Time is nigh for the tenth avatar

I had blogged earlier about an oligarchy-technocracy web that is creeping globally - and is about to envelope India as well. The IT backbone is ready, the policies are in place, financial institutions are all prepared, and monoplies are waiting in the wing... Now all that was needed is to spring it on the unsuspecting public.

Today, they inform the sheeple of India via The Times of India that cashless/electronic payments can be made at your neighbourhood kirana store!



The article states,

"Micro transactions for payments such as local taxi fares and kirana store purchases are set to go cashless with the National Payment Corporation of India on Monday extending the Interbank Mobile Payment Service (IMPS) for merchants."

The 'electronic cash' agenda is obviously in an accelerated mode. It was only in June this year that the former Finance Minister (current President of India), Pranab Mukherjee, called for banks in the country to ensure that EVERY Indian family has a bank account within six months!

This is the sequence of what is likely to follow:
1. Major financial turbulence in the public sector ...including severe crises in central and state budget deficits, and large-scale recapitalisation requirements for pubic sector banks due to bad loans and NPAs
2. Runaway inflation and/or economic crisis ...setting the stage for far-reaching and comprehensive government deregulation and reforms
3. Massive increases in 'austerity' measures, utilities charges and taxes ...multiple drains on their meagre income will put the average citizen at the complete mercy of the governing elite
4. Disinvestment of public assets ..."distress sale" of everything public - from the cash-rich Life Insurance Corporation (LIC) to 'sick' Public Sector Units (PSUs), and public land holdings
5. Privatisation of public services ...creating dependence on private service-providers for food, healthcare, education and security - instead of the Public Distribution System (PDS), primary healthcare & education networks, and public pension funds
6. Gradual transfer of real public & monetary policy-making powers to a cabal of global oligarchs (via lobbyists) ...with a pliant, indoctrinated and/or greedy political class acting as the citizens' lightning rod
7. Vilification, marginalising, criminalising and/or usurpation any movement or individual with a different or opposing point-of-view ...and the internet is NOT an exception

But what else can one expect when much of government policy-making in India (and indeed, worldwide) is already outsourced to consultants, think tanks, universities and NGOs funded or run by the private sector?

Welcome to the Kali Yuga. And considering all that could go wrong - perhaps, the time is ripe for the tenth avatar of Vishnu.

Only God can save us now.

The Amul brand: The idea of thriving together

Dr Verghese Kurien, called the "Father of India's White Revolution" demonstrated that socially inclusive enterprises can be economically competitive.

The most famous brand he helped build was Amul - a brand jointly owned by more than 3 million dairy farmers. The brand with its ubiqutious "Amul Baby" mascot, created in 1967, has also earned the distinction of being the longest running Ad Campaign in the world... And it's still going strong!

Bharat Dhabolkar, a writer on the Amul account, says that the campaign owed much to the freedom that Dr Kurien gave the agency. "He would not ask to see what we created. Even if he did not like something, he would just mention that; not ask us to change anything."

I guess that's what made Dr Kurien's 'co-operative partnership' model work so well: Each partner has a personal stake in the brand's success!

Are the oligarchs leaving the Titanic?

Robert Johnson is a real Financial World Insider. He is a former Economist for the US Senate, Executive Director of the Institute for New Economic Thinking, and a Director of the Global Finance Project at the Roosevelt Institute.

Johnson also formerly traded currency on Wall Street for George Soros. Well, Soros was the chap known as "The man who broke the Bank of England", consequently costing the Britain's Pound Sterling its centuries-old position as a world reserve currency! He is believed to have masterminded the transfer of the former USSR's state-run assets into the hands of the Russian oligarchs. He (Soros) is also said to to have been the speculator behind the currency crisis that crashed the Asian Tiger economies in the late 90s. (Soros is rumoured to be a conduit for the Rothschild financial empire.)

So if anyone has had a glimpse of the plans hatched in the rareified world of money-power, it'd be Robert Johnson. Here, in his words, he describes the current (as of 25 July 2012) mood among some members of the global oligarchy. Most importantly, consider the chilling metaphor he uses to describe the Financial System: THE TITANIC!



