“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.

Indeed, Nordic or Scandinavian countries i.e. Denmark, Norway and Sweden have always

come out near the top of quality of life and well-being surveys, usually quite a bit ahead

the UK and US, which have adopted more strident neo-liberal policies.

In India, we don’t have to look far to see alternative models of development based on

non-consumerist and communal forms of living. The Navdanya organisation has trained

over 500,000 farmers in sustainable agriculture and is actively involved in the rejuvenation

of indigenous knowledge and culture.

Another example is the ‘Green Action for National Dandi Heritage Initiative’ a government

backed project in Dandi and six surrounding villages in Gujarat, based on the Gandhian

values of village development and environmental conservation. Considering sustainability,

there are the basic questions that every sensible person should be asking:

Must we change our measure of ‘progress’ or ‘growth’?

How to move to sustainable consumption?

Are inequalities an obstacle to achieving sustainability?

Can the redefinition of gender roles contribute to sustainability?

Can finance be put in the service of sustainability?

What role should social investment play in the sustainability agenda?

Must we link trade to social and environmental standards?

How to re-imagine transitional governance?

The ‘Globalization’ of Poverty and Imperialism:

The phenomenon of globalization has been accompanied by the growth in power of a few

prodigious institutions operating under principles that are decided upon

undemocratically, and which drastically affect the lives and livelihoods of the masses.

The world has become more unequal and unstable as a result of corporatisation, private

and quasi-public. In India, a relatively handful family owned corporations control much of

the economy and society and are all too willing to fall in line with Western elite interests,

whose hegemonic strategy lies in depressing wages, exploiting markets and maximising

profit. Their interests do not lie with those of the 833 million poor in India who live on less

than two dollars a day, the bulk of the people residing in the eight states of India that

contain more poor people than 26 sub-Saharan African countries combined, the almost

one in two children who are malnourished or their families; nor do their interests lie with

the tens of millions across India who are having their lands stolen, their rights trampled

on, their villages destroyed, their homelands occupied by paramilitary forces just because

the rich require their land, their acquiescence, their mineral rich mountains, their

agriculture.

The international financial institutions (IFIs) - The International Monetary Fund (IMF),

World Bank and the World Trade Organization (WTO); all three institutions play roles

greatly different from those originally agreed under the charters that set them up. All three

have achieved positions of seeming permanence by assuming a stance that combines

institutional rigidity with procedural fluidity. A shifting stance with regard to their

governance is inevitable, because there lays at the heart of the present policy regime, a

contradiction that, constantly threatens to rupture its hegemonic order.

All three govern an economy that their neoliberal ideology insists is best left institutionally

ungoverned. This contradictory position leaves global governance open to diverse but

powerful criticisms.

In the World Bank, votes are weighted according to the amount of money each country

subscribes to it. Each member-country has 250 votes plus one additional vote for every

share that it holds, each worth $100000. Members buy shares by subscribing money to

the Bank. Any amendment in Bank’s rules requires 85 per cent of the votes. The US being

the largest shareholder with over 17 per cent votes can veto any amendment.

While China and India, together have only 5 per cent of the total votes, although they

represented 36 per cent of the world’s population. In the case of IMF, a similar

undemocratic structure ensures that the developed countries have an effective say in

decision-making. These institutions still follow an archaic practice under which the

President of the World Bank is the nominee of the US while a European nominee heads

the IMF.

Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs) are economic policies for developing countries

that have been promoted by the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) since

the early 1980s by the provision of loans conditional on the adoption of such policies.

Under their Articles of Agreement, the World Bank and the IMF are not supposed to enter

into policy conditionality and restructuring of the economy of the member-countries. But

both institutions have expanded their policy conditionality since the 1980s. Not only the

number of ‘loan conditionalities’ under the ‘structural adjustment Programmes (SAP) has

increased; but also their scope has widened beyond core monetary and fiscal

macroeconomic issues.

Many developing nations are in debt and poverty partly due to the policies of international

institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank. Structural

Adjustment Policies (SAPs) have been imposed to ensure debt repayment and economic

restructuring. But the way it has happened has required poor countries to reduce spending

on things like health, education and development, while debt repayment and other

economic policies have been made the priority. In effect, the IMF and World Bank have

effectively demanded that poor nations deliberately lower the standard of living of their

people.

