Mario Puzo opens one the chapters of The Godfather with a piquant line: behind every wealth there is a crime. There is world of difference between being rich and wealthy. To be rich in a fair and legitimate way is not extraordinarily difficult. However, to be wealthy is altogether another thing. How does one become wealthy? To become wealthy, one must necessarily engage in myriad shenanigans, aid and abet, conspire, and walk the shady roads of back hand deals. Are national/state economies necessarily an organised criminal enterprise? Under the mantle of public good the State crafts a public expenditure bill with full connivance and complicity of the captains of the industry. Bribery, corruption and other financial illegalities are conveniently legalised by the vested interest legislators. There is a sly by cynical joke going around among the frustrated citizens; the say: when the time comes to allot tax-payers money to the complicit stakeholders the question is: who “needs” money? The fellow who “needs” the money names the project, and the “Government” goes along with the mega-projects touting them as the most life transforming projects for the “betterment” of the peoples. Really?
I argue that our nation/state economies are “mafia economies” peddling pseudo-development. The unsuspecting citizen is lulled by the promise of transformation, dazzled by sleek designs, and temporarily seduced by the promise. However, the eventual “development” project is pseudo: a veritable Potemkin Village - a façade to a state/country faring poorly, making people believe that the country is faring better. Mafia is an internationalised term for rough-shod-ing, brutalising and killing the real or perceived adversaries or competitors for financial gain, control of resources and monopolise the market.
Development is a seductive idea. Who does not want to develop? But what is development? What kind of development? The industrial economy in the name of efficiency created a homogenized model of development generated by the West, and this was presented as the norm to be emulated as a measure of success:one model fits all places and for all times;the rich and the poor were successfully and without much effort were lured to embrace the Potemkin Villages. The so-called developers rarely have professional knowledge of the industry of which they boisterously muscle their way into villages and wreck unimaginable destruction in the name of the faux progress. The unsuspecting citizens mesmerized by concretised jungles realize decades later the disaster they inflicted upon themselves.
Politics is about allocation of resources: who gets what and how much. The perennial complicity of the legislators with the captains of the industry is the modus operandi of crafting nations’ and states’ budgets, ostensibly under the guise of public good. The public gets Potemkin Villages, soon to be in disrepair, and the captains of the industry gorge on the ill-gotten wealth. International Monetary Fund (IMF) indicates that in the low-income countries a staggering 50% of the “investment” is wasteful spending on “infrastructure.”