Monday, October 19, 2009

Necessity is the mother of Exploitation

The world in general is composed of two kinds of people. The Optimists and the Skeptics.
Some one who surely was a member of the former category of people once quite famously remarked that Necessity is the mother of invention. What that fellow failed to foresee was that every invention brings along a new class of slaves who , in order to properly and fully use that invention, are then systematically exploited. The need of the hour was to have a large land plying locomotive in place. The steam engine was invented. With it's invention came the need for tracks, and tracks demanded timber and metal. Both these things required cheap labour to obtain them from woods and mines. Then you needed a class of men who y it to the sites. After that you needed men to convert these materials into useful products. Once the materials took the shape of industrially usable products there arose the need for men who would then finally use these materials to make those tracks and trains. But hold..on......to lay down tracks we need to cut hills and level the ground...and all that needs cheap labour, once these obstacles are overcome comes the need to hire new labour which shall actually lay down those tracks. Of course we need bridges and a whole lot of such engineering marvels to successfully use the invention. Thus one invention gives rise to infinite opportunities for exploiting helpless people.
I am not sure whether any of the above mentioned persons who contributed towards the development of the whole invention would ever be able to enjoy it's benefits. They won't be given concessions, won't get travel benefits , won't get quota's or free food on board those trains. Those trains shall never be available for their needs or to cater to their requirements. In fact all those who had absolutely nothing to do with the entire thing and process s hall be the ones who shall be given the best available berths, accommodation and facility which the train can afford. Also it would be to serve their commercial and other interests that the train service shall be designed. I am jot talking about the middle class , I am talking about the bureaucracy, industrialists, politicians and their sycophants.
Those who think that such ambitious projects and inventions generate employment are not wrong, but they miss a very important point. Every life lost and every sacrifice made for the giving shape to these monuments is eventually for the benefit of those who never were concerned with any part of this matter. All this is true as also is the fact that entire chain of persons who were employed in this activity would not have been paid anything equitable to their efforts.
Even if we leave aside such controversial topics where labour's exploitation acoording to some , is inevitable, necessity leaves us with many examples where the invention has given birth to intellectual as well as emotional exploitation. In the case of press. Since freedom of expression was the need, there arose the press. With it emerged a class which soon started exploiting it's power and the people who felt that it was necessary to have something like the press in place soon became the subjects of it's exploitative tendencies. Every necessity thus creates a class which would be subjected to inhuman and grossly unjust treatment to help the suprerior class to enjoy the invention which has been designed to meet the necessity. Necessity is thus the mother of exploitation which shall be used to utilize the invention which was contemporaneously developed and which will in the end benefit those who had nothing to do with the development of the invention or had contributed not a single penny in it's development.

Unless such injustice is removed I cannot accept tacitly the claim that necessity is the mother of invention..period.

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