The Devil of Economic Fundamentalism Read online

encouragement and material resources; they obliged by producing new discoveries and inventions at regular intervals. The West soon visualised an economic revolution with the help of new technologies. This spawned an era of industrialisation. The manufacturing of items of practical utility in bulk began. The determination of physical forces and mechanical laws led to the production of vehicles. Buses, trucks, trains and motorcars started pacing the earth with great speed, ships sailed through the oceans and the aircraft conquered the sky. The scientific revolution continued to sweep the world. The researches in the field of electricity and magnetism resulted in the availability of an alternative source of energy capable of lifting human life to new heights. The bulb came and soon myriads of electrical items -- tubes, fans, coolers, heaters and electric motors of different kinds started entering the houses and factories. The discovery of radio waves revolutionised communication. Came radios, telephones and telegraphs followed by television, fax and many other usable. The twentieth century witnessed many a quantum jump with the electronic and computer revolutions. The researches in the field of physics, chemistry and biology were utilised in medical fields with dazzling results, making the treatment of a large number of diseases possible. The X-ray, the ultrasound and the computerised investigations now assist the clinicians in diagnosing the ailments with precision. The nuclear physics has not only provided another alternative source of energy but has also helped the medical scientists to devise treatment of the deadly cancers.

  The progress of the medical science has been remarkably outstanding. The communicable diseases like cholera, kala azar and plague that used to strike in epidemics, often decimating the whole of localities, have largely been controlled, small pox has been totally eradicated, polio myelitis is on the verge of eradication and potent antibiotics are now available to combat other life-threatening infections like septicaemia, meningitis, subacute bacterial endocarditis etc. Anti-tubercular and anti-leprosy drugs have revolutionised the treatment of tuberculosis and leprosy. The surgery has also been marching ahead; the open heart surgery is now performed in almost all major cities of the world, the kidneys are regularly transplanted, the cataracts are operated upon even in camps organised in villages, and the brain surgery is becoming commoner. The obstetric surgeries save the lives of millions of women who had very bleak chances of survival without surgery.

  The advancement in various fields of physics has now made it possible for the viewers to watch live events occurring in distant corners of the earth. A person can talk on telephone to another person living anywhere in the world. Man has already landed on the moon, and many more missions are in operation to uncover the mysteries of the cosmos.

  The West deserves ovation for the amazing advancement in science that the world has experienced during the last few centuries. It has undoubtedly helped man to overcome a large number of problems. Western scholars are worthy of encomiums for their tireless, selfless and dedicated efforts to determine and apply natural forces and resources for the benefit of mankind. They successfully imbued the 19th century with a scientific temper in human approach. But alas, this scientific spirit did not last long. The concourse of scientific development and economic fundamentalism after some time positioned the latter in the driver's seat. The scientists were naive and guileless people. They could not decipher their enormous potential as the ultimate guides for society and could not muster the courage, conviction, desire and wit required to thwart the onslaught of the economic fundamentalists who were full of intrigues and used their money power to take control of almost all the departments of social existence. While the scientists toiled day and night at the expense of their comfort without receiving much in return, their inventions and discoveries were hijacked by the merchants for their own upgrading. If they had done so without disturbing the delicate environmental and social balance, it could not have been as devastating as it ultimately turned out to be. What the earth had to see and bear was the most blatant misuse of scientific and technical information for the sake of money. Thus the amazing source of energy, the nuclear, was misused for manufacturing nuclear bombs capable of decimating the whole of mankind; the atomic bombs were hurled on the innocent citizens of two Japanese cities, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, murdering millions of men, women and children, and crippling, forever, as many. Other highly destructive weapons -- combat aircraft, missiles, chemical bombs, etc. came into the hands of man; the aim behind their development was to impose the uncanny will of certain powers on the rest of the world so that they may be forced to surrender to their economic plans. The business houses started using advanced equipments to boost their sales. Cameras are now used to take pictures of persons in the nude, and the electronic equipments are used to dispatch vulgarity and shamelessness in the houses of the common people. The technology is misused to loot and plunder in the name of fashion. People are made addicts of insalubrious or highly damaging items; they are made to drink the undrinkable, and eat the uneatable. The precious time of men, women and children is killed with indecent, nonsense programmes.

  Consequent on the blind race for money, what has suffered most is health -- physical, mental and social. While the medical scientists have persisted in their efforts to find out the aetiologies and remedies of the various health problems, the magnates have been incessantly engaged in popularising whatever suits their interests irrespective of their impact on human health. And the tragedy is that the medical scientists too have lately become mere tools in their hands. They sometimes resist, but subdued as they are in disposition, their viewpoint is published only in medical journals. If at all it becomes public, the merchants find alternative ways to submerge it into oblivion. The medical world is not dynamic enough to aggressively push its concerns through. The problem has been further compounded by the privatisation of medical institutions and research laboratories. The industries are now buying medical specialists for their own ends. They have the money power to lure experts who too seem to have found a heavenly haven in the garden of materialism.

  The callousness of medical experts and the passive nature of the medical education have strengthened the resolve of the economic fundamentalists to market everything the demand for which already exists or can be created through high-pitched propaganda without being least bothered about the adverse effects on the individual, family and social wealth. The medical scientist has proved unequal to the dire challenges of the bazaar. Thus, first, tea and coffee hit the shops and such was the quality of the campaign to popularise them that they rapidly assumed the status of household beverages. The medical world was seized with the health problems related with these developments and pointed out that coffee had undesirable effects on heart, nervous and gastrointestinal systems. It is now well established that they are significant aetiological factors in the rising incidence of heart attacks, peptic ulcers and certain neurological problems. Yet, their social glorification continues. The tobacco and cigarettes of various tastes then entered the market. These have become symbols of high standard with increasingly large numbers of people becoming addicted to smoking. To multiply their demands, women too who previously were disinclined to smok­ing were also encouraged. Doctors have declared in unequivo­cal terms that smoking is not just harmful but is extremely dan­gerous to health. They have established that cigarettes cause lung cancer, which still remains almost incurable, bronchitis and asthma causing severe distress in breathing and are a signifi­cant factor in the development of coronary heart diseases. Each one of these diseases is either fatal or severely crippling Similarly, tobacco has been associated with mouth cancer, which is incurable except when it is detected very early and Buerger’s disease, a disease of the veins of legs that may lead to gangrene of the foot. But all these caveats have failed in discour­aging smoking. The doctors are not assertive enough to pres­surise parliaments and assemblies to pass bills proscribing the production and sales of cigarettes, cigars and tobacco. Instead, the doc­tors themselves have succumbed to the propaganda by the manu­facturers and the
ir henchmen. It is a sad fact that a sizeable percentage of doctors do smoke. The female smokers are rapidly on the rise despite the accumulating evidence that smoking habit badly damages the health of their children.

  Similarly, such has been the glorification of alcohol that any person trying to prove his credentials in society has to serve drinks to his visitors, especially on the occasions of celebrations. The medical science informs in categorical terms that alcohol is damaging to the health of a man whatever the amount imbibed. Yet, with the support of some partisan investigators, it has been campaigned that alcohol is harmless in small doses; some have gone to the extent that they have declared it beneficial for the heart, capable of increasing a specific kind of cholesterol that seems to have a soothing effect on the cardiovascular system. It need not be said that most of these advocacies have been chiefly guided by the financial motives and have little to do with the medi­cal truth; at the most they are truncated facts. What the