Globalization, Poor in India and the deepening crisis of Democracy

“It is fitting that at this solemn moment we take the pledge of dedication to the service of
India and her people and to the still larger cause of humanity…
The achievement we celebrate today is but a step, an opening of opportunity, to the
greater triumphs and achievements that await us.
Are we brave enough and wise enough to grasp this opportunity and accept the
challenge of the future? …
A new star rises, the star of freedom in the east, a new hope comes into being, a vision
long cherished materialises. May the star never set and that hope never be betrayed!”
--Jawaharlal Nehru
(Extracts from the famous speech “tryst with destiny” at Parliament House in New Delhi
on 15th
August 1947)
Colonialism, Poverty and Class in India:
It is rarely mentioned fact that India was not only for around 250 years a colony of Britain
but was also united by this colonial power. In fact, India has never been united in history
and it was never Indians who united India. Indians inherited a country from Britain. Even
far back in history: there never was one and only one political and military authority in the
whole of the Indian subcontinent, not even under the mighty Mauryan empire until the
British conquest. When the British empire withdrew, a new imperial class took over.
Whatever its intentions that political class was simply a continuation of the British imperial
class. One elite replaced another elite.

Russia, China, Italy, Germany and others who were united by the struggle of their
populations. China was united by Chinese revolutionaries in a bloody civil war, but
nevertheless. Russia was united by Russian czars in a series of brutal wars of expansion,
but nevertheless. Germany was united by Bismark etc. The only other major country of
Asia that was united and created by a colonial power is Indonesia which was a former
Dutch colony.
Unlike most of Asia, India has remained a country of embarrassing poverty, ranking very
low among world countries in human indicators like life expectancy, children malnutrition,
health care and education. Where Japan, Korea and even China have tried seriously to
distribute wealth to erase poverty, in 2010 India’s top 100 rich people owned a fortune
equal to about 25% of GDP. Since 1991 India’s economy has grown at a much faster pace
than Brazil, but Brazil has dramatically reduced poverty while India has not.
Of course, India entered independence with a double curse: a colonial past that had
twisted its economy, and a caste system that was justified and prescribed by the majority
religion. The elitist character of Indian society is still there: the elite has simply changed,
absorbing businessmen and Bollywood stars, and shedding penniless intellectuals.
Eliminating poverty and reducing inequality are not existential missions for this elite just
like they weren’t for the Brahmins of the past. These instead constituted the moral priority
for post-war Japan, and they are today for technocratic post-communist China.
India differs from the rest of Asia in that its economic boom has not come from
manufacturing but from exploitation of its cheap natural resources and of its cheap labor
force. India’s big export has been services, particularly in IT, precisely the sector in which
Japan, Korea and Taiwan largely failed. But those countries “failed” in the exports of
services also because they had found better ways to create wealth with engineering and
manufacturing sectors that helped lift millions of people out of poverty. By contrast, India’s
service economy benefits only a tiny population of English-speaking college kids while
leaving urban poors to sell water packets in filthy streets for a few cents, and rural poors
to grow rice in dismally irrigated fields.
The Indian elite is literally above the law, rarely held accountable for what they have done
in office. No surprise that the Indian governments was outraged when in December 2013
the police arrested an Indian diplomat (Devyani Khobragade) for falsifying documents that
allowed her to illegally underpay a nanny she helped immigrate illegally from India. When
has anybody ever heard that India arrested a distinguished citizen for merely breaking the
law?? The notable exception was the “2G spectrum scam” for which one minister ended
up in jail, but that was a $27 billion scam, that Time magazine rated second in a "Top 10
Abuses of Power" list after Watergate.

What is more surprising is that the masses accept this state of affairs. With the exception
of Anna Hazare’s 2011 anti-corruption campaign that achieved very little and probably
represented more the frustration of the middle class than of the slums and of sporadic
military attacks by small bands of Maoist groups in central India promptly labelled as
“terrorists” by the elite class the half a billion of people who live below or barely above the
poverty line don’t seem to mind. Centuries of caste system may explain this passion for
accepting injustice as something that cannot be reversed in this life.
The numbers, however, are merciless. 10 million new job-seekers enter the job market
every year; but only 3 million new jobs are being created. The others will find jobs in the
streets or will be underemployed for life. In 1991 India’s main occupation was agriculture:
60% of the labour force. In 2013 it is still agriculture and it is still 60% of the population.
Too bad that now agriculture only contributes 14% to GDP. Retail inflation in November
2013 was 11.24%.
India ranks 142nd in the world in per-capita income. Life is cheap in India but even
adjusted for purchasing power India still ranks 129th
. India can find solace in the fact that
country #143 is Pakistan: the two mighty nuclear powers of the region are two of the
poorest countries in the world. Since most of the countries that follow in that ranking are
African and Africa’s per-capita income is growing faster than India, India is slowly but
steadily sliding towards the very bottom. Meanwhile, India’s population growth rate
remains one of the highest of world. Among major countries only Nigeria and Pakistan
beat India (whose 1.3% rate is even higher than Bangladesh’s 1.2%).
The future trend was well summarized by those who noticed a simple fact: In 2013 every
member of India’s lower house under the age of 30 is the scion of a political dynasty. This
continuing dismal state of affairs also affects the way people behave. If you thought of
India as a spiritual place, it takes only a few days to realize that it’s exactly the opposite:
very few places in the world look so materialistic and selfish. I noticed that in Bangladesh
people would immediately ask me “can i help you” whenever i looked lost or stared at my
map whereas in India nobody (literally nobody) asks you if you need help except the touts
who are trying to sell you hotel rooms or other services. It is embarrassing to see how
people fight for a seat on a bus or on a subway, ignoring elderly people, pregnant women,
etc. India must have been a spiritual place in the 1960s when young people from all over
the world were travelling to experience its atmosphere, but 50+ years of a dysfunctional
state have created a population that can’t afford to do much else than survive.
According to the World Bank, “poverty is pronounced deprivation in wellbeing.” Poverty
encompasses a range of issues, including health, housing, education, nutrition and life
expectancy. It is pervasive across all aspects of life and throughout the duration of life. The
issue of poverty keeps raising its ugly head, especially in India. The now dismantled
Planning Commission kept on shifting the poverty line, but was always at a stringently low
level, which underestimated the numbers actually living in poverty. It seemed as if playing
highs and lows with India’s poverty line had almost become a trendy pastime.

The truth is that poverty is an embarrassment. It is an embarrassment to many of India’s
rich and to a good number of politicians, who like to portray the country as an emerging
superpower, with its space programme, sophisticated missiles, sports towns, growth
figures, Formula-One race track and gleaming malls. And finally, there’s always the “opium
of the masses”, take your pick between either Cricket or Bollywood.
Now for some startling facts, one in four people in India are starving and every second
child is underweight and stunted. The 2010 Multidimensional Poverty Index indicated that
eight Indian states account for more poor people than in the 26 poorest African countries
combined. According to this measure, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh,
Orissa, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal have 421 million poor people. This is
more than the 410 million poor in the poorest African countries put together.
The 2014 global Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) by researchers of the Oxford
Poverty & Human Development Initiative at the University of Oxford has been released (
Global MPI 2014: Key findings) that covers 108 countries: 31 Low-Income Countries, 67
Middle-Income Countries and 10 High-Income Countries.
These countries have a total population of 5.4 billion people, some 78% of the world’s
population. The MPI assesses poverty at the individual level. If someone is deprived in a
three or more of ten weighted indicators; the global index identifies them as ‘MPI poor’.
Those indicators are based on health, education and living standards and comprise the
following 10 factors:

1. Years of schooling
2. School attendance
3. Levels of nutrition
4. Child mortality
5. Access to Water
6. Access to Electricity
7. Access to Cooking fuel
8. Sanitation
9. Flooring material
10. Ownership of assets

According to the MPI, out of its 1.2 billion-plus population, India is home to over 340
million destitute (i.e. “poorest of the poor people”) and is the second poorest country in
South Asia after war-torn Afghanistan.
 Some 640 million poor people live in India (40% of the world’s poor), mostly in rural
areas, meaning an individual is deprived in one-third or more of the ten indicators
mentioned above (malnutrition, child deaths, defecating in the open).
 Bangladesh has less than half of India’s per-capita GDP but, has overtaken India in
terms of a wide range of basic social indicators, including life expectancy, infant
and child mortality rates, enhanced immunisation rates, reduced fertility rates and
particular schooling indicators.
 Moreover, over half of the population in India practices open defecation, a major
health hazard, compared with less than 10% in Bangladesh.
 India had the second-best social indicators among the six South Asian countries
(India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal and Bhutan) 20 years ago. Now, it has
the second worst position, ahead only of Pakistan.
Capitalistic Economy, Media & advertising collusion and
corporatisation of NGOs?

