GREEN FEATURES : Ecological Democracy : Vol.1 Issue 3 September 2013

Ecological Democracy

Source:

http://ecologicaldemocracy.net/

The last century has seen many national movements successfully liberating countries from colonial rule. But since the last quarter of the twentieth century, we have witnessed world-wide schizophrenia in our ‘development’ policies.

Global players like the US and European Union and arms of their economic hegemonies such as the World Bank and I.M.F. have forced governments to adopt policies which are resulted in a serious all round crisis, including an ecological crisis.

On the other hand there is a multitude of UN Conferences on various dimensions of the ecological crisis. To understand this schizophrenia and to evolve policy frameworks to respond to this crisis from the ecological swaraaj perspective is the need of the hour.

Our online journal www.ecologicaldemocracy.net is an effort to bring cohesion to the efforts of all who believe in the idea of ecological swaraaj.

Vol.1 Issue 3 September 2013

In this issue

Climate Change: Politics of Global Discourse & South Asian Response

Dr Suman Sharma & D.M.Gautam

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Our mother earth is facing a multi-faceted crisis of unprecedented proportions. This crisis is not only an existential threat to humankind but also to all life forms and environment of the planet. The technological march of ‘progress and development’ as it is generally understood, has excluded a very large mass of human population from the gains of such progress and development. At the same time the ‘progress and development’ by its inexorable logic consumes the resources of the earth at a very fierce pace to sustain its growth momentum. The fast pace of consumption of resources, particularly of the non-renewable kind, and exclusion of large mass of human population from the ambit of ‘progress and development’ has created inequity and disequilibrium in nature and among human society. This inequity and disequilibrium in turn has created the crises being faced by the mother earth and its inhabitants.

The principles of equity and ‘common but differentiated responsibilities’ for global discourse on climate change were evolved by a painstaking effort under the aegis of United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change(UNFCCC). The international community in a feeble attempt to respond to the crises facing humankind and mother earth adopted a Millennium Declaration under the auspices of the United Nations in the year 2000 and set for itself very ambitious Millennium Development Goals(MDGs) to be achieved by 2015. The MDGs are a declaration of intent on the reduction of extreme income poverty and hunger, achieving universal primary education, promoting gender equality and empowering women, reducing child mortality, improving maternal health, combating HIV/AIDS and other major diseases, ensuring environmental sustainability and developing a global partnership for development. The South Asian community under the aegis of regional cooperation grouping, SAARC, four years after the Millennium Declaration, recommitted themselves to the goals of MDGs by declaring their own South Asian Development Goals (SDGs). The SDGs echoing the goals of MDGs were organized into four broad categories of Livelihood, Health, Education and Environment.

United Nations Millennium Development Goal 7 pronounced its objective to integrate the principles of sustainable development into country policies and programmes and reverse the loss of environmental resources. The Environment SDG specifies its goals to achieve acceptable levels of forest cover, water and soil quality, air quality, conservation of bio-diversity, wet land conservation and ban on dumping of hazardous waste including radioactive waste.

This paper attempts to examine and analyze various initiatives taken by SAARC on the threat of Climate Change to a sustainable environment in the context of global negotiations on this subject and emerging new concept of human security distinct from traditional concept of security in military sense. The new paradigm of human security perceives the security as freedom from danger, fear, want and deprivation. Further, the ideas of recent trend in Deep Ecology which go beyond mere human security to encompass all life and nature has been noted with particular reference to its indebtedness to Gandhian philosophy.

It is maintained that the environment of mother earth being indivisible, any regional effort to find a solution to the problems of Climate Change has to dovetail with the larger global efforts/solution. The global efforts symbolized by the discourse under the aegis of United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change(UNFCCC)have unfortunately been very prolonged and virtually put under suspended animation by the decisions or rather indecisions at Conference of Parties in Durban(2011) and Doha(2012). The nations which enjoy the power and prosperity and pollute mother earth the most, evade their commitment to the basic principle of ‘common but differentiated responsibilities’ and ‘principle of equity’ set forth in global discourse. The inexorable logic of growth and progress pursued through neo-liberal economic ideology to sustain their life style and consumption patterns compel them not to come to terms with the real threats of Climate Change. Ironically, the rumblings of continental shift of power and prosperity( noted as an inevitable historical process by Indian political activist and thinker Dr Rammanohar Lohia in one of his lectures in 1952[1]) in recent times from the West to the East are accompanied with the pursuit of same neo-liberal economic ideology which would only perpetuate inequity within and among nations as also cause irreversible damage to the nature and environment.

The efficacy of South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) as a regional organization to deal with the issues posed by Climate Change has been examined in this larger global context. Further, various problems facing SAARC while pursuing these issues have also been highlighted. The virtual failure of global and regional efforts due to prolonged, action-less deliberations, lack of political will to accept the inevitable and change course for the survival of humankind has been underlined.

