Rights: Humans' and Animals'

Have you ever wondered why don’t you find baby curry, human soup or something like that in the menu of your favorite restaurant? It’s so simple, we have some government laws that prohibit human killing. Why then this government is so keen on protecting human lives not lives of chickens or goats? Oh wait, there some laws to protect tigers, lions and many other animals. Anyways, I am not trying to argue that if there was no law protecting human life, then people would have been killing each other to eat. Certainly not. In fact, most of the animals do not eat meat of their own species of animals.

Basically, I am trying to say that there are definitely some reasons behind these kind of laws dealing with rights of humans and animals. A nice example is religious/social sanction against cow killing in India. It is not so long that Indians have been worshiping cows. Even some people believe that Vedic people were eating cows (ref). May be, after the advent of agricultural techniques, and after finding vast amount of arable land people in Indian subcontinent reduced meat consumption. Cow became more useful alive than killed for meat. And not to forget that bullocks were used to plough agricultural field (still used widely in present days). I am not saying that people stopped eating cows only because cows offered them material incentives. Surely they could have eaten old and unproductive cows. It can be argued that the cultural consiousness, of being compassionate towards life in general, played a key role in protecting cows in India. But, no one ever talked about protecting rabbits or cocroaches, except few crazy animal rights activists .

Roughly before a century, tiger killers were being rewarded, but now tigers have got too many rights. Even, in some sense, more than what humans have. Only because tigers in jungle make lots of money in terms of tourism.

Human rights also evolved in the same way. Europeans killed native Americans for their gold. But when they needed people in agricultural land and industries, they started importing people from Africa as slaves. And when they realised that free people can be more useful than slaves, America became the land of freedom. It also took same amount of time for the European nations to realise that free countries can bring more prosperity to them than occupied colonies.

I am here trying to say that our rights are a result of interaction between complex social processes and materialism, not because we have some divine consciousness.

Distribution of Wealth: is not always bad

There are two things to be distributed among people: a radio manufacturing plant and land (agriculture).

Lets first talk about the radio factory. It will be foolish to break the radio factory into pieces and give each equal amount of scrap metal. And if the factory is given to the workers only then the concept of equality is not satisfied (I mean not everybody is getting share). So there is only one possible option left with us, i.e., to give the ownership of the factory to a democratic authority which will be responsible to distribute the profit among all(generated by the radio factory).

Here comes the real problem. How will the workers or the authority be interested to run the factory, if, by taking no interest, they are not going to lose their share? neither they are getting any extra share by taking interest (because the final objective of the society is to guarantee equality).

In simple words, distribution of a radio factory is not going to help the society as a whole.

Now consider the case of land. If land is distributed equally (assuming that land everywhere is equally productive) everybody would be owner of equal amount of land. here the land is different from radio factory in the sense that the individual owners are able to use it to produce (grains and vegetables). Since everybody gets benefit from keeping the production level high thus overall production is not going to decrease (though I am not claiming here that the gross production will increase).

What is the difference we saw in between two cases above? The first one (the radio factory) needs a central authority but the second one needs no such authority.

There are many examples of successful land distribution programs. In Denmark, common people were greatly benefited from cooperative farming (link). In West Bengal, India land reform program in early 80s considerably reduced rural poverty (link).

Development and anti-Development people

The background story

Needless to say, most of the people who had participated in the freedom struggle were rural poor. They had expected that when the British would leave all the evils would go with them Then the British transferred power to feudalistic Nehru and his colleagues. Under the newly formed government, the new elites like native industrialists and middle class bureaucracy started to grow. Corruption and other form of social evils started to grow along with. Initially, Nehru convinced people that in order to develop the country, some people have to sacrifice. The poor who were already waiting, tried to convince themselves.

After a few decades, people realized that there is no hope in expecting something from government. The social divide (rich and poor) became distinct.

After liberalization

The sick economic model of Nehru reached its stagnant stage, when the system became totally corrupted. Our leaders then submitted national independence to international mafias like IMF and world bank. Many foreign corporates came to save Indian economy. The banner under which this process was carried out (still going on) was "development". Vajpayee added a more fashionable slogan to it; "India shinning!".

India started to shine indeed, but for some. To some, India even looked darker. Their land is forcefully grabbed and they are forcefully thrown into destitute (ref.). What they will do then? If they tried to resist, they become "anti-development" people!

The battle between "development" people and "anti-development" people

Now it is quite distinct that the urban middle class, mainly educated mass are supporter of development, as they are directly or indirectly benefiting from it. How is the scope for those "anti-development" people to survive? Their live hood is forcefully grabbed (a nice example being the recent event in Nandigram, West Bengal). How they will resist? Can they compete with the "development" people formally(note: I am talking about electoral politics)? surely they are the loosers. But they have to resist. How they will do? Now come to see the Gandhian way of struggle (nonviolent).