What is really the economy and what does economic growth mean? The word economy
originates from Greek word oikonomia, which means management of a household. The
word economy indicates conservation, safety and sustainability; which is what is what we
would expect in management of our households. Won’t we?
But, for our sins, when we look at what we have done; we realize that we have created a
system which could be anything, but not even remotely resembling an Economy. The so
called economy has created mountains and mountains of waste, has stripped and
poisoned the environment and is utterly unsustainable by any standards.
It is fitting here to quote David Attenborough who put it brilliantly:
“If you believe in Infinite growth on a very finite planet, you are
either insane or an economist”
The so-called economy in India is in good shape as the newspapers, Internet sites and
Telivision channels would not tire teling you a million times, but Indians are forced to live
a hand-to-mouth existence.
There is a growing sense of disillusionment among most Indians, and it is largely to
counter this disappointment that political outfits today champion nationalism, miracle of
free-market capitalism and the threats of terrorism and immigrants. We Indian’s
collectively spend less to buy pencils for our children than to purchase arms, not to
mention as of today; India is largest arms importer in the world.
The now dominant Capitalism, is an economic system defined by private ownership of
capital and the means of production, market competition, market allocation and
administration of corporate workplace. Its obvious implications are that those who own
capital and means of production will accumulate vast profits and hold great power in
economy and society; and that those who manage and otherwise dominate institutional
decision-making will have considerable income and power and that those who only obey
orders and meticulously carry out the required labour as demanded by their pastors and
masters will be overwhelmingly marginalised in both income and in power.
Corporations have dominated our economic and social fabric by creating a disguised
dictatorship by the ownership and administration of workplaces, and by corrupting
political system via commercial interests in the pursuit of higher profits. Citizen's
behaviours have been pushed by market competition toward selfishness and outcomes
have turned around from fulfilment of collective aspirations toward private profits, while
ignoring the vast and unmistakable reality of poverty, destitution and relentless trampling
of human dignity.
Capitalism has built-in contradictions, and was never intended to be just and humane. It’s
not some kind of conspiracy to keep the masses in poverty or in fear of falling into it. The
increasing concentration of power, ownership of resources and wealth in the hands of the
few and the rising impoverishment of the masses is one of capitalism’s greatest
contradictions. Capitalism thrives on poverty and that’s why it is rampant in the West and
much more so in the cheap labour economies of the ‘third world’.

Governments celebrate record corporate profits and push for further monetary and fiscal
austerity and deregulation which inevitably translates into higher levels of inequality,
outsourcing of jobs, low pay, abolition of human rights, mass unemployment and the
erosion of fundamental social security. In the West, jobs are being outsourced, wages are
falling and unemployment is rising. As the fiercely competitive market becomes saturated
with goods and demand is unable to clear up supply, firms fail and go out of business.
Also, in the west there is a striking shift towards powerful monopoly or oligopoly capitalism.
(Monopoly is defined by the dominance of just one firm in the market e.g. Microsoft
(Operating systems, office productivity suites), Google (web search, search advertising),
DeBeers (diamonds), Monsanto (seeds); Oligopoly occurs where few large firms dominate the
market e,g. Health insurers, Wireless carriers, Beer, Electronic media industry), while citizens
and workers experience increasing powerlessness and immiseration; and on the other
hand for private corporations to seek out new profits and imperialist ventures abroad
becomes the norm.
Some decades ago, theorist and social philosopher Herbert Marcuse summed up the
problems facing modern society by saying that:
“Free market enterprise was from the beginning not altogether a blessing. As the liberty to
work or to starve; it spelled toil, insecurity, and fear for the vast majority of the population.
If the individual were no longer compelled to prove himself on the market, as a free economic
subject, the disappearance of this kind of freedom would be one of the greatest achievements
of civilization.”
“The technological processes of mechanization and standardization might release individual
energy into a yet uncharted realm of freedom lying beyond necessity. The very structure of
human existence would be altered; the individual would be liberated from the world of work,
imposing upon him alien needs and alien possibilities. The individual would be free to exert
autonomy over a life that would be truly his own. If the productive apparatus could be
organized and directed toward the satisfaction of the vital needs, its control might well be
centralized; such control would not prevent individual autonomy, but render it possible.”

“For any consciousness and conscience, for any experience which does not accept the
prevailing societal interest as the supreme law of thought and behaviour, the established
universe of needs and satisfactions is a fact to be questioned - questioned in terms of truth
and falsehood. “Truth” and “falsehood” of needs designate objective conditions to the extent
to which the universal satisfaction of vital needs and, beyond it, the progressive alleviation
of toil and poverty, are universally valid standards.”
“The distinguishing feature of advanced industrial society is its effective suffocation of those
needs which demand liberation - liberation also from that which is tolerable and rewarding
and comfortable - while it sustains and absolves the destructive power and repressive
function of the affluent society. Here, the social controls exact the overwhelming need for
the production and consumption of waste; the need for stupefying work where it is no longer
a real necessity; the need for modes of relaxation which soothe and prolong this stupefaction;
the need for maintaining such deceptive liberties as free competition at administered prices,
a free press which censors itself, free choice between brands and gadgets.”
 One-Dimensional Man (1964) – by Herbert Marcuse
Capitalism and the wage system must be abolished; they are twin monsters which are eating
up the life of the world. In place of them we need a system which will hold in check men's
predatory impulses, and will diminish the economic injustice that allows some to be rich in
idleness while others are poor in spite of unremitting labour; but above all we need a system
which will destroy the tyranny of the employer, by making men at the same time secure
against destitution and able to find scope for individual initiative in the control of the
industry by which they live.

A better system can do all these things, and can be established by the democracy whenever
it grows weary of enduring evils which there is no reason to endure. Among the many
obvious evils of capitalism and the wage system, none are more glaring than that they
encourage predatory instincts, that they allow economic injustice, and that they give great
scope to the tyranny of the employer.
Private ownership of land and capital is not defensible on grounds of justice, or on the ground
that it is an economical way of producing what the community needs. But the chief
objections to it are that it stunts the lives of men and women, that it enshrines a ruthless
possessiveness in all the respect which is given to success, that it leads men to fill the greater
part of their time and thought with the acquisition of purely material goods, and that it
affords a terrible obstacle to the advancement of civilization and creative energy.
The approach to a system free from these evils need not be sudden; it is perfectly possible to
proceed step by step towards economic freedom and industrial self-government. It is not true
that there is any outward difficulty in creating the kind of institutions that we have been
considering. If organized labour wishes to create them, nothing could stand in its way.
The difficulty involved is merely the difficulty of inspiring men with hope, of giving them
enough imagination to see that the evils from which they suffer are unnecessary, and enough
thought to understand how the evils are to be cured.
This is a difficulty which can be overcome by time and energy. But it will not be overcome if
the leaders of organized labour have no breadth of outlook, no vision, no hopes beyond some
slight superficial improvement within the framework of the existing system. Revolutionary
action may be unnecessary, but revolutionary thought is indispensable, and, as the outcome
of thought, a rational and constructive hope.
-- From Political Ideals (1917) by Bertrand Russell
Western corporations are seeking to grab an ever-increasing share of the overseas market.
The manufacturers know that branding matters and the bigger the celebrity, the better
the potential market for higher sales opportunity. Apparently, they have been incredibly
successful in repeatedly brainstorming us with the message that ‘greed is good’, that
material possessions have the last word in success and that individual consumer is the
king in a world that has in itself, and even happiness, so to speak has become ‘up for sale’.
Mentioning the super-rich in India, according to a recent Forbes magazine’s report, the
100 richest Indians are all dollar billionaires, with a combined wealth of $386 billion.
This implies, out of India’s population of 1.25 billion, 100 “very special class” of individuals
(and off course their families) control about quarter of the country’s GDP, while the whole
agriculture and allied sectors accounted for less than 14% of the India’s GDP in 2013.
In the second rung of this ladder, India has 42,800 persons having taxable income of more
than Rs. 1 crore who were also levied a surcharge of 10 per cent. Next to this, we witness
a sharp decline of rich people. In a sense, India has only 42,900 (including 100 big shots)
rich people or rulers of new India to be more precise! The wave of economic growth has
actually not trickled down from the 0.004% of population.

It is this heaven-and-earth chasm which has created staggering levels of inequality, where
99.996 per cent population has an average spending between just Rs. 26 and Rs. 38 per
day across the rural and urban spectra respectively.
According to the new estimates from Credit Suisse’s Global Wealth Databook 2014, the
difference in the wealth share held by India’s poorest 10 per cent and the richest 10 per
cent is enormous; India’s richest 10 per cent holds 370 times the share of wealth that it’s
poorest hold. India’s richest, top 1% holds close to half of the country’s total wealth, which
is larger than the share of top 1% that has ever been in the US, the archetypal capitalist
economy, in its entire history over the last century.
Is the status-quo not a shameful situation for any nation?
The mainstream corporate media has been fooling the public for decades. It fails to shine
a light on important decisions that are made behind closed doors by unaccountable
corporate players, senior politicians and unelected bureaucrats. It therefore fails to expose
the close links between these groups that ensure unity of interest and action. Mainstream
media news is shaped by selective filtering by or on behalf of media owners who, along
with figures in officialdom, lobbyists and a range of other influences, determine the
production and reporting of ‘news’. The media serves to manufacture consent in this way.
The media torch does not focus on the already done-deals that the public never had any
knowledge of or insight into. Modes of thought are encouraged which seek to guarantee
integration, rather than forms of critical thought or action that may lead to a direct
questioning of or a challenge to prevailing forms of institutionalised power. Oppositional
stances are stifled or marginalized and consensus is manufactured both in cultural and
political terms. It’s infotainment in purest form. From the TV news and commercials to the
game-shows and latest instant fame programme, misinformation, narcissism and
distraction pervades all aspects of life. Why be aware of the world’s ills and challenge
anything when you can live in the dark, watch X-Factor, wear Reebok and shop till you
drop? It is a consumer paradise where lies are truth and unfettered desire a virtue.
The mainstream media and politics do not want a well-informed, educated populace that
is aware of its disfranchisement, exploitation and manipulation. It does not require
disenchantment and revolutionary murmurs, but acquiescence and passivity from a
population that is distracted by the advertising industry and its products and looks to its
leaders to save it from their fears and confusions. The public cannot know the reality simply
because they will not be allowed to know. They must be kept in fear and in the dark and
deceived by politicians and the media that churn out from a factory increasingly tired-
sounding clichés about a war on terror or humanitarian militarism to justify murderous
brutality. Forget about informed debate when platitudes,simple emotion and 'common
sense' outlooks will do. You will rarely find anything radical or challenging here or
elsewhere on mainstream TV because that's not the point of it.