In conclusion, it has been emphasized that search for an alternative source of renewable energy (alternative to fossil fuels) and to the development model of neo-liberalism is the only hope for the future. A state of harmony and equilibrium – ‘Samanvya’ as an Indian would call it – among and within nations and communities, between nature and man and within nature itself only will ensure peace, equity and survival of mother earth.

Key Words – Climate Change, Global Discourse, Environmental Sustainability, South Asian Vulnerability, Deep Ecology, Neo-Liberal ideology.

Introduction

South Asia with one fifth of world population is an extreme disaster prone region. Recently in May 2011, the Secretary General of SAARC presented a draft SAARC Agreement on Rapid Response to Natural Disasters to the Inter-governmental meeting in Colombo. He pointed out quoting global statistics that over past forty years, South Asia faced as many as 1333 disasters that killed 980,000 people, affected 2.4 billion lives and damaged assets worth $105 billion. Further, that this loss is by far the highest among the recorded disasters in various geographical regions.[2] The United Nations Environment Programme(UNEP) in pursuance of its mandate to review the global environment collaborated with South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation(SAARC) to present South Asian Environment Outlook,2009(SAEO,2009) after a wider consultation process involving governments and other partners from the nations of South Asia, sub-regional intergovernmental agencies and experts. The Report reveals the state and trends of the environment – land, air, water and bio-diversity and covers five key issues on Climate Change, Food Security, Water Security, Energy Security and managing Urbanisation. The Report notes:

South Asia occupies about 5 per cent of the world’s land mass, but is home to about 20 per cent of the world’s population. This is expected to rise to about 25 per cent by 2025. Three-quarters of South Asia’s population lives in rural areas, with one-third living in extreme poverty (on less than a dollar a day). Their well-being is further compromised by indoor air pollution, which is a severe health hazard. The report highlights that South Asia is very vulnerable to climate change. Impacts of climate change have been observed in the form of glacier retreat in the Himalayan region. … These glaciers form a unique reservoir, which supports perennial rivers such as the Indus, Ganges and Brahmaputra, which, in turn, are the lifeline of millions of people in South Asian countries (Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal, and Pakistan). This will exacerbate the challenges of poverty reduction and improving access to safe drinking water, two of the Millennium Development Goals.[3]

It is indeed a sad historical irony of monumental proportions that South Asia which was the ancient cradle of the principles of ecological harmony in its quest for spiritual and physical symbiosis, today faces such a bleak environmental outlook. The fundamental filial connect between humankind and Mother Earth was declared thousands of years ago in the ancient Indian sacred scripture Vedas in the Hymn to the Earth:

'Mata Bhumih Putroham Prithivyah: Earth is my mother, I am her son.[4]

His Holiness The Dalai Lama in The Buddhist Declaration on Nature articulating the ethical and ecological vision of Buddhism made following observations which are extremely relevant for our time:

'Destruction of the environment and the life depending upon it is a result of ignorance, greed and disregard for the richness of all living things. This disregard is gaining great influence. If peace does not become a reality in the world, and if the destruction of the environment continues as it does today, there is no doubt that future generations will inherit a dead world.

'Various crises face the international community. The mass starvation of human beings and the extinction of species may not have overshadowed the great achievements in science and technology, but they have assumed equal proportions. Side by side with the exploration of outer space, there is the continuing pollution of lakes, rivers and vast parts of the oceans, out of human ignorance and misunderstanding. There is a great danger that future generations will not know the natural habitat of animals; they may not know the forests and the animals which we of this generation know to be in danger of extinction.

'We are the generation with the awareness of a great danger. We are the ones with the responsibility and the ability to take steps of concrete action, before it is too late.’[5]

It is this critical awareness of the existential threat to humankind that has impelled right thinking people and analysts to rethink the old traditional concepts of security and realise the threats posed by the adverse impact of Climate Change as threat to human security defined as freedom from danger, fear, want and deprivation. The Climate Change is thus perceived as a threat to security in the non-military sense. This requires an entirely new conceptual framework to understand the magnitude and extent of this threat and therefore, to formulate an entirely different strategy to counter and secure peace and security for humankind. This humanist view which links environment and security focuses on the welfare of humankind in a world which has globalised and wherein technology has weakened the geographical and cultural barriers.[6]

