He seems like a really smart guy, a really great guy im sure andy ernst i can say about him he earns, you know, sort of my job was to ask tough questions on behalf of see, they have 107 lobbyists on capitol hill. They are swarming capitol hill their lobbyists. But ive got 100000 i had 100,000 people, more than 1000 people write me their objections. And so the first thing i would do is stop this deal. I would not let this go through if i were its not up to me. Senator franken weighs in on the proposed comcasttime warner cable merger monday on the communicators at 8 p. M. Eastern on cspan2. Booktv continues with arundhati roy. She talks about the effect of economic globalization on third world countries and argues that the exploitation of workers on the margins of the global capitalist system goes largely unnoticed even though the negative impact is huge. This is about an hour and a half half. Thank you everybody. Can you all hear me . Yeah . Okay. What im going to do is to talk a little and read a little, but to try and follow my Natural Instincts as a storyteller, even though a lot of what i write is about politics. So capitalism a ghost story is about the ways in which capitalism works in the modern day, which isnt always what we think. Its not just about operations and privatization and how does it colonize our imagination how does it pay must . Tema us. How does it make us into people we dont even know that we are . So ill just start ill just start at the beginning of this book and ill just read bits and talk a bit and if im being totally incoherent you can ask me questions afterwards about it. Is it a house or a home a templeton india or a warehouse for its ghosts . Ever since it arrived things have not been the same. Here we are, the frame to take me there said, pay your respects to our new ruler. Antilobbying laws to indias richest man. Id read that this most expensive dwelling ever built, 27 floors, three helipads, nine lifts, Hanging Gardens ballrooms, whether rooms gymnasiums, six floors of parking, and 600 servants. But nothing had prepared me for the vertical lawn a soaring 27 story high wall of grass attached to pay vast metal grid. The grass was dry in patches and dates had fallen off in neat rectangles. Clearly, trickle down hadnt worked. Thats why a nation of 1. 2 billion, indias 100 richest people on assets equal to onefourth of the gdp. The word on the street and in the New York Times is at least was, after all that effort and gardening they dont live in and tell a. No one knows for sure. People still whisper about ghosts and bad luck and sanctuary. May be its all karl marxs fault, all that testing. Capitalism, he said has conjured up such gigantic means of production and of exchange that its like a sorcerer who is no longer able to control the powers of the netherworld whom he has called up by himself. In india for 300 million of us who belong to the new post International Monetary fund reforms middleclass, the market, live sidebyside with the spirit of the netherworld. The poltergeist of dead rivers, dry wells, Bald Mountains and denuded force. The coast of 250000 debt ridden farmers have killed themselves and of the 800 million who have been impoverished and dispossessed to make way for us. And who survive on less than half a dollar a day. But he is personally worth 20 billion. He holds a majority controlling share in the Reliance Industries limited, i r. L. In company with a market capitalization of 47 billion Global Business interests that include petrochemicals, oil, natural gas, polyester fiber, special Economic Zones, fresh food retail, high schools, Life Science Research and stem cell storage services. Irl recently bought 95 shares in infotel, atv consortium that controls 27 tv news and entertainment channels and almost every regional language. Infotel, the only nationwide license for 4g broadband, a high speed information pipeline which is the technology works, could be the future of information exchange. He also owns a cricket team. So all, you have these huge industrialists who have this cross ownership of businessebusinesse s and then you have huge media houses like, for example newspaper which has a readership of 17. 5 million readers in four languages, and they own 69 companies which are Mining Companies to Power GenerationCompanies Real Estate companies, textile companies. So they have this kind of controlling the way of controlling information, imagination and business and land and agriculture. Irl is one of a handful of corporations that run india. Some of the others are the other reliance reliance by the group owned by his brother. The rate of growth is felt across europe, central africa, Asia Latin America the net cast why. The visible and invisible overground as was underground. They run more than 100 companies in 80 countries, and are one of indias oldest and largest privatesector power companies. They own minds steel plants, telephone and cable tvs and Broadband Networks and they run whole townships. They manufacture cars and trucks to own the hotel chain jaguar land rover, a chain of bookstores, a major brand of iodine salt. They are advertising could easily be you cant live without us. According to the rules the more you have the more you can have. The air of the privatization of everything has made in the dashing into a, with fascicle in the world. However, as with any good oldfashioned economy, one of its main exports is its minerals. Indias new Mega Corporation the reliance, those who managed to muscle their way to the head of the spigot that is spewing money extracted from deep inside the earth. Its a dream come true for businessmen to be able to sell what they dont have to buy. The other major source of corporate wealth comes from the land banks all over the world weak, corrupt local governments have helped wall street brokers, agribusiness corporations and chinese billionaires to amass huge tracts of land. In india