Posted on 03/06/2024 (GMT 18: 47 hrs)
Updated on 06/06/2024 (GMT 08: 58 hrs)
Compiled by the Partyless Society⤡ & Occupy Dalal Street⤡
Only a few hours are left till the election results for the 2024 General Elections are to be declared. We, the OBMA activists cum authors, do not know, who will ascend the so-called “throne” of the so-called “Mother of Democracy”, which has been reduced to an electoral autocracy, a totalitarian nation-state. Given these conditions, the present article shall attempt to correlate three aspects of the arena of Indian democracy, viz., ecology, economics and the elections.
A few days ago, many of the poll personnel or electoral officials along with common citizens died after suffering from massive heat strokes in the conditions of rising temperatures (their docile bodies were also suffering from the long-term impacts of the COVID vaccination or the “death-jab”⤡) due to anthropogenic glocal heating, commonly known as “global warming” or “climate change”:
Heatstroke: Several poll personnel die in UP, Bihar on eve of Lok Sabha Election last phase as mercury rises VIEW HERE ⤡ (As reported on 31st May, 2024 ©Livemint)
At least 25 poll staff among 40 heat-related deaths as north India boils VIEW HERE ⤡ (As reported on 31st May, 2024 ©The Hindu)
Moreover, what is more striking in this case is that:
33,776 Trees to Be Cut for New Road for Pilgrims, Uttar Pradesh Tells NGT: Report VIEW HERE ⤡ (As reported on 1st June, 2024 ©The Wire)
Even before this, the highly anti-environmental Bullet Train project of the Modi government:
Mangroves to be cut for Mumbai-Ahmedabad bullet train project after court order VIEW HERE ⤡ (As reported on 28th December, 2022 ©Frontline)
With so-called “beautification” (or rather, commodification) aims, the Kashi Vishwanath Dham Corridor Project of the BJP has destroyed both nature and heritage.
The BJP Government has come up with yet another mega project, viz., a corridor that is to be constructed at Baranasi straight from the ghats up to the Kashi Vishwanath Temple. This corridor not only destroys the historical heritage buildings and narrow lanes that were once the essential characteristic to the ancient city of Benaras, but is also promoting religious fundamentalism by foregrounding the temple narrative above all other issue-areas (similar to that of the disputed Ram Mandir project, associated with the infamous Babri Masjid Demolition in 1992, by the members of the Sangh Parivar). The corridor project is an attempt to showcase market fundamentalism by expanding and “beautifying” (in other words, creating a “site of vandalism” by undoing the “site of archive”) the area around the temple through the hollow show of commodification and corporatization for the sake of the ever-expanding marketable pilgrimage and tourism industry. Organized Religion is business after all!
This is an anti-environmentalist stance, too, since the roads and structures that are being substituted in place of the heritage architectures are either products or by-products of processed anti-green reinforced concrete materials, pitch, basalt and bitumen, all of which are the outcomes of the parasitic carbon economy.
Moreover, the unprecedented over-flooding of the historically noteworthy Benaras ghats in the recent years has been a consequence of the environmental catastrophe itself: the unpreventable sea-level rise due to the melting of glacier caps in both the poles, increased torrential downpours etc. However, perhaps due to boiling frog syndrome, none is concerned about the fact of the melting ice-glaciers.
For more information on the BJP’s aim to “erase history” through the Kashi Dham project can be seen in the given documentary:
Strange Destruction of Self: Hindus VIEW HERE ⤡
Did not the “masters” of the Indian republic have any idea regarding the inevitable heat-waves in India from 19th April, 2024 to 1st June, 2024? Are they suffering from the boiling frog syndrome, i.e., an outright denial or willful disregard of the quite evident scientific fact of the climate emergency? Are they suffering from social as well as ecological myopia?
Such extreme temperatures are unprecedented, unthinkable, and something that we are unable to cope with as members (who are also responsible for climate crisis as geological agents; thus the adjective “anthropogenic” is coined) of the pesticide generation, a byproduct of the heinous Green Revolution.
With every passing year, the temperatures are on a rise to cause heat waves culminating in desertification tendencies that increase the El Nino effect and the Urban Heat Island Effect, questioning the very basis of species-survival itself.
Earth just had its hottest year ever recorded — by far VIEW HERE ⤡ (As reported on 9th January, 2024 ©NBC)
The NASA website shows the following steep rise in global temperature in the past few decades in recorded history⤡:
The disasters that face all the species-populations of the planet earth are “more than climate change”, as stated by Donna Haraway. One can also observe the following catastrophic situation in this connection:
Excessive groundwater extraction is causing Earth’s tilt to shift, reveals study VIEW HERE ⤡ (As reported on 13th July, 2023 ©The Economic Times)
Climate crisis has shifted the Earth’s axis, study shows VIEW HERE ⤡ (As reported on 23rd April, 2021 ©The Guardian)
Thus, the Milankovitch Phenomenon has shifted, causing changes in species sleep-patterns by changing one’s biological clocks!
Did the ruling political party of India choose the lengthy phases of the election deliberately in order to proceed with depopulation (the Malthusian positive checks), lower voters’ turnout etc., that helps them to increase the rigging and MANeuvering after the elections are done? The ECI seems to have lost all its credibility, since it has aided the BJP to manipulate voting results:
Election Commission’s Delay Over Voter Turnout Figures Raises Concerns: What’s Wrong With It? VIEW HERE ⤡ (As reported on 22nd May, 2024 ©ADRIndia)
Earlier, we had said that even only one instance of electoral manipulation undermines the efficacy or legitimacy of the entire electoral process, given the problem of inductive generalization.