Environment and Human Security

The Third Annual South Asian NGO Summit on Environmental, Political and Economic Dimensions of Security held in February 1995 presented such an alternative notion of human security for the third world. This Summit maintained that war, economic decline, civil strife and government oppression were threats to human security in the third world. Further, the human security was also threatened by the so called ‘development process’ which was considered by some as enhancing security since the projects involved in this so called ‘development process’ quite often lead to displacement of poor people, depletion of resources, degradation of environment, urban congestion leading to deterioration in the quality of life and climate changes which cause frequent natural disasters. The concept of political security which traditionally focuses on the military dimension is, therefore, incomplete without environmental/human-security issues. In this perspective the very idea of development which is based on expropriation of the rights of rural communities and institutionalization of injustice through an aggressive use of state power is the leading contributor to insecurity. The indigenous mode of existence which is more in harmony with the rhythms of nature is discarded in favour of the so called modern and organized way of life. An overwhelming corporate power joins forces with state power in this game plan to achieve their ‘development goals’ to the obliteration of indigenous community life and posing a threat to ecological equilibrium. Several recent examples of this phenomenon and sharp conflict between the Corporate-State combine on the one hand and indigenous people on the other, could be seen in Narmada Valley(Big Dam project over river Narmada), Madhya Pradesh, Singur(proposed site for Chemical-hub), West Bengal , Posco steel project in Orissa and Kudankulam and Jaitapur(nuclear project sites) in Tamilnadu and Maharashtra in India. The ‘mutiny’ against the ‘development process’ in several parts of India in rural and tribal hinterland is a testimony to this conflict between two contending forces of Corporate-State combine with its so called modern notions of ‘sustainable development’ and indigenous communities with their simple, rudimentary way of life in harmony with nature. The closing remarks of the Third South Asian NGOs Summit epitomizes this world view:

Threats are posed to an environment’s security by state, donor and international institution actions.
Environmental security cannot be isolated from poverty alleviation, governance and regional conflict resolutions.
Local communities were better able to manage natural resources in their own areas; development initiatives that bypass these locals are bound to mismanage and disrupt local societies.
Environment security and women’s empowerment are two sides of the same coin.
A practical and sustainable response would empower communities and create appropriate institutions.[7]

Human Insecurity in South Asia

Late venerable Dr Mahbub ul Haq whose Human Development Centre in Pakistan provides us insightful reports on the state of human development in South Asia, gave a comprehensive definition of human security as security of income, employment, food, health, education and environment. Further, in its ambit are insecurity arising from violence within the household, by the community and the state against women, children and the minorities.[8] He expounds this concept as under:

Human security, in the last analysis, is a child who did not die, a disease that did not spread, an ethnic tension that did not explode in violence, a woman who was not raped, a poor person who did not starve, a dissident who was not silenced, a human spirit that was not crushed. Human security is not a concern with weapons. It is a concern with human dignity.[9]

South Asia has been acknowledged to be a region in crisis. The sense of crisis deepened in 1980s, when South Asia was perceived to be falling behind in the development process as compared to East and Southeast Asian countries which were on a fast track of growth and economic transformation. South Asian countries were caught in a vicious circle of low growth and poverty, unable to overcome their economic and social problems. Whatever economic growth was achieved, the same was uneven, resulting in sharp disparities between different regions and communities. The severe problems of endemic poverty, slow and uneven economic growth were further compounded by the extreme population pressure. The modest economic achievements of the sub-continent were diluted by explosive population growth. High rates of population growth rendered South Asia as the most densely populated region in the world. (260 people per sq. km. against the global average of 44 people per sq. km.). South Asia has suffered extensive erosion of its natural resources in recent past. The most critical dimension of this erosion was deforestation of tropical forests. The deforestation has resulted in virtual breakdown of Himalayan eco-system with consequent silting of river beds and annual flooding of vast areas in the region. With rising population pressure, this situation can deteriorate to ecological disaster.

Natural disasters are afflicting South Asia with increased frequency and ferocity – recent cyclones, particularly, the super cyclone that hit India’s east coast( Tsunami of 2004), earthquake of 2005 and super flood during July-August 2010 in Pakistan, have been causing extensive damage to life and property. To add to the negative economic, demographic and ecological profile of South Asia, is the high defence expenditure in the countries of the region. It is indeed ironic that while the economic indicators of growth and development are suppressed due to growth in population, the trend in per capita defence expenditure shows an upswing. High defence expenditure not only adds to the fragility of the economies of South Asian countries but also points towards a deteriorating security environment in the region.

The socio-political scene in South Asia is marred by conflict and strife. The societies in South Asian countries are plural, composite in nature, comprising various cultural, ethnic, linguistic and religious groups. The State structures and socio-political institutions seem inadequate or unsuitable to accommodate the rich diversity in the region. We have serious democratic deficit with borrowed institutions of Western democracies which are not rooted in the indigenous history and culture. Violence, terrorism and ethnic conflicts in several countries of the region have assumed serious proportions – prolonged insurgency in Indian North-East, conflict in Kashmir, history of ethnic divergence between Sri Lankan Tamils and majority Sinhala population, violence against Mohajirs in Karachi, tension in Sind and Baluchistan, instability and uncertainties in Nepal in the aftermath of war by Nepal Communist Party-Maoist (NCP-M) against the constitutional monarchical democratic system, fierce antagonism between warring political groups in Bangladesh. Further, narco-terrorism and religious fundamentalism have cast their pernicious, dark shadow on the sub-continent. The presence of US-NATO forces in the eighth member State of SAARC(Afghanistan) and the complex nature of the war in that country involving Pakistan and fundamentalist forces therein has aggravated the adverse politico-security situation in the region.

