Beddgelert
13-03-2009, 18:06
This is pretty much OOC. If anyone feels like posting their government/people's feelings on Soviet India, what it was, or what they imagine it is becoming, that's fine, too, however.
The good times
The Indian Soviet Commonwealth of Beddgelert (sometimes anglicised Beth Gellert... if you see posts from Beddgelert, that's the same thing as Beth Gellert, 'tis interchangeable) lies in the Indian sub-continent, covering the real-world nations of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka. The Andaman and Nicobar Islands are occupied by Azazia's United Kingdom. The Geletian Celts arrived several centuries before other Europeans, having been pushed out of Galatia (in modern Turkey) after refusing to convert to Christianity or accept Roman dominion, and established numerous kingdoms extracting tribute from the locals. Later Europeans were surprised to find powerful white kingdoms in India, and ultimately the Geletians were to be used as an administrative and warrior class in the British, Portuguese, and other empires. Many of them, though, revolted during the Second World War, with Japanese help and the benefit of access to the upper echelons of British society, and the Indian National Army of Llewellyn Map Gelert drove out the British and Portuguese in 1947, having made no great efforts towards a peaceful solution. An elderly Llewellyn's Indian Principality was over-thrown in the May Revolution of 1982 -leading to the creation of Beddgelert (meaning Gelert's Grave)-, and in the February Revolution of 1989 the Communist Party of India (Amalgamated Marxist-Leninist/Maoist) was deposed in a popular coup by the Soviets, leading to the BG that I'd RP'd, more or less, over most of the last six years on NS.
The population is getting on for thirteen billion, the economy has been for several years well inside the top one-percent fastest-growing in the multiverse according to the UN/WA, and BG has never been involved in total war, or launched a major invasion of another country. The Commonwealth is in large part a direct democracy with a fundamentalist commitment to the idea that democracy is a lie unless it also permeates the economy and the military, rather than only the political sphere. In short, it has been how probably the world's largest and richest Communist state would be were I, like, god, or something.
Well, after six years, I'm kinda bored of having it all my own way. The government has been returning budgets worth hundreds of trillions of dollars, the populace is in the top 0.1% best educated on earth, it must be damned near impossible to die in the Commonwealth, and the last three times we've tried to conduct a military intervention the aggressors have run away before we could bring a single weapon to bear. Plus the Soviet cricket test side could surely beat a Rest of the World team by an innings and some.
Fun for a while, but ultimately not really my cup of tea.
I find myself missing April 2003 and the couple of months following, when Beth Gellert's economy was Imploded, I hadn't even quite put my own nationalism to bed, a country of terrorists held our national theatre to ransom, and we couldn't even fend off one rogue bomber from... er, who was that, anyway? Please stand up!
The Wreck-oning
Now, this may be the curry I just made with excessive use of brain-melting scotch bonnet, or the fact that I just finished a 750ml bottle of vodka and somehow remembered where I put the litre bottle, but...
...while it's not exactly a full-on retcon, I am going to mess BG up a bit. Instead of being my ideal, it will be perhaps more like what I imagine may go wrong with my ideal, if that makes sense.
So, WTF is BG, now?
The Indian Soviet Commonwealth of Beddgelert is a Communist state that calls Graeme Igo -not Karl Marx- the father of its ideology, and, like those real nations that misused the name of Marx, fails to live-up to many of his teachings (of direct political democracy, communal living, co-operative economic management, and so on). This much to the frustration of Igo, who is still very much alive and, often against his better judgement, involved in Beddgelen politics.
The economy
Per capita GDP in parity terms will be pulled down. US$15,000 PPP per capita will be the start point. A bit lame for a nation that has had one of the world's 0.5% fastest growing economies since before nations of 4bln people were even founded, but what the frood ever. The economy will be part central-planning, part 'informal', part subsistence, and part communal/social, and still fanatically anti-capitalist (he who profits out of proportion to his work shall expect to lose his head), with a mix of total ignorance of market forces, simulation of them by price-setting in a half-hearted gesture to Igo's original theories, and marginal acceptance of them in the 'grey' economy.
For now, growth will still be strong. With explosive population growth, technological advances in transport and communication, and various emerging climactic challenges, there is still much room for huge public works projects that represent massive economic activity and growth, and planning inefficiencies haven't bitten too hard because the nation is only twenty years old in its current form, and because community Soviet Enterprises operating in the market-simulation sector represent a larger part of daily economic activity.
The weakness of 2007's rains and the failure of the 2008 monsoon coupled with difficulties in trading with totally dissimilar foreign economies represent the biggest economic problem in the nation today, with the government struggling to budget for unexpectedly high food import demands and damage to sectors tied to both state and co-operative agricultural concerns in parts of the country.
