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http://www.countercurrents.org/…/demonetisation-ww2-bengal…/

Demonetisation, WW2 Bengal Famine And Horrendous Indian Avoidable Mortality Then And Now

The demonetisation of Rs. 500 and Rs. 1000 notes by the Murderer of
democratic institutions(Modi) is disproportionately impacting the poor
of India. Presently 4.5 million country people die avoidably from
deprivation each year and demonetisation will make this worse by
increasing poverty, deprivation and dis empowerment. People must reject
this callous and deadly attack on the poor, reject deadly pro-One Perc
enter neo-liberalism and demand social justice via social humanism
(democratic socialism).

Countercurrents.org
editor Binu Mathew has written: “In a cashless / digital money India
Big Brother would be watching 24/7. The digitally illiterate vast
majority would be driven out of circulation like the old notes. It’s a
long process, perhaps more lethal than Hitler’s “Final Solution”. More
people died in World War II Bengal famine than Hitler’s gas chambers.
Did it make it at least into the footnotes of Indian history?
Demonetised country doesn’t need gas chambers, hunger will do the job!”
[1].

Unfortunately Binu Matthew is essentially correct and indeed
quite conservative in his estimation. Poverty and dis-empowerment
combine to constitute a deadly deprivation in India today that is
already linked to an annual avoidable mortality of 4.5 million people
each year as estimated from mortality data from the UN Population
Division [2]. Avoidable mortality (avoidable death, excess mortality,
excess death, untimely death, deaths that should not happen) is the
difference between actual deaths in a country in a given period and
deaths that would be expected if that country were at peace and subject
to humane governance [3]. Demonetisation will make this horrendous
Indian avoidable mortality holocaust worse by increasing poverty,
deprivation and dis-empowerment.

The annual mortality in India
(2017 population 1,350 million [2]) is 7.3 deaths per 1,000 of
population [2]. However for poor and high birth rate but decently
governed countries the annual death rate is about 4 deaths per 1,000 of
population [3], the difference being 7.3- 4.0 = 3.3 avoidable deaths per
1,000 of population per year and accordingly 3.3 avoidable deaths per
1,000 of population x 1.35 thousand million people = 4.46 million
avoidable Indian deaths from deprivation every year. It must be noted
that a total of 17 million people presently die avoidably each year from
deprivation in the Developing World (minus China) [3]. In contrast,
annual avoidable death is effectively zero (0) for China, South Korea,
Japan, Western Europe, and the colonization-derived countries of the
US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Apartheid Israel [3].

4.46 million or about 4.5 million avoidable Indian deaths every year in
“the world’s biggest democracy” means that untimely Indian deaths every 2
years exceed the carnage of the WW2 Jewish Holocaust (5-6 million Jews
killed by violence or imposed deprivation in 1941-1945) [4] or of the
WW2 Bengali Holocaust (Bengal Famine) in which the British with
Australian complicity deliberately starved 6-7 million Indians to death
in 1942-1945 for strategic reasons in Bengal, Orissa, Bihar and Assam
[5-14], Australia being complicit by withholding grain from its huge
wartime wheat stores from starving India [5]. When the price of rice
rose up to 4-fold (for a variety of complex reasons), those living at
the edge (notably land-less labourers) could not buy food and perished
under merciless British rule.

The appalling 4.5 million avoidable
deaths each year in ostensibly democratic but neo-liberal India as
compared to zero (0) in authoritarian but pluralistic and altruistic
China is testament to the abolition of endemic poverty in China but not
in our country. The ostensibly free but One Per center-owned Mainstream
media of the country are able to report the explicit, publicly-visible
horrors of war, terrorism and famine but fail to report the worsening
avoidable mortality holocaust occurring behind closed doors. Thus it has
been estimated that in 2003 about 3.7 million Indians died avoidably
from deprivation as compared to the 4.5 million such deaths expertly
predicted for 2017 [3]. But just as Western media still overwhelmingly
ignore the WW2 Bengali Holocaust (6-7 million avoidable Indian deaths
from deprivation in Bengal and neighbouring states in 1942-1945), so
Indian media largely ignore the worsening Indian avoidable mortality
holocaust (presently about 4.5 million avoidable deaths from deprivation
each year).

