There is an
interview with Arundhati Roy in today's
The Hindu. It's about the Narmada issue, but she makes some great points in general:
(A country) cannot be run like (a corporation). All policy cannot be guided by commercial interests and motivated by profit. Citizens are not employees to be hired and fired, governments are not employers. Newspapers and TV channels are not supposed to be boardroom bulletins. Signing over resources like forests and rivers and minerals to giant corporations in the name of `efficiency' and GDP growth only increases the efficiency of terrible exploitation of the majority and the indecent accumulation of wealth by a minority -- leading to the yawning divide between the rich and the poor and the kind of social conflict we're seeing.
and
You cannot say I'm taking away the livelihood of 200,000 to enhance the livelihood of two million. Imagine what would happen if the government were to take the wealth of 200,000 of India's richest people and redistribute it amongst two million of India's poorest? We would hear a lot about socialist appropriation and the death of democracy. Why should taking from the rich be called appropriation and taking from the poor be called development?
You go girl.