Politics
Pre-colonial India was a mishmash of princely states, warrior republics, and shifting empires and commonwealths. Colonial India was chiefly British with some Portuguese and other territories, under which Dravidian and Indo-Aryan populations suffered out of proportion to the Geletian populace that was better able to attain high status in colonial society and became better educated, wealthier, and proofed against the infamous famines that wracked the sub-continent, leading to it becoming the largest ethnic group (though not an absolute majority, and always divided along broad tribal and clan lines). Between 1947 and 1982, the Principality was an absolute monarchy practicing de facto racial apartheid to the further betterment of the Celts while Prince Llewellyn chumed about with business people and military strongmen, fighting ceaseless counter-insurgency campaigns against chiefly Indo-Aryan Maoists, Dravidian nationalists, and the partly-Geletian Marxist-Leninist Indian Red Army Faction amongst other groups. During these years, parts of the economy were modernised, but inequality reached new heights. Between 1982 and '89, Igo's son, Sopworth, lead a Communist state aligned to and modeled on the USSR.
In 1989, popular demonstrations against the CPI did not lead to the embrace of western capitalism and multi-party democracy, as Llewellyn's corruption and his puppet-filled parliament had soured these things for the Indian palate. There were perhaps more akin to earlier demonstrations in the Soviet bloc countries that still wanted Socialism in the economy and democracy in government, but of course Moscow in 1989 was utterly incapable of cracking down on such a movement in vast and remote India, and Graeme convinced his son to step-down and dissolve the Communist Party, leading to a dissemination of political power through the Soviets.
I think that the Soviet Commune -through which Pantisocratic Phalansteries (communes), economic and military Soviets, and universities administer the Commonwealth- will coalesce in the form of a new League of Indian Communists, easing in a congregation of authority around its central committee.
A new troika, recalling in some ways the Galatian tetrachy, will consist of the Chairman of Council of State of the Indian Soviet Commonwealth, comrade Chivo (a sort of 'party name'); the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the League of Indian Communists, comrade Graeme Igo; and the Chairman of the Council of Ministers comrade Aparajita (another party name, meaning undefeated).
Igo may be the ideological father of the nation, but now in his seventies, tired, and appearing small and physically weak for a Geletian, he doesn't have the energy to keep-up with Chivo's relentless 'powergaming' while also spending a lot of time dashing about the globe to spread his ideas, perhaps in hope that someone else will embrace them more purely. The fact that Aparajita is both the only woman and the only non-Geletian in one of the three highest offices in the land may or may not suggest a tokenistic value to her presence.
The good times
The Indian Soviet Commonwealth of Beddgelert (sometimes anglicised Beth Gellert... if you see posts from Beddgelert, that's the same thing as Beth Gellert, 'tis interchangeable) lies in the Indian sub-continent, covering the real-world nations of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka. The Andaman and Nicobar Islands are occupied by Azazia's United Kingdom. The Geletian Celts arrived several centuries before other Europeans, having been pushed out of Galatia (in modern Turkey) after refusing to convert to Christianity or accept Roman dominion, and established numerous kingdoms extracting tribute from the locals. Later Europeans were surprised to find powerful white kingdoms in India, and ultimately the Geletians were to be used as an administrative and warrior class in the British, Portuguese, and other empires. Many of them, though, revolted during the Second World War, with Japanese help and the benefit of access to the upper echelons of British society, and the Indian National Army of Llewellyn Map Gelert drove out the British and Portuguese in 1947, having made no great efforts towards a peaceful solution. An elderly Llewellyn's Indian Principality was over-thrown in the May Revolution of 1982 -leading to the creation of Beddgelert (meaning Gelert's Grave)-, and in the February Revolution of 1989 the Communist Party of India (Amalgamated Marxist-Leninist/Maoist) was deposed in a popular coup by the Soviets, leading to the BG that I'd RP'd, more or less, over most of the last six years on NS.
The population is getting on for thirteen billion, the economy has been for several years well inside the top one-percent fastest-growing in the multiverse according to the UN/WA, and BG has never been involved in total war, or launched a major invasion of another country. The Commonwealth is in large part a direct democracy with a fundamentalist commitment to the idea that democracy is a lie unless it also permeates the economy and the military, rather than only the political sphere. In short, it has been how probably the world's largest and richest Communist state would be were I, like, god, or something.
Well, after six years, I'm kinda bored of having it all my own way. The government has been returning budgets worth hundreds of trillions of dollars, the populace is in the top 0.1% best educated on earth, it must be damned near impossible to die in the Commonwealth, and the last three times we've tried to conduct a military intervention the aggressors have run away before we could bring a single weapon to bear. Plus the Soviet cricket test side could surely beat a Rest of the World team by an innings and some.
Fun for a while, but ultimately not really my cup of tea.