The Human Development in South Asia Report 2005 made following seven important findings after analyzing issues of human insecurity in South Asia:

There is a disconnect between economic growth and human development and hence the economic policies in the region have made people more vulnerable to shocks and insecure in life.
The conflicts in the region between states and within are due to some deep-seated feelings of injustice and disempowerment.
The economic insecurity is the cause of many conflicts and disruption of life.
If health infrastructure not improved South Africa will go Sub-Saharan Africa way in this regard.
Environment degradation has reached such levels that huge disaster is imminent if no prompt action taken to avert this disaster.
Children and Women are extremely vulnerable in South Asia.
The institutions of governance must protect and serve people rather than the rich and powerful.[10]

Security of all Life and Nature: Deep Ecology

There is a deeper strain of environmentalism which considers that the concept of natural diversity as a valuable resource for human kind (which needs to be protected) is merely shallow ecology. This school of ecological philosophy (claiming to be deep ecologists) maintains that natural diversity has its own intrinsic value and to equate it to be value for humans would tantamount to racial prejudice. Hence all life forms are valuable and humans have no right to reduce the richness and diversity of environment except where it is necessary to satisfy vital needs.[11] The philosophy of deep ecology is very familiar to Gandhian South Asia. The ideas of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi rooted in conservative Indian tradition, had influenced the philosophy of deep ecologists. He discussed the environmental problems in his famous journal Hind Swaraj way back in 1909 to suggest measures to root out the problem rather than search a solution to control it. He maintained that the extravagant utilization of non-renewable resources, i.e., coal, oil and metal at global scale would play havoc with nature. He considered the unsatiable and unending pursuit of material pleasure and prosperity to be the Achilles’ heel of modern civilization. He thus practised and propagated the ancient Indian ideal ofAparigraha, i.e., non-possession. He approached nature with utmost reverence and emphasized that the man should not cause violence to other living forms. He believed in essential unity of man and of all that lives. His concept of Ahinsa, popularly interpreted as non-violence, meant non-injury not only to human life but to all living things. For him this was the way to Truth which he saw as Absolute, as God or an impersonal all-pervading reality.[12] This Gandhian perspective compels us to seek answers to some basic questions:

Why such a human activity which has caused the crisis of Climate Change?

Is this crisis inherent in the model of development/economic ideology chosen by the human kind – particularly in the rich/industrialized world?

Is the focus of this model of development on ensuring the security of the State, of the status quo of inequity, rich-poor divide, socio-economic deprivation of large numbers, of vulgar prosperity and abysmal poverty as distinct from security of all living forms and nature?

Mitigation, Adaptation, Preparedness to make the world Climate Change resilient – is it only an elite façade to preserve the status quo of inequity and socio-economic deprivation?

Do South Asia continue to ape the economic development model of energy and capital intensive economic growth based on extravagant utilization of oil-coal-metal and supplemented by dangerous nuclear energy sources or seek an alternative economic development model?

Is an alternative development model feasible/possible in an interdependent globalised world order today?

Is the human race and particularly vulnerable regions like South Asia doomed to the disaster of Climate Change because there is no alternative to the model of progress and economic growth provided by the ideology of Capitalism?

Is it a false debate? Is the march of technology driven development and growth ideology neutral?

Is there any answer to the ‘crises’ posed by the technological march of the modern civilization? Can South Asia with its claim of ‘original environmentalism’ provide a solution to the threats of Climate Change?

While it may not be feasible or within the scope of this paper to seek answers to all the questions above, it would be relevant to delineate the global and South Asian regional response to the threats of Climate Change in the perspective of issues raised therein.

Global Discourse: Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change(IPCC)

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change(IPCC) which came into existence in 1988 in pursuance of first World Climate Conference organized under the aegis of UN Environment Programme(UNEP) and World Meteorology Organisation(WMO) defines Climate Change as the change in the state of the climate that can be identified by changes in the mean and/or variability of its properties persisting for an extended period. Further, this change could be due to natural variability or a result of human activity.[13] There is now acknowledged plethora of scientific evidence that climate change is occurring primarily due to human activity. The emission of Green House Gases(GHGs) and its effect on global warming leading to devastating consequences for the climate are now well known for quite sometime. The debate on Climate Change has acquired urgency of late due to the existential threat that its adverse impact poses for humanity and also since it raises serious political issues on the nature and ideology of the model of economic growth and progress based on fierce consumption of depleting fossil fuels.

The IPCC report provides strong evidence of the change in climate. It has noted CO₂ atmospheric concentration up from 280 ppm (pre-industrial) to 379 ppm (2005) and GHG emissions up by 70% between 1970-2004. This has resulted in rise in global mean temperature by 0.74°C between 1906-2005. The eleven years period between 1995-2006 has been recorded among the 12 warmest years since 1850. Further, global sea level rose 1.8mm/yr during 1961-2003 and at a faster pace during 1993-2003 at the rate of 3.1 mm per year. The average warming in future is predicted to be 0.2°C per decade.[14] The adverse impact of these changes would increase the risks of natural disasters like floods, cyclones, drought, coastal erosion, landslides, water famine, food scarcity, adverse impact on human health, damage to fresh water ecosystems etc. The socio-economic impact of such adverse changes could be devastating for a densely populated region like South Asia.