Recently, Lord Jacob Rothschild, George Soros and John Paulson are actively "betting" on serious and imminent financial turbulence ahead.

Grab your life-jackets, folks!

Wealth vs Wisdom

The tyranny of numbers is almost unbearable. Today, the most subjective facets of life can be reduced into numbers. Intelligence becomes IQ; Emotions turn into EQ; Beauty transforms into a 'size zero' or 'six-pack'; Health is 120/80 - and now some so-called scientists have even claimed to have measured the potential existence of a 'God Particle'!

Of course, all this obsession with reducing everything - even immaterial aspects into a measureable quantity is not ideal. In fact, its mostly counter-productive...

In life, it is usually the most mundane things that make it fulfilling - almost anyone would consider a life spent single-mindedly amassing material wealth, wasted. On TV, kowtowing to 'TRPs' result in synapse-sapping reality shows and soap operas catering to lowest common denominator. In an organisation, 'targets' and 'KPIs' usually aid manipulators more than business-owners. In economics, an obstinate focus on 'GDP' growth could be prove unsustainable - or even ruinous for a nation in the long run.

In the video below, Devdutt Pattanaik - author, mythologist, artist and philosopher - puts Measurement into context.



Here's Devdutt again, this time differentiating between bequeathing Property and passing on Values... Do we really have a legacy (one that has value beyond measurement) to leave to the coming generation(s)?



I'm not trying to say anything in particular. Anyway, whatever I wanted to say is not quite as important as the conclusions you've drawn yourself.

The web of technocracy

I'm participating in a lively discussion on 'Cashless Society' on another forum, where I posted the Hindu BusinessLine article on India's Finance Ministry calling on banks to ensure that every family in India must have at least one bank account within six months.

I had to clarify that this action is among the last strands in a vast technocratic web of corporate "partnerships", an extensive IT network, and a comprehensive legislative framework that's already put in place.

The following are the other strands in the e-governance web in India - where the "e-citizen" is stealthly, silently transformed into an "e-customer"...

1. There is a biometrics-based Unique ID (UID) project being rolled out in India as we speak; it's the largest such database in history - and it is ultimately meant to enable a cashless society. (This article quotes the CEO of MindTree, one of the key IT companies involved.)

2. The framework for a mobile-based, biometrics-validated transaction system has already been worked-out by the Government of India. (This article is from the India's Ministry of Communication and Information Technology. There is also an extremely detailed pdf report at the end of the article, on the framework that is in place.)

3. In my previous post I have covered how this system is designed to create government-corporate monopolies that have sinister precedents in the "chartered companies" of the colonies; What the possible agenda may be; and the possible significance of the timing of all this.

And there is NO WAY to stay outside this web. Let me clarify...

As most of us are aware, 'money' is created every time 'debt' (i.e, IOUs) is created by a bank. I am no economist but my understanding is that the medium-of-exchange that a government authorises for repayment for all debts, public and private (legal tender) eventually dominates all other media-of-exchange. So if the new legal tender is electronic cash, eventually we all MUST 'work' to earn e-cash pay our taxes in e-cash!

(I don't believe it will be India alone that is taking this route. The privatisation of governance via public-private partnerships is spearheded by companies like Accenture - including for basic areas like food, income, healthcare, etc.)

I am confident that all this is not coincidence. There are powerful groups within the ruling classes that see "crisis" as "opportunity" - because populations in panic tend not to question "solutions" - no matter how horrendous they seem in hindsight.

The announcement I mentioned in the beginning of this post was one of the last ones - but perhaps among the most ambitious - moves by Pranab Mukherjee as Finance Minister. It is now a near-certainty that he will be appointed as the next President of India - with two significant powers: ONE, to make the vital "call to form the government" in case of a hung parliament in the 2013 elections. Two, to declare a state of national emergency when he perceives an internal or external threat - or a financial crisis!

Remember, India - after multiple downgrades by sundry Wall Street rating vultures - is now at the edge of a much greater financial precipice than we were in 1991. Incidentally, then, we were "rescued" by Manmohan Singh, a former Finance Minister and present Prime Minister, who has NEVER been elected into Parliament. He is just a technocrat who came into prominence and power during a crisis!

