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Reading Around II

Another fine writer who looks unabashedly at roots of terrorism in the U.S. “homeland” and the subsequent war in Afghanistan is the Indian, Arundhati Roy. Her South Asian woman’s perspective, with her impressive array of facts, persuasively, artistically, and morally presented, is without peer. My friend Karen has forwarded two impressive essays on the current crisis, the first being The Algebra of Infinite Justice, and the second, Brutality Smeared in Peanut Butter.

So moved was I by Arundhati’s coherent grasp of a vast array of often confusing information that I read her book, Power Politics (in paperback from South End Press). Here she exposes globalization, Indian-style. She lucidly documents how the Indian government has been made to accept “privatization,” in terms of terribly unfavorable financial contracts with multinational suppliers, like Enron, for construction of mega-dams, which will displace millions of people and provide unneeded amounts of energy at an unaffordable cost. How can this happen, you ask? A level of graft and corruption probably not (yet) possible in the U.S.

Regarding the mega-dam project in India, Arundhati says, “There’s a saying in the villages of the Narmada valley—You can wake someone who’s sleeping. But you can’t wake someone who’s pretending to be asleep." Do you think this has a broader application for us as citizens of the world’s remaining superpower? Now, I’m moved to read, finally, Arundhati’s much acclaimed work of fiction, The God of Small Things.

posted by Paul at 3:48 PM