Information Wrap - Puri

ASIA

A Cargo of Questions 1992

India

PURI

Puri is one of the four holiest cities in India. The temple of Jagannath, Lord of the Universe, offers Hindus the opportunity of worship without caste distinctions. Contradictorily, the temple employs 6000men to perform the temple functions and rituals, attendants who are divided into 36 orders and 97 classes. 20,000 people depend on Jagannath for their livelihood.

Information Wrap

As we dwell on contemporary changes in the generation of wealth and its distribution, a number of distinctive feature of our times immediately spring to view. At the outset, it is clear that socialist polities everywhere have undergone a traumatic experience, comparable to what capitalist polities experienced in the 1930's. Next, it is equally clear that the indifference of radical thinkers to liberal values and institutions has played an important role in weakening the political structure of socialist societies in the very recent past. Last, but not least, the current trauma of the socialist world calls for a fundamental rethinking of socialist theory and practice if the enduring concerns of socialism are to remain on the agenda. It would be monumental folly to imagine that the trauma of world socialism has no special meaning for an India engaged in a serious examination of the principles and practice which shape its political economy. But if we are to avoid a panic reaction, it is necessary to do three things. First, to locate the principles that have guided our economy since the 1950's. Secondly, to take stock of our successes and failure of our great experiment in social transformation and economic growth. And lastly, instead of blindly accepting economic prescriptions flowing out of international financial agencies, we should work out a strategy of economic management which rests upon the specificity of our social condition. 

The social experimentation that was initiated in India in the 1950's rested precisely upon such an exercise. It was clear to all concerned that the mechanism of the market had led humanity to the Great Depression of the 1930's, not to mention the frightfulness of fascism. Indeed even a cursory look at our economy and society makes it obvious that the manner in which the "market" is currently held out as a panacea is a matter of deep concern. To start with, the market is not uniformly successful even if in an advanced capitalist world. If we turn to developing countries, the situation is much more alarming.

Most developing countries have discovered that blind recourse to marketisation, while it may benefit some, leads a society as a whole to disaster. The few successful Third World countries - characterised by their modest size, and also the absence of a vast agricultural hinterland - have to be examined with reference to the "special' relations which the advanced capitalist world sought to establish with them, not necessarily for economic reasons. Moreover the state was anything but "neutral" in such polities.

It has been pointed out that there exists considerable confusion among economists between the notion of the market, on the one hand, and the climate of "competitiveness" on the other. The market is often a monster, promoting inequitable growth and distribution and generating class warfare in societies. The ethos of competitiveness pertains to an altogether different world; to efficiency; to innovative technology; and to the crucial concept of sustainable growth. Moreover, unlike the market, competitiveness does not necessarily conjure into existence vulgar consumerism which corrodes the integrity of individuals at the same time as it undermines the moral voice of the community. For all these reasons, we need to examine closely the political economy of liberalisation, if we are to negotiate our way into the next century as a humane, productive and equitable society.

THE TIMES OF INDIA, February 26, 1992. 

Do we feel freedom in the market place?

I am shopped, therefore I am?

Twenty years later! The dirty picture of neoliberalism: India’s New Economic Policy

 

 

 

 

 

Cultural practices, social organization and the British Raj. Ruling the Empire in India through division? Class and/or caste? Identity politics? Class identity?

  

Q. Where can you see three deities process on three so-called Juggernauts and the largest kitchen in the world? 

 

A. The Shree Jagannath Temple in Puri!

 

 

 

A Cargo of Questions 2017

 

The LODE project of 1992 and the Re:LODE project of 2017 is about generating questions that begin with places along the LODE-Line.

 

   

 

To every place there belongs a story . . .

To every story there belongs another . . .

 

 

 

 

 

Is capitalism historically inseparable from colonialism?

 

 

 

If these 10 temples give away their wealth, India's poverty will be solved! 

 

 

 

 

 

 

How did we get into this mess?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Why does India need the Left?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Does capitalism function through the expansion of frontiers?

 

 

 

 

Some 80 years after the Poona Pact gave reservations to India’s most backward communities, are Dalits rising to the top in corporate India?

 

 

Modernity? Enlightenment? Equality? Emergency? Class consciousness and democracy in modern India? The Americanization of India . . . and the World?

Why does everyone in India think they are 'middle class' when almost no one actually is?







To every place there belongs a story . . .

. . . and a language and a literature!

Chha Mana Atha Guntha, or Six Acres and a Third















This blog-post is a matrix that originates first in the context of an artistic activity that relates to this place, Puri, and then connections multiply through processes of association, suggesting links, articulations and juxtapositions that the contemporary information wrap affords us, in a particular and contemporary type of consciousness, where the "loop" or "ricorso" helps the zig zagging necessary to see what is going on.

That's just the way it is . . . but don't you believe them . . .