Capitalism: A Ghost Story
Courageous and clarion Roy (Walking with the Comrades, 2011) continues her analysis and documentation of the disastrous consequences of unchecked global capitalism. She investigates India’s “Gush Up” capitalism and how it is reinforcing a caste system that benefits the elite while wreaking cruel havoc on the greater population and the country’s invaluable natural resources. Roy reports on collusion between New Delhi and multinational corporations that results in the corruption and dysfunction of local governments and brutal initiatives, disguised as security measures, in which people are forced off their land to make way for highways, airports, dams, mines, and factories. While violence is used against the poor, the middle class is covertly coerced by way of what Roy calls the “exquisite art of Corporate Philanthropy.” She cites eye-opening examples of how the support by well-established international foundations of admirable cultural projects and NGOs also insidiously engenders privatization and the infiltration of grass-roots movements against corporate pillaging. As Roy observes, “The algebra of infinite injustice works in mysterious ways.” Precise and revelatory, Roy gives us an awful lot to think about. --Donna Seaman