The modern twentieth century world formally woke up to the challenge of Climate Change much after the holocaust of Second War when in 1972 UN Conference on Environment was organized in Stockholm. While Climate Change became a dominant subject of international discourse, the deliberations of the international community have been marked by political deadlocks, scientific uncertainties, lack of trust, inadequate leadership, political regrouping, influence of business lobbies and geo-political considerations.[15] Ironically, the State apparatus in collaboration with Corporate lobbies in developing countries which have been suppressing indigenous and deprived communities to impose their own model of ‘development’ within, have been using the idiom and phraseology of the deprived during negotiations with the developed/ industrialised countries. The poor and deprived and their advocacy of an ecologically harmonious and genuinely sustainable development process thus became a potent pawn in the hands of hypocritical regimes in the developing world on the geo-political chess board.

The First World Climate Conference was organized by United Nations Environment Programme(UNEP) and World Meteorological Organisation(WMO) to look into climate data, identify its impact and to promote research on climate variability in 1979. This Conference recommended creation of an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change(IPCC) which later came into existence in 1988. This very year a group of 400 scientists and policy makers met in Toronto in a Public Scientific Conference ( sponsored by UNEP and WMO) and suggested 20% reduction in GHG against 1998 levels by 2005. In subsequent year 1989, UN General Assembly passed a resolution 44/228 to recognize the importance of the protection and enhancement of environment for all countries and further decided to convene a UN Conference on Environment and Development.

The First Assessment Report(AR) of IPCC in 1990 put forth a proposition of 60-80 per cent cuts in CO₂ emissions to stabilize the concentration of GHG which was noted to be 25 per cent higher in the pre-industrialisation age. The Second World Climate Conference held in Geneva the same year laid down basic principles like ‘ common concern of humankind’, common but differentiated responsibilities’, principle of equity’, ‘precautionary principle’ and further urged developed states which were responsible for 75 per cent of world’s GHG emissions to establish targets and/or feasible national programmes or strategies which will have a significant effect on limiting emissions or GHG. This Conference also recognized that emissions from developing countries must still grow to accommodate their development needs. UNGA passed a resolution in 1990 to formally launch negotiations on a framework convention on Climate Change. The very next year in 1991, the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee(INC) met for the first time.

A consensus on UN Framework Convention on Climate Change(UNFCCC) could be reached in 1992 where in the landmark Earth Summit in Rio de Janerio, Brazil this Convention was opened for signatures of the member states. The Convention finally came into force in 1994. The Rio action plan-Agenda21- launched in the Earth Summit echoed the humanist approach to development and Climate Change when its preamble declared:

Humanity stands at a defining moment in history. We are confronted with a perpetuation of disparities between and within nations, a worsening of poverty, hunger, ill health and illiteracy, and the continuing deterioration of the ecosystems on which we depend for our well being. However, integration of environment and development concerns and greater attention to them will lead to the fulfillment of basic needs, improved living standards for all, better protected and managed ecosystems and a safer, more prosperous future. No nation can achieve this on its own; but together we can – in a global partnership for sustainable development.[16]

The UN General Assembly adopting Rio Declaration on Environment and Development in August 1992 echoed these sentiments when it proclaimed in its very first principle that:

Human beings are at the centre of concerns for sustainable development. They are entitled to a healthy and productive life in harmony with nature.[17]

               The UNFCCC signed by 153 states declared its objective in Article 2 ‘ to achieve stabilization of greenhouse gas
concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate
system. Such a level should be achieved within a time frame sufficient to allow ecosystems to adapt naturally to climate
change, to ensure that food production is not threatened and to enable economic development to proceed in a
sustainable manner.’ The framework convention thus acknowledged Climate Change as an existential threat for
 humankind and fossil fuels as a major source of problem.

         The second Assessment report of IPCC in 1995 confirmed the rise in global   temperature as being influenced by
 human beings. This report provided inputs for negotiations which culminated in landmark Kyoto Protocol.

The Kyoto Protocol pronounced in 1997 within the parameters of UNFCCC, divided the nations into two main groups ,i.e., Annex1 parties and Non-Annex1 parties. Some non-annex1 parties listed in Annex-2 and hence Annex-2 parties. Developing countries 145 in number were Non-Annex-1 parties. The Protocol lays down three mechanisms as under following the principle of ‘common but differentiated responsibilities’:

Joint Implementation: Annex-1 countries can get credits for funding projects to reduce GHG emissions in other Annex-1 countries(mainly former Soviet bloc countries termed as economies in transition)
Clean Development Mechanism(CDM): Annex-1 countries can get credit for funding projects in Non-Annex-1 countries which projects reduce GHGs.
International Emission Trading(IET): Annex-1 countries can buy and sell carbon credits where one country has exceeded its target and can sell its reductions by the tonne to another country.[18]

CONFERENCE OF PARTIES(COP)

Ever since 1995, the parties to UNFCCC have been holding Conference of Parties(COP) in order to assess progress in dealing with Climate Change. The chequered history of international negotiations bereft of political will to accept common but differential responsibilities continued through annual COPs when in 2000, COP-6 reached an impasse in Hague. COP-6, however, resumed in Bonn in 2001 after US President George Bush declared official decision to abandon Kyoto Protocol and focused on financial support to developing countries. It committed to create a $410million fund by 2005. In 2001 again, COP-7 meeting in Marrakesh decided to set up a Climate Change Fund for mitigation and adaptation to climate change as well as Least Developed Country Fund for the poorest countries. The third IPCC Assessment Report in the same year provided new and strong evidence of global warming over the last fifty years. It cautioned against the wider security implications of the climate change due to melting of glaciers and rise in sea level.

