The massive uproar over the union cabinet decision to allow FDI (Foreign Direct Investment) in retail multi-brand and single brand chain stores like Wal-Mart is indicative of the apprehension of the poor regarding re-entry of foreigners through the back door. The reason for this is that the so called globalisation of the economy has been helping the rich getting richer and the poor going more and more below the poverty line! In spite of the claim that this step would create more jobs and give a fillip to overall growth, the poor see no light at the end of the tunnel. Even the burgeoning middle class so fond of foreign goodies is facing the thrust of the rising prices.

NDA Government had given the slogan of "India Shining" but it did not shine as they had envisaged. UPA also tried to make India shine and succeeded but only at the corporate level. The people below are still in darkness! Incidentally, a recent survey showed that in regard to the welfare parameters, Nepal and Bhutan are ahead of India! There has been a controversy about the poverty line in India. The Planning Commission was targeted for formulating a wrong line by stating that people living on Rs 32 per day are not construed as poor! Whatever may be the true evaluation of a person called poor; there is a stark fact that the majority population in India do not constitute inhabitants of a welfare state. There is no doubt that India is a "wealthy" country in terms of the wealth owned all over the world as well as locally by some of its citizens. In fact per capita income is also quite reasonable. In spite of many hiccups, India has a fast growing economy. However, the catch is that the economic benefits are not percolating to the grass roots population. Globalisation era authored and implement by Dr. Manmohan Singh has helped in creating a massive middle class almost equal to the population of USA. A huge market for multi-national companies! If only 1% of Indian population drinks just a can of coke in a day, it means more than 10 million cans daily! The number of mobile phones circulating is in millions. Same is the story with most of the foreign origin consumer products. One needs to remember that the original initiators of globalisation and free market economy are themselves in doldrums in America as well as in Euro zone!

In contrast to the claim of India shinning, as per surveys, 60% Indians do not have proper toilet facilities and go into fields to relieve themselves. A large proportion of the population especially in rural India has no access to treated and filtered safe drinking water. The number of suicides committed by farmers due to economic reasons is in thousands. Recently, over a thousand infants died due to encephalitis because the government had allocated too little for public health. It is not only the corporations which are wealthy; the government itself collects hefty taxes and has enough wealth. Unfortunately, this wealth is channelled into foreign corporations manufacturing deadly weapons. India is slated to buy 126 fighter aircraft worth over $ 12 billion. Foreign corporations from the west are vying with each other to take these orders! Over and above this there are many skeletons of dirty scams tumbling out of the Indian cupboard with each passing day. Corruption is eating into very vitals of the society. It has seeped into the blood stream. An estimated two hundred eighty thousand crore rupees are stashed in Swiss banks. All this money is not genuinely and honestly earned one! Common man is getting crushed under the ever rising prices feeding the corporate mill. The Agriculture Minister received a slap in public from an irate citizen infuriated by rising prices. The corporate India is shinning but it is not the real shine. It is rather the false glitter and as the proverb goes, everything that glitters is not gold! This false shine is being polished by the corporate media. They are raising hype for all the foreign consumer products and have deliberately hidden the abnormal gap between the "dirty" rich and the extremely poor masses especially those living in most of the backward and remote areas. The latest trend is the foreign direct investment in retail stores of single and multiple brands. Allowing 100% and 51% investment to Wal-Mart and other chains may cripple the local shop-keepers but the corporatism will shine more! The decision taken by the cabinet in this behalf has already created a furore all over the country. The Parliament is unable to conduct any business as the opposition wants a roll back of the decision.

India has come a long way from the Charkha of the Father of the Nation that was a symbol of the peoples' resistance to the British textile mills which had robbed India of all the precious resources. The new symbols of acquiescence are Coke, McDonald's, KFC, Nokia, and Motorola and so on. Catering to the middle class taste buds to earn dollars would not be such a bother. Earning dollars by supplying lethal weapons in conflicts manipulated by them to create jobs back home is the meanest thing they are indulging in. In this they are helped by corrupt politicians and bureaucrats. However, the worst thing about these corporations is their enmity to the environment. They have gone berserk in destroying it and displacing poor farmers who had been dwelling there for centuries. Poor Adivasis are facing the brunt of corporations setting up massive projects in almost all remote areas. What the British did during their colonial rule in India, the Corporations though supposed to be Indian in origin, are doing the same thing internally in collaboration with outsiders. It amounts to internal colonization of the country by the "dirty rich" elite. While the corporate India is shining and the huge middle class is enjoying the foreign goodies, the teeming millions below the poverty line are getting pushed more and more into darkness of poverty! Unfortunately, people at the helm do not realise that the western powers that had physically colonized poor countries for the theft of resources have found new ways of continuing their imperialist designs in a more subtle way with the collaboration of local corporate agents! This process is bound to make the divide between the teeming millions below poverty line and the extremely rich living in luxury sharper. We may have physically broken free from the western colonialists but we still continue to be enslaved by them, mentally as well as economically!