The point of it all is to convince the public that their trivial concerns are indeed the major
concerns of the day and that the major world events and imperialist wars can be trivialised
or justified with a few glib clichés about saving oppressed woman in Afghanistan or killing
for peace in Africa.
The widespread phenomenon of advertising mythology has consumed us entirely which
involves generally regarding the viewers as worthless or inferior on false premises that
fundamentally appeal to irrationality– Other than our basic needs, in most cases, why else
would you need their products; if it wasn’t to make you feel a little more worthy or
superior? Here, for the advertisers the key to profits and greater market share is creating
an environment of artificial scarcity, which at present they seem to be doing pretty well. In
an age of mediocrity not many of us have the time and inclination to look beyond the
obvious. With the fundamentals laid out in the college/university, and with the mainstream
media relentlessly wheeling the narrative, we refuse to look beyond.
The media worships individual success while at the same time millions are left to live and
die unnoticed as if they encourage to inspire their disgust and content to inspire nothing
else. The media regularly covers the billionaires and creates the impression that, for
instance if you are not among the elite for example-Forbes magazine’s millionaires or even
billionaires list, or at least aspiring to be on it, you are somehow at best unremarkable and
at worst a failure.
Commercial media advertising campaigns propagate the myth that, if you don’t buy so
and so product or use this or that item, you somehow don’t belong to a certain celebrated,
aspiring class or select crowd that commercial interests have conjured up.
The much coveted celebrity status begets fame privilege and favour, and its influence is
everywhere in today’s world of multi-channel 24-hour TV, powerful PR agencies, gossip
columns, websites and instantly accessible social media. While acquiring celebrity status
may be a somewhat liberating experience for those who emerge into the limelight from
lives of poverty and hardship, the vulgar preoccupation with money or material
possessions and undue fascination with that coveted celebrity status coupled with a
pervasive cult of excessive individualism is socially divisive.

Such a culture eats away at a sense of fraternity, solidarity and camaraderie by
encouraging folk to seek unlimited material wealth and self-gratification and to set
themselves apart from everyone else around them.
It also fuels a certain arrogance, which can lead people to regard themselves as being
above and beyond society’s standards of accountability and that they can do anything and
get away with it– which is what a world of corruption and deceit that wealth and
unaccountable power afford in general.
While there may be little wrong with the notion of fame in itself, especially when set within
the context of a fair and just society, is there any benefit to be derived by society from
today’s acute obsession with celebrity and worship of the individual? Not much. The media
overly focuses on the lives and deaths of privileged, well-known individuals, while scant
regard is paid to hundreds of millions who are left to live and die in poverty. And,
ultimately, that’s the role the worship of celebrity increasingly plays. It acts as a device to
legitimise inequality, to bind the masses to the system, to divide people from one another
based on the clamour to be ‘individual’ and to divert attention away from the functioning
of illegitimate systems of governance.
In a world where elected governments have abdicated their legal and financially
redistributive roles concerning their respective populations, it’s become a case of each
man for him/herself, whereby the unrestrained greed for celebrity status or the hope of
‘making it big’ provide the perfect antidote for a lifetime of ever decreasing benefits,
diminishing rights, low pay and poverty and of generally being surplus to requirements.
A craving for but not the actual acquirement of fame and fortune in the promised-land of
the future, the lure of exported American Dream, the ultimate opiate for modern man and
woman. In India, the product-endorsing celebrity gets wheeled on to TV and splashed
across the tabloids to try to fool the downtrodden into believing just how wonderful the
system is.

Media and advertising industry is the splendid example of corporate monopoly and
dominance in India. I don’t know if you have heard of Mr. Vineet Jain, the current
Managing director of India's single largest media conglomerate owned by the Sahu Jain
family, Bennett, Coleman & Co. Ltd. (B.C.C.L.); is the parent company of The Times of India,
Economic Times and other large newspapers, several magazines and is a powerhouse in
television, radio and the digital medium. The Times of India is the largest of any English-
language newspaper in the world. The Economic Times is the world’s second most widely
read English-language business newspaper after the Wall Street Journal. Both are owned
by B.C.C.L., along with eleven other newspapers, eighteen magazines, two satellite news
channels, an English-language movie channel, a Bollywood news-and-life-style channel, a
radio network, Internet sites, and outdoor billboards.
Mr. Vineet Jain, in a 2012 interview to NewYorker magazine stated on record that “We are
not in the newspaper business, we are in the advertising business,” he said. With
newspapers sold so cheaply and generating little circulation revenue, newspapers depend
more on ad revenue, he said, and, “if ninety per cent of your revenues come from
advertising, you’re in the advertising business.” (Citzens Jain: Why India’s newspaper
industry is thriving)
Another big media monopoly owner is Mr. Mukesh Ambani whose personal net-worth is
over $23 billion and holds majority controlling shares in Reliance Industries Limited (RIL),
a company with a market capitalisation of $47 billion and global business interests that
include petrochemicals, oil, natural gas, polyester fibre, Special Economic Zones (SEZ),
fresh food retail, high schools, life sciences research and stem cell storage services. RIL
recently bought 95 per cent shares in Infotel, a TV consortium that controls 27 TV news
and entertainment channels, including CNN-IBN, IBN Live, CNBC, IBN Lokmat, and ETV in
almost every regional language except the Telugu ones.

Given this huge collusion of media and advertising industry India, fewer and fewer people
recognize this covertly dominating corporate driven culture for what it is; let alone strive
to challenge its hegemony or imperialism. But appealing to animal instincts, greed and
insensitivity has become the priority of media representing ‘modern’ India is because of
the priorities of India’s mostly unconcerned crème de la crème or the elites like the
politicians, CEO’s, film stars, cricketers etc.
Father of the nation Mahatma Gandhi once stated: “Future of India lies in its villages.”
Today, rural India constitutes 833 million people, and around 780 spoken dialects, but
largely invisible in the media. There is not a full-time media journalist who specializes in
poverty, employment or housing.
In India, there is a plan to develop well-planned ‘smart cities’ (and villages) that have
decent, modern infrastructure. The question remains that, whether the government can
restore the economic fabric of the village, which was once enshrined in a well-functioning
eco-system and a healthy social life based on fraternity and mutual co-operation. We build
cyber cities, techno parks, state-of-the-art airports, IITs, highways and bridges and see the
inevitable necessity of the corporate world to spread its tentacles everywhere and thrive;
at the cost of the welfare of the downtrodden and the environment, while depriving the
common man of even the basic necessities of life and still believe all these to be ‘economic
growth’.
No wonder, several studies show that more than 58 per cent of the 600 million farmers
sleep empty stomach. We don’t think how our farmers on whose toil we feed ourselves
scarcely manage to feed themselves; we fail to see how the millions of the poor survive.
And how is all this injustice justified? By referring to the holy grail of GDP growth – a single,
narrow definition of ‘development’ or ‘growth’ – a notion hijacked by economists and their
secular theology parading as an ‘economic pseudo-science’; an economic miracle which
is cursed by dying or uprooted local communities against economies that cannot die or
be uprooted. That the GDP is a flawed estimate of a country’s progress is now being
increasingly realized; nor does a high GDP mean more job creation. If that were so, there
is no reason why India should have witnessed a jobless growth in the past decade, between
2005-13, when its average annual growth had remained over 7%, only 15 million jobs were
created; given that, every year, some 12 million people enter the job market.
Our neighbour China is the world's worst environmental disaster. In 1980, according to
World Bank estimates, average income there was less than $200, measured in current U.S.
dollars. By 2013, income averaged nearly $7,000. World Bank would never talk about the
dark side. Why not? The bigger the disaster, the higher is the GDP. It may startle us, but
the fact is that the more we destroy the environment the higher is the economic growth.
If we bomb a city, and then rebuild it; the GDP soars. Similarly, if you allow the
biotechnology companies to contaminate your food and environment, the health costs go
up and so does the GDP. The more the application of all kinds of deadly pesticides and
chemical fertilizers the higher is GDP growth. What World Bank doesn't tell you is; China's
GINI index (a measure of income distribution where 0 is perfect equality and 1 is perfect
inequality) has grown from roughly 0.3 in the early 1980s to above 0.45 in recent years.

If that is not enough, acid rain is falling on one third of the Chinese territory; half of the
water in the seven largest rivers in China is completely useless, while one fourth of Chinese
citizens do not have access to clean drinking water. One third of the urban population is
breathing polluted air, and less than 20 percent of the trash in cities is treated and
processed in an environmentally sustainable manner. Finally, five of the ten most polluted
cities worldwide are in China.
Shipra Nigam a Consultant Economist with Research and Information Systems (RIS) for
Developing Countries; agrees: “Key sectors – traditionally held to be the preserve of the
state – such as ports, roads, rail and power have been handed over to corporate capital.
This has meant, inevitably, that the government has abdicated all decision making powers,
as well as functional and financial control over such projects. Nowhere else in the country
has this abdication of responsibility been so total, nowhere else has the state given over
the economy so entirely to the corporates and private investors.”
The poor in India are the ‘ghosts of capitalism’, the ‘invisible’ and shoved-aside victims of
a now rampant neo-liberalism. As governments are cutting back on public spending on
health, education, childcare, development, the NGOs moved in. The Privatisation of
Everything has also meant the NGO-isation of everything. As jobs and livelihoods
disappeared, NGOs have become an important source of employment, even for those who
see them for what they are. And they are certainly not all bad.
Of the millions of NGOs, some do remarkable, radical work and it would be a travesty to
tar all NGOs with the same brush. However, the corporate or Foundation endowed NGOs
are global finance’s way of buying into resistance movements, literally like shareholders
buy shares in companies, and then try to control them from within. One century after it
began, corporate philanthropy or corporate social responsibility (CSR) is as much part of
our lives as multinationals like McDonalds and KFC. There are now millions of non-profit
organisations many of the biggest in the US, the hub of capitalism. Globally, the largest of
them is the Bill Gates Foundation with ($21 billion), followed by the Lilly Endowment ($16
billion) and the Ford Foundation ($15 billion). Armed with billions in their pockets, these
NGOs have invaded into the world of public goodwill, turning potential revolutionaries
into salaried activists, funding artists, intellectuals and filmmakers where all these are
gently lured away from any sort of radical confrontation with the establishment, pushing
through the agenda of corporate driven multiculturalism, gender and community
development and finally transforming the idea of justice into a gigantic industry of human
rights.
“There can be no meaningful mass movement when dissent is generously funded by those
same corporate interests which are the target of the protest movement. Everything the [Ford]
Foundation did could be regarded as ‘making the World safe for capitalism’, reducing social
tensions by helping to comfort the afflicted, provide safety valves for the angry, and improve
the functioning of government.”
 McGeorge Bundy, National Security Advisor to Presidents John F. Kennedy and
Lyndon Johnson (1961-1966), President of the Ford Foundation, (1966-1979)