COP-8 met in Delhi in 2002 and calling for sustainable development agreed that adaptation to climate change was as important as mitigation measures.

The ratification of Kyoto Protocol by Russia in November 2004 and its coming into force on February 2005, resurrected the Protocol to some extent after US declared its dissociation from the treaty and merely maintained an observer status.

COP-11 which was also the first meeting of parties to Kyoto Protocol after 1997 agreed on an action plan in Montreal(Montreal Action Plan) and agreed to extend the life of the Protocol beyond 2012 when it would have been due to expire. It also agreed to negotiate ‘deeper cuts’ in GHG emissions.

The real politic came to the fore in 2005 when a group of five nations(G5)- Brazil, India, South Africa, Mexico and China- met G8 countries during their summit meeting in Gleneagles to debate Climate Change. G-5 countries stressed on transfer of technology and financial support for a ‘flexible, fair and effectual global framework’ in this regard.

G-8 countries in their subsequent 2007 summit meeting pledged financial support for adaptation measures along with use of cleaner and renewable energy. Thus technology cooperation and financing became the latest buzz-words of global negotiations on Climate Change.

COP-13 meeting in Bali in 2007 laid down a Bali Road map after taking note of fourth report(AR-4) of IPCC. It made a strong scientific case for political action on the climate issues facing humankind.

G-8 countries in a significant move held a special climate summit of major industrialized and developing countries under the aegis of the Major Economies Forum on Energy and Climate at L’Aquilla in 2009. This conclave endorsed the important benchmark of a maximum permissible global temperature rise of 2*C above the pre-industrial levels and G-8 countries agreed to cut their carbon emissions by 80 per cent by 2050 with a pre-condition that developing countries would agree to a global 50 per cent cut in emissions by 2050. G-8 countries hoped that developing countries might endorse a target which was not accepted by them in the past. However, the developing countries only agreed to ‘peak’ their emissions before cutting down in absolute terms.

The international community, particularly rich club of industrialized nations and emerging economies of G-5 countries refused to accept mandatory obligations on GHG emissions. While there was no compliance of short-to-mid term (2020) reduction plans envisaged in Kyoto Protocol, long term declarations only seemed unconvincing and intended to buy time for promoting geo-political selfish interests. While US despite being largest per-capita emitter of CO₂ refused to accept binding cuts , developing countries like India and China insisted on seeking ‘allowances’ due to their need for economic growth. They maintained that any mandatory cut in CO₂ emissions would compromise their efforts to tackle poverty.

COP-16 at Copenhagen in 2009 was held against this background but ended in a failure since no country signed the accord proposed for limiting carbon emissions to below 2°C with efforts to ‘peak’ them early. Thus in complete violation of the principles evolved after decades of painstaking efforts, no legally binding emission cuts were accepted. While the COP accord was not approved, it was proposed as under:

Developed countries would jointly mobilize US $100 billion a year by 2020 to address the needs of developing countries.
A Copenhagen Green Climate Fund would thus be established to support projects, programmes, policies and other activities of developing countries.
A Technology Mission would be established to accelerate technology development and transfer to developing countries.
An assessment of Copenhagen Accord will be completed by 2015.

The Copenhagen Accord and response of different group of countries underlined fragmentation of the past efforts and abandoning of basic principles evolved earlier.

COP-16 at Cancun in December 2010 while made an effort to restore the sanctity of multi-lateral negotiations under the UNFCCC failed to make any headway on securing ‘common but differential responsibilities’ and ‘deeper cuts’. On the contrary, the difference between developed and developing countries was obliterated- while developed countries would no more commit legally to cut emissions, the developing countries will have to take binding commitments. There were no firm commitments either to provide technological and financial help by rich countries who merely made promises. The Cancun thus made an about turn with following Long Term Cooperation Action(LCA) plan:

Developing countries agree to-

writing off historical debt of developed countries;
have their own domestic emission targets and actions;
allow third party verifications of targets, making it binding;
emission targets of developed countries that are not sufficient to limit global temperature increase below 2°C.