the land of millions of people is being acquired and handed over to private corporations for public interest, for special Economic Zones and infrastructure projects, dance, highways, car manufacturers, chemical loves and formula one racing. As it concentrates wealth onto the tip of a shiny pin on which are billionaires live tidal waves of money crash through the institutions of democracy, the courts, the parliament, as well as the media search recovered the ability to function in the ways they are meant to. The noisier the carnival around elections, the less sure we are that democracy really exists. Each new Corruption Scandal that services in india makes the last one will gain. So there was this huge telecom scandal in india which involve millions of dollars, but the privatization and illegal sale of telecom doesnt involve war displacement and ecological devastation. The privatization of indias mountains, rivers and forests does. Perhaps because it does not have the uncomplicated clarity of a straightforward out and out accounting scandal, or perhaps because its all being done in the name of indias progress. It doesnt have the same resonance with the middleclasses your so basically what is happening now is in central india, you know one of the things that ive been thinking after couple of years which i find quite shocking, is that there hasnt been a year in india since 1947 which is the year we became independent there was a transfer of power between the british and the indian elite there hasnt been a single year in which the indian army has not been deployed against its own people. So from 1947 where the whether you think about kashmir punjab, the army is constantly deployed against people that are supposedly within the nation. And now because of this new aggressive Economic Policy which involves selling the bounds, the rivers privatizing and mining there is a war going on against Indigenous People in the forests of central india. But the war is not just in the forests. Theres a whole bandwidth of resistance movements. Inside the force are the armed maoist guerrillas. Outside there are militant peoples movements. Theres a whole bandwidth of movements which, you know, academics and journalists like to classify as oh this is gandhi and this is nonviolence this is violence, this is maoist. But, in fact people dont think like that. They think strategically. So when youre out in the villages, in the plains, you cant really have a guerrilla army. So you have movements which call themselves gandhian or, in any case there are militant but not armed. Inside the forest, which are now filled with Paramilitary Forces like in latin america and like in colombia in peru you have these hugely armed soldiers closing in on villages, burning them, raping the women trying to clear the forest for corporations. And the Prime Minister of india called these Indigenous People are certainly armed, most of the arms are snatched by the film Paramilitary Forces who are in the force with grenades and ak47s and rocket launchers. So they were called indias greatest internal security threat. And the government announced something called operation green hunt which was supposed to just hunt these people down and clear the force. So a year from two years ago i actually went into the forest and spent some time with the guerrillas and get out and wrote an essay called walking with comrades. Announces review a little bit just to give you kind of texture of what is actually going on in there. The terrorists typewritten note slipped under my door in a sealed envelope confirmed my appointment with indias biggest, single biggest internal security challenge. Ive been waiting for months to hear from them. I had to be at any of forgive and times on two given dates but that was to take care of bad weather, punctures, blockades, transport strikes and sheer bad luck. The note said ryder should have camera, and a coconut. The meter will have a cap outlook magazine, and bananas. That password will be i wondered whether the meter in the greater would be expecting a man, and whether i should get myself a mustache. There are many ways to describe it. Its an oxymoron. Its a border town smack in the heart of india. Its the epicenter of a war. Its an upside down inside out down. The please wear plain clothes and the rebels wear uniforms. The jail superintendent is in jail. The prisoners are free. 300 of them escaped from the old town jail two years ago. Women who have been raped in our are in police custody. The rapist give speeches in the bizarre. Across the river, in the area controlled by the maoists is the place Police Called pakistan. They are the villages are empty but the force is full of people. Children who want to be in school run wild. In the lovely forest villages the Concord School buildings have either been blown up and lie in the heat or they are full of policemen. That had the war thats unfolding in the jungle is a war that the government of india is both proud and shiite. Operation green hunt has been proclaimed as well as denied. Indias home minister and ceo of the war says it doesnt exist, that its a media creation. And yet substantial funds have been allocated to it, and tens of thousands of troops are being mobilized for it. To the theater of the war is in the jungles of central india they will have stars consequences for us all. If ghosts are the lingering spirits of someone or something that has ceased to exist then perhaps the National MineralDevelopment Corporation new fallen highway crashing through the forest is the opposite of a ghost. Perhaps its the harbinger of what is soon to come. The antagonists in the forest are disparate and unequal in almost every way. On one side is a massive Paramilitary Force armed with the money that the firepower, the media and the hubris of an emerging superpower. On the other ordinary villagers armed with traditional weapons backed by superbly organized hugely