"By providing the funding and the policy framework to many concerned and dedicated
people working within the non-profit sector, the ruling class is able to co-opt leadership from
grassroots communities, ... and is able to make the funding, accounting, and evaluation
components of the work so time consuming and onerous that social justice work is virtually
impossible under these conditions"
 Paul Kivel, You Call this Democracy, Who Benefits, Who Pays... 2004, p. 122
Neo-liberal model of ‘Economic growth’:
Indian Constitution
(Directive Principles of State Policy (Part IV))
Art 38. State to secure a social order for the promotion of welfare of the people.—
(1) The State shall strive to promote the welfare of the people by securing and protecting
as effectively as it may a social order in which justice, social, economic and political,
shall inform all the institutions of the national life.
(2) The State shall, in particular, strive to minimise the inequalities in income, and
endeavour to eliminate inequalities in status, facilities and opportunities, not only
amongst individuals but also amongst groups of people residing in different areas or
engaged in different vocations.

Art. 39. Certain principles of policy to be followed by the State.—The State shall, in
particular, direct its policy towards securing—
(a) That the citizens, men and women equally, have the right to an adequate means of
livelihood;
(b) That the ownership and control of the material resources of the community are so
distributed as best to subserve the common good;
(c) That the operation of the economic system does not result in the concentration of
wealth and means of production to the common detriment;
(d) That there is equal pay for equal work for both men and women;
(e) That the health and strength of workers, men and women, and the tender age of
children are not abused and that citizens are not forced by economic necessity to
enter avocations unsuited to their age or strength;
(f) That, children are given opportunities and facilities to develop in a healthy manner
and in conditions of freedom and dignity and that childhood and youth are protected
against exploitation and against moral and material abandonment.
Art. 39A. Equal justice and free legal aid.—The State shall secure that the operation of the
legal system promotes justice, on a basis of equal opportunity, and shall, in particular,
provide free legal aid, by suitable legislation or schemes or in any other way, to ensure that
opportunities for securing justice are not denied to any citizen by reason of economic or
other disabilities.
……
Art. 41. Right to work, to education and to public assistance in certain cases.—The State
shall, within the limits of its economic capacity and development, make effective provision
for securing the right to work, to education and to public assistance in cases of
unemployment, old age, sickness and disablement, and in other cases of undeserved want.
Art. 42. Provision for just and humane conditions of work and maternity relief.—The State
shall make provision for securing just and humane conditions of work and for maternity
relief.
Art. 43. Living wage, etc., for workers.—The State shall endeavour to secure, by suitable
legislation or economic organisation or in any other way, to all workers, agricultural,
industrial or otherwise, work, a living wage, conditions of work ensuring a decent standard
of life and full enjoyment of leisure and social and cultural opportunities and, in particular,
the State shall endeavour to promote cottage industries on an individual or co-operative
basis in rural areas.
Art. 43A. Participation of workers in management of industries.—The State shall take steps,
by suitable legislation or in any other way, to secure the participation of workers in the
management of undertakings, establishments or other organisations engaged in any
industry.
….
Art. 45. Provision for early childhood care and education to children below the age of six
years.—The State shall endeavour to provide early childhood care and education for all
children until they complete the age of six years.

Art. 46. Promotion of educational and economic interests of Scheduled Castes, Scheduled
Tribes and other weaker sections.—The State shall promote with special care the educational
and economic interests of the weaker sections of the people, and, in particular, of the
Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes, and shall protect them from social injustice and
all forms of exploitation.
Art. 47. Duty of the State to raise the level of nutrition and the standard of living and to
improve public health.—The State shall regard the raising of the level of nutrition and the
standard of living of its people and the improvement of public health as among its primary
duties and, in particular, the State shall endeavour to bring about prohibition of the
consumption except for medicinal purposes of intoxicating drinks and of drugs which are
injurious to health.
Art. 48. Organisation of agriculture and animal husbandry. —The State shall endeavour to
organise agriculture and animal husbandry on modern and scientific lines and shall, in
particular, take steps for preserving and improving the breeds, and prohibiting the slaughter,
of cows and calves and other milch and draught cattle.
Art. 48A. Protection and improvement of environment and safeguarding of forests and wild
life.—The State shall endeavour to protect and improve the environment and to safeguard
the forests and wild life of the country.
Neoliberalism is in the first instance a theory of political economic practices that proposes
that human well-being can best be advanced by liberating individual entrepreneurial
freedoms and skills within an institutional framework characterized by strong private
property rights, free markets, and free trade. The role of the state is to create and preserve
an institutional framework appropriate to such practices. The state has to guarantee, for
example, the quality and integrity of money. It must also set up those military, defence,
police, and legal structures and functions required to secure private property rights and
to guarantee, by force if need be, the proper functioning of markets.
Furthermore, if markets do not exist (in areas such as land, water, education, health care,
social security, or environmental pollution) then they must be created, by state action, if
necessary. But beyond these tasks the state should not venture. State interventions in
markets (once created) must be kept to a bare minimum because, according to the theory,
the state cannot possibly possess enough information to second-guess market signals
(prices) and because powerful interest groups will inevitably distort and bias state
interventions (particularly in democracies) for their own benefit.
Privatization and deregulation combined with competition, it is claimed, eliminate
bureaucratic red tape, increase efficiency and productivity, improve quality, and reduce
costs, both directly to the consumer through cheaper commodities and services and
indirectly through reduction of the tax burden. The free mobility of capital between
sectors, regions, and countries is regarded as crucial.

All barriers to that free movement (such as tariffs, punitive taxation arrangements,
planning and environmental controls, or other locational impediments) have to be
removed, except in those areas crucial to ‘the national interest’, however that is defined.
State sovereignty over commodity and capital movements is willingly surrendered to the
global market.
International competition is seen as healthy since it improves efficiency and productivity,
lowers prices, and thereby controls inflationary tendencies. States should therefore
collectively seek and negotiate the reduction of barriers to movement of capital across
borders and the opening of markets (for both commodities and capital) to global
exchange.
Furthermore, the advocates of the neoliberal way now occupy positions of considerable
influence in education (the universities and many ‘think tanks’), in the media, in corporate
boardrooms and financial institutions, in key state institutions (treasury departments, the
central banks), and also in those international institutions such as the International
Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank (WB), and the World Trade Organization (WTO) that
regulate global finance and trade. Neoliberalism has, in short, become hegemonic as a
mode of discourse.
It has pervasive effects on ways of thought to the point where it has become incorporated
into the common-sense way many of us interpret, live in, and understand the world.
After 23 years of a shift towards neo-liberalism and increasing urbanisation, to what
extent has the process thus far, lead us to ‘growth’ in Justice, Liberty, Equality and
Fraternity as embodied in the preamble of Indian Constitution?
There has been little real progress in the living conditions of most Indians during the 24-
year economic boom while the living conditions of most other countries (starting with
China) that were in the same situation have improved significantly. Also, India’s so called
“democratically elected” political elite stole the wealth that was created in these 20 years
of economic growth and delivered very little to ordinary families, whereas the Chinese
communist dictatorship significantly improved the living conditions of ordinary families.
Neo-liberalism (the paradigm for modern day ‘globalisation’) is by its very nature designed
to fail the majority and benefit the relative few. And its outcome is and will continue to be
endless conflicts for fewer and fewer resources. In the mainstream media and among many
leading politicians and economists, this constitutes growth and development; but it’s
neither. Evidently, it is plunder and exploitation writ large. Here, the evidence doesn’t lie
in the West; decades of such policies have culminated in austerity, disempowerment and
increasing hardship for the masses accompanied with concentration of ever more wealth
and power in the hands of the few powerful individuals and entities.

