On Capitalism and Social Work

Corporate philanthropy has turned to be the most visionary business of all time. 

Arundhati Roy, Capitalism: A Ghost Story, Outlook, 26th March 2012

It's heartening to see truth coming out in a mainstream publication like Outlook. It's all the more to extract truth when it comes cloaked in the garb of philanthropy.  Arundhati Roy, in the article referred exposes the workings of the matrix called "capitalism". It's difficult for anyone to be out of this matrix because no one knows it's there. I have met many well intentioned and religious people who have not yet decoded the DNA of capitalism.

Corporate-endowed foundations administer, trade and channelise their power and place their chessmen on the chessboard, through a system of elite clubs and think-tanks, whose members overlap and move in and out through the revolving doors. Contrary to the various conspiracy theories in circulation, particularly among left-wing groups, there is nothing secret, satanic, or Freemason-like about this arrangement. It is not very different from the way corporations use shell companies and offshore accounts to transfer and administer their money—except that the currency is power, not money.

 Arundhati Roy, Capitalism: A Ghost Story, Outlook, 26th March 2012

There are few amongst men who have not fallen for the intoxicating lure for power. One presumes that people working for upliftment of the world should not parry with name and power because this is the surest doorway for sullying intentions. Unfortunately, charity, an ennobled path for the men of high virtue has been morphed by coporates into a "career option", as promising as any other, where men in suits hob nob with the rich, the high and the mighty over banquets in five star hotels. 

Like all good Imperialists, the Philanthropoids set themselves the task of creating and training an international cadre that believed that Capitalism, and by extension the hegemony of the United States, was in their own self-interest. And who would therefore help to administer the Global Corporate Government in the ways native elites had always served colonialism. So began the foundations’ foray into education and the arts, which would become their third sphere of influence, after foreign and domestic economic policy. They spent (and continue to spend) millions of dollars on academic institutions and pedagogy. 

Arundhati Roy, Capitalism: A Ghost Story, Outlook, 26th March 2012

Antonio Gramsci, one of the foremost Marxist thinkers in the 20th century became renowned for his concept of cultural hegemony as a means of maintaining the state in a capitalist society. Corporate foundations today are the instruments for making free thinking men wedded to capitalistic ideology. Feudalism was in many ways better than capitalism as it controlled people physically. The enemy was out there, clear and visible. Capitalism is far more complex. It is coded in your thought process through the educational institutions. We parade around like free thinking men unbeknownst to us that we are bound to the mother culture of capitalism in the most hideous ways. It  provides us with the meaning and purpose of life. 

As the IMF enforced Structural Adjustment, and arm-twisted governments into cutting back on public spending on health, education, childcare, development, the NGOs moved in. The Privatisation of Everything has also meant the NGO-isation of Everything. As jobs and livelihoods disappeared, NGOs have become an important source of employment, even for those who see them for what they are. And they are certainly not all bad. Of the millions of NGOs, some do remarkable, radical work and it would be a travesty to tar all NGOs with the same brush. However, the corporate or Foundation-endowed NGOs are global finance’s way of buying into resistance movements, literally like shareholders buy shares in companies, and then try to control them from within. They sit like nodes on the central nervous system, the pathways along which global finance flows. They work like transmitters, receivers, shock absorbers, alert to every impulse, careful never to annoy the governments of their host countries. (The Ford Foundation requires the organisations it funds to sign a pledge to this effect.) Inadvertently (and sometimes advertently), they serve as listening posts, their reports and workshops and other missionary activity feeding data into an increasingly aggressive system of surveillance of increasingly hardening States. The more troubled an area, the greater the numbers of NGOs in it.

 Arundhati Roy, Capitalism: A Ghost Story, Outlook, 26th March 2012

And why to leave the NGOs out of this conspiracy. I remember reading a book, "The Brave New World", a chilling foresight into a society being increasingly fashioned according to capitalistic interests. Is all the technology aiding us to become free thinking citizen or is it just making us into bits of information being fed into a giant supercomputer controlling every single facet of our lives.

Armed with their billions, these NGOs have waded into the world, turning potential revolutionaries into salaried activists, funding artists, intellectuals and filmmakers, gently luring them away from radical confrontation, ushering them in the direction of multi-culturalism, gender, community development—the discourse couched in the language of identity politics and human rights.

Arundhati Roy, Capitalism: A Ghost Story, Outlook, 26th March 2012

There's scarcely a man who has not signed his truce with the devil of capitalism. Let's pray that there are some who shall have the wisdom and the courage to tell people a different story, whisper dreams of a different earth.

On Ego

“I'm sick of not having the courage to be an absolute nobody.” 
― J.D. Salinger, Franny and Zooey


This particular quote is the keynote for the set of quotes to follow from J D Salinger. I have not read his books but learnt from Wikipedia, unsurprisingly, that he was very interested in Hindu philosophy. Perhaps Salinger did not have the guts to be an absolute nobody but he had a rare capacity to be self deprecating, almost approaching sagacity



“I’m just sick of ego, ego, ego. My own and everybody else’s. I’m sick of everybody that wants to get somewhere, do something distinguished and all, be somebody interesting. It’s disgusting.” 
― J.D. Salinger, Franny and Zooey


We all, I guess, at some point, get sick of our egos but almost all of us carry on with this sickness. We are always selling our self to someone to avoid the greatest fear of our life - anonymity. We are educated to be someone and somebody. Are there any takers for an education that teaches to be just oneself?To meet someone who is just himself or herself is actually rare. It takes far greater intelligence to be so. 

“I'm the most terrific liar you ever saw in your life. It's awful. If I'm on my way to the store to buy a magazine, even, and somebody asks me where I'm going, I'm liable to say I'm going to the opera. It's terrible.” 
― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye


This is trademark, Salinger, self-deprecating humor. These are the kinds of aspects that people, most carefully conceal in themselves, almost like a shadow. I believe, like Don Quixote some don't even consider such things as lies. But for those who don't have an easy conscience, the damned souls, it's a torturous inner battle; the deep wish for truth but falsity and deceit winning at the end. It's so difficult for us to live without some constructed grandeur. 

On Being a Teacher

“Anyway, I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody's around - nobody big, I mean - except me. And I'm standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff - I mean if they're running and they don't look where they're going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That's all I do all day. I'd just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it's crazy, but that's the only thing I'd really like to be.” 
― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye


I am quintessentially a teacher. Over the years, more than learning about what to do, I have learnt more about "what not to do". The playground has been the most pregnant motif of my imagination whenever I think of education and learning. A field of rye is even better, as it creates a sense of union with nature. Often, during recess break, with a cup of tea in my hands, I watch the children running in the playground, squeals of laughter, bumping and rolling. 


More than confinement, The School has to be a space, a sacred space where children grow naturally and harmoniously. It's human nature to be curious and learn. The true role of a teacher is not to teach but to remove any hindrances in the way of a child's learning.


Ultimately, being a teacher, I have to take care that these children of God, don't start going over the cliff (drugs, violence, addictions) and when they do, "I have to come out from somewhere and catch them"


My grateful acknowledgement to Prof. Madhukar Shukla who shared this on Facebook some time back and which has haunted me ever since.