Arundhati Roy gives a very nice sataric comment: They have watched the great Gandhian people's movements being reduced and humiliated, floundering in the quagmire of court cases, hunger strikes and counter-hunger strikes. Perhaps these many million Constraining Ghosts of the Past wonder what advice Gandhi would have given the Indians of the Americas, the slaves of Africa, the Tasmanians, the Herero, the Hottentots, the Armenians, the Jews of Germany, the Muslims of Gujarat. Perhaps they wonder how they can go on hunger strike when they're already starving. How they can boycott foreign goods when they have no money to buy any goods. How they can refuse to pay taxes when they have no earnings. (click)

So there is an obvious answer left to those people: Take arm and resist.

Virtue of Electroral democracy

It is realized that nation state came into existence out of fear (of theft, organized attack etc.). In different parts of world organization of state took different forms, though their basic themes were largely similar, i. e., the system controlled by a central authority. Everything revolved around that center, laws related to both material and immaterial stuffs etc.

Advent of this system was not unnatural or accidental, rather it was well in accordance with human nature. “Everyone works for material incentive? Well, it is, but I don’t think it is all. People came in contact with immaterial stuffs. God, soul, ethics and morality, they tried to know objective of life. But nobody ever knew the secret and purpose of the human life! In fact, if we assume happiness is what human beings thrive for, then we are confused again, what do we need for it, and how much? Material stuffs or immaterial stuffs?

Monarchs became official owner of their states, including people. Unlike the democratic age we are living in now, individual right/liberty was not known in that time. But I don’t think people of that time were bearing more violence/exploitation than how much we bear now. We saw monarchs like Harsa who distributed all his personal wealth to people. And Ashoka who devoted most part of his life time in welfare of people. What was incentive for them to be so noble? Reputation, is not it?

And monarchs had understood that a kingdom could not prosper without collective effort of people. It should be noted here that since a monarch is on the top of the management structure, it is quite easy for him to manage the system, if he is efficient.

However, an Interesting change occurred after industrial revolution started. People got a wonderful opportunity to create immense amount of wealth (by doing business) without holding political position, this resulted imbalance in power structure. Then we saw French revolution and modern concept of democracy i. e., electoral democracy.

In electoral democracy, the ruling people are considered as the servant of common people, but they hold as much power as monarchs had possessed. Shortly, people got no more power from this new system, except the voting right. Since the ruling people are not ensured of any kind of incentive, they try to exploit their power which they hold for short duration.

Thus Resulting only chaos, this is what virtue of electoral democracy is.

War is no more a profitable business

Ever since human beings came out of forest to settle down in civilization, war is a unavoidable event. enslaving people and snatching stuffs from them is, probably, the first successful business human civilization has ever witnessed. with time appreciation for this business also grew. it became an auspicious duty for a king to conquer land and collect tribute.

This business always put the loser at heavy loss, interestingly, often it put victors also at loss. for eg, there were few like Mahmud and Nadir Shah who made huge amount of profit whereas we saw some victors like Ashoka who borne loss.

After Industrial Revolution

human society passed through many stages; from democracy to monarchy, from monarchy to democracy, from plutocracy to monarchy.. but never did it change the equation, until industrial revolution. with advent of modern transportation system and invention of perishable commodities, scope of a successful business changed radically: instead of occupying land and collecting revenues it became much easier to collect huge amount of revenue by supplying commodities. instead of enslaving people and make them work forcefully it became much easier to hire them and use machines to produce too much wealth.

but, ironically, industrial revolution did not end war and slavery. attempts to establish monopoly over market by European businessmen resulted two greatest devastating wars (WWI and WWII). However, in both these wars the winners (nations) had to pay heavy price. But business has made things very easy. We saw Bill Gates making unimaginable amount of wealth within a few years.

Capitlism and Monarchy: a parallel

I assume that performance of a system depends largely on how efficient its administration is. Why private firms perform far better than public ones? I think it is because a private company has “a” owner. The owner has direct interest in running the system efficiently. And he can manage very well as he has the sole authority. Yeah, it is an example of central administration and no one other than the owner has “complete” autonomy to take any decision.

Competition makes things better

What if the owner of a private firm is not able to manage efficiently? The answer is very simple, he will make loss in business and some other private companies will conquer his business empire. For e. g., Hero-Honda motorbikes almost kicked Bajaj scooter manufacturer out of business and Google became king in online business.

Monarchy is a centralized system just like private companies, so it can be run efficiently if the monarch is able enough. What if the monarch is not efficient? The answer is same, he will loss his kingdom to an efficient monarch. Take the example of Chandragupta. Dhana Nanda had a very big empire but he was not a efficient manager. Chandragupta not only annexed Nanda’s kingdom but also he conquered most part of present day's India, Pakistan and Afghanistan. And really Chandragupta’s rule was one of the most prosperous epochs in Indian history. There are many other examples like Kharavela, Kaniska, Vikramadiya and Sher Shah Suri.

The only difference being, in the case of capitalism the mode competition is business whereas monarchs have to go to war.