Moreover, social and cultural traditions dating back thousands of years are being
discouraged and uprooted thanks to a redefining of the individual in relation to the
collective; of how one should live and what one should aspire to be like, willingly assisted
by an all pervasive advertising industry. This is the cultural impact of ‘globalisation’ – that
accepts gross inequalities as necessary, obvious and even beneficial, and that indigenous
cultures must be swept aside in the name of progress.
We must look behind the rhetoric of those who espouse the virtues of the free market or
neo-liberalism. The US achieved its level of affluence by way of vandalism not free market
economics.
Corporate-backed politicians in India have also seen little wrong in using the machinery
and violence of the state to work hand in glove with rich interests to secure access to the
nation’s resources, while attempting to justify its brand of plunder, human rights abuses,
killings and cronyism by hiding behind baseless claims about ‘opening up’ this or that
sector of the economy, ‘progress’ and the wonders of the supposed ‘free market’.
In India, many people are resisting state-corporate policies because they are in the main
merely facilitating corporate takeovers of food, agriculture, resources, land, public
infrastructure and water. Successive governments have abused and removed some the
nation’s poorest people from their lands.
Killings and human rights abuses have gone hand in hand with the destruction of the
environment as profiteering industries linked with resource extraction and processing
have moved in. Police action has included firing live bullets and violence on peaceful and
unarmed people demanding justice and their rights. This is symptomatic of what is
happening across the country.
In Jaitapur (Maharashtra), police had opened fire on peaceful protesters demonstrating
against the proposed nuclear power plant to be built by French company Areva NP. There
has been fierce opposition to the project from the people of Jaitapur and the surrounding
areas. Land has been forcibly acquired in most cases. The issues at stake for the local
people include concerns about loss of livelihood, serious damage to the environment,
issue of safety given the seismic activity of the site, track record of disaster preparedness
in India, and finally but importantly, the complete lack of transparency about the project.
The government has made no genuine attempt to address the issues raised and has
essentially been trying to gloss over them while stubbornly pressing ahead with the plan.
South Korean steel maker POSCO signed a memorandum of understanding in June 2005
with the state government of Odisha to construct a USD 12 billion steel plant with an
annual production capacity of 12 million tonnes. In Odisha, state forces were deployed to
assist in what many regard as the anti-constitutional land acquisition to protect the stake
of India's largest foreign direct investment (FDI) project.

The Anti-POSCO movement, in its five years of peaceful protest, has faced state violence
numerous time and is now gearing up for another-perhaps final non-violent and
democratic resistance against a state using violence to facilitate its undemocratic land
grab for corporate profits, overlooking due process and the constitutional rights of the
people.
Parts of agriculture have already been placed in the hands of powerful Western
agribusiness. The effects in agriculture sector include seed patenting and seed
monopolies, increasing levels of cancer due to contamination, the destruction of rural
economies, farmer suicides and water run offs from depleted soil leading to climate
change and severe water resource depletion.
The neo-liberal model of growth has seen the poverty alleviation rate in India remain
around the same as it was back in 1991 or even in pre-independence era. The drive
towards neo-liberalism and urbanisation has thus far been underpinned by un-
constitutional land takeovers and the trampling of democratic rights, using colonial-era
laws. Fertile land has been taken from poor farmers for as little as 300 rupees/square
metre; thereby developers and real estate agents have sold it out for up to 600,000
rupees/square metre.
Furthermore, Washington based research and advocacy group Global Financial Integrity
has shown the alarming outflow of illicit funds into foreign bank accounts which facilitates
"crime, corruption, and tax evasion" has accelerated since opening up of the economy to
neoliberalism in the early nineties. ‘High net worth individuals’ (i.e. the very rich) are the
biggest culprits here. (The Drivers and Dynamics of Illicit Financial Flows from India: 1948-
2008)
For supporters of cronyism, cartels and the manipulation of markets, which to all extents
and purposes is what economic ‘neo-liberalism’ has entailed in India over the last two
decades, there have been untold opportunities for well-placed individuals to make an
under-the-table quick money from various infrastructure projects and privatisation sell
offs: assets such as highways, airports, sea ports and other infrastructure built up with
public money or toil have been sold off into private hands.
Also, around the world, this oil-dependent, urban-centric, high energy, high consumption
model is stripping the environment bare and negatively impacting the climate and
ecology. I pose the following questions to the supporters of the status quo:
If someone were to come along and steal the food from your plate, the livelihood from your
hands, the health from your body, the years from your life and the water from your tap, how
would you feel?
How would you feel if you then witnessed the takeover of all that by a handful of people who
try to convince you that it is all for your own good?

How would you feel in a world where few giant agro-chemical corporations protected by the
laws and regulations that follow unchecked pro-privatisation policies, gives them free reign
to control and manipulate the seeds we grow, the food we eat and the water we drink?
Alarming ‘growth’ of rural distress and the Agrarian Crises:
Agriculture is no longer an economically viable activity, and several studies have shown
that farm incomes have remain frozen (or declined) in the past 20 years. Not surprisingly,
a 2014 survey from National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO) has estimated the
average monthly farm family income that a household drives from farming alone at paltry
Rs. 3,078. To make the ends meet, a farm family has to work in some other non-agricultural
activities, including MNREGA. That makes for an average of Rs 6,000 per family per month.
No wonder, 58 per cent farmers go to bed hungry, and 76 per cent want to quit agriculture
if given a choice. Even globally, studies by UNCTAD show that farm incomes have
remained static for two decades if adjusted for inflation. In other words, what the farmer
was getting as wheat price in 1995 is no different from what he is getting in 2014. The only
difference being that while farmers in rich developed countries get direct income support
and subsidies, farmers in India are left to survive on hope.

It is not the lack of improved technology or an access to markets that is behind the
prevailing crisis. It is the declining farm incomes over the years that pushed agriculture
into a deep pit. But unfortunately, the economic debate has never gone beyond the
growth rate in agriculture.
The focus has remained on growth, and not on agrarian distress. Six major causes for the
agrarian crises, which are all rooted in the neo-liberal economic policies directly or
indirectly, can be summarized as follows:
 Liberal Import of Agricultural Products: The main reason for the crash of prices
of agricultural products, especially of cash crops like cotton, tea, coffee, vanilla,
pepper; in India was the removal of all restrictions to the import of these products.
For example: when the Government of India reduced the import duty on tea and
coffee from Sri Lanka and Malaysia, their prices in the domestic market got reduced
drastically. Thus cultivation of such products became unprofitable and unviable so
their production was fully or partly stopped.
Since the removal of quantitative restrictions and lowering of import duties were
according to the restrictions of the World Trade Organisations (WTO), the crash in
the prices of agricultural products is directly related to the neo-liberal policies of
the government. Import liberalization leads to dumping; which is sale of goods at
less than cost of production. Dumping is a market distortion where production is
supported independently of demand, leading to depressed international
agricultural prices, causing unfair competition for small and marginal farmers in
rural areas of developing countries, where 70% of the world’s poor live. Also,
dumping destroys domestic markets and livelihoods and incomes dependent on
them, and erodes their purchasing power and entitlements.
 Cutback in Agricultural Subsidies: In the post-reform period the government
reduced different types of subsidies to agriculture, and this has increased the input
cost of cultivation. The cutback in subsidy and control of fertilisers over the last few
years has adversely affected the agricultural sector and made agriculture less
profitable.
According to WTO, India is allowed to provide a maximum of 10 per cent of the
total value of a crop as MSP (Minimum Support Price) also called the ‘de-minimis’
level. In case of rice, against the permissible limit of 10 per cent, India provides 24
per cent. In case of wheat, it is fast approaching the 10 per cent deadline. Indian
price support to farmers is actually hurting the commercial interests of US
agricultural exporters. Nearly 33 such export federations are pressuring the US
government not to allow any further rise in MSP for Indian farmers. They are keen
that Indian farmers will be forced to get out of agriculture once farming become
economically non-viable thereby turning India into a major food importing country.

Also, in the worst case scenario, the government may eventually stop supporting
farmers by doing away with the system of announcing the minimum support price
(MSP) for farmers and thereby substantially reducing the subsidy outgo.
 Lack of Easy and Low-cost Loan to Agriculture: After 1991 the lending pattern
of commercial banks, including nationalised banks, to agriculture drastically
changed with the result that loan was not easily available and the rate of interest
was not affordable. This has forced the helpless farmers to rely on extortionate
moneylenders and thus pushed up the expenditure on agriculture. All this has
emboldened and encouraged the enhanced role of the private moneylenders in
the rural areas.
The National Commission on Farmers (NCF), a commission constituted on
November 18, 2004 under the chairmanship by Dr M.S. Swaminathan, also pointed
out that removal of the lending facilities and concessions by banks during the post-
reform period have accelerated the crisis in agriculture. As a result even traders are
now playing the role of moneylenders via supplying agriculture inputs, equipment,
etc.
When the farmers were not able to pay back loan because of high interest rate,
they fell into the debt trap. Studies show that most of the farmers’ suicides were
due to the debt trap. Debt continues as a legacy. Even after suicide by peasants in
large numbers, loans from the private moneylenders and also banks haunt their
successors who are forced to bear the burden of the dead men.
Since the Indian government decided to pursue the aggressive liberalisation policy,
farmers claim that in Vidarbha, a region infamous for it’s farmers’ suicide, bank
credit provides for only 15% of their needs. They rely on moneylenders and traders
for the rest, who charge interest at rates varying between 30 and 120 per cent a
year, which is enough to kill any hope of the farmer to generate a surplus.
 Sharp decline in Government Investment in the Agricultural Sector: Studies
show that after the economic reforms started, the government’s expenditure and
investment in the agricultural sector have been drastically reduced. This is based
on the policy of minimum intervention by the government enunciated by the policy
of globalisation.
The expenditure of the government in rural development, including agriculture,
irrigation, flood control, village industry, energy and transport, declined from an
average of 14.5 per cent in 1986-1990 to six per cent in 1995-2000. When the
economic reforms started, the annual rate of growth of irrigated land was 2.62 per
cent; later it got reduced to 0.5 per cent in the post-reform period. The
consequences were many. The rate of capital accumulation in agriculture came
down, and the agricultural growth rate was also reduced. This has directly affected
the purchasing power of the rural people and subsequently their standard of living.

