Confessions of an Economic Hit Man

Sairam friends,

Couple of days back, I wrote an article about how I had a dream as if I offer garland to Shirdi Saibaba statue situated inside a college kind of environment.

Here’s the article – Finally, saw a beautiful Shirdi Saibaba in dream

In the same dream, I also saw as if I go to a library asking for a book. The librarian gives me a Tamil version for which I ask for original English version.

I also heard the first two letters of the book in Tamil. Hence, it was easy for me to do some research and find out the book Sai wanted me to read.

So here’s the book.

Confessions of an Economic Hit Man by John Perkins.

Here’s some words about the book courtesy of Wikipedia

Confessions of an Economic Hit Man is a partly autobiographical book written by John Perkins published in 2004

It provides Perkins’ account of his career with engineering consulting firm Chas. T. Main in Boston. According to Perkins, his role at Main was to convince leaders of underdeveloped countries to accept substantial development loans for large construction and engineering projects that would primarily help the richest families and local elites, rather than the poor, while making sure that these projects were contracted to U.S. companies. Later these loans would give the U.S. political influence and access to natural resources for U.S. companies. He refers to this as an “economic hit man.”

The book very clearly shows you how the U.S has exploited vulnerabilities of under developed Nation. John was once asked to travel to Indonesia where the country just went through a civil war. The dictator leader there was convinced to work on Power generation project in his country where millions of people were suffering without basic needs. Electricity was not a major concern during that time. But Hit men’s are highly paid and hired to convince world leaders to funnel the loan from World Bank, IMF etc directly to American Corporates. These Corporates work on projects in other countries. When those countries can’t pay back the loan, they are locked in. Now, what ever an American Corporate or leader thinks must be followed by this leader and thus poor people are exploited. If you can’t pay loan back, sell your resources for a extremely low price.

Is this how the U.S became so powerful? This probably could be one of the reason and I am pretty sure, these activities still continue much to the shock of American’s themselves.

Here’s a quote from the book

I had always loved and respected the U.S and American’s for their values. This book may not make me loose my liking for the U.S but it helps me understand how greedy people are to cheat other countries.

When you cheat a person, you ruin his family. When you cheat a country, you ruin millions of its citizens and ordinary people.

Is that a good Karma?

Sai never tells me anything in dream directly. He just gives me a small hint and leaves the rest to me. I am supposed to get an idea about why Sai wants me to know about this book which I had never come across. Surprisingly, as I saw in dream, there’s a Tamil translation of the book too.

Few years back, I used to go to a studio where they were doing a Post Production of a Tamil movie called “Kannathil Mutham Ittal – A Peck in the cheek’.

I went to premier of the movie along with the Editor and his team and reached to my room. My room mate who was a Sound Engineer saw the movie after a week and asked me “What’s Maniratnam conveying in the movie?”

I was blinking.He continued…

“The worst of all pain in life is to be a refugee – When your own Country doesn’t belong to you and you are forced to move out, its the worst pain of all”

I laughed.

Now I realized that most states in India are ignoring its ordinary Citizens. We don’t want developed Nations to come here and cheat us. Our own politicians are cheating us. Our own politicians are making us a refugee. We can only stay in the Country silently accepting what ever they do.

Anyway…When ever I come across the word “Confession”, I remember a funny dream I had about this girl.

I had this dream few months back

It was as if I am in Chennai trying to catch hold of a Bus to Coimbatore. I see buses parked to reach Tirupati but not Coimbatore. I actually missed the bus and worried. Suddenly, I saw one of my uncle who met with an accident walking along with me. It was too dark. I saw this girl dressed like an IPS officer and standing in the corner of the road. She tells that she’s investigating something and cuts a tag we were wearing in our hand.( This tag was like how they were a white tag for devotees who have darshan in Tirupati before 10 years). I ask her not to cut the tag in our hand forcefully. Here’s the funny part – She asks me to shut up and says “I completed my Masters in Engineering and came to this job. So you better walk away”.

I felt bad and move away. Thankfully, I saw this dream as a luck factor. I believed my Uncle who was hospitalized due to an accident in his leg will be healed soon. Today, he really is walking and doing well.

Only after few month, I realized why Sai showed this girl dressed as a Police. I did a mistake unknowingly and felt its better to tell her its not right on my part. I tried to tell this to her on several occasions but could not. I atleast wanted to apologize to this girl for this blunder I did. I hope someday, I will be able to speak to her for couple of hours and discuss about all these dreams. It will help me understand why I went through all these experiences. Now, I don’t even know where Sai is taking me?

A saint who can even tell me the book I am supposed to read can’t be wrong in sensitive issues. Now, I don’t know how long I must live with a guilt.

Another thing I changed after above dream is this – I was wearing a Sai’s bracelet kind of stuff for over a year in my hand. Usually, I don’t like to show any strangers that I am a Sai devotee. We must never let anyone know that we like Sai unless they are our close friends. In the dream, since she asks to remove the  tag, I felt Sai don’t want me to wear such bracelets and stopped wearing it.

Coming back to the theme of the article, I don’t know why again and again Sai shows me dreams that makes me feel I must do something for this Nation.

Atleast a small project will make me feel satisfied.

Sai has to give me some ideas

Sai blessings

Venkat