The President's visit...

Welcome Mr. President……….

The forthcoming visit of the President of the USA, Barak Obama has already stirred enormous interest and intense debate on the issues that shall receive attention during the visit.  India is one country that is supposed to have enormous goodwill for US and no doubt the charismatic President’s visit shall cause more flutters than any of his illustrious predecessors. 

The President of the world’s super power is visiting even as world leaders still scurry and huddle under the aegis of G-8, G-20, IMF, World Bank, and the UN to grapple with the consequences of the world economic crisis that has been christened the worst to befall the globe after the famous “Great Depression of the 1930s”.   The greatest of powers stood in silence and disbelief even as the most prosperous and tallest of behemoths fell into abyss taking with them the rest in the system. 

The tremors that erupted since the now famous ‘sub-prime mortgage crisis’ gave away for never ending shocks that seem to create a crater large enough to plunge the global financial landscape deep beneath the rubble.  I’m sure very small and privileged group of Indians shall get to meet and talk to the President.  Few questions have been infecting my mind ever since the crisis and alas ! if I got a chance to talk to the President….Shall I ask him ?

In the US, epicenter of the shock, more than 20 lakh people were rendered homeless, 8 lakhs have lost their livelihood, 2 trillion dollars worth of pension funds have evaporated into thin air.  16 trillion has been lost world wide, ILO reports loss of 20 million jobs in 2009 and estimates 210 million overall with a parting note – these are estimates on what has happened so far while specialists still reassure that the worst is far from over.  The first and the last leg of the rescue plan have been large dozes of bailout packages that you so deftly ushered through the Congress.  That Huge Corporations and investment Banks were bailed out made all headlines.  Has a penny been spent to people who have been rendered pauper or lost their livelihood in the process? What happened to the ‘customer’ for who’s delight the invincible ‘free market’ edifice was so painstakingly built ? What happened to the customers who lost their savings, their homes, their pension funds, their jobs and with it all their future?  Does not your action end in resuscitating a system that could possibly re-live leaving all humans associated with it dead?

Was not ‘free market ‘unabashedly seeking state intervention to sustain itself? Well, the irony is you still prescribe cure through more reforms, well this time to be served with a flavor of more stringent regulation? Has in any of the Summits that you preside been a debate to evaluate the human component of the crisis earnestly? Is it not imperative that a dispassionate and non-dogmatic approach be made to restore peace in the livelihood of millions of people in the world where you still are the super power? 

Mr.President…you would have noticed the protagonists of the “free market” system who not too long ago were seen singing praise over the infallibility and invincibility of the system hushed up quickly to rebuke their own creation.  The innumerable money spinning inventions of the all conquering speculative financial world in the form of ‘derivatives’ and ‘instruments’ were derided with contemptuous demeanor.  I admire your intervention in stifling the self aggrandizement and lavish indulgence of the industry chieftains.  But, shall that prevent future innovations that would deprive others of their savings?  Are not these systems and institutions created to serve humans after all?

N.Sekar,

nsekar445@gmail.com, 9488031745