*NATIONS AND GOVERNMENTS*

Nations have boundaries created by their governments and people. Government, its people and to great degree its resources define a nation, otherwise nation is an ill defined piece of land and water. Nations can create patriots, common man, the powerful and the corrupt. This is decided by values of a nation. Values of a nation depend on the driving factors and principles behind its creation, existence and continuity. Once a nation is formed the soul of the nation will be in the hands of the people who control its governance. 

For the common man nations are defined by boundaries and will clash with others to defend it through politics or patriotism. If we look through history we will find that may countries never existed before and many that existed disintegrated and dissolved. 

Governance is lucrative and it gives immense power to the people who govern. The way to control governance of a nation is by controlling its resources. Control of a nation’s wealth equates to power and the to struggle control resources leads to corruption. To control resources there were wars. Aryans conquered Dravidians, Romans roamed the world and the Europeans fought Indians, Chinese, Americans and Africans. The result was well defined geographical areas brought under the control of the powerful to exploit the resources. Powerful does not mean civilised. It just meant that they had the technology and tactics to defeat the opponents. 

This gave them the ability to control the most valuable resources of the time. It brought them wealth and gave them the power to control and decide the destiny of the mass they controlled. It was an intoxicating power. It was the period of colonialism and imperialism. During the same period corporate bodies started to form, with the blessings of the rulers. The roots of which you could see in piracies promoted by the Kings, like the Spanish Armada and later a more refined business house like the English east India company. There was not much difference between these except that once a business house is formed, it got the legal backing of the rulers of the time.

When the imperial and colonial powers declined, these business houses started to become powerful, but they needed the backing of governments to continue with their ability to control resources. 

Probably the world war one and two enhanced this process. Result was creation huge business houses in western democracies like the General Electrical,  the Shell petroleum etc. In the so called second world (communist countries), the business was controlled by governments which lead to its failure by the end of twentieth century. Governments can survive only by the “success” of the business and hence the governments created by so called democratic processes let the corporate greed continue unabated with the exploitation of resources, by legitimising such exploitations.

Here we can see control of resources and countries from a distance.

The creation of business houses came out of the realisation, that to control resources you don’t need to occupy countries and you can do it better by focusing to control the resources. Also you don’t have to worry about freedom struggles. 

In colonial world controlling resources was equated to controlling specific geographic areas, but business colonialism did not control geographic areas. Instead the boundary was defined by density of the resources. It created borderless markets. As an example, the  total control of petroleum resources is not equated to any geographically well defined states, instead the boundary is blurred. Pepper, petrol and people do not have borders, but India, Saudi Arabia and China do. 

This sort of control is more dangerous. If a country is occupied, people may fight for freedom. If, only resources are occupied, the freedom struggle becomes blurred as resources lack boundaries. 

Now the danger we face is control of the most precious resource of the present time- the human being as resource. To make this easy the population has to be primed. By this I mean there should be a cultural invasion and enhance a process of cultural discontinuity, about which we discussed above. The result-the nation gets corrupt governance, corrupt culture and corrupt society. End result the state becomes slave to corporate greed. There is a counter argument to this, that out sourcing helped China and India and their population. I know “individuals” feel that they have been helped, but I feel their “souls” are enslaved. People do not get the time to realise the difference between them as individuals and souls. People are given very little time to think, question and challenge, which we discussed above. Will it change? Can “state based patriotism” give way to “resource based patriotism”?

*RESOURCES AND CORRUPTION*

Corruption is a common word which even the corrupt use without any hesitation. We have all been victims of corruption or have supported corruption to some degree or form in our life. People like me talk against corruption all the year and become corrupt on 31st of March before we file the income tax return (I start to look for loopholes in taxation laws). If we cross the red light at a traffic signal in India, we are ready to open our valet to the police officer to avoid a fine or legal procedure. We blame the police force later for being corrupt.

Is corruption the same across all countries?.

