Daniel goes to a party to learn about international solidarity
Inspired by a post by fellow faster Mikayla, on friday night I went to a party. There was drinking, dancing, cross-dressing and occasional fighting. They were almost all journalists. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it became an excursion into the real world.
It was a normal party of 40 or so people. There was drinking, dancing, cross-dressing and occasional fighting. Heeding the advice that I wouldn't be able to dance with my legs, on arrival I planned out a voyage through the rooms so as to minimise the temptation to flail my arms, and maximise contact with the most interesting looking people. It was difficult since they were all dressed up as another member of their group. They are Mundus Masters students of journalism, and some had already racked up impressive fulltime journalism experience: CNN, Jakarta Post, academia in Mozambique, interviewing state presidents.
I was on day 8 of my fast, and I still get hungry at the sight of food. (Smells I can deal with, pleasing and satisfying my senses). It wasn't long before I had to sit down to avoid the sight of homemade cookies and chips. I ended up next to a quiet man from New Delhi, and had my first serious conversation about the life of the Indian poor. I came away struck by the naivety of my thinking, exacerbated by 2 years of studying economics.
I proposed, "The people need energy from somewhere, and that's why they're building the dams?"
"No. The politicians want the dams. A few handful of people, for the well-off in cities to use the energy." Megawatt-pride is easier translated into dollars and votes, than the lives of a few tens of thousands of people in the villages, which lie in the valleys flooded by the dams.
"But every economist says GDP is correlated with energy use," I countered, thinking of the new "Indian middle class" that has been a darling of the capitalist system.
"The concept of GDP is a western concept," he said. "Where is does this idea of GDP come from?"
Economists. Supported by politicians giving them a nice office to pontificate in. Supported in turn by wealthy businessmen. Started being used only in the 1940's! (Invented by Kuznets). That's a bloody short time, even for the inillustrious 'scientific' discipline, not even reaching back to the depression on which we're trying to base our plan to get out of the current financial crisis.
"What the majority of the Indians care about is being able to live. Their land. Their livelihood. Their traditions."
And the relentless focus on GDP has made so many rural people into the urban poor, who of course just want to survive. And when one lives in a city, as destitute as can be, it's still increasing GDP. It's incredible how one can forget the perversity of such matters; even when one is fasting and just that little bit closer to the global poor than one's everyday comforts: cookies and chips. And taking part in the economy.
