitalism is human urge which always wants to spread, acquire and grow.This urge is the root cause of exploits of capitalism as well.
Capitalism has delivered what it promised.It has delivered fast cars,BIG and astonishingly beautiful structures and HEAVY Pockets.Everyone seems to be happy.Powered by booming economy and rising share market,everyone is rising on ecstastic wave of power.
But can everything be that straight?
It cant be and it isn’t.
Yesterday i saw the reason why Nehru abhored Capitalism and the reason he came up with something called mixed economy.Yesterday i happened to visit a Private hospital in my city to see a known person from my village who was admitted there.
The hospital is airy and beautifully maintained. This hospital is one of the best in the city.Yet another gift of Capitalism.I went to the general ward to meet the person.He is a poor farmer who owns around 2 acre land.His annual income would be hardly 50000/-.He was suffering from some disease which i could not read and pronounce from the prescription.But what i was shocked with was the tests that he had undergone since coming there.He showed me a bill of 20000/- which he had already paid and there was yet more to come.
I asked the reason of not going to the government hospital and his wife spoke with grim voice.She said that she had initially taken him to government hospital but for two days no one took care.His condition was getting bad day by day.So he was brought here.Family has taken loan of 25000/- from some money lander in the village.I knew a Compounder there and asked him about the patient.
He looked at him and told me that he will be allright in few days. What came next was infact more shocking.He told me that the patient was not serious and all the tests done on him were done in order to make money only.That means that all of the tests were not required.
Was i shocked? Not actually as it happens everyday.
But what striked me was why?And the answer came from the compounder itself.He said that all these fake tests are necessary in order to maintain huge expenditure that is required to run that BIG hospital with BIG staff and its bright corridors.Offcourse all that comes for a cost.
So everyone pays for that.So now we are living in a world where we pay for packaging and not for real product.Where the structures of Capitalism has started a vicious cycle of exploitation which no one of us is able to break.Being part of that vicious cycle we exploit someone else and the cycle of exploitation goes on.
The doctor who started that big hospital in my small town was also prey of this vicious cycle .He was somewhere trapped in this chain.No he is no inhuman or cheat.But he has to be like that in order to make his hospital survive.
That’s capitalism for you folks………..Or KILLER CAPITALISM as i would like to label it.
Tags: capitalism, capitalism in India, Face of capitalism, Health and capitalism, Hospitals and capitalism, Indian middle class, NGO, socialism
NOMADIC CEREBRATIONS 
August 29, 2008 at 7:20 am |
hi,
i must congratulate you fir another great eye-opening article!!
i am no one to acknowledge your work but great work again!!!
its like you are getting more perfect with each article…
anyways good job pradeep
and
after this i’ll be waiting for your another post!
next is what????
make it a bit earlier this time!!!
regards!!!
August 29, 2008 at 7:37 am |
pradeep ji kya karen…gandha hain par dhandha hain yeh…..growing demands and need of rich lifestyle is the root cause of this bloody captialism
August 29, 2008 at 7:46 am |
Wow brother,
what a great step to tell what this capitalism actually is?
i think everyone should know abt the fact that why our leaders were not ready to accept this capitalism.
N by posting this article, u again proved that u r a great initiator.
Gud Luck
August 29, 2008 at 7:53 am |
Hi Pradeep
Gud JOb done again!!
Semms that you are becoming more mature day by day , just kidding you,
I wish to congratulate you for the Ugly Truths of Capitalism …
but believe you me , those devil winds will not be shutdown ever.
Nyways , lots of gud work is required in that direction.
But, gud job done again…..so Next is What dude 🙂
Reg
Roopesh
August 30, 2008 at 7:04 am |
bana u have presented this concept of “killer capitalism ” in a very nice manner. but put some more light in this concept. u have portrayed very beautifully. kuods well done
August 30, 2008 at 8:08 am |
well i guess capitalism has a face which has negative shades to it.and ur article throws an light on goodie good facade of capitalism…evry thing tht shines is not gold ,we ought to look at darker sides of it..n ur article did it wonderfuly……..all the best for future.
August 30, 2008 at 12:41 pm |
congratulations….. what a eye opener it rly helps the youth to feel n realize the true picture of our country. and would help them to get rid of this money charm and wld actually help themselves and country.