I find myself missing April 2003 and the couple of months following, when Beth Gellert's economy was Imploded, I hadn't even quite put my own nationalism to bed, a country of terrorists held our national theatre to ransom, and we couldn't even fend off one rogue bomber from... er, who was that, anyway? Please stand up!
The Wreck-oning
Now, this may be the curry I just made with excessive use of brain-melting scotch bonnet, or the fact that I just finished a 750ml bottle of vodka and somehow remembered where I put the litre bottle, but...
...while it's not exactly a full-on retcon, I am going to mess BG up a bit. Instead of being my ideal, it will be perhaps more like what I imagine may go wrong with my ideal, if that makes sense.
So, WTF is BG, now?
The Indian Soviet Commonwealth of Beddgelert is a Communist state that calls Graeme Igo -not Karl Marx- the father of its ideology, and, like those real nations that misused the name of Marx, fails to live-up to many of his teachings (of direct political democracy, communal living, co-operative economic management, and so on). This much to the frustration of Igo, who is still very much alive and, often against his better judgement, involved in Beddgelen politics.
The economy
Per capita GDP in parity terms will be pulled down. US$15,000 PPP per capita will be the start point. A bit lame for a nation that has had one of the world's 0.5% fastest growing economies since before nations of 4bln people were even founded, but what the frood ever. The economy will be part central-planning, part 'informal', part subsistence, and part communal/social, and still fanatically anti-capitalist (he who profits out of proportion to his work shall expect to lose his head), with a mix of total ignorance of market forces, simulation of them by price-setting in a half-hearted gesture to Igo's original theories, and marginal acceptance of them in the 'grey' economy.
For now, growth will still be strong. With explosive population growth, technological advances in transport and communication, and various emerging climactic challenges, there is still much room for huge public works projects that represent massive economic activity and growth, and planning inefficiencies haven't bitten too hard because the nation is only twenty years old in its current form, and because community Soviet Enterprises operating in the market-simulation sector represent a larger part of daily economic activity.
The weakness of 2007's rains and the failure of the 2008 monsoon coupled with difficulties in trading with totally dissimilar foreign economies represent the biggest economic problem in the nation today, with the government struggling to budget for unexpectedly high food import demands and damage to sectors tied to both state and co-operative agricultural concerns in parts of the country.
Politics
Pre-colonial India was a mishmash of princely states, warrior republics, and shifting empires and commonwealths. Colonial India was chiefly British with some Portuguese and other territories, under which Dravidian and Indo-Aryan populations suffered out of proportion to the Geletian populace that was better able to attain high status in colonial society and became better educated, wealthier, and proofed against the infamous famines that wracked the sub-continent, leading to it becoming the largest ethnic group (though not an absolute majority, and always divided along broad tribal and clan lines). Between 1947 and 1982, the Principality was an absolute monarchy practicing de facto racial apartheid to the further betterment of the Celts while Prince Llewellyn chumed about with business people and military strongmen, fighting ceaseless counter-insurgency campaigns against chiefly Indo-Aryan Maoists, Dravidian nationalists, and the partly-Geletian Marxist-Leninist Indian Red Army Faction amongst other groups. During these years, parts of the economy were modernised, but inequality reached new heights. Between 1982 and '89, Igo's son, Sopworth, lead a Communist state aligned to and modeled on the USSR.
In 1989, popular demonstrations against the CPI did not lead to the embrace of western capitalism and multi-party democracy, as Llewellyn's corruption and his puppet-filled parliament had soured these things for the Indian palate. There were perhaps more akin to earlier demonstrations in the Soviet bloc countries that still wanted Socialism in the economy and democracy in government, but of course Moscow in 1989 was utterly incapable of cracking down on such a movement in vast and remote India, and Graeme convinced his son to step-down and dissolve the Communist Party, leading to a dissemination of political power through the Soviets.
I think that the Soviet Commune -through which Pantisocratic Phalansteries (communes), economic and military Soviets, and universities administer the Commonwealth- will coalesce in the form of a new League of Indian Communists, easing in a congregation of authority around its central committee.
A new troika, recalling in some ways the Galatian tetrachy, will consist of the Chairman of Council of State of the Indian Soviet Commonwealth, comrade Chivo (a sort of 'party name'); the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the League of Indian Communists, comrade Graeme Igo; and the Chairman of the Council of Ministers comrade Aparajita (another party name, meaning undefeated).
Igo may be the ideological father of the nation, but now in his seventies, tired, and appearing small and physically weak for a Geletian, he doesn't have the energy to keep-up with Chivo's relentless 'powergaming' while also spending a lot of time dashing about the globe to spread his ideas, perhaps in hope that someone else will embrace them more purely. The fact that Aparajita is both the only woman and the only non-Geletian in one of the three highest offices in the land may or may not suggest a tokenistic value to her presence.