The WTO also has very similar reasons for why it has faced stern opposition which is also

shared by the other (IFI’s) namely IMF and World Bank, which are summed up in the five

points mentioned below:

1. The WTO Is Fundamentally Undemocratic:

WTO undermines Local Level Decision-Making and National Sovereignty and the policies

of the WTO impact all aspects of society and the planet, but it is not a democratic,

transparent institution. The WTO rules are written by and for corporations with inside

access to the negotiations. For example, the US Trade Representative gets heavy input for

negotiations from 17 “Industry Sector Advisory Committees.” The approval of the WTO required entire sections of U.S. laws to be rewritten to conform to the WTO rules,

similar to the way that treaties often redefine how the U.S. will interact with other states.

Had the agreement been voted on as a treaty, requiring a two thirds majority in the Senate,

it would have been defeated. The WTO supposedly operates on a consensus basis, with

equal decision-making power for all. In reality, many important decisions get made in a

process whereby poor countries’ negotiators are not even invited to closed door meetings

— and then ‘agreements’ are announced that poor countries didn’t even know were being

discussed.

Many countries do not even have enough trade personnel to participate in all the

negotiations or to even have a permanent representative at the WTO. This severely

disadvantages poor countries from representing their interests. Likewise, many countries

are too poor to defend themselves from WTO challenges from the rich countries, and

change their laws rather than pay for their own defence.

The WTO’s “most favoured nation (MFN)” provision requires all WTO member countries

to treat each other equally and to treat all corporations from these countries equally

regardless of their track record.

Local policies aimed at rewarding companies who hire local residents, use domestic

materials, or adopt environmentally sound practices are essentially illegal under the WTO.

Developing countries are prohibited from creating local laws that developed countries

once pursued, such as protecting new, domestic industries until they can be internationally

competitive. Conforming to the WTO requires entire sections of laws to be rewritten and

many countries are even changing their laws and constitutions in anticipation of potential

future WTO rulings and negotiations.

The WTO limits governments’ ability to use their purchasing dollars for human rights,

environmental, worker rights, and other non-commercial purposes. The WTO requires that

governments make purchases based only on quality and cost considerations. Not only

most corporations operate with an open eye regarding profits and a blind eye to

everything else, so must governments and thus whole populations.

The WTO blocks countries from acting in response to potential risk by impeding

governments from moving to resolve harms to human health or the environment, much

less imposing preventive precautions. The WTO would like you to believe that creating a

world of “free trade” will promote global understanding and peace. On the contrary, the

domination of international trade by rich countries for the benefit of their individual

interests fuels anger and resentment that make us less safe. To build real global security,

we need international agreements that respect people’s rights to democracy and trade

systems that promote global justice.

2. The WTO only serves the interests of multinational corporations:

The policies of the WTO impact all aspects of society and the planet, yet the WTO rules

are written by and for corporations with inside access to the negotiations. Citizen input by

consumer, environmental, human rights and labour organizations is consistently ignored.

Even requests for information are denied, and the proceedings are held in secret.

The WTO rules permit and, in some cases, require patents or similar exclusive protections

for life forms. Thus promoting the interests of huge multinationals —there are no

principles at work, only power and greed. WTO rules put the “rights” of corporations to

profit over human and labour rights. The WTO encourages a ‘race to the bottom’ in wages

by pitting workers against each other rather than promoting internationally recognized

labour standards.

The WTO has ruled that it is illegal for a government to ban a product based on the way

it is produced, such as with child labour. It has also ruled that governments cannot take

into account “non-commercial values” such as human rights, workers exposed to toxins or

species protection, or the behaviour of companies that do business with vicious

dictatorships such as Burma when making purchasing decisions.

The WTO’s fanatical obsession with free trade means that goods must be produced as

cheaply as possible in order to compete in the global market. Toward this end, workers’

rights are being steadily eroded, real wages are declining, & many jobs are moving to

overseas free trade zones, another brainchild of the Bretton Woods institutions. Here there

are few costly environmental or job safety standards, a laughable minimum wage, and a

no-strike policy. CEO salaries, however, are climbing.

It’s mainly women who are working in the free trade zones, as they can be paid less than

men. They work as many as 18 hours a day, earn pennies an hour, suffer sexual harassment

from their male overseers, may be forcibly sterilized, and then are fired when they become

too sick from the toxic job environments to work anymore.

3. The WTO encourages privatization of Essential Services including health:

The WTO is seeking to privatize essential public services such as education, health care,

energy and water. Privatization means the selling off of public assets - such as radio

airwaves or schools - to private (usually foreign) corporations, to run for profit rather than

the public good.