Our Country’s famine expert and 1998 Nobel Laureate
for Economics, Amartya Sen, and his colleague Jean Drèze commented
thus on media reportage and avoidable deaths from deprivation (1995):
“The contrast is especially striking in comparing the experiences of
China and India. The particular fact that China, despite its much
greater achievements in reducing endemic deprivation, experienced a
gigantic famine during 1958-1961 (a famine in which, it is now
estimated, 23 to 30 million people died), had a good deal to do with
lack of press freedom and the absence of political opposition. The
disastrous policies that paved the way to the famine were not changed
for three years as the famine raged on, and this was made possible by
the near-total suppression of news about the famine and total absence of
media criticism of what was then happening in China… However, it
appears that even an active press, as in India, can be less than
effective in moving governments to act decisively against endemic
under-nutrition and deprivation – as opposed to dramatically visible
famines. The quiet persistence of “regular hunger” kills millions in a
slow and non-dramatic way , and this phenomenon has not been much
affected, it appears, by media critiques” [15].

Thus the World is
well aware of the 1958-1961 famine in China (23-30 million deaths) that
was associated with the Great Leap Forward but is overwhelmingly
unaware of the hundreds of millions of “slow and undramatic” avoidable
deaths from deprivation under the British and post-Independence. Using
Country’s census data 1870-1950, assuming an Indian population of
about 200 million in the period 1760-1870, and estimating by
interpolation from available data a country’ people’s avoidable death
rate in (deaths per 1,000 of population per year) of 37 (1757-1920), 35
(1920-1930), 30 (1930-1940) and 24 (1940-1950), one can estimate excess
deaths (avoidable deaths, untimely deaths) of 592 million (1757-1837),
497 million (1837-1901) and 418 million (1901-1947), roughly 1.5 billion
in total or 1.8 billion including the Native States. However after
Independence the avoidable death rate dropped dramatically to circa 3.5
deaths per 1,000 of population per year by 2003 (2003 population 1,057
million), with 1950-2005 avoidable deaths from deprivation totalling
about 350 million [16].

Brilliant country’s writer and activist
Arundhati Roy has provided a succinct explanation for Mainstream lying
by omission over appalling social realities (2004): “The ultimate
privilege of the élite is not just their deluxe lifestyles, but deluxe
lifestyles with a clear conscience” [17]. It must be recognized that
ignoring horrendous realities and lying by omission are far, far worse
than repugnant lying by commission (explicit lying) because the latter
can at least be refuted and admit the possibility of public discussion
[18, 19].

Demonitisation is worsening the conditions of the poor
of the country and will thus inevitably contribute to a worsening of the
killing of “millions in a slow and non-dramatic way” that presently
stands at about 4.5 million avoidable Indian deaths from deprivation
each year.

Demonetisation has led to a cash shortage that
disproportionately affects the poor. The poor have limited cash to buy
food, farmers have limited cash to pay rural labourers to harvest food,
farmers are having trouble selling harvested food, and the result is
real deprivation and hunger [20]. West Bengal chief minister has
claimed (January 2017) that the demonetisation of Rs. 500 and Rs. 1000
notes (announced by Modi on November 8, 2016) could lead to suffering
and famine for the poorest: “The decision to demonetise the currency has
led to severe hardship among the poor and the marginalised. In many
areas, labour is not available to harvest the grains from the field. In
other parts of the state, farmers are not able to earn money from
cultivation of vegetables as demand has slowed down and people are
cutting consumption… Tea sellers who used to earn Rs500 a day are now
unable to find customers due to shortage of currency. This Rs2,000-note
has created more confusion and hardships for the people. This happens
when the leadership loses connection with people” [21, 22].