The west claims they have a better system and deals with corruption efficiently. Is it right?. I don’t think so. In India prices of commodities are reasonably stable (even if it is high) across the country (I am not talking about the black market) eg price of petrol, cooking gas, wheat, cars, electronic goods. In the west the price varies within a small area eg the price of petrol varies from service station to service station. The same car costs you differently in different garages. The same camera and even the same milk or bread costs varies across shops. I would call this “free for all corruption”. Western governments  will defend this by saying people have the choice and freedom and will attack the price control and regulations that are in existence in countries like India. What they forget is that affordability is sometimes dependent on regulation. These regulations are needed to smother corporate corruption. The problem is that it is not enforced to help the vulnerable and never put in place where and when it is needed. Instead laws are enacted and enforced to control the common man and poor. The corruption among the bureaucracy, politicians, judiciary and the fourth estate are directly or indirectly linked to the greed of the huge corporate sector. 

The control of resources, that are important at that specific time in history is what corporate sector is looking for. 

Two thousand years ago, spices were the most valuable commodity. Pepper was called black gold. South Asia had a lot of spices in all shapes and forms. Hence the countries from that region were rich. The so called leaders of the current democracies and freedom of speech, wanted the control of those resources and through corruption and force, they controlled these for centuries. 

Then by the middle of the eighteenth century coal and cotton became indispensable, as industrial revolution gained momentum. Again corruption was propagated through war and intimidation for the control of coal and cotton. Countries like India were “rich” at that time, as far as cotton and coal were concerned. The money was looted from India and imperial Britain left India, when the price of coal and cotton stagnated. This meant our GDP was fell as the value of the resources were fell. The “great Britain “ had already made the money from India when India was rich. 

Then by twentieth century petrol became the favoured energy currency in the world, after automobile engine was invented and its infinite possibilities were understood. A shift of interest in the source of resources occurred. It shifted from South east Asia and Africa to Middle east. Slowly India lost her importance as a source of valuable resource  (value of spices, coal and cotton diminished) in the western world. India had already been milked and what was left had little value in the twentieth century. “West” thronged the markets of “Middle east”. This time for “liquid gold”. 

Again the calculated corruption of the so called western democracies overpowered the unorganised tribes in the middle east, who did not have any idea of the gold mine they were sitting on. They also created a powerful state to oversee this-Israel.

In short, the wealth of a nation and importance of its  resources are time dependent. Crude oil had been here for centuries, but it became valuable only in the twentieth century after the invention of automobiles. Corporate corruption is always in search of valuable (time dependent) resources. Now the most valuable resource is skilled work force. Hence the corporate executives are flocking Indian, Chinese and other markets, awaiting to sign people into bonded labour and modern slavery. If the governments do not agree to their demand. They label them as undemocratic, oppressive etc. Some of these countries have grown beyond the reaches of western corporate greed, by creating their own transnationals. Is it better? Greed replaced by greed?

*BOUNDARIES OF NATIONS*

One thing we need to keep in mind is the origin of nations and the geographical boundaries. We should look at origin of India in the context of other geopolitical identities. What was America like before Amerigo Vespucci. What was Nigeria, Saudi, Italy, Japan and even Britain before christ. 

India and her boundaries were defined by British, based on resources and India was a federation

Boundaries were created by the powerful occupiers. Be it invaders or the inhabitants. The reasons are many. But the most important is where lies the resources that are valuable to that particular part of time or history.

Same is true in case of India. The geopolitical boundaries of British raj was a creation of British to control the most valuable resources for their industrial revolution- Coal and cotton. Then  coffee, tea, pepper, cardamom valued by the rich in the west. This created a conglomeration of small states into what is called India. Same is true of most African nations. Look at their boundaries, they all look as though drawn with a ruler. Scaled to perfection. The imperial , colonist did this to control resources. In that process they divided the tribes and languages. 

When the invaders left, the tribal and language fights are rekindled and that is what we see in middle east and elsewhere

It is the human greed for capital that maintain the boundaries of the nations. Money uses it very well to control resources by combining the contradictions of religion and language in politics.