The WTO’s General Agreement on Trade in Services, or GATS, includes a list of about 160

threatened services including elder and childcare, sewage, garbage, park maintenance,

telecommunications, construction, banking, insurance, transportation, shipping, postal

services, and tourism. In some countries, privatization is already occurring. Those least able

to pay for vital services – working class communities and communities of colour - are the

ones who suffer the most.

The WTO’s fierce defence of ‘Trade Related Intellectual Property’ rights (TRIPs)—patents,

copyrights and trademarks—comes at the expense of health and human lives. The WTO

has protected for pharmaceutical companies’ ‘right to profit’ against governments seeking

to protect their people’s health by providing lifesaving medicines in countries in areas like

sub-Saharan Africa, where thousands die every day from HIV/AIDS.

4. The WTO is Increasing Inequality, Hunger and Poverty:

Free trade is not working for the welfare of majority of the world, and it seems most of the

‘free’ trade is not only, not free but, grossly unfair and controlled by powerful vested

financial and corporate interests that recognize no principles but only greed and

ruthlessness.

The gap between the rich and poor has reached new extremes and is still growing, while

power increasingly lies in the hands of elites. The challenges related to growing income

inequality were listed as the number one global concern going into 2015 in a report from

the World Economic Forum (WEF).

The recent OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) report says

that, the gap between the rich and poor in a range of countries has reached its widest in

30 years. Also, over the last 30 years surveyed, the US, Japan and UK witnessed the largest

increases in inequality. Today, the richest 10 percent of the population in the OECD area

earn 9.5 times the income of the poorest 10 percent; in the 1980s this ratio stood at 7:1

and has been rising continuously ever since. It reaches around 10 to 1 in Italy, Japan, Korea,

Portugal and the United Kingdom, between 13 and 16 to 1 in Greece, Israel, Turkey and

the United States, and between 27 and 30 to 1 in Mexico and Chile.

According to Oxfam International’s report Even it up –Time to end extreme Inequality 2014,

between 1980 and 2002, inequality between countries rose rapidly reaching a very high

level. It has since fallen slightly due to growth in emerging countries, particularly China.

But it is inequality within countries that matters most to people, as the poorest struggle

to get by while their neighbours prosper, and this is rising rapidly in the majority of

countries. Seven out of 10 people live in countries where the gap between rich and poor

is greater than it was 30 years ago.

In countries around the world, a wealthy minority are taking an ever-increasing share of

their nation’s income. Worldwide, inequality of individual wealth is even more extreme. At

the start of 2014, Oxfam calculated that the richest 85 people on the planet owned as

much as the poorest half of humanity. Between March 2013 and March 2014, these 85

people grew $668m richer each day.

If the richest man on Earth, Bill Gates were to cash in all of his wealth, and spend $1m

every single day, it would take him 218 years to spend it all. In reality though, he would

never run out of money: even a modest return of just under two percent would make him

$4.2 million each day in interest alone. The aggregate wealth of today’s billionaires has

increased by 124 percent in the last four years and is now approximately $5.4tn. This is

twice the size of France’s GDP in 2012.

Oxfam has calculated that a tax of just 1.5 percent on the wealth of the world’s billionaires,

if implemented directly after the financial crisis, could have saved 23 million lives across

the world’s poorest 49 countries, by providing them with money to invest in healthcare.

The number of billionaires and their combined wealth has increased so rapidly that in 2014

a tax of 1.5 percent could fill the annual gaps in funding needed to get every child into

school and to deliver healthcare services in those poorest countries.

5. The WTO Is Destroying the Environment:

The WTO is being used by corporations to dismantle hard-won local and national

environmental protections, which are attacked as “barriers to trade.” The very first WTO

panel ruled that a provision of the US Clean Air Act, requiring both domestic and foreign

producers alike to produce cleaner gasoline, was illegal. The WTO declared illegal a

provision of the Endangered Species Act that requires shrimp sold in the US to be caught

with an inexpensive device allowing endangered sea turtles to escape. The WTO is

attempting to deregulate industries including logging, fishing, water utilities, and energy

distribution, which will lead to further exploitation of these natural resources.

All these observations suggest that, the IMF and the World Bank and the WTO, were

setup as US-dominated institutions, as collectivist fronts for US international economic

policy – arms, some might say, of a new world order characterized by a more covert and

effective imperialism.

One of the notable features of democratic deficit in global space is the sheer neglect of

public participation in the formulation of policies of international institutional

arrangements. Forget about the authoritarian regimes, even those countries who claim to

be democratic have failed to inform their own citizens about their involvement with several

global institutions.