As a consequence of the policies of Liberalisation, Globalisation and Privatisation
(LPG), there has been a steady overall decline in the share of the agricultural sector
in terms of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) from around a third in the early 1990s
to below a fourth in the year 2000.
 Restructuring of the Public Distribution System (PDS): As part of the neo-liberal
policy, the government restructured the PDS called targeted PDS (TPDS) , was
introduced with effect from June, 1997 by creating two groups— Below Poverty
Line (BPL) and Above Poverty Line (APL)—and continuously increased the prices of
food grains distributed through ration shops.
Cereals are a much cheaper form of calories and protein than other foods,
therefore, poorest 40% of the population spend one third of their food budget on
cereals, but get three fourths of the nutrition from them. Between 1990-91 and
1999-2000 cereals prices rose 30% more than the prices of other commodities. It
resulted in forced reduction of their annual consumption of cereals between 1991
and 1998 by 16.3 kg per capita or 81.5 kg for a household of five. As a result, even
the poor people did not buy the subsidised food grains and it got accumulated in
godowns to be spoiled or sold in the grey market. As the intake from PDS was less,
it has affected the food security of the poor, especially in the rural areas, and this
has indirectly affected the market and the farmers.
The FCI (Food Corporation of India) was formed in 1965 (under the Food
Corporation Act, 1964), and its main objectives were to procure food grains directly
from the farmers and further to store and supply them for PDS and for maintaining
price stability during scarcity. Considering drastic inefficiency of FCI and increased
food subsidy burden, in 2004 the former UPA government’s Ministry of Consumer
Affairs, Food and Public Distribution had reportedly commissioned McKinsey &
Company to give recommendations on how to bring about substantial and
sustainable efficiency in the operations of FCI, considering that it had suffered from
lots of problems related with procurement of rice, pilferage, storage etc. M/s
McKinsey & Co submitted their report on 28th
July, 2005; which posed a serious
threat to the very existence of the corporation and its workforce. It had made some
recommendations for FCI like outsourcing its key operations including food grains
procurement, handling, transportation and distribution; de-hiring and renting out
of FCI godowns; and targeted Voluntary Retirement Scheme (VRS) to reduce the
existing man power. To sum up, in the garb of FCI's improvement, the firm had
advocated for privatisation as the solution. Recently, in August 2014, Union
government had set up 8 members High Level Committee (HLC) on FCI
restructuring, which was chaired by Dr. Shanta Kumar. On 21st
Jan 2015, the
committee submitted its report on restructuring of FCI to the Prime Minister
Narendra Modi. The report pointed out before making recommendations that
"Only 6% of farmers gain by selling their produce to procurement agencies, and
the targeted public distribution system (TPDS) suffers leakages of up to 50%".

 Special Economic Zones (SEZ) and Infrastructure Projects: As part of the
economic reforms, the system of taking over land by the government for
commercial and industrial purposes was introduced in the country as per the
Special Economic Zones Act of 2005.
This was done without even ascertaining the economic potential of these specially-
carved out export zones, and without even evaluating the socio-economic costs
involved; these SEZs were being pushed aggressively as the engines of economic
growth. Very often it is fertile land which has been acquired. In addition,
unconstitutional land grabs for nuclear plants and other infrastructure projects
have additionally, forcefully displaced many others from the land.
With more than 50 per cent land allotted remaining unused, and with no significant
role in creating employment and boosting exports, most of the SEZs that have been
approved have turned into real estate havens. Not meeting the intended objectives
of spearheading a manufacturing revolution, these SEZs were effectively used by
the IT companies to avail tax incentives by shifting their offices into these zones.
Interestingly, the Commerce Ministry had turned a blind eye to the gross
mismanagement and violations of the SEZ Act. It is now considering to allow
developers of SEZs to throw open apartments, schools and hospitals to people who
live outside these zones. Land has also been used for setting up residential
complexes or used for other industrial activity, not permitted under the SEZ Act.
In the largest wave of suicides in human history that we know of, almost 300,000 farmers
have taken their lives since 1997 and many more are experiencing economic distress or
have left farming as a result of debt, a shift to GMO cash crops and economic liberalisation.

According to census 2011, every day 2,500 farmers quit agriculture. Some other studies
have shown that roughly 50,000 people migrate from a village (and that includes farmers)
into a town/city every day. As per a NSSO study, 42 per cent farmers want to quit if given
an alternative.
Suicides by farmers are a form of protest. If they can write, they often leave a suicide note
- that generally does not focus on their family members, but addresses the Finance
Minister, the Prime Minister and the Bank manager. In India, successive governments have
already placed part of agriculture in the hands of powerful Western agribusiness.
The effects include bio-piracy, patenting and seed monopolies, increasing levels of cancer,
the destruction of localised rural economies, farmer suicides, water run offs from depleted
soil leading to climate change and severe water resource depletion and chemical
contamination.
Traditional agricultural practices are being destroyed by Western agribusiness interests,
which work hand in glove with the petrochemical industry and its chemical inputs. From
how land is used and food is produced to the quality of what ends up on the plate, both
food sovereignty and the health of the nation are under threat.
Part of the structural adjustment of Indian agriculture has led to a shift in India from the
production of bio-diverse food crops for local consumption to cash crops for exports.
Agriculture has been systematically killed over the last few decades and it is done
deliberately because the IMF-World Bank and big agri-business have given the message
that this is the only way to grow economically. 60% of the population lives in the villages
or in the rural areas and is involved in agriculture, and less than 2% of the annual budget
goes to agriculture. When you are not investing in agriculture, you think it is economically
backwards, underperforming; so better leave it to the vagaries or the tyranny of the
markets. 25 crore people in this country are agricultural landless workers.
This skewed economic thinking is leading to policies that push farmers out of agriculture
to swarm in to the cities. It is expected that in another 15 years, by 2030, nearly 50 per
cent of India’s population would be living in the urban centres. These cities and towns
would occupy approximately 2% of the country’s geographical area. This would not only
economic madness but would also speaks volumes about the lack of political and scientific
vision. With such a massive displacement of population, living in the cities will be like living
in urban ghettos. Already, 60% of Mumbai's population comprises slums, and these slums
are in 8 per cent of Mumbai's area. If we give these people land, these people are also
start-ups, these people are also entrepreneurs But we are giving these conditions only to
industries; therefore, agriculture has disappeared from the economic radar screen of the
country. Up to 70% of the population is being completely ignored.

Moreover, it has been a case of massive tax breaks for industry and corporations and
underinvestment in rural infrastructure and farming. With GDP growth slowing and
automation replacing human labour the world over in order to decrease labour costs and
boost profit, where are the jobs going to come from to cater for hundreds of millions of
former agricultural workers or those whose livelihoods will be destroyed as corporations
move in and seek to capitalise and mechanise industries (e.g. wheat processing) that
currently employ tens of millions?
According to a study by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO-2003): The
opening up of markets in developing countries, in the context of a global agriculture still
characterized by high levels of protection in developed countries, left the reforming
developing countries less able to prevent:
(a) The flooding of their domestic market (import surges) with products sold on the global
market at less than their cost of production i.e. Dumping; and (b) The displacement of local
trading capacity which was intended to, and in some circumstances initially did, fill the
void left following the deregulation of local markets and associated dismantling of
government ownership and control.
Agriculture, Food Security and vested interests of the elite:
India’s leaders cede food sovereignty to multinational corporations by handing over its
public sector infrastructure to private concerns, kill and abuse some of its poorest people
to drive hundreds of thousands of them from their lands and ruthlessly ready to leave a
legacy for future generations, of a chopped down, sold off, wasted and poisoned
environment.
At best, it shows a lack of foresight. At worst, it displays complete subservience to elite
interests. The bedrock of any society is its agriculture. Without food there can be no life.
Without food security, there can be no genuine independence. Nowhere is this the case
than in India where 64% of the population derives its sustenance from the agricultural
sector. To control Indian agriculture is to exert control over the country.
One needs only to control seeds, agro-chemicals and resultant debt and infrastructure
loans. In India, small farms account for 92 percent of farms and occupy around 40 percent
of all agricultural land. Small and family farms form the bedrock of food production.
However, there is a concerted effort to remove farmers from the land.
Hundreds of thousands of farmers have taken their lives since 1997 and many more are
experiencing economic distress or have left farming as a result of debt, a shift to (GMO)
cash crops and economic liberalisation. Also, as a result of these activities, India's
biodiversity is being up-rooted. The subcontinent used to have 30,000 varieties of rice to
cope with different climates; there are merely 15 that remain.

We have also observed the largest migration in India’s history, from the countryside to the
cities. The 2011 census had shown that, for the first time in history in the past decade,
more Indians were added in the cities amounting to 91 million against 90 million in the
rural areas. This phenomenon can only be explained by mass migration, because a decade
earlier rural India grew by 113 million people against 68 million for urban India.
A recent report by the organisation GRAIN revealed that small farms produce most of the
world’s food and are more productively efficient than large farms. Facilitated by an
appropriate policy framework, small farmers could easily feed the global population.
(Hungry for Land - GRAIN)
But small farmers are currently squeezed onto less than a quarter of the world’s farmland
and the world is fast losing farms and farmers through the concentration of land into the
hands big agribusiness and the rich and powerful. If we do nothing to reverse this trend,
the world will lose its capacity to feed itself.
That is a well-founded claim because the GRAIN report, hungry for Land, states that small
farmers are often much more productive than large corporate farms. For example, if all of
Kenya's farms matched the output of its small farms; the nation's agricultural productivity
would double. In Central America, it would nearly triple and in Russia, it would be six fold.
“American foreign policy has almost always been based on agricultural exports, not on
industrial exports as people might think. It’s by agriculture and control of the food supply
that American diplomacy has been able to control most of the Third World. The World
Bank’s geopolitical lending strategy has been to turn countries into food deficit areas by
convincing them to grow cash crops – plantation export crops – not to feed themselves
with their own food crops.”
-- Prof. Michael Hudson (Economist)
US foreign policy is about power and control: the power to control food, states and entire
populations. In many respects, the subjugation of India by the US rests on the Global GMO
biotech companies (e.g. Monsanto), eventually controlling agriculture and seizing national
food sovereignty and the food security.
An unaccountable cartel, the “Big six” global GMO biotech and agrochemical companies
(e.g. Monsanto, Bayer CropScience, Syngenta AG, BASF SE, Dow Agrosciences and DuPont)
control nearly 70 percent of the global pesticide market, and essentially the entire market
for genetically modified (GMO) seeds. The “Big six” has been granted license to influence
key aspects of agriculture by controlling seeds and chemical inputs and by funding and
thus distorting the biotech research agenda and aspects of overall growth policy.
Since the mid-1990s, Monsanto, Syngenta and DuPont, along with Bayer and Dow, have
bought up more than 200 seed companies to become dominant players in the seed
market. Can there be a better example of oligopoly?