Developed countries agree to-

generate US $100 billion in long term, $30 billion in 2010-12;
facilitate technology transfer through innovation centres;
funding reducing emission from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD) and address own actions leading to deforestation;
linking adaptation to Hyogo Framework for Action – a global treaty on disaster risk reduction;
funding research on understanding vulnerability, impacts, development of plans and creating institutional responses.[19]

The critics of Cancun LCA maintain that this proposed cooperation has virtually negated Kyoto Protocol since second commitment period under the Protocol has not been decided and deferred till next Durban Summit, the base reference period for emission reduction is not indicated (whether it should be 1990, 2000 or 2025) and emissions reduction targets have not been set for countries individually or as a whole. All countries participating in Cancun summit accepted US position with the sole exception of Bolivia.

While the international community was getting ready for next round of climate negotiations at Durban, South Africa in 2011, there was consensus among experts that challenges the current perspectives on future emissions and nature of international cooperation. The International Council for Science and the International Social Science Council reached a consensus that the social and bio-physical sub-systems are intertwined in a manner that the conditions and responses of the system to external forcing are based on the synergy of the two sub-systems. Hence the problem of climate change can be addressed by studying the full global system rather than its components.[20]

COP 17 at Durban reached an agreement to negotiate a new and more inclusive treaty and establishment of a Green Climate Fund. The EU and several countries agreed to continue Kyoto Protocol beyond 2012 if other governments, including major emitters from developed and developing countries, agreed to negotiate a new legally binding treaty with deeper emission reduction by 2015 to come into force afterwards. While the UN Under Secretary & UNEP Executive Director welcomed Durban proceedings as a boost for global climate action, the critics termed it as succumbing to Climate Apartheid, a crime against humanity by delaying real action till 2020 and permitting an increase in global temperature of 4 degree Celsius as a death sentence for Africa, Small Island States and the poor and vulnerable worldwide. Further, that postponement of decision on Second Commitment Period of Kyoto Protocol till next COP with no commitments for emission reduction by rich countries, implied that Kyoto Protocol is on life support until replaced by a new agreement which would be weaker. The critics also maintained that the Green Climate Fund should be managed by participatory governance and not by World Bank which they consider a villain of the failed neo-liberal economy.

Rio+20 Conference held in June 2012 marked revival of the spirit of The United Nations Conference on Environment and Development of 1992. Rio+20 reaffirmed commitment to UN MDG7 on Environment Sustainability. The Outcome Document of Rio+20 laid down the vision of a Green Economy in the context of sustainable development and poverty eradication. It reaffirmed that Climate Change is one of the greatest challenges of our time and expressed profound alarm that emissions of green house gases continue to rise globally.

COP 18 at Doha in 2012 was termed a mere intermediate COP which enabled start of a new negotiating process aimed at delivering a new global climate agreement. The rich and powerful had their way which actually commenced at COP 2005 at Montreal and formalized at Bali COP 2007 which had set the basis for developing countries to also get involved in mitigation action. Now we have a state of confusion and uncertainty with Second Commitment Period of the Kyoto Protocol(2013-2020) with legal binding targets for a smaller number of countries than the First Commitment Period(2008-12), voluntary commitments reached in 2010 under the Cancun Agreements by countries like the US and China and which run to 2020 and the negotiation of a new climate change agreement that will be completed by 2015 and will enter into force in 2020. The uncertainty and ad-hocism is now symbolized by an Ad-Hoc Working Group under the Durban Platform(ADP). The moderate voices maintained that no breakthroughs were expected or achieved but the UNFCCC process was kept on track.

South Asian Response

The colourless kaleidoscope of a multi-faceted crisis in South Asia inevitably demands a regional response to the threats posed by Climate Change. In fact, the complex nature of this crisis makes it a threat to the very existence of sub-continent population seeking a secure and dignified human life. The climate of mother earth being indivisible and intertwining of bio-physical and social sub-systems as mentioned earlier, would necessarily dictate that the regional response dovetails to the global efforts to find answers to the issues raised by the crisis of Climate Change.

South Asia with its ancient lineage of environmentalism and current dismal state of environment outlook entered the phase of regional cooperation rather late as compared to other regional groupings in the world.

The Heads of the State/Government of seven South Asian countries -Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka - formally established the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) in their first summit meeting held in Dhaka on 7-8 December, 1985. They adopted a Charter for SAARC in this summit meeting. The basic objectives set forth in the Charter were, inter-alia, to promote the welfare of the peoples of South Asia and to improve their quality of life; to accelerate economic growth, social progress and cultural development in the region; and to promote and strengthen collective self-reliance among countries of South Asia.

The most significant feature of the SAARC Charter is the provision that the Heads of State/Government would meet once a year, or more often, if necessary.

The inaugural Dhaka Summit set the precedent for procedures and modalities to be followed in future. Thus each Summit was to be preceded by a meeting of the Standing Committee and of the Council of Ministers. After the conclusion of each Summit, a declaration expounding the Summit’s philosophy and thinking was issued along with a Joint Communique which contained in summary form the substantive decisions of the Summit.