According to William Blum, an American author, historian, and critic of US foreign policy,

stated that, United States was involved in the overthrow of more than 40 foreign

governments and suppression of over 30 popular movements struggling against

authoritarian regimes. Insistence by the US to adopt its version of democracy at the global

level also does not mean that the US is an inherently democratic country. The way

important economic and political decisions are influenced by powerful corporations and

special interest groups in the US (with hardly any input from public) leaves little doubt

about the actual practice of democracy within the country. Businessweek magazine carried

out an interesting survey of corporate power in the US in 2003. The survey revealed several

startling facts, some of which are summarized below:

74% said that big business has too much power in influencing government policies,

politicians, and policy-makers in Washington.

72% of Americans say business has too much power over too many aspects of

American life.

95% were of the opinion that US corporations should have more than one purpose.

They said that corporations owe something to their workers and the communities

in which they operate and corporations should sacrifice some profit for the benefit

of workers and communities.

Of all the ‘great powers’ the US had been most averse to being ruled by anything

resembling an independent institution. Post-World War II, US came to dominate the

international agenda resting on two pillars and two commodities – unchallengeable

military power and the dollar as the world’s reserve currency combined with the quest to

control global food and global energy resources.

“Control oil and you control nations; control food and you control the people.”

“America has no permanent friends or enemies, only interests.”

Henry Kissinger (Former National Security advisor and later the US secretary of state)

The true enemy of growth is a system that facilitates such plunder, which is presided over

by well-funded and influential foreign foundations and powerful financial-corporate

entities and their handmaidens in the IMF, World Bank and WTO.

Across the globe, powerful corporations and their compliant politicians seek to sweep

away communities and their indigenous knowledge and culture in the chase for profit and

control. They call this ‘Growth’.

Deepening crisis of ‘Democracy’:

To sum up, genuine democracy cannot be ushered in without a radical restructuring of the

contemporary globalization processes. Democratic values like human dignity, freedom,

equality and justice cannot take root in a polity obsessed with neoliberal orthodoxy.

The world, in fact, needs a much more open discourse and discussion on globalization and

democracy, than what has been offered by mass media, academia and research

institutions. The contours of public discourse can be enlarged by a variety of policy

measures such as promotion of independent public broadcasting systems,

democratization of universities and cultural institutions, curbs on the monopoly ownership

of media, expanding the space for informed political discussion through local media and

so forth.

These measures would go a long way in strengthening public participation on issues

concerning contemporary social life. For that to happen, the role of a democratic and

accountable state is predominant in deepening the democratization process at all levels.

Do we know where the earliest democratic republic in the world was?

No, it was not in Rome... or even Athens... It was the Licchavi republic of the Vrijji

Confederacy in the 6th century B.C. historical India, almost 2500 years ago; of which

Vaishali was the capital, now located in modern day Bihar. Documented records mention

the seven qualities of the citizens of Vrijjis, practicing in accordance with the principles of

democratic duties. These duties were sometimes referred to as 'seven non-harming

principles' or 'seven principles of non-decline' and they were as follows:

(a) Assembling and meeting regularly and discussing on community affairs and projects.

(b) Meeting together in harmony, conducting affairs together in harmony for what needs

to be done together and dispersing together in harmony.

(c) Not instituting laws and regulations which are not agreed upon by the community,

simply out of personal convenience or preference; nor denigrating or abolishing laws

already instituted, while upholding the main provisions of the already established

laws.

(d) Honouring and respecting the elders long in experience, consulting with them and

giving due weight to their words.

(e) Honouring and respecting the womenfolk, protecting them from abuse and ill-

treatment.

(f) Honouring and revering all internal and external places of worship, shrines and

national monuments, which cultivate harmony and communal spirit, and not

neglecting to honour their ceremonies through gifts and donations required for them

as dictated by tradition.

(g) Giving rightful protection, support and sanctuary to sages, scholars and men of

learning who maintain virtue and serve as spiritual refuge for the people while

joyfully receiving, honouring and wishing them well.

If at all we are to see the revival of the world as a whole, than clearly revival and

strengthening of democracy is crucial and imperative. Extreme economic inequality is

corrosive to our societies.

It makes poverty reduction harder, hurts our economies, and drives conflict and violence.

Reversing this trend presents a significant challenge, but one where we’ve seen some

progress. Here are 10 ways to move the world forward in reducing global inequality.