Monsanto already controls the cotton industry in India and is increasingly shaping agro-
policy and the knowledge paradigm by funding agricultural research in public universities
and institutes: For these reasons it has frequently been described as the contemporary
“East India Company”. After creation of its agricultural division in 1960, Monsanto
transitioned beyond chemicals into seeds.
Monsanto went on acquiring and merging with dozens of seed and agricultural companies
globally for the next 40 years and shed its chemical and industrial divisions to broaden its
operations and to shift itself exclusively into the agricultural market.
The quasi-monopoly position of companies Monsanto has enabled it to control 30 percent
of the seed market in India. While costs rose by more than 500 percent, income for farmers
remained more or less the same, which forced many to find themselves in debt. In an
attempt to control agriculture and despite evidence that suggests otherwise, GMO biotech
corporations promote the notion that they have the answers to feeding the world.
Back in 2003, after examining all aspects of GM crops, eminent scientists from various
countries who formed the Independent Science Panel concluded:
"GM crops have failed to deliver the promised benefits and are posing escalating problems
on the farm. Transgenic contamination is now widely acknowledged to be unavoidable, and
hence there can be no co-existence of GM and non-GM agriculture. Most important of all,
GM crops have not been proven safe. On the contrary, sufficient evidence has emerged to
raise serious safety concerns that if ignored could result in irreversible damage to health and
the environment. GM crops should be firmly rejected now."
Monsanto and the GMO biotech sector forward the myth that GMO food crops are
necessary to feed the world’s burgeoning population. They are not. Aside from the review
by GRAIN, the World Bank-funded International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge
and Science for Development Report (IAASTD) stated that smallholder; traditional farming
(not GMOs) can deliver food security in low-income countries through sustainable agro-
ecological systems.
Presently, India's apex biotechnology regulator, Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee
(GEAC) has approved more than 30 new varieties of genetically modified (GMO) crops
such as rice, wheat, maize and cotton for field trials, according to official reports. So far, it
is reported that 60 of the pending 70 applications have been cleared.

This spate of approvals is happening at a juncture when The Standing Committee on
Agriculture in Parliament unequivocally concluded that GMO seeds and foods are
dangerous to human, animal and environmental health and directed the former UPA
government of Dr. Manmohan Singh to ban GMOs.
The Technical Expert Committee (TEC) recommended an indefinite moratorium on the
field trials of GM crops until the government devised a proper regulatory and safety
mechanism. No such mechanism exists, but open field trials are being given the go ahead;
Despite such evidence and the recommendations to put a hold on open field GMO trials
by the Supreme Court-appointed TEC, the push is on within official circles to give such
trials the green light.
Shri Rakesh Tikait, National Spokesperson for the Bhartiya Kisan Union (BKU) explains: “The
government is exhibiting its pro-industry stance by pushing for unneeded, unwanted and
unsafe GMOs in our farming. We want all open air field trials of GM crops stopped
immediately in the country since such open air trials pose not only a risk of contamination
but also risk of trade rejection. Further, any moves towards trade liberalization in
agriculture whether through the WTO route or through free trade agreements are
unacceptable to us.”
The farmers recently organized and occupied the streets in a Kisan Maha Panchayat
(farmer meeting) in Delhi, India, in protest at the Modi government’s anti-farmer policies.
Among the demonstrators were hundreds of women recently, as well, who have resolved
to stay put on Parliament Street in India’s capital until the government engages them in a
dialogue to resolve various burning issues, among them:
 Banning of GMOs and stopping of all field trials
 Fair and remunerative prices for farm produce
 Demand for a farm income commission
 Removing agriculture from free trade agreements including WTO
 Adequate disaster relief for farmers
Coming back to Monsanto’s evil legacy, its first product was saccharin, an artificial
sweetener and sugar alternative that was later proved to be a potential carcinogen. It then
forayed into chemicals, plastics and became notorious for Agent Orange that was used to
defoliate jungles by US soldiers in the Vietnam War between 1960s and 1970s.
This exposed hundreds of thousands of civilians and US troops to deadly chemical called
dioxin, one of the most toxic of all known compounds, as a result of which, even today
after decades; deformed, disabled and stunted babies are born in Vietnam and US war
veterans and their families suffering from various health hazards. (Monsanto's 5 Most
Dubious Contributions to the Planet)
Today on its web site, however, the company seems to have forgotten its infamous legacy
and confidently states:

"We are an agricultural company applying innovation and technology to help farmers
around the world be successful, produce healthier foods, better animal feeds and more
fibre, while also reducing agriculture's impact on our environment."
The GMO biotech sector cannot be trusted. As its largest player, Monsanto is responsible
for knowingly damaging people’s health and polluting the environment and is guilty of a
catalogue of decades-long deceptive, duplicitous and criminal practices. It has shown time
and again its contempt for human life and the environment and that profit overrides any
notion of service to the public, yet it continues to propagate the lie that it has humanity’s
best interests at heart because its so-called GMO ‘frontier technology’ can feed the hungry
millions.
The United Nations has recognized access to water as a basic human right, stating that
water is a social and cultural good, not merely an economic commodity. Today, due to
increasing consumption patterns water is becoming scarce and this scarcity is an emerging
threat to the global population. Global consumption of water is doubling every 20 years,
more than twice the rate of human population growth. At present more than one billion
people on earth lack access to fresh drinking water.
By the year 2025 the demand for freshwater is expected to rise to 56% above what
currently available water can deliver if current trends persist. To solve the growing water
crisis, the solution that is proposed and pushed by world bodies such as the World Trade
Organization (WTO) and International Monetary Fund (IMF) through international
agreements such as General Agreements on trade and services (GATS) is privatization of
water, which in effect leads to treatment of water by private companies through structural
adjustment policies. The control of water by private companies takes away the resource
from the public and puts it in private control.
After the economic reforms of the 1990s, India has witnessed an increased influence of
neoliberal policies in various areas. Water distribution has been the most recent to come
under its ambit, as an increased emphasis has been put on privatization of water
distribution in different cities and towns across the country. Experiments with water
privatization have been done in different parts of the world, and in most of these places,
it has resulted in widespread public outcry and resistance. The example of Bolivia is a case
in point. The government privatized the water and sewer services, and there was a huge
increase in the tariff, which resulted in widespread public unrest.
The people’s resistance led to widespread struggles between the government and the
people, and the government brought in the army to control the people. But in the end,
the people won the ‘water wars’ and the consortium of private water companies had to
withdraw and leave the country. In India, though, different states continue to engage in
experiments with water privatization. Most recently, Delhi has started its experiment with
water privatization in some zones; also the people have struggling in Mumbai to stop
privatization of water distribution.

A number of water supply build-operate–transfer (BOT) projects have been abandoned or
are causing serious problems in India, Vietnam, China, Malaysia and elsewhere, due to
unaffordable levels of prices being built into take-or-pay contracts. Similar problems have
been observed elsewhere in the world.
Also, privatisation of water and indiscriminate use of water resources for commercial
plants and factories has further added to woes of rural India, resulting in severe shortages,
depletion of water table and damage to the environment. For example: In India, Coca-Cola
has contributed to the depletion and degradation of groundwater leading to the
detriment of local communities: Communities across India living around Coca-Cola’s
bottling plants are experiencing severe water shortages, directly as a result of Coca-Cola’s
massive extraction of water from the common groundwater resource.
The wells have run dry and the hand water pumps do not work anymore. Studies, including
one by the Central Ground Water Board in India, have confirmed the significant depletion
of the water table. When water is extracted from common groundwater resources by
digging deeper; the water thus obtained smells and tastes strange. Coca-Cola has been
indiscriminately discharging its waste water into the fields around its plant and sometimes
into rivers, including the Ganges, in the area. The result has been that the groundwater
has been polluted as well as the soil. Public health authorities have posted signs around
wells and hand pumps advising the community that the water is unfit for human
consumption.
Tests conducted by a variety of agencies, including the government of India, confirmed
that Coca-Cola products contained high levels of pesticides, and as a result, the Parliament
of India has banned the sale of Coca-Cola in its cafeteria. However, Coca-Cola not only
continues to sell drinks laced with poisons in India (that could never be sold in the US and
EU), it is also introducing new products in the Indian market; and as if selling drinks with
DDT and other pesticides to Indians was not enough, one of Coca-Cola’s latest bottling
facilities to open in India, in Ballia (Uttar Pradesh), is located in an area with a severe
contamination of arsenic in its groundwater. [India Resource Center, Coca- Cola Crisis in
India, undated] [Indian Coke, Pepsi Laced with Pesticides, Says NGO]

