Towards an alternative perspective

The Indian banking system is passing through a rough phase. With the banks already grappling with unusually high instances of non-performing assets (NPAs), a myriad of scams have unfolded, questioning the functioning of the banking system as a whole. The issues involved therein, have however, been widely discussed and debated and more and more analysis of the same is being added to the table daily. My purpose here, therefore, is not to contribute further to the same, but to dwell on something different.

I just started reading the epic novel written by John Steinbeck which was published way back in 1939, titled, “The Grapes of Wrath”. I would just like to quote a passage from this novel, which is a conversation between the owners and the tenants of some piece of land:

“The owner men went on leading to their point: You know the land’s getting poorer. You know what cotton does to the land; robs it, sucks all the blood out of it.

The squatters nodded – they knew, God knew. If they could only rotate the crops they might pump blood back into the land.

Well, it’s too late. And the owner men explained the workings and thinkings of the monster that was stronger than they were. A man can hold land if he can just eat and pay taxes; he can do that.

Yes, he can do that until his crops fail one day and he has to borrow money from the bank. But – you see, a bank or a company can’t do that, because those creatures don’t breathe air, don’t eat side-meat. They breathe profits; they eat the interest on money. If they don’t get it, they die the way you die without air, without side-meat. It is a sad thing, but it is so. It is just so……..When the monster stops growing, it dies. It can’t stay one size.

….The squatting men looked down again. What do you want us to do? We can’t take less share of the crop – we’re half-starved now. The kids are hungry all the time. We got no clothes, torn an’ ragged. If all the neighbors weren’t the same, we’d be ashamed to go to meeting.

And at last the owner men came to the point. The tenant system won’t work anymore. One man on a tractor can take the place of twelve or fourteen families. Pay him a wage and take all the crop…..

But you’ll kill the land with cotton.

We know. We’ve got to take cotton quick before the land dies. Then we’ll sell the land. Lots of families in the East would like to own a piece of land.

The tenant men looked up alarmed. But what’ll happen to us? How’ll we eat?

You’ll have to get off the land…..

And now the squatting men stood up angrily. Grampa took up the land…..And Pa was born here….Then a bad year came and he had to borrow a little money….An’ we was born here. There in the door our children born here. And Pa had to borrow money. The bank owned the land then, but we stayed and we got a little bit of what we raised.

We know that – all that. It’s not us, it’s the bank. A bank isn’t like a man. Or an owner with fifty thousand acres, he isn’t like a man either. That’s the monster.

Sure, cried the tenant men, but it’s our land. We measured it and broke it up. And we got killed on it, died on it. Even if it’s no good, it’s still ours. That’s what makes it ours – being born on it, working it, dying on it. That makes ownership, not a paper with numbers on it.

We’re sorry. It’s not us. It’s the monster. The bank isn’t like a man.

Yes, but the bank is only made of men.

No – you are wrong there – quite wrong there. The bank is something else than men. It happens that every man in a bank hates what the bank does, and yet the bank does it. The bank is something more than men, I tell you. Men made it, but they can’t control it……You’ll have to go……You’ll be stealing if you try to stay, you’ll be murderers if you kill to stay……”

 

What is it that I am trying to drive at, by quoting the above longish passage? This novel is written in the context of the developments that took place in America in the third and the fourth decades of the twentieth century. The above passage provides glimpses of the beginning of the modern world of industry and finance. A world that is that is considered to be a non-negotiable way of life today. The growth of industry and finance have been cited as a proof of the very growth and development of humankind. Purportedly, these systems were devised for humankind. Then, when and why did it so happen that these systems were allowed to grow into monsters bigger than humankind itself?

 

The Oxfam report on the extent of inequality prevailing in the world released in January, 2018, titled, “Reward Work not Wealth”, provides some stark facts. To put things in perspective, the report states, “Last year saw the biggest increase in billionaires in history, one more every two days. Billionaires saw their wealth increase by $762 billion in 12 months. This huge increase could have ended global extreme poverty seven times over. 82% of all wealth created in the last year went to the top 1%, while the bottom 50% saw no increase at all.”

 

When the systems of industry and finance were being envisaged, allowed to grow and develop, was the above the end result that was being visualized? I doubt. But this is what it has come to. This is the situation that we have landed ourselves in. So while some individuals are able to defraud the entire system for billions of dollars and go scot free, some others die every second for want of food. While the entire world is being turned into a concrete jungle, there are places where water is already on the verge of drying up. Pieces of paper decide destinies in a world which has long forgotten to value human life.

 

We may be faced with crisis situations in almost all walks of life today, be it financial crisis, environmental crisis, food crisis, water crisis, and so on and so forth. But the solution doesn’t lie in making efforts to plug the immediate leakage. The pressure of water is so strong that it will soon create another hole and flow out anyway.

 

However, to arrive at even the semblance of a solution, the problem needs to be understood and accepted first. The entire culture of worshipping systems, machines and money, of letting them rule over humankind, of ensuring that no alternative that talks of holistic structural and systemic shifts in ideologies is allowed to even make it to the table, needs to undergo an urgent transformation. Newer and completely different frame of references will have to be created to look at issues, not in a disjointed manner, but in a manner where co-relation is possible. But before any of this has to take place, there has to be a willingness to accept that there definitely is something wrong with the current state of affairs, a willingness to at least start the debate on what can be done about it, and to follow that up with focused, meaningful and directed efforts. Only this can ensure that our future generations are able to even survive on this planet.  We owe at least that much to those we are ourselves bringing into this world.