It was a case of Modi mania when Narendra Modi and his BJP ‘swept’ to power in last year’s Indian general election. It was however hardly the sweeping endorsement from the voters that much of the corporate media liked to portray it as. The BJP might have took 282 of the 543 seats in the Lok Sabha, but it ‘swept’ to power on only 31 percent of the vote.
Parts of corporate India and the well-off middle classes nevertheless celebrated Modi’s rise to Prime Minister in the belief that they would materially benefit from a ‘Thatcherite-style’ revolution (see here). And many ordinary folk also swallowed the PR about Modi’s ‘vibrant Gujarat’ PR campaign, which has been shown to be anything but ‘vibrant’.
Writing on the Countercurrents website, Rohini Hensman shows that GDP growth in Gujarat under Chief Minister Modi was nothing special compared with many other states in India and was supported by wholesale privatisation of public assets, which has in effect meant the state government abdicating responsibility for decision-making processes that impact millions of people’s lives by handing them to elite interests (see here). In terms of poverty, rural population displacement, hunger, farmer suicides, corruption, disease and debt, Hensman demonstrates that under Modi the extreme economic neoliberalism practised was anything but a resounding success.
Now at the political helm nationally, Modi and his administration are helping to accelerate a process that could eventually result in the selling of the economic and social bedrock of the country – agriculture – to foreign GMO agribusiness, not least by pushing for open field trials of various GM food crops. (The BJP does not stand alone here, though, as the process was gathering pace under the previous Congress-led administration and Veerappa Moily near the end.) Full story...
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Parts of corporate India and the well-off middle classes nevertheless celebrated Modi’s rise to Prime Minister in the belief that they would materially benefit from a ‘Thatcherite-style’ revolution (see here). And many ordinary folk also swallowed the PR about Modi’s ‘vibrant Gujarat’ PR campaign, which has been shown to be anything but ‘vibrant’.
Writing on the Countercurrents website, Rohini Hensman shows that GDP growth in Gujarat under Chief Minister Modi was nothing special compared with many other states in India and was supported by wholesale privatisation of public assets, which has in effect meant the state government abdicating responsibility for decision-making processes that impact millions of people’s lives by handing them to elite interests (see here). In terms of poverty, rural population displacement, hunger, farmer suicides, corruption, disease and debt, Hensman demonstrates that under Modi the extreme economic neoliberalism practised was anything but a resounding success.
Now at the political helm nationally, Modi and his administration are helping to accelerate a process that could eventually result in the selling of the economic and social bedrock of the country – agriculture – to foreign GMO agribusiness, not least by pushing for open field trials of various GM food crops. (The BJP does not stand alone here, though, as the process was gathering pace under the previous Congress-led administration and Veerappa Moily near the end.) Full story...
Related posts:
- Lobbyist claims Monsanto weed killer is safe to drink, then bolts when TV...
- Arundhati Roy: Beware the ‘gush-up gospel’ behind India’s billionaires...
- The greenhouses where Monsanto 'plays God' with the future of the planet...
- Feeding the vultures while agriculture starves: capitalism’s great Indian con-trick
- Rising suicide rate for Indian farmers blamed on GMO seeds...
- Monsanto caused 291,000 suicides in India...
- Capitulating to Monsanto and Wall Street: What future for India?
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