Jean Dreze’s column – All governments hide something from their citizens | ज्यां द्रेज का कॉलम: सभी सरकारें अपने नागरिकों से कुछ न कुछ छिपाती हैं

Jean Dreze, eminent economist and sociologist

I was born in 1959 in Belgium, which is a small country in Europe. At the time, Congo was a colony of Belgium. Congo is a huge country in Africa, about 80 times the size of Belgium. Belgium was greedy for Congo’s rich mineral resources and enslaved many local Africans to work in the mines.

Those who did not work fast, many times their hands were cut off. Congo gained independence in 1960. Its first Prime Minister was Patrice Lumumba, who was democratically elected. He was murdered within a year. It is widely believed that Belgian mining-companies played a role in his murder. Perhaps they feared that they would nationalize the mines.

When we were children, no one told us about the atrocities committed by Belgium in Congo. We thought the Belgians did a good job there. After many years I came to know the truth. I realized that powerful people and governments maintain their power by hiding facts from us.

I later studied economics, first in Britain and then at the Indian Statistical Institute in New Delhi. We learned many complex principles, but never heard about matters like exploitation, the caste system or corporate power.

How can the labor market be analyzed without talking about exploitation? How can we understand India’s economy without thinking about the caste system? How can economic policy be evaluated without taking into account the influence of corporate power? At that time I did not ask myself such questions.

When I started connecting with the real world, I understood the importance of these issues. I realized that these issues were playing out like the Congo of the science of economics: facts and ideas that were being hidden from us in the interests of those in power.

In the same way I realized that many Congolese exist in other sciences too. Like, think about history. We remember some events and some not, we remember some people and some not. Facts inconvenient for the ruling class are forgotten.

For example, very few people in India today know about the land reforms that took place in Kashmir around 1950. These reforms were possible because Kashmir had its own constitution. Those reforms helped create a prosperous and egalitarian rural economy in Kashmir. Why did people forget this?

All governments hide something or the other from their citizens. For example, many European governments conceal atrocities from the colonial period. The US government often hides its war crimes committed in other countries. And the Indian government has not yet been able to reveal who was spying on hundreds of citizens using the Pegasus software. If the government was not doing this itself, then the government should at least find out who was behind it and tell the public.

We all have our own secret, that is, some information which has been hidden from us. It is easier to see someone else’s Congo than to recognize your own. It is easy to see that many workers in India have little knowledge of their rights, such as the right to minimum wages. But one has to find one’s Congo.

Today the Internet has made it possible to find out what is being hidden from us. But it will be successful only when we try. If we only read what is visible on the phone screen, we will become like sheep who just follow the herd.

How can the labor market be analyzed without talking about exploitation? How can we understand India’s economy without thinking about the caste system? How is it possible to evaluate economics without taking into account corporate influence? (These are the author’s own views)