Furthermore, so far as the question of climate crisis is concerned, is the BJP at all bothered with such a burning, central issue? Its manifesto is mute with regard to the long-term environmental concerns (though they have planned their trash agenda keeping in mind the centenary of independence of India for the next 23 years, i.e., Azadi Ka Amrit Mahotsav⤡ by obliviating the immediate crises of climate change. As if they will remain in power for so long!). So are all the other political parties such as Congress, AAP etc., with the only visible exception of the CPI(M), which, surprisingly enough, has the highest criminal record as per the recent findings of the ADR:
Our (soon-to-go???) Prime Minister Modi is one of the climate denialists, as was observed clearly in this infamous 2017 remark of his, being no different from Far Rightist Trump’s internationally condemned “climate change is a myth” remark:
How such a clear-cut climate denialist, i.e., a totally ignorant, illiterate, stupid and worthless person such as Modi (the so-called self-proclaimed “Vishwaguru” ) was allowed to give a speech (one who is always so afraid/petrified to hold press conferences or have open debates with the Opposition!) in the Climate Summit??? We know that he used teleprompter to deliver his speech, as he always has done or will do if he is re-elected.
In talking about ecology in relation to the Indian polity, a specific correlation has to be drawn between the “tests” of the defence (otherwise an offence in the Orwellian Doublespeak)/death industry and the increased frequency of occurrence of anthropogenic/human-caused “natural” disasters such as recursive super-cyclones, tsunamis or earthquakes. A recent example was when on 1st May, 2024, India tested its missile in the coasts of Odisha:
India tests Supersonic Missile-Assisted Release of Torpedo system VIEW HERE ⤡ (As reported on 1st May, 2024 ©Naval Technology)
India Tests Advanced Missile VIEW HERE ⤡ (As reported on 1st May, 2024 ©Arms Control Association)
Weeks after this, the Cyclone Remal hit Odisha, West Bengal, Bangladesh (we have no time to keep in mind such geo-political nation statist boundaries) and so on. Are these two phenomena related to each other? Ignoring this fact, the Indian government carried on with its so-called “deterrent” apocalyptical missile tests:
RudraM-II Missile Successfully Test Fired Off The Coast Of Balasore In Odisha: DRDO VIEW HERE ⤡ (As reported on 29th May, 2024 ©DD News)
This is nothing new. Even the earlier government celebrated their electoral victory in 2009 by firing missiles from the self-same coastal region of the Bay of Bengal:
India test-fires N capable Agni-II missile VIEW HERE ⤡ (As reported on 19th May, 2009 ©The Indian Express)
Within days, the severe cyclonic storm “Aila” came on 25th May, 2009:
May we not correlate all these?
In the continuity of power-relations, the ruling class simply forgets the extreme environmental impact of such missile firings that causes the “pressure cooker effect” in the atmosphere by creating more heated air to move upwards, which is thence followed by the incoming of aggressive cold winds?
Environmental impact assessment of missile test firing VIEW HERE ⤡
Moving ahead, let us consider India’s position with regard to its status of external debt:
Source: VIEW HERE ⤡ (As Retrieved on 03/06/2024, GMT 18:18 hrs)
Earlier, the IMF warned India about its debt:
IMF Warns India on Debt Concerns, Says It May Exceed 100% of GDP VIEW HERE ⤡ (As reported on 20th December, 2023 ©The Wire)
Apart from the question of external debt, continuing occurrences such as hyper-inflation, large scale unemployment and so on along with the chaosophical share market, the cryptic dominance of cryptocurrency or bitcoins (a supplement of “cash” money) makes us ponder over the alternative to such a risk and sick society, viz., a sustainable retreat from the developmentalist paradigm as preached by the WB-IMF-WTO extortionist trio.
Though the incumbent finance minister gave a lip-service to the climate crisis “issue” in her last interim Budget 2024. The whole Indian economy is not at all concerned about Green Banking and Environmental Social Governance (ESG) Funds. Thus, from the perspective of Green Capitalism, the BJP and their allies do not even know the profitable enterprise of Green Economy!
Norway has held its climate elections and has talked of climate legislation, which seems to be quite as much applicable to India as well as the rest of the world. Yet, Norway has hypocritically approved seabed mining at the same time!
This is indeed a very confusing time requiring stern measures from us….
Norway’s ‘Climate Election’ Puts Center-Left in Charge VIEW HERE ⤡ (As reported on 17th September, 2021 ©The New York Times)
Norway Makes Historic Vote In Favor Of Seabed Mining VIEW HERE ⤡ (As reported on 11th January, 2024 ©Carbon Herald)
Though these self-proclaimed “Hindutvavadins” do not know anything about the great dissolution or “mahapralaya” as anticipated by the so-called “Hindu” rishis— they had predicted such a disastrous state of affairs!
To allure the Homo Consumens, the following kind of “deep fake” news are being spread all over the social media to deceive the Indian common masses:
Reliance Industries Files Complaint With Mumbai Cyber Police After Deepfake Video Featuring Mukesh Ambani & Narayana Murthy Of Infosys Goes Viral VIEW HERE ⤡ (As reported on 24th May, 2024 ©The Free Press Journal)
Considering such a grave state of the Indian economy, which has worsened in the last 10 years of the BJP rule with rising bankruptcies and privatization of public sectors, how can India recover?
Given the crafted dilemma of “economy or environment?”, one has to ask all the political parties: what are you thinking about the next 10 years, since the said time period shall inevitably witness the rise in the number of internally displaced climate refugees, more (previously unseen) super-cyclonic phenomena, more heat-waves and consequently, the loss of the entire coastal region of the Indian peninsula.
Standing on the eve of the election results, OBMA has this much to say: we have to save democracy, socialism, secularism as well as the ENVIRONMENT AS A PRIMARY CONCERN.
Therefore, we earnestly urge for a:
SEE ALSO:
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