closed dow n.
T hat’s bad enough—w hat’s w orse is the fact that people tolerated
it. (Just imagine the same thing happening here in Boston, say.)
Feudalistic attitudes run very deep in India, and they’re going to be
hard to uproot.
T hat’s w hat w as so striking about the village in West Bengal.
Poor, landless w orkers, including lots of w omen, w ere active and
engaged. You can’t put numbers on that kind of change, but it makes
a huge difference. T hat’s real popular resistance and activism, like
the democratic institutions that developed in Haiti before Aristide’s
election (and that still exist there) and w hat happened in Central
America in the 1970s and 1980s.
(In Haiti, democracy elicited instant U S hostility and a murderous
military coup, tacitly supported by the U S; in Central America, a U S-
run terrorist w ar. In both places, the U S permitted democratic
forms after establishing conditions that prevented them from
functioning—amidst much self-congratulation about the nobility of
our leaders.)
W hat has to be overcome in India is enormous. T he inefficiency
is unbelievable. W hile I w as there, the Bank of India came out w ith
an estimate that about a third of the economy is “black”—mainly
rich people w ho don’t pay their taxes. Economists there told me
one-third is an underestimate. A country can’t function that w ay.
As elsew here, the real question for India is, can they control
their ow n w ealthy? If they can figure out a w ay to do that, there are
lots of policies that might w ork.
International organizations
I n World Orders, Old and New, you say that the U N has become
virtually an agency for U S pow er.
T he U N mostly does w hat the U S—meaning U S business—w ants
done. A lot of its peacekeeping operations are aimed at maintaining
the level of “stability” corporations need in order to do business. It’s
dirty w ork and they’re happy to have the U N do it.