People are generally hungry not because of insufficient agricultural production but
because they do not have money to buy food, access to land to grow food or because of
complex problems like food spoilage, poor food distribution systems and a lack of reliable
water and infrastructure for irrigation, storage, transport and financing.
If these deeper problems are not addressed and as long as food is not reaching those who
are hungry and poor, increased agricultural production will not help reduce food
insecurity.
The Unholy trinity - WTO, World Bank and IMF have been telling India to for a long time:
to displace the farming population so that agribusiness can find a stronghold in India
(aided by the free trade agreement, which could see land in the hand of foreign entities
that prioritise cash crops for export). It would be easy to conclude that farmers in India
represent some kind of ‘problem’ to be removed from the land and a problem to be dealt
with once removed. Since when did food producers, the genuine wealth producers, become
a ‘problem’? The answer is when Western agribusiness was given the green light to take
power away from farmers and uproot traditional agriculture in India and recast it in its
own profiteering, corporate-controlled image.
This is the type of growth that is being forced through on behalf of elite interests via the
World Bank, WTO, and IMF. Current policies further add to the problems faced by farmers
due to ludicrous trade policies that encourage imports while driving down prices for
produce at home. So what might an alternative vision involve, instead of forcibly removing
640 million or so, from rural India under the current warped notion of growth? There are
many visions and strategies being pursued.
But as a starting point, the following offers a credible option:
“… We are therefore committed to resist patents on seeds and life forms promoted by the
TRIPS agreement of WTO which lead to the privatization of biodiversity and piracy of
traditional knowledge… We are committed to promoting alternatives to non-sustainable
agricultural technologies based on toxic chemicals and genetic engineering. We are
committed to changing the rules of unfair trade force on small peasants through the WTO
Agreement on Agriculture, which are leading to destitution, debt and farmers suicides
…Our mission is to promote organic fair trade, based on fairness to the earth and all her
species, fairness to producers and fairness to consumers.
We will… create another food culture, which respects diversity, local production and food
quality…We are committed to creating a future of food and agriculture in which small
farmers prosper and biodiversity and cultural diversity thrives…

Bio-diverse small organic farms increase productivity, improve rural incomes and
strengthen ecological security. Large-scale industrial monocultures displace and
dispossess small farmers and peasants, destroy the environment and create malnutrition
and public health hazards.
Our mission is to provide alternatives to a global food system, which is denying one billion
people access to food and denying another 1.7 billion the right to healthy food, as they
become victims of obesity and related diseases. Our mission is to provide “good food for
all” through the promotion of bio-diverse organic farming, food literacy and fair trade.”
---- Navdanya Mission Statement
India can already feed itself and arguably doesn’t need modern technology of poisonous
pesticides, destructive fertilizers and patented GMO seeds that can’t match 1890 AD yields
in India. The answer to food security, food democracy and local/national food sovereignty
does not lie with making farmers dependent on a few large corporations whose bottom
line is exploiting agriculture for their own benefit under the guise of ‘feeding the world’.
Unhappiness and Unsustainability in the ‘growth’ economy:
For thousands of years, people have been writing and speculating about happiness. The
ancient Greek philosopher Aristippus who is considered to be the founder of Hedonism,
concluded that happiness lies in the pursuit of external pleasure. Other philosophers, from
Antisthenes to Buddha, have stressed that looking inwards and leading an ascetic life based
on virtue, simplicity and inner peace as the route to happiness. And then there are others
who seem to think that we can only be occasionally happy in what is essentially a miserable
world. The German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer said that all happiness is an illusion
and that life oscillates like a pendulum, back and forth between pain and boredom.

The type of society we live in has a huge bearing on our happiness or well-being. We
should therefore attempt to do things that we find interesting, whether through our work
or during our leisure. By being creative, explorers of the environment like a philosopher or
scientist. Be passionate about something. Think of the self-employed artisan who spends
a day or a week making something with his or her hands. He or she takes pride in his work
– both in the way the work is carried out and in the end product. It’s a form of self-
actualisation brought about by meaningful work.
Karl Marx argued that self-actualisation was to be truly achieved in a society that makes it
possible for someone to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the
morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as he
has in mind.
Being ‘happy’ is state of being, a state of worthwhile endeavour freely chosen and not
imposed. It is not achieved through the pursuit of an ultimate unattainable elusive goal
on a never ending treadmill of drudgery, a never ending treadmill of control. Happiness is
not a fixed end point to be achieved by possessing a hundred latest, cutting edge
consumer gadgets and indulging in the individualised competition of conspicuous
consumption that proclaims 'Look at me, I’m better than you, I’m elevated from the
masses'. And by elevating oneself in such a way, the gregarious human animal is cut off
from the wider group and may ultimately become rather unhappy.
It’s for good reason that the older generation keeps reminding us that people today are
probably less happy than they were back in the 1950s, when communities were more
cohesive, people had less material goods and excessive individualism was not rampant.
Once the genie was out of the bottle and people’s aspirations went through the roof,
disillusionment was bound to take a hold.
Growth, if it is to have any substance, is about the well-being of people. A number of well-
being surveys (e.g. Happy Planet Index, World Values Survey and the Human Development
Index) indicate that happier societies invest heavily in health, welfare and education, are
more equal and live within the limits imposed by the environment.
However, elites in India and the West currently work against the interests of many, not in
favour of them. People in wealthy western nations are not much happier, or are indeed
less happy, than those who belong to poorer more rural countries that use far fewer
resources. This is a suspect development model that is not only ecologically destructive,
but promotes conflict due to struggle for finite resources to fuel the craving for ever more
products that have an inbuilt planned obsolescence.
If anyone perceives the type of ‘growth’ being sold to the masses is actually possible in
the first instance, they should note that ‘developing’ nations account for more than 80%
of world population, but consume only about a third of the world’s energy.

US citizens constitute 5-6% of the world’s population, but consume 24% of the world’s
energy. On average, one American consumes as much energy as 2 Japanese, 6 Mexicans,
13 Chinese, 31 Indians, 128 Bangladeshis, 307 Tanzanians and 370 Ethiopians. The Earth is
4.6 billion years old and if you scale this to 46 years then humans have been here for just
four hours. The Industrial Revolution began just one minute ago, and in that time, 50% of
the Earth’s forests have been destroyed.
According to the science journal Nature, by 2025 more than half of the world will face
freshwater stress or shortages and by 2050 as much as 75 percent of the world's
population could face freshwater scarcity, if governments fail to collaborate on
international efforts to protect and conserve life’s most vital ingredient. One of the first
indications of a future water crisis will be mass migrations of people away from areas
without water. (The energy challenge – Journal Nature)
We are using up oil, water and other resources much faster than they can ever be
regenerated. We have also poisoned the rivers, destroyed natural habitats, driven some
wildlife species to extinction and altered the chemical composition of the atmosphere –
among many other things.
Levels of consumption were unsustainable, long before India and other countries began
striving to emulate the false notion of ‘growth’. The West continues to live way beyond its
(environmental) limits. The current model of growth is moreover based on a deceitful
ideology that attempts to justify and sell a system that is designed to fail the majority of
the global population and benefit the relative few. The mainstream media constantly
brainstorms us that we must stick to the prevailing system because; there is no 'credible'
alternative. That's a profoundly deplorable standard to overpower people into submission.
In such circumstances, surely any evaluation of where the world is currently at should be
left to the ordinary folk, many of whom have already provided their assessment of the
situation since 2011 through the ongoing global ‘Occupy Movement’ protests across 951
cities in 82 countries around the world against the bankers, inequality, imperialist wars and
corruption. The system is in crisis and a blatant failure, but is sold to us as a success story.
(http://www.occupytogether.org/aboutoccupy/)
The assumption is that the coal must be mined, the ore must be extracted, the steel must
be produced and the rivers must be exploited in the name of ‘development’. But who
controls this process, who garners profits from it and just what type of development results
from it?
The type of ‘progress and growth’ on offer makes any beneficiaries of it blind to the misery
and plight of the hundreds of millions who are deprived of their lands and livelihoods. For
the first time in modern world, we are witnessing the coinciding, converging and merging
of three major crises –financial, energy and food; each crisis interacting with the others and
resulting in an exponential deterioration of true economy.

The false universalism of man as conqueror and owner of the Earth has led to the
technological hubris of geo-engineering, genetic engineering, and nuclear energy. It has
led to the ethical outrage of owning life forms through patents, water through
privatization, and the air through carbon trading. It is leading to misappropriation of the
biodiversity that serves the poor.
The type of growth that we are seeing is legitimised by a certain mindset and ideology.
Vandana Shiva, an Indian environmental activist and anti-globalization author, sums it up
as follows:
“People are perceived as ‘poor’ if they eat food they have grown rather than commercially
distributed junk foods sold by global agri-business. They are seen as poor if they live in
self-built housing made from ecologically well -adapted materials like bamboo and mud
rather than in cinder block or cement houses. They are seen as poor if they wear garments
manufactured from handmade natural fibres rather than synthetics.”
What some might regard as ‘backward’ stems from an ethnocentric ideology, which is
used to legitimize the destruction of communities and economies that were once locally
based and self-sufficient. The disease is offered as the cure.
Nevertheless, there lies true creativity in the fields of India, where rural workers are the
genuine wealth creators. What greater wealth can there be, than the creation of locally
sourced, untampered and wholly organic food? Food security and food sovereignty marks
the real wealth of a nation, not ‘social media apps’, the ability to sell use-and-throw goods
via trendy advertising agencies and PR campaigns.
However, instead of this government after government aggravates the problems by
creating an impression that the villagers are a backward, inefficient and unproductive lot
who can survive only on relief funds.
Bhutan may be a far from perfect place, but maybe something valuable could be learned
from its government, which stresses the importance of economic growth in conjunction
with Buddhist values in its pursuit of modernisation. There, the government through its
policies actively promotes psychological well-being, health, community vitality, ecology
and culture, heritage and the preservation and sustainable use of the environment.
According to the World Values Survey in 2007, Denmark was the planet’s happiest country.
It would be foolish to suggest that wealth does not positively impact well-being or
happiness. But the concentration of wealth in the hands of a relative few may help to
explain why so many people are unhappy in the wealthier nations. Denmark is not just
wealthy, but its people feel safe because emphasis and investment is placed on social
equality, social security and robust welfare policies.

Globalization, Poor in India and the deepening crisis of Democracy

Globalization, Poor in India and the deepening crisis of Democracy

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