motivated maoist guerrilla fighting force with an extraordinary and violent history of armed rebellion. The maoists and the paramilitary have fought each other several times before. In the 60s and 70s and then begin from the 70s onwards all the way through to the present. They are familiar with each others tactics and have studied each others combat manuals closely. Each time it seems as though the maoists or the previous avatars have not just been defeated, but literally, physically exterminated. Each time they reemerged more organized, more determined, and more influential than ever. Today, the insurrection has spread through the mineral rich forests in west bengal homeland millions of indias tribal people, dreamland to the corporate world. I arrived monday, well before the time for my appointment. First day first shoot. I had my camera, my small coconut and the powdery red teacup him a four. I wonder if someone was watching me and having a laugh. Within minutes and young boy approached me. He had a cap and a backpack schoolbag, chipped red nail polish on his fingernails. No bananas. Are you the one whos going in, he asked me . Know i didnt know what to say. He took out a soggy note from his pocket and handed it to me. It said means i couldnt find outlook. And the bananas, i ate them, he said. I got hungry last night he really was a security threat. Is backpack said Charlie Brown not your ordinary blockhead. [laughter] he said his name was i soon learned that the force is about to enter was full of people that many names and fluid identities. It was like how lovely not to be stuck with yourself, to become someone else for a while. We walked to the bus stop only a few miles away, minutes away from the temple. It was already crowded. Things happened quickly. There were two men on motorbikes. There was no conversation, just a glance of acknowledgment, the shifting of body weight, the revving of engines. I had no idea where were going. We passed the house of the superintendent of police which i recognized from my last visit. He was a candid man. In fact, this man committed suicide a couple of years ago. Frankly, speaking, this problem can be solved by police or military. The problem with these tribals is that they dont understand greed. Unless they become greedy, theres no hope for us. I have told my boss remove the forest and instead put a tv in every home. Everything will be automatically thought about. In no time at all we were riding out of town. It was a long ride. It ended abruptly in the middle of nowhere on an empty road with forests on either side. Munkto got off and i did too. The bikes left and picked up my backpack and followed the small interval security challenge into the forest. It was a beautiful day. The forest floor was a carpet of gold. In a widely and marched under white sandy banks of a broad flat river. It was obviously monsoon fed. So now it was more or less a sand flat. At the center, a stream ankledeep in easy to wade across. Across with pakistan. Out there, maam, they candid s. B. Had sydney, my boys shoot to kill. I remember that as we began to cross. I saw us and a policemans rifle sights, tiny figures in the landscape, easy to pick off. But munkto seemed quite unconcerned, and i took my cue from him. And then, of course, it goes on the weeks i spent in there. So the way it works is that the Indian Government now, i mean one of the main things that is happening, the indian elections will be starting on the 10th of april. And one of the main issues in the election im stated in some ways is that the present government, though it tried to do this operation green hunt and it was pushed back by civil society, by activists by the physical fight in the forest. So now the corporations are backing, or they want to back the government that can actually send out the army and air force against the poorest people in india, to hand over those lands to the corporations. And they want someone whos not going to flinch you know, is not going to be upset by what happened over the last two years when indian civil society, many people just stood up and said you cant do this. And this government blinked so now we are looking for a government that isnt going to blink. But obviously this kind of coercion works for the poor. You can bomb the poor. You can jail them. You can do all of that, but what are you going to do with the others . The army is experienced enough. So im just going to read you what the army says now. The indian army publicly released its updated doctrine of military psychological operations which outlined and i quote, a planned process of conveying a message to a select target audience to promote particular themes that result in desired attitudes and behavior which affect the achievement of political and military objectives of the country. This process of perception management, it said, would be conducted using the media available to the services. The armys experience enough to know that coercive force alone cannot carry out or managed social engineering on the scale that is envisioned by indias plans. Basically, what the Indian Government is saying that is that it wants to 75 of the indian population in the cities, which means Something Like 500 million people. How do you engineer something on that scale . Certainly not voluntary. But the war against the poor is one thing but for the rest of us the middle class, the intellectuals, the opinion makers, it has to be perception management. And for this we must turn our attention to the exquisite art of Corporate Philanthropy. Of late, the mining corporations have embraced the arts art installations and the rush of Literary Festivals that have replaced the 1990s obsession with beauty contests. Currently mining in the heart of the homeland is sponsoring a creating happiness film competition for young students. The tagline is mining happiness. Mr. Jindal group brings out a contemporary art magazine