Clinton,"India is NOT Poverty Stricken."

[Guest guest]

>

>Title: Kalu Ram Deserves Bharat Ratna. Does he not?

>By: S Gurumurthy

>Source: New Indian Express

>03/25/2000

>

>Kali Ram Meena is a villager. He belongs to the Scheduled Caste. He is a

>srarapanch, a council member of his village panchayat. The village Naila

>is

>in desert state, Rajasthn. This is where president Bill Clinton had gone

>on

>Thursday to understand the deeper meaning of India.

>

>This rustic villager shocked the american president with a question. He

>asked him straight: "President Saheb, most Americans think that our

>country

>is backward and poverty stricken, where people die of hunger, and which is

>full of snake charmers. You also think so?"

>

>The head of the strongest and the richest nation was taken back. He never

>anticipated this, especially at Naila village. And, never from a Kalu Ram.

>Against the background of whatever he had been told by Indians and

>Americans

>about Kalu Ram's country, he would have expected Kalu Ram to ask from the

>world's richest 'Raja' - this is how the Naila people called Bill Clinton -

>for some favours, for himself and for his village.

>

>But Kulu Ram wanted no favour. His profound question travelled way beyond

>Bill Clinton's understanding of India. He challenged very picture that

>some

>of the best minds in the country, including ministers and prime ministers -

>whether it was Nehru then or Vajpayee today - officials and columnists,

>non-government organisations and intellectuals have presented about India

>to

>the Americans, to the West and even to us, Indians.

>

>Recovering from his shock, Clinton responded: "No. India is not a poverty

>stricken nation. My visit will help to correct this wrong impression of my

>fellow Americans that India is poor." Bill clinton understand that Kalu

>Ram's question also contained the answer, and, that is, this nation is not

>a

>poor nation, as the whole world is made to believe.

>

>It would have been shocking only if Bill Clinton were not shocked. That

>India means hunger and poverty, superstition and illiteracy, snake charming

>and bride burning, married children and prostituting widows, is the picture

>that has been unfailingly presented to the world and west for over a

>century. Not by foreigners, but by Indian themselves since independence.

>The neo Catherine Mayos are ever sniffing around the Indian gutters to make

>films and write books to tell the west and India that India means gutter.

>Contrast with Bill Clinton's own country. One-third of pregnant girls are

>school going children. But no American would define the American identity

>as

>unwed, child mothers.

>

>Before independence, the missionaries started advertising India's poverty

>abroad during the colonial period to raise funds for their religious

>conversion work. After independence, the success of their work inspired

>many

>voluntary organisations to copy their success to secure aid for their work.

>This trend became the obsession of these organisations, which successfully

>made business out of the advertised poverty and hunger in India.

>

>The Indian government too did not lag behind. It also confirmed the image

>of India as a poverty-stricken and hunger-redden country. Just to secure

>aid for few millions. With the result, poverty and hunger ceased to be

>India's problems, and become her image, even her identity.

>

>This is what Kalu Ram has challenged. But only very few know that Kalu Ram

>is right in challenging the entire opinion-making intellect of India.

>India

>was never poor, nor is it.

>

>If India is poor, it is in leadership. Not just political. Even its

>intellectual leadership is only as good. It is poor not in its resources,

>human and material, but in properly augmenting it.

>

>Just take one asset in which the masses of India and generally the women of

>India, have put faith - gold. Every economist would advise that it is a

>wasteful and idle asset and no one should invest in gold. But the Indian

>mind defied this advice and bought gold. The government virtually declared

>gold as an illegal asset and handed over the entire gold trade to smugglers

>who emerged as monopoly gold suppliers. Yet the Indians continued to buy

>gold. Even Lord Balaji was forced to buy smuggled gold to mint the Balaji

>coin for his devotees.

>

>Not many in our country know that Indians have accumulated a gold stock of

>nearly 3 lakh tons. The value of this is about 3000 billion US Dollars.

>This may not make sense unless it is related the wealth of America itself.

>The value of gold stock in India alone is equal to one-third the market

>capitalisation of corporate America! Again it is equal to one-half of the

>GDP of America! Again gold in unornamented form is estimated at 20000

>tons,

>which is equal to 200 billion dollars, or 9.5lakh crores! The entire gold

>is in black form, because only smugglers supplied gold to the people for 50

>years.

>

>Unless the black gold is brought out into circulation, this vital asset

>will

>continue to be our liability. Imagine the government gives tax immunity to

>all gold deposited into banks. The estimate is that we will raise gold

>deposit of at least 5000 to 10000 tons, that is equal to 50 t0 100 billion

>US dollars. This will stabilise our foreign exchange front, help India

>control the world gold market and prices, bring down the interest rates and

>put into circulation a giant asset that moves around stealthily, like a

>thief, even now. This is how we have reduced one of our most valuable

>asset

>into a liability.

>

>Kalu Ram knows nothing about this. But he is sure that we are not a poor

>nation. Will this open the eyes of Indians in the way it opened Bill

>Clinton's and made him promise to correct his fellow Americans about India?

>That is Indians are worth trading and doing business with, and not the

>charity of Americans. Kalu Ram has in effect told Bill Clinton that

>America

>can invest in India, while those who projected India as a poor country had

>convinced themselves that India deserves aid from the Americans.

>

>Surprisingly, only a few news papers had carried this report. Newspapers,

>which wasted hundred of tons of newsprint to support Deepa Mehta and

>Shabana

>Azmi's constitutional right to project the Indian widow as prostitute, did

>not even print the Kalu Ram and Clinton dialogue.

>

>Kalu Ram Meena deserves to be awarded Bharat Rathna, for telling the truth

>to the most important man in the world today - a truth, which most Indians

>have not noticed. Does he not?

>

 

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