News
World country has commented on the massive move to a cashless society:
“On November 8, all Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes were made invalid. Was
this a masterstroke by Modi? Economic prudence can never allow that 86
percent of the money should be removed from circulation… But, what about
that daily wage earner who doesn’t even know what ‘go cashless’ means.
A large amount of money belonging to the poor and the uninformed lot
has become invalid. It is their hard-earned savings which they are
unable to convert either because they don’t have access or right
information about the whole process… The so called- informal economy is
collapsing for the simple reason that it thrives on cash transactions.
More than 90 percent of the labour force in India is dependent on this,
receiving the biggest setback of their lives. The demand has come down
drastically and the small or micro enterprises have slowed down on their
production. Since the labour force works on a daily wages, a loss of
one-month of their pay has crippled the informal economy like never
before” [23]. “The Hindu” similarly concludes that demonetisation has
caused a shortage of cash (a “cash famine”) that disproportionately
impacts the poor who are not part of the digital economy [24].

Physicist and outstanding Indian environmental and social analyst and
activist, Dr Vandana Shiva, has excoriated this disempowerment of the
poor for the benefit of the rich (January 2017): “ As 2017 begins and we
flounder in our mad rush to force all of India into a digital economy
overnight… We live in times where the non-working rent collectors and
speculators have emerged as the richest billionaires. Meanwhile, the
hard working honest people, like farmers, workers in self-organised
economies (mistakenly called unorganised and informal) are not just
being pushed into deep poverty, they are, in fact, being criminalised by
labelling their self-organised economic systems as “black”… Imposing
the digital economy through a “cash ban” is a form of technological
dictatorship, in the hands of the world’s billionaires. Economic
diversity and technological pluralism are India’s strength and it is the
“hard cash” that insulated India from the global market’s “dive into
the red” of 2008… When I exchange Rs 100 even a 100 times it remains Rs
100. In the digital world those who control the exchange, through
digital and financial networks, make money at every step of the 100
exchanges. That is the how the digital economy has created the
billionaire class of one per cent, which controls the economy of the 100
per cent. The foundation of the real economy is work. Gandhi following
Leo Tolstoy and John Ruskin called it “bread labour” — labour that
creates bread that sustains life. Writing in Young India in 1921, he
wrote: “God created man to work for his food, and said that those who
ate without work were thieves” [25].

Satya Sagar, a journalist
and public health worker, has similarly commented on this massive
disempowerment of the poor (January 2017): “ From all evidence so far it
is clear, that the Scheduled Castes and Tribes, who make up a bulk of
those surviving off India’s vast informal economy, are the worst
affected by the sudden disappearance of cash from the economy.
Agricultural labour, construction workers, employees of
micro-enterprises, the urban and rural poor – mostly from these
marginalized castes- have been pushed to the brink of starvation or
worse due to loss of jobs and income. The other sections, whose lives
have been severely disrupted are small and medium sized farmers, who are
overwhelmingly from Other Backward Castes and artisans, mostly from
poorer Muslim communities…what Modi dispensation is doing through its
devious insistence on a digitalised economy – imposing on the already
disadvantaged a test designed to not just make them fail but also put
the blame for their misery on their own ‘ignorance’. If in the past they
were actively denied knowledge of the ‘Vedas’ by the upper castes now,
as they are trying to catch up, the rules of the game are either being
changed abruptly or they are being priced out of the market. The most
apt way to describe what is happening in India today is perhaps through a
completely new term –dwijitalisation. It captures well the long-term
implications of Narendra Modi’s push for a digital economy in a country
that has long been ruled by the dwij – or twice born castes as the Hindu
elite call themselves. Under the new rules of the dwijital economy only
the dwij– at the top of the social, economic and political ladder –
will climb still higher, while kicking the ladder down to ensure no one
can follow” [26].

Final comments.

The Country’s
demonetisation is a huge shift towards a largely cash-less, digital
economy that disproportionately impacts the largely digitally illiterate
poor. This shift is towards a massive disempowerment of the poor for
the benefit of the rich.

The top One Percent of the world own
half the world’s wealth and this is clearly incompatible with
one-person-one-vote democracy. India, even more blatantly so than other
ostensible democracies, has become a kleptocracy, plutocracy,
lobbyocracy, and corporatocracy in which Big Money in the hands of a
relative few buys people, politicians, parties, policies, public
perception of reality, and hence votes and more political power, with
the consequences of even more private profit and private wealth that
further trash democracy. Indeed India can be seen as a kind of extreme
Apartheid state in which the rich One Percenters rule because the poor
majority have been duped by Big Money perversion of democracy. Small
wonder that nuclear terrorist, serial war criminal, racist Zionist-run,
genocidally racist and democracy-by-genocide Apartheid Israel has
successfully courted Modi.

