One of the most helpful descriptions of globalization is found in the Report of the Copenhagen Seminar for Social Progress in 1997. According to the report, globalization is a ‘trend’ and a ‘project’. The trend is the narrowing of physical distances between peoples and growing interdependence of countries resulting from astonishing advances in science and technology. The ‘project’ is global capitalism, or the application of the ideas and institutions of the market economy to the world as a whole. It is actively pursued by the United States and a number of other governments and implemented through such institutions as WTO, World Bank and other multilateral trade agreements. What is under our consideration is this ‘project’. This can also be termed as corporate globalization as this ‘project’ is essentially led and directed by multinational corporations to maximize their profit. They come to have unregulated political power, exercised through multilateral trade agreements and unregulated financial markets.
Corporate globalization restrains nation states from protecting the rights, interests and well being of its citizens; it reduces the functions of the state to that of protecting the interests of the investors, the corporations. It thwarts genuine democratic processes; it reduces democracy to periodic elections; moreover, once elected, the people’s representatives are made to implement the designs of WTO and World Bank, essentially the corporations. The US is trying to export this sham of democracy to the rest of the world with devastating consequences to peoples and economies. The corporations further feed on these disasters and make profit out of them.
The scope of this paper would be confined to how corporate globalization impacts the farming sector in India. About 60% of the India’s population, two thirds of India, lives on farming or farm related occupation, either as small and marginal farmers, or as farm labour. A marginal farmer would be someone cultivating (as owners or tenant or share cropper) agricultural land up to 1 hectare or 2.5 acres, and a small farmer would be someone cultivating (as owner or tenant or share cropper) agricultural land of more than 1 to 2 hectares. According to the Report of the National Commission for Enterprises in the Unorganized Sector in India, 2009, 86% of India’s work force is in the unorganized sector which includes those who are self employed as small and marginal farmers, farm labour and those who run small retail shops. The report also reveals that despite the progress that India has made in the economic front, 77% of Indian population lives on less than 20 rupees per day, which is less than half a US dollar. Today, the attempt of the Indian state is to reduce this farm dependent population to 30% which means that the state is going in for corporatization of farming; which also means displacing large number of the farming population into joblessness and utter poverty.
Today, the Indian peasantry, the largest body of surviving small farmers in the world, faces a crisis of extinction. Increased cost of agricultural input, crop failures due to company supplied seeds that cannot stand hostile weather conditions, unpredictable weather changes due to global warming, fall in price of agricultural commodities due to cheap imports has set the stage for farmer indebtedness and farmer suicides. India has seen over a quarter of a million farmers’ suicides between 1995 and 2010. Noted journalist and rural affairs editor of the leading Indian daily, The Hindu, P. Sainath writes: "We have been undergoing the largest catastrophe of our independent history - the suicides of nearly a quarter of a million farmers since 1995. We are talking of the largest recorded rate of suicides in human history.” This is happening not by accident but by design.
The roots of this human tragedy can be traced back to what is touted as ‘Green Revolution’. Before the Green Revolution, farmers were cultivating varieties of crops, using varieties of seeds that suited varieties of climatic and soil conditions with minimum external inputs. Farming was more organic and sustainable. The Green Revolution changed this scenario; the farmers were told that their indigenous seeds were no good. And then, they were supplied hybrid high yielding seed varieties. The indigenous rice varieties that were resistant to floods and droughts and other climatic and soil conditions, were taken away from Indian farmers and stored in the Rice Research Institute in Philippines, which was funded and controlled by the Ford Foundation. The Indian farmers, then, were given the high yielding hybrid seeds which did not have much resilience, and therein increasing the risk of crop failure.
The company seeds needed more water, fertilizers and pesticides; they also could not be reused. A free resource available on farm became a commodity which farmers were forced to buy every year. Added to this were the additional costs of fertilizers and pesticides. The excessive use of fertilizers and pesticides depleted the fertility of land, contaminated the earth and waters and poisoned the food system with deleterious consequences to the health of people. Further, they resulted in an increase in the cost of farm inputs. What the farmers cherished as a free gift of mother earth and bounty of God became a commodity. Human avarice has destroyed the integrity of creation and brought death and suffering to it. More than four decades later, the Green Revolution, which initially produced large quantities of wheat and rice, has reached a dead end, with failing yields of rice and wheat, and creating soil-related problems.
The WTO allowed an increase in agribusiness subsidies while preventing countries from protecting their farmers from the dumping of artificially cheap produce. For example, U.S. soya beans are cheap not because of cheap production but because of subsidies. The U.S government pays $ 193 per ton to US Soya farmers, which artificially lowers the price of the US soya beans. Due to removal of Quantitative Restrictions and lowering of tariffs, heavily subsidized soya beans flooded India's domestic market, prices crashed by more than two-thirds. Domestic oilseed production declined and domestic edible oil prices crashed. The prices of groundnut and other oil producing seeds crashed. Meanwhile, some farmers protesting against the collapse of their markets were shot down by the police. Further, Indian farmers were blamed for not being “competitive”.
In the history of seed alienation, 2004 seed bill passed by the Indian parliament is a mile stone. Ostensibly, this bill was about keeping a check on seed quality; but in reality it was meant to protect the interests of big business, keep farmers’ seeds out of the market and discourage small seed dealers and producers. It harmonized the Indian seed law with that of the laws around the world and to ensure that the Indian seed market is open to big business. It also allowed the registration of GM seeds, though stipulating clearance from the environmental ministry. A further modification of it is awaiting passage in the Indian Parliament to make it better suit the interests of big business.
