“Economics is a mere skeleton, unless it has a little human covering and filling out, a little human bloom upon it, and little human warmth in it” — Charles Dickens.
Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement took over Zuccotti Park in New York on September 17 and since then has spread to some 200 cities in 83 nations. OWS’s Facebook page says 20,000 protesters are in attendance at the Big Apple. In contrast, the Facebook page of Occupy Dalal Street has only 38 members along with an out-of-place Che Guevera photo in the background, a divorce from Indian ground realities.
What has made the OWS movement so popular and getting bigger by the day fired by the social media? Protesters in the US, the movement’s Ground Zero, are irked with the billions doled out as bailouts to banks to help them again kick-start making profits and artificially come out of the crisis, while average Americans are having no relief from high unemployment and job insecurity. It is estimated that 13% of the US’s working age populace is unemployed, and 9% of Americans are surviving on doles and social securities.
Calling themselves 99%, the protesters criticise the 1% or the elite that allegedly has the policymakers eating out of their hands. They slam the growth of stark inequality and the erosion of social mobility in the land of opportunity. Adbusters, the Canada-based activist group, which sparked off the OWS movement, has called for global protests to demand G-20 leaders impose a ‘Robin Hood’ tax of financial transactions and currency trades. OWS leaders are urging fellow protesters to close their bank accounts and transfer their money to credit unions, and the protest will culminate on November 5.
The movement has so far remained peaceful, except in Rome, attracting youth, factory workers, lower middle classes, liberal arts professionals and a section of the intellectuals in almost all countries in North and South America and Europe — making it the biggest people’s power emerging against the ruling politico-economic classes in the developed world. It also has the silent support of a large section of the middle classes in these societies who are facing the brunt of global economic downturn. The protests there are taking a counter-culture hue, and are akin to the anti- establishment movement of the 1960s.
The impact is yet to be felt in much of India or Asia. While the larger part of the Arab world is embroiled in various struggles for political freedom, China, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, South Korea, Singapore are having various degrees of buoyancy in their economies and the middle classes expecting are more upswings from the largely capitalist systems here.
With an Indian economy growing at about 8% annually, second only to China, 400 million strong middle class are gaining from the economy and hoping for a better future, the anger in India is restrained at the moment. It is at two levels: against rampant political-bureaucratic corruption among middle classes who are supporting the Anna movement, and against poverty and dispossession from jal, jangal, jameen (basic resources like water, forests and land) among the tribal and rural poor of India.
In India, economic growth has to trickle down, ensure justice for the marginalised and bring more pro-people land acquisition and bank support systems. Else, the current anti-corruption movement may become a whirlwind of enormous proportions, with a much broad-based leadership taking charge.
It needs an imaginative civil society leadership to entwine these two levels, albeit peacefully, and start from within the confines of the Indian Constitution and then help initiate reforms whose time has come.
It would be interesting to note whether the OWS becomes Communism 2.0, or the possible coming together of the two levels of civil society protests in India forges a new world view drawing from the Gandhian tactics, Communist ideals and welfare economics practice. Watch out for this space for the emerging social trends.