Poverty and disempowerment constitute a
deadly deprivation in India today that is already linked to an
appalling, worsening and resolutely ignored annual avoidable mortality
(annual untimely deaths) of 4.5 million Indians. Demonetisation will
inevitably worsen deprivation and avoidable death. However the very
callousness, wealth transfer, disempowerment and inequity implicit in
Modi’s demonetisation may prove to be just too much to bear and hence
lead to the downfall of the neo-liberal One Percenters running
kleptocracy India.

The currently dominant neoliberal economic
model involves maximizing the freedom of the smart and advantaged to
exploit the natural and human resources of the world for private profit,
with an asserted trickle-down of some benefit to the poor. The clear,
humane alternative to neo-liberalism is social humanism (socialism,
democratic socialism, eco-socialism, the welfare state) that seeks via
evolving social contracts to maximize human happiness, opportunity and
dignity for everyone [27, 28]. Yet, as demonstrated by the injustice of
demonetisation, India is firmly in the hands of the neo-liberal One
Percenters.

Indeed democracy is fundamentally the expression of
the will of the people and one would reasonably suppose that a
fundamental desire of virtually all people would be minimization of
avoidable deaths from deprivation, especially for themselves and their
loved ones. The annual avoidable deaths of 4.5 million Indians is
testament to the utter perversion of fundamental democracy by the rich
One Percenters.

The sheer callousness of the Modi-led One
Percenter demonetisation will hopefully induce national clarity in which
humane Indians will reject neoliberal greed, corruption, inhumanity
and inequity, and demand realization of the social humanist decencies
for all promised at Independence nearly 70 years ago.

References.

[1]. Binu Matthew, “Modi’s New Year’s Eve speech: what comes next?”, Countercurrents, 1 January 2017: http://www.countercurrents.org/…/modis-new-year-eve-speech…/ .

[2]. UN Population Division, “World Population Prospects 2015 Revision”: https://esa.un.org/unpd/wpp/DataQuery/ .

[3]. Gideon Polya, “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950”,
that includes a history of every country from Neolithic times and is
now available for free perusal on the web: http://globalbodycount.blogspot.com/ .

[4]. Martin Gilbert “Atlas of the Holocaust”(Michael Joseph, London, 1982).

[5]. Gideon Polya (2011), “Australia And Britain Killed 6-7 Million
Indians In WW2 Bengal Famine”, Countercurrents, 29 September, 2011: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya290911.htm .

[6]. Paul Greenough (1982), “Prosperity and Misery in Modern Bengal: the Famine of 1943-1944” (Oxford University Press, 1982).

[7]. Jean Drèze and Amartya Sen (1989),“Hunger and Public Action” (Clarendon, Oxford, 1989).

[8]. Gideon Polya (2008), “Jane Austen and the Black Hole of British
History. Colonial rapacity, holocaust denial and the crisis in
biological sustainability” , G.M. Polya, Melbourne, 2008 edition that is
now available for free perusal on the web: http://janeaustenand.blogspot.com/ .

[9]. Cormac O Grada (2009) “Famine a short history” (Princeton University Press, 2009).

[10]. Madhusree Muckerjee (2010), “Churchill’s Secret War. The British
Empire and the ravaging of India during World War II” (Basic Books, New
York, 2010).

[11]. Thomas Keneally (2011), “Three Famines” (Vintage House, Australia, 2011).

[12]. “Bengali Holocasut (WW2 Bengal Famine) writng iof Gideon Polya, Gideon Polya: https://sites.google.com/si…/drgideonpolya/bengali-holocaust .

[13]. Colin Mason (2000), “A Short History of Asia. Stone Age to 2000AD” (Macmillan, 2000).

[14]. Lizzie Collingham (2012), “The Taste of War. World War II and the Battle for Food” (The Penguin Press, New York, 2012).

[15]. Jean Drèze and Amartya Sen, “Introduction” in Jean Drèze,
Amartya Sen and Athar Hussain (editors), “The Political Economy of
Hunger”, pages 18-19, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1995.