Then came the new patent law passed by the parliament to suit the demands of TRIPS (Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights), which has significantly altered the earlier patent regime. The most important change introduced in the new patent law was the inclusion of the patenting of life forms. Plant species developed through GM became part of the patent laws. This further facilitated the alienation of seeds and total dependence of Indian farmers on seeds produced by corporations through biopiracy.
Biopiracy refers to the appropriation of traditional knowledge and genetic resources, particularly plant and other biological resources, specific to a people or region without permission from and with little or no compensation to the community and then, using them for profit. It is ironic that while they sell their seeds to the farmers, they take away traditional seeds from the farmers and store them in their seed banks without paying any cost to the farmers who originally used them. Monsanto and its associates have a market share of 43% for the sale of seeds in general and 93% market share for the sale of cotton seed alone. Despite India’s stringent regulatory frame work, Monsanto and its affiliates are exerting major influence to introduce ever greater number of genetically modified crops in India.
Serious ethical questions have been raised regarding the patenting of life forms. Earth and all that is in it belong to God. God is the creator of life. We are playing gods and threatening the integrity of creation by creating new life forms through means that are not natural, which also has serious implications for biodiversity and health of humans and other organisms. Furthermore, we claim ownership for that which truly belongs to God and use it for profiteering.
At present, the laws are stringent against GE foods and seeds. The Genetic Engineering Approval Committee (GEAC) can only recommend the approval of GE seeds and foods and the final decision is taken by the government involving four ministries - of Environment, Agriculture, Forest and Wildlife and Health. Succumbing to the pressures of multinational corporations, the government has already introduced a legislation to create a Biotechnology Regulatory Authority of India (BRAI) in the parliament to stream line and make the sanctioning process more corporate friendly, compromising the farmers’ rights, India’s rich bio-diversity and the health of its people.
The role of United States in all this must be highlighted. Monsanto is one of the three corporations that represent the US in the advisory board of the India-US Knowledge Initiative (AKI), Wal-Mart and Archer Daniels Midland Co. being the other two. This was a deal struck by our Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh and the former President of the US, George Bush on 18 July 2005. What might be the interests of these multinational companies in education, research and knowledge dissemination in the area of agriculture in India is something to be pondered over. The joint statement between the two heads of states recognized the challenges and opportunities of modern-day agriculture, and it made a commitment to facilitate technology transfer, trade, and investment and bolster agricultural research, education, and extension through public-private partnerships. In other words, multinational companies with records of exploitation and unethical business practices world over will now decide the priorities of education, training, research and dissemination of knowledge between India and the US with Indian scholars and scientist acting as their neo-colonial agents.
As part of the AKI, the US government is pressurizing India to open its retail industry for foreign direct investment (FDI). The Indian retail industry is the means of livelihood for 40 million people in the self-employed, unorganized sector. The overwhelming portion of retail trade — 98 per cent — is through the unorganised sector, a euphemism for sales done through tiny family-owned shops, roadside eateries, kiosks at street corners, and hawkers and street vendors plying their wares on pushcarts. Wal-Mart is waiting in the wings for its entry into this retail market. You can imagine the consequences that Wal-Martization can have on the retail industry in India - the impact it would have on the livelihood of small retailers and small and marginal farmers.
The farmers' groups believe that the monopolistic buying power of the large retailers would further weaken the marginal farmers' position, resulting in lower share of value to them, dictating the production techniques and output by the larger retailers. This in turn would result in the destruction of diversity in Indian agriculture. FDI in retail sector, besides resulting in the loss of employment for small retailers (97% of the businesses are run by the unorganized small retailers), would result in manipulation of prices by these multi-national giants to the detriment of farmers’ interests and total lack of a level playing field.
Lastly, corporate globalization works through co-opting our intellectuals and scholars; through colonization of minds. Through such deals as US-India Agricultural Knowledge Initiative, in the name of collaborative research, Indian agricultural scientists and scientific establishments like ICAR, who are sustained by Indian tax payers’ money (public finance) will work for the American private monopolies in agricultural trade and retail industry like Monsanto and Wal-Mart. Let me close with a recent news item that came in the Indian newspapers that Ford Foundation is providing assistance for policy research and analysis to Members of Parliament in India. This kind of financial assistance often becomes indirect means of unethical lobbying. This has been a standard practice by which the US has furthered its corporate design across the globe. The assistance of Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation for researches in the area of GE should also be viewed in this light. Some of the apparently benevolent acts of corporations and their outfits can only be viewed with suspicion knowing how they have acted in the past as agents of the strategic design of exploitation and colonization. Corporate Interests often make their way through and justify their actions through benevolent acts of corporate social responsibility.
The way forward in resisting this onslaught lies in facilitating popular movements against GM seeds and foods; co-opting the health conscious Indian middle class also in this struggle; encouraging farmers groups to go in for more sustainable and organic alternatives; encouraging farmers to produce, preserve, and distribute traditional varieties of seed; encouraging them to go in for multi-cropping and crop varieties that would ensure food security and nutritional requirements; popularizing the threat posed by GM seeds and foods to the bio-diversity of the country; and pressurizing the state governments to declare their states as GM free: prohibiting the field trials of GM seeds.
Let me conclude. It is not individuals that we are dealing with; there is no point in any rich man feeling guilty about his inordinate wealth. As we read in the book of Ephesians, Ch. 6: “Our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms” that spread death and destruction over the whole creation. This requires that we put on the armaments of faith. It means exposing them and exorcising them in the name of Jesus Christ.
No comments:
Post a Comment