Understanding Financial Dictatorship

For all that is under the blue sky some kind of government, a way of governance, is re an indisputable requirement. Autocracy, aristocracy, democracy, oligarchy, kingship, monarchy, military dictatorship, communism, capitalism are some forms of government mankind has experienced with. Each form having its own story of rise  and fall. Despite all having their good and bad side, military dictatorship as a form of governance is the most detested. The dictatorship, however, has been held in principle as a situation-non-grata by the international community. It is blamed to have plagued the governance turf with the arbitrary unilateral actions lacking mass support & approval to be obtained through peaceful and civlised means. The pages of history are replete with partial, impartial and controversial accounts viewing  the events and the persons with the colour of goggles and painting them with brush of words writers possessed and used.

The world has also seen what may be called democratic dictatorship, where a party rides with indifference to any constitutional, ethical, cultural/global ethos or legal riders except with a sense of ‘me-thinks correct approach’. With march of life on the earth the civilization has now witnessed another form of governance, though indirectly, which can be named as ‘financial dictatorship’. Although not armed with fire-arms  yet in a position to control, command and subdue even the armed. Unlike military dictatorship, usually bound by borders, the  financial dictatorship is without borders. It needs no elections to contest but can finance or help finance any contestant who beseeches before it.

It enjoys the beauties and the benefits of crown sans its responsibility. It emboldens  a nation to impose unwarranted financial sanctions against the other by taking recourse to reduction in or withholding bilateral trade and other agreements, causing it denial of international institutional/non-institutional credits and discouraging their exports & services with imposition of heavy tariffs. Not only this, they  influence their  cliques and cohorts to do as directed against those not conforming compliance to their dictates. It makes the mare go. This also leads to building up of arms, military confrontations that take toll of innocents.

As is commonly understandable the summation of the individual fortunes and the value of the government owned properties constitute the total value of wealth of a  country. Real wealth originates from the earth including water bodies. Whatever evolves from it by way of mining, extraction, drilling, production & utilization, is an addition to the global wealth.

That is why invasions and aggressions have taken , and are taking place to lay hands on  land strips without caring for the inhabiting  masses. Notwithstanding the fact that in this exercise the cruel clutches too have burnt their fingers, if not body, yet the thirst has remained insatiable due to willful greed. The volume and the value of wealth a country  owns determines its degree of financial prowess in the international battle field of influence. The more it owns the greater it impacts in international  relations. They create an oligopoly situation, amass much of resources only to weaken others and compel them to toe their line.

On geographical and social fronts they conceive, devise and promote conflicts indirectly in an imperceptible format. In the name of conflict resolution they stoke and  support warring groups, with no end to the game, destroying men and material resources. Resultantly the relatively weak nations, forming majority of the world population, suffer fall in purchasing power for goods & services that  manifests in decrease of imports of goods & services by them meaning. With the inter country fall in general purchasing power the demand contracts with stock of supplies getting either stopped or reduced. This forces reduction in new investments, consumption, production, human resources, profits, income, employment, leading to global economic slowdown. That is why economic slowdowns, sometimes even meltdowns, repeat at global level with intervals till the economy again   adjusts with the disturbing interventions.

This phenomenon of financial dictatorship  works at country level also. It happens when the government exacerbates inequality by underfunding public services such as education, healthcare, communication and overfunding maintenance expenditure, under-taxing corporate bodies, and failing to clamp down on tax dodging, with delayed & partial collection of the levied taxes. When top 10 percent of any population holds 77.4 percent of the total wealth of a nation, and when the contrast is even sharper for the top one percent that holds 55.53 percent of the national wealth, when the bottom 60 percent of the population owns merely 4.8 percent of the national wealth there follows the ghost of economic slowdown.

If the top 10 percent raise their demand four times still it will be  five points less than half a percent increase of the 90 percent works, the principle of macro economics. As per disclosure  of results of survey by Oxfam- an International Human Rights Group, at the World Economic Forum annual meeting held at Doha in January 2019, globally billionaires’ wealth rose by 12 percent  or 2.5 billion dollars a day in 2018 whereas the poorest half of the population of the world suffered their wealth decline by 11 percent.

This indicates that the poorest half has  not only been unable to retain previous position but actually skidded down to go weaker than before. Sans siding with any ‘ism’ a mechanism has to be worked out so that resources and returns are channelled in a manner that ensures somewhat sustainable equitable distribution. To avoid the inter/intra-country economic slowdown & other unwanted dictations the financial dictatorship has to be reined in. This has to be  democratized in line with the spirit of  ‘for the all, by the all  and of the all’.

The author is a former Sr. Audit Officer and Consultant in the A.G’s Office Srinagar.