I have just seen a documentary on genetically modified foods & read Next (by late Michael Crichton) again. Both talk about the inherent problem underlying patenting of living organisms or their genes / parts.
Now, we generally see our parliamentarians arguing about trivial issues & the media showing similar stupid issues all day interspersed with ads by large corporations. I used to wonder why somebody doesn't tell both these guys to go find something more sensible to do. Then again, after going through the above two items, it has dawned on me that maybe that is what the hidden agenda is: to keep the public at large running around their life & be bombarded by senseless issues rest of the time, so that the real & important issues are hidden behind the screens.
If one were to just read through the list of acts passed in the parliament without so much as an hour's discussion, one would understand. Increasingly, countries are passing laws that profits larger corporations. What is the largest source of money controlled by the least concerned people? It is inevitably the public funds. Any subsidy, grant, loan is provided from the public corpus and accountability is minimum - not just in India - but worldwide.
So what do large corporations do? They dont market products like consumer goods- they market items for public body consumption - health, arms, agriculture, public services, etc. What do the largest corporations sell us? They sell us fighter jets without accountability, vaccines & emergency medicine procured by the government without adequate tests or assurance, genetically modified food sold through government gene banks, public services like consultancy, water supply & waste management, electricity, etc that no person is able to question directly. It is simply the money that is taken from the public in form of taxes, and not given accountability of. The public is not in direct control of this money, and the people entrusted with this money can be easily bribed or provided stake in the corporations in order to gain access to the money.
If we see around, there are a million examples - Dabhol Power Project, Bhopal gas tragedy, Submarine scam, Bofors scam, etc etc...We are being systematically robbed (yes, that is the correct word) of our earnings, and the corporations are getting more powerful using the same money, and eventually even control what rules apply to them. Its a vicious circle that will end in the slavery of a general person to larger corporations - the future kings / dictators of the world.
This is where all the farce comes in - caste politics (a la Mayawati), regional politics (a la Thackereys), saas bahu serials, pointless arguments on news channels (both funded by ads of larger corporations, and hence dictating what should be shown), reality shows, and in extreme cases even acts of terrorism - in short anything that distracts or disrupts the normal persons life enough to take his or her attention away from what is happening to public funds, public rights and opinion on things that are actually affecting the world at large...
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