September 4, 2008 at 7:25 pm |
It’s an interesting mix of capitalism or socialism with the society, polity and economy of a particular country that comes to present how any of these concepts behave or relate in that environment. We do have examples of capitalist countries giving birth to some of the most successful welfare societies. For us in India, the big word is democracy – we claim to be one of the oldest democracies in the world but we are yet to practice even the ‘D’ of democracy!
September 16, 2008 at 8:17 am |
Did socialism ensure that we had any better health care facilities in India?
September 17, 2008 at 6:27 am |
Even socialism didnt deliver its promises……..Thats why we welcomed capitalism with open hearts and aspirations.
But dont you think CAPITALISM is taking its toll now.We are in midst of a vicious cycle. where we are ending up sacrificing small joys of our lives……..we are working hard to have more money to get those things which could have come with lesser effort and money.
February 24, 2009 at 4:09 am |
After reading your entire article I concluded that you have contradicted yourself in atleast one area, firstly you stated that the impoverished farmer had gone to a government (hence, socialist) hospital and found the service to be so inadequate that he had to go to a much more expensive private (hence, capitalist) hospital. Now unless I’m misunderstanding you are proposing that we ‘socialise’ the privatised hospital in an attempt to make it affordable and I’m sure you’re going to justify this by stating that the politicians are corrupted by capitalism too, but, atleast one other person commented here that socialism did nothing for their country. In my opinion this is another example of a short cited liberal view, where trying to smash the entire problem to pieces with a hammer seems to be the only option. First off, you’re suggesting the adoption of a socialist system for a hospital, which is proven not to work. Why not just get the government to pay for the farmer’s private healthcare? That way you don’t destroy what works and you leave the goverment to do better and more useful things while capitalism does what it does best, run things… efficently.
February 24, 2009 at 4:11 am |
pradeep, with regards to your comment, why not just stop buying things you don’t need? Isn’t that the socialist ideal, only having what you need and producing for your society as a whole?
February 24, 2009 at 5:01 am |
@antipink…
I am not proposing anything. I have my beliefs in place for goods and virtues of capitalism and socialism as well. But at the same time i think that discussing ills of both is a neccessary thing to do.
Some of the best social structures and services have been provided by the capitalist countries.
I am in no way proposing to socialise the HOSPITAL. But at the same time a small check is indeed required for services like this.
I agree that we should buy the things we require…….But arent we mortals……….we are??? lured by all the material things produced and thrown towards us in a fancy manner….
TELL ME HOW TO AVOID THIS SINFUL PROPOSITION???
March 29, 2010 at 12:26 am |
I can not agree more. Corporates are a machine that’s sole purpose is to feed itself. Yes, we pay for packaging because that is what such an entity is made of. Villages in India give a clue of what is really needed to satisfy and sustain a human and it’s culture while maintaining balance with the environment. I hope India’s rural and traditional population is sizable enough to be a counterbalance critical mass in the future of the world.
My India: Where every village is home – Experience !
July 25, 2010 at 10:02 pm |
The issue of “capitalism” is complex. Many of the dissatisfied have perverted it’s definition to suit their dissatisfaction. In it’s most basic definition, capitalism has existed for thousands of years and simply means that the fruits of one’s labor and ingenuity belong to oneself. Also included in the basic definition is the idea that land and other natural resources can be claimed by an individual or group of individuals, which again is nothing new. Even primitive tribal societies typically lay claim to hunting and gathering territories and enforce those claims via threat of punishment, death and war.
Money lending is common in capitalist economies, but that too has existed for thousands of years.
What makes Western capitalist societies productive is not only capitalsim, but capitalism combined with enlightenment education. The interest rates for money lending are gauged so as to spur economic activity rather than arrest it. When interest rates rise, economic activity slows. But in a free society the money lender has the perogative to lower interest rates, which will usually happen because the money lender can’t make any money if only a few people show up to take the loan. In the USA the base interest rate is set by the Federal Reserve bank so as to spur economic activity and to stave off inflation. Banks that borrow money from the Federal Reserve bank mark up the interest rate and take the risk that if they mark it up too far there will be too few takers and they will lose money rather than make money. As the money lenders are in competition with each other there are always some wise lenders to offset the foolish ones.