[16]. Gideon
Polya, “Economist Mahima Khanna, Cambridge Stevenson Prize And Dire
Indian Poverty”, Countercurrents, 20 November, 2011: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya201111.htm .

[17]. Arundhati Roy and David Barsamian, “The Chequebook and the Cruise Missile”, Harper Perennial, New York, 2004).” from

[18]. “Mainstream media lying”: https://sites.google.com/site/mainstreammedialying/home .

[19]. “Mainstream media censorship”: https://sites.google.com/site/mainstreammediacensorship/home .

[20]. Rahul M., “Staying half-hungry due to the demonetisation “drought””, Countercurrents, 27 December 2016: http://www.countercurrents.org/2016/12/27/9341/ .

[21]. Archisman Dinda, “Demonetisation could lead to famine, Mamata Banerjee says” , Gulf News, 7 January 2017: http://gulfnews.com/…/demonetisation-could-lead-to-famine-m… .

[22]. “Indian demonetisation could lead to famine”, Pakistan Observer, 8 January 2017: http://pakobserver.net/indian-demonetisation-could-lead-to…/ .

[23]. “The demonetisation, a crippled economy and the mayhem!”, News World India, 15 December 2016: http://newsworldindia.in/…/the-demonetisation-a-cri…/239111/ .

[24]. “Demonetisation causes cash famine in Malabar”, The Hindu, 2 December 2016: http://www.thehindu.com/…/Demonetisatio…/article16441703.ece .

[25]. Vandana Shiva, “Demonetisation: beware of digital dictatorship”, Countercurrents, 3 January 2017: https://www.countercurrents.org/…/demonetisation-beware-of…/ .

[26]. Satya Sagar, “Cashless is not casteless”, Countercurrents, 9 January 2017: http://www.countercurrents.org/…/09/cashless-is-not-castel…/ .

[27]. Brian Ellis, ”Social Humanism. A New Metaphysics”, Routledge , UK , 2012.

[28]. Gideon Polya, “Book Review: “Social Humanism. A New Metaphysics”
By Brian Ellis – Last Chance To Save Planet?”, Countercurrents, 19
August, 2012: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya190812.htm .

Dr Gideon Polya taught science students at a major Australian
university for 4 decades. He published some 130 works in a 5 decade
scientific career, most recently a huge pharmacological reference text
“Biochemical Targets of Plant Bioactive Compounds” (CRC Press/Taylor
& Francis, New York & London , 2003). He has published “Body
Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950” (G.M. Polya, Melbourne,
2007: http://globalbodycount.blogspot.com/
); see also his contributions “Australian complicity in Iraq mass
mortality” in “Lies, Deep Fries & Statistics” (edited by Robyn
Williams, ABC Books, Sydney, 2007: http://www.abc.net.au/…/australian-complicity-in-i…/3369002…

) and “Ongoing Palestinian Genocide” in “The Plight of the Palestinians
(edited by William Cook, Palgrave Macmillan, London, 2010: http://mwcnews.net/…/4047-the-plight-of-the-palestinians.ht…
). He has published a revised and updated 2008 version of his 1998 book
“Jane Austen and the Black Hole of British History” (see: http://janeaustenand.blogspot.com/
) as biofuel-, globalization- and climate-driven global food price
increases threaten a greater famine catastrophe than the man-made famine
in British-ruled India that killed 6-7 million Indians in the
“forgotten” World War 2 Bengal Famine (see recent BBC broadcast
involving Dr Polya, Economics Nobel Laureate Professor Amartya Sen and
others: http://www.open.edu/…/social-econo…/listen-the-bengal-famine ; Gideon Polya: https://sites.google.com/site/drgideonpolya/home ; Gideon Polya Writing: https://sites.google.com/site/gideonpolyawriting/ ; Gideon Polya, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gideon_Polya
) . When words fail one can say it in pictures – for images of Gideon
Polya’s huge paintings for the Planet, Peace, Mother and Child see: http://sites.google.com/site/artforpeaceplanetmotherchild/ and http://www.flickr.com/photos/gideonpolya/ .