On 4/14/07, Doug Henwood <dhenwood@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Not at all. What is she? She is an international celebrity, a best-
selling author who no doubt books a healthy revenue. She has joined
the same class she criticizes in the quoted passage. She speaks and
writes in English, the global language, which is spoken by that
elite, but not by, what?, 90% of the Indian population. I can't blame
her for joining the global elite, but she should show more
understanding for those Indians who want to as well. Is a programmer
in Bangalore really "greedy"? That's a moralizing critique but not
much more.
I couldn't agree more. As far as I can tell Arundhati Roy has very little grassroots "street cred" perhaps even less so than someone like Vandhana Shiva. She performs a great service by providing an eloquent voice to the oppressed, but her appeal is mainly to the intellectuals.
As to the programmers in Bangalore, yes many of them really are greedy. Or at least have an infuriating sense of entitlement. I receive a regular stream of forwarded emails of "scam alerts" about Bangalore cabbies and such overcharging software programmers and warning said programmers to safeguard their hard-earned success from greedy con-artists. It seems that Bangalore has a few million scammers preying on honest hardworking programmers. It makes you want to puke.
I've really never gotten much sense of what kind of
economic policy she thinks India should follow, and how to get there.
I once asked her U.S. agent, very sophisticated fellow politically,
what her politics were, and he said he'd rather drink a beer.