So that economic activity is spurred, the borrower must feel that he can use the money to increase his profits during his lifetime. Undergirding this “feeling” is the borrowers knowledge that he has a productive lifetime of about 40 years and his feeling of tiredness at the end of each day’s work. If one has to work too hard so that one is always tired and can’t enjoy life then one will not want to borrow too much. If one has little faith in one’s ingenuity then one will not want to risk taking on much in any debt. Some will choose to be business owners and risk takers, others will choose the safety of being an employee. Neither choice is perfectly safe, but the basic equation does work well for most people and the proof is the high level of prosperity and comfort in Western nations.
One can point to all the difficulties and individual failures in Western societies, but these amount to a smaller number than the successes. We know that many immigrants to the USA have worked themselves to the bone, but they rarely claim that they know of a better way in their home countries or elsewhere. Immigrants who work hard usually do see their children and grandchildren experiencing gradual improvement in prosperity usually to the extent that their grandchildren enjoy a level of prosperity equal to or greater than 5th and 6th generation Americans.
Detractors of capitalism often use a Straw Man argument (one of the logical fallacies) that capitalism is invalid because it does not produce Utopia. It was never a claim of capitalism, free markets and freedom that such would produce Utopia, the only claim is that it works better than all other known systems.
One should note that in free capitalist societies everyone is offered the opportunity to try to be King of his limited realm. In communist societies everyone is held down to the level of a serf. In Western socialist Democracies one simply sees the huge surpluses created by capitalism distributed to the masses under threat of violent revolution by the masses, by the serfs. If those social Democracies had not first embraced capitalism to create huge wealth the serfs would not have anything to vy for in the ongoing war of all against all.
India does not have the capitalist reserves that would make sense for the creation of a socialist Democracy – the war of all against all in India will bring only a pittance to the serfs, and thus not worth the effort. Slogans about working for one’s society or the brotherhood and sisterhood of humanity are only slogans slung by corrupt politicians in order to win the votes of serfs so they can win office and then engage in corruption for their own self-advantage seeking at the expense of the serfs. The CPM party in India has proven this to be the case and the people of India are gradually coming to accept the folly of believing uncriticly in mere sloganeering. Unfortunatly too many are not ready to accept the failure of communism and socialism-out-of-poverty and so we see a new wave of prolitarian ignorance and disconent in for example the Trinamul party. When will they learn?
One can only wonder if anyone has ever worked for the sake of their nation or their brothers and sisters in humanity – there are so few examples of such. Rather what we saw in the USSR and in China was people working for their own benefit to the extent that they could. And what we saw were ghastly human rights violations perpetrated by the Communist Kings and their noblemen in vain attempts to make it seem as if the system was working. Ask the people of the Ukraine how well Soviet Communism worked for them? Why aren’t there any significant numbers of people in the former Soviet Republics clamboring for a return to Marxist politics?
Given what is now known about how the behavior of atoms and molecules undergirds all biologic entities, and what we know about evolution of species, how can we honestly claim that humans can and will behave divinely? What kind of change in our genetic underpinnings would have had to take place that we would be intrinsicly altruistic? And if some feel they are intrinsicly altruistic, can they lay claim to anything other than a fluke, a random mutation in their genetic make up? But then what of those who have not had such a mutation – are they to be singled out for extermination? The whole idea is nonsense on it’s face.
I am not saying that their is no altruism, only that it is limited and unprovable and should not be elevated to ridiculous heights to suggest that a man or woman toil for the sake of people they don’t know, some of whom are no doubt laggards.
To be sure education is critical to a capitalist society – math, science, engineering, history as well as wisdom. It is not helpful that many Indians discontinue education at grade 5, or 8. In a capitalist society the uneducated and unwise will end up as serfs. Education is totally necessary to make the system work well. Perhaps one should condemn the poor educational infrastructure and readiness to discontinue study in India before one condemns capitalism which is only in its infancy in India, but which has already shown its ability to increase prosperity there with those segments of society which have embraced education. Was Manmohan Singh not a poor boy once?