Is there a major monetary 'reset' coming in six months?

PLEASE NOTE: I've edited this post a bit to add new information, clarify some points and to correct minor errors.

The world's major financial institutions are insolvent. Between debt, derivatives, re-hypothecation, and fractional reserve banking, there is just too much (several hundreds of trillions of USD more) of 'notional money' in the system than corresponding real assets or collateral value.

No repayment or settlement is possible... A major financial and monetary system resest is INEVITABLE.

Of late, several economists and thinkers have been noting a movement toward bifurcating the 'money system' as we know it today, into two parts:
- a universal 'store of value' (i.e. global currency)
- an electronic 'medium of exchange' (i.e. cashless society)

On one hand, there are very visible candidates for 'global currency' - like the IMF's Strategic Drawing Rights (SDRs), which is valued against a basket of currencies - and The World Bank Group's Bancor, a concept that is valued against gold.

On the other hand, cashless e-transactions are being aggressively promoted as an alternative that is safer, faster, more efficient, and trackable (thus less prone to corruption). The advantage for the financial system is that a 100% electronic cash would also end the need to even keep a fractional amount in reserve.

But a electronic cash also has its downsides:
- it is essentially a trasfer of zero-value IOUs;
- it is still created by bankers;
- it is usable only within an approved network;
- it will eventually require some form of electronic / biometric identification; and (most perhaps, most importantly...)
- it can never be 'stored' or 'saved' by the users (i.e. the public).

Although nearly inevitable, there has been never been a date or timeframe ascribed for this 'reset event', or more likely 'reset process'... until last week, that is!

On 17 June 2012, India's Finance Ministry instructed the country's banks to "ensure that at least one person per family across the country has a bank account in the next six months." Essentially, a call to plug the lives of all 1.3 billion Indians (or 1-in-6 of all humanity) into the financial matrix.

The intention is to transfer all government transactions online. From taxes to subsidies - EVERYTHING will be in e-payment!

You probably don't think India has the IT infrastructure, authentication processes, or financial inclusiveness to make this happen... You are wrong. Almost every village of over 2000 persons in India's un-banked hinderland is now connected by private - and substantialy, foreign - companies called 'Banking Correspondents'. Its shareholders include hedge funds and foreign banks.

The IT infrastructure and system is in place - and it's called the National Information Utilities (NIUs). Not surprising, these too are structured for heavy corporate participation. This system will in-turn be based on the largest biometric database in history, the Unique ID (UID) System - which too will be validated, operated and maintained by private corporate entities!

This is from the Report of the Technology Advisory Group for Unique Projects, presented by a team led by Nandan Nilekani to the Finance Ministry: "NIUs are important institutions, since they aid the functioning of Government. Due to various factors such as a large upfront sunk-cost, economies of scale, and network externalities from a surrounding ecosystem, they are essentially set up as natural monopolies."

IN SHORT... A PRIVATE MONOPOLISTIC 'TECHNOCRACY' (E-GOVERNMENT) WILL REPLACE THE DEMOCRATIC FEATURES OF THE 'REPUBLIC' OF INDIA!

The set-up is very similar to a Chartered Company monopoly - the most familiar of which (for Indians at least) would be the East India Company.

But such a drastic, far-reaching realignment of power between the public and private domains would need a serious crisis as backdrop in order to manufacture the appearance of public consent, or to takeover via 'emergency' powers minus public debate... Here's where the significance of the recent debasement of the Indian Rupee (by over 1/5th of its value), the downgrading of India's banking sector as well as its sovereign debt rating to one notch above 'Junk' status - could possibly come into play in the next few months!

"Et tu, Paul?"

US Senator Rand Paul, son of Congressman Ron Paul, now endorses - and will probably campaign for - Mitt Romney.

I guess, this just goes to show...



Now whoever wins the next term as the 'Global Overlord of Democracy and Freedom Home Delivered by a Drone' in November 2012, Wall Street's pod of giant vampire squids won't lose sleep.