1. Holding the Leaders Accountable

We need to confront inequality by backing people to claim their rights and hold their

leaders accountable. When the wealthiest use their financial power and the influence that

comes with it to bend laws and policy choices in their favour, democracy is undermined.

We need changes to the rules and systems that have led to today's inequality explosion -

governments' primary concern must be responding to the needs of their citizens, not

being unduly influenced by affluence.

2. Universal Free Public Services

We need to level the playing field by investing in universal free public services, including

health care, education, and social protection. These measures can mitigate the worst

impacts of today's skewed wealth and income distribution, but also enable a healthy and

educated majority to seize greater opportunity to prosper in life.

3. Stop Illicit Outflows

In developing countries, inadequate resourcing for health, education, sanitation, and

investment in the poorest citizens drives extreme inequality. One reason is tax avoidance

and other illicit outflows of cash. According to Global Financial Integrity, developing

countries lost $6.6 trillion in illicit financial flows from 2003 through 2012, with illicit

outflows increasing at an average rate of 9.4 percent per year. That’s $6.6 trillion that could

reduce poverty and inequality through investments in human capital, infrastructure, and

economic growth.

4. Progressive Income Tax

After falling for much of the 20th century, inequality is worsening in rich countries today.

The top one percent is not only capturing larger shares of national income, but tax rates

on the highest incomes have also dropped. How much the highest income earners should

be taxed?

This is obviously a question to be decided domestically by citizens, and opinions differ.

For instance, economist Tony Addison suggests a top rate of 65 percent rate on the top 1

% of incomes.

5. A Global Wealth Tax?

In the recent book Capitalism in the Twenty-first Century, the author Thomas Piketty

recommends an international agreement establishing a wealth tax. Under his plan,

countries would agree to tax personal assets of all kinds at graduated rates. The skeptics

do have a point about whether this particular plan is practical, but we shouldn’t give up

on the idea. Because wealth tends to accumulate over generations, fair and well-designed

wealth taxes would go a long way towards combating extreme inequality.

6. Enforce a Living Wage

Governments should establish and enforce a national living wage, and corporations should

also prioritize a living wage for their workers and with the suppliers, buyers, and others

with whom they do business. Low and unliveable wages are a result of worker

disempowerment and concentration of wealth at the top—hallmarks of unequal societies.

As human beings with basic needs, all workers should earn enough to support themselves

and their families.

Governments and corporations should be responsible for protecting the right to a living

wage, corporations should commit to responsible behaviour that respects the dignity of

all workers.

7. Workers’ Right to Organize

The right of workers to organize has always been a cornerstone of more equal societies,

and should be prioritized and protected wherever this basic right is violated. Extreme

inequality requires the disempowerment of workers. Therefore, the right of workers to

organize and bargain collectively for better pay and conditions is a global human rights

priority. Despite Article 23 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights— which declares

the right to organize as a fundamental human right—workers worldwide, including in the

United States, still face intimidation, fear, and retribution for attempting to organize

collectively. Where unions are strong, wages are higher and inequality is lower.

8. Stop Other Labor Abuses

Companies worldwide are also replacing what was once permanent and stable

employment with temporary and contingent labour. Often called “contingent” or

“precarious” workers, these workers fill a labour need that is permanent while being denied

the status of employment. In the United States, this trend is called “misclassification,” in

which employers misclassify workers as “independent contractors”; when they are actually

employees. Contingent labour also occurs through outsourcing, subcontracting, and use

of employment agencies.

9. Open and Democratic Trade Policy

Negotiating international trade agreements behind closed doors with only bureaucrats

and corporate lobbyists present has to end. These old-style trade agreements are

fundamentally undemocratic and put corporate profits above workers, the environment,

health, and the public interest. We need a new, transparent trade policy that is open,

transparent, and accountable to the people.

10. A New kind of Economics?

Economists are often imagined as stuffy academics who value arcane economic theory

above humanitarian values. The field’s clinging to miserly theories gave us such disasters

the Washington Consensus and a global financial system that imploded in 2008.

Thankfully, there’s a movement among economics grad students and scholars to

reimagine the discipline. As they acknowledge, we clearly need a new economics that

works to improve the lives of everyone, not just those already well off.

For instance, what could be more radical than a Buddhist economics? This is the path

promoted by economist and Rhodes Scholar E. F. Schumacher, who says humanity, needs

an economics that creates wealth for all people, just not money for privileged people and

corporations. Economics should take into account ethics and the environment, and treat

its claims less like invariable truths.