SAARC Study on Environment Preservation and Natural Disasters

The Third SAARC Summit which was convened in Kathmandu, Nepal on 2-4 November, 1987decided, inter-alia, to commission a study on the ‘Protection and Preservation of the Environment and the Causes and Consequences of Natural Disasters’ in a well-planned comprehensive framework. In fact, while deciding to commission this study, the Summit leaders expressed their deep concern at the fast and continuing degradation of the environment including extensive destruction of forest, in the South Asian region. They also noted that South Asia was afflicted with such natural disasters as floods, droughts, landslides, cyclones, tidal waves which have had a particularly severe impact causing immense human suffering.[21]

This study which was finalized in December 1991 was formulated after a very comprehensive national studies by individual Member States to bring out the conditions prevalent in the countries of the region on environment and natural disasters. The individual country reports also mentioned the preventive and remedial measures taken with regard to adverse climate conditions and natural disasters. The individual country studies were amalgamated with the help of consultant experts. The study report noted that:

The region is one of the poorest in the world and has a high rate of population growth and population density – the SAARC Member states comprise 20 per cent of the world’s population living on 3.5 per cent of the total land area and generate only 2 per cent of the world’s GNP. The pressures that these socio-economic conditions create on the natural environment are enormous. In addition, development programmes in the area of industry, agriculture and energy, which are necessary to improve the standards of living of the people, create environmental problems through the generation of wastes and heavy demands they put on natural resource base. SAARC region because of its high level of poverty…. Degradation of the environment has a particularly adverse effect on the poor, and results in increased natural disasters, especially in the high slopes of the mountain regions, dry and desertified areas, and in the flood plains. The natural resource base of South Asia Has to be managed extremely carefully and with great ingenuity to ensure increased productivity on a sustainable basis so that present and future generations can meet their needs and aspirations and live in harmony with their environment.[22]

The Report made recommendations on measures to protect and manage environment and suggested measures and programmes for strengthening disaster management capabilities. Specific issues covered by recommendations on protecting and managing environment included strengthening the environment management infrastructure, environmentally sound land and water planning, research and action programme on mountain development in the Himalayan Region, coastal zone management programme, integrated development of river basins, SAARC forestry and watershed programme, programme on energy and environment, pollution control and hazardous wastes programme, network on traditional water harvesting techniques, SAARC cooperative programme for biodiversity management, people’s participation in resource management, information exchange on low-cost and environmentally sound habitat related technologies, SAARC network of environmental NGOs, participation of women in environment, SAARC Fund for environment, SAARC report on the state of environment and cooperation among SAARC Members on environmental issues in international forums.

Further, the Report incorporated measures and programmes for strengthening disaster management capabilities and covered topics on networking of institutions on natural disaster planning and management, establishment of a SAARC relief and assistance mechanism for disasters, cooperation on the development of modern disaster warning systems, programme for research related to drought prone areas and information exchange system on management of human activities in disaster prone areas.

Finally, the Report suggested an appropriate institutional mechanism for coordinating and monitoring implementation of its recommendations in the form of a SAARC Committee on Environment.[23]

SAARC Study on Greenhouse Effect

Coinciding with Public Scientific Conference held in Toronto SAARC heads of States and Governments in their Fourth Summit held in December 1988 decided to undertake a study on the Greenhouse effect and its impact on the region. The unprecedented floods, cyclones and earthquakes during the year attracted their attention and they observed as under:

The Heads of State or Government expressed their deep sense of sorrow and profound sympathy at the loss of valuable lives and extensive damage to property suffered during the year by Bangladesh, India, Nepal and Pakistan as a result of unprecedented floods, cyclones and earthquakes. In this connection, they recalled their earlier decision at Kathmandu in November, 1987 to intensify regional cooperation with a view to strengthening their disaster management capabilities and took note of the recommendations of the meeting of the SAARC Group of Experts on the Study on the Causes and Consequences of Natural Disasters and the Protection and Preservation of the Environment, that met in Kathmandu in July 1988. They expressed the conviction that identification of measures and programmes as envisaged by the Group of Experts would supplement national, bilateral, regional and global efforts to deal with the increasingly serious problems being faced by the region as a result of the recurrence of natural disasters and the continuing degradation of the environment. They urged that the study should be completed in the shortest period of time so that it could provide a basis for the member countries to draw up an action plan for meaningful cooperation amongst the Member States. They decided that a joint study be undertaken on the "Greenhouse Effect" and its impact on the region.[24]

This study recommended regional measures in sharing experiences, scientific capabilities and information on climate change, sea level rise and technology transfer. The regional discourse among SAARC countries was keeping pace with the global debate and proceedings in different forums.

The studies on natural disasters/environment and Greenhouse Effect culminated in adoption of SAARC Plan of Action on Environment in 1997. Subsequently, there was a series of meetings of SAARC Environment Ministers and flurry of regional activity in the wake of this discourse acquiring critical global dimension.

SAARC Common Position in UN Conference of Parties(COP4)

SAARC Member states also evolved a common position on climate change. On the eve of the Fourth Session of the Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change( COP-4) which was held in Buenos Aires, SAARC Environment Ministers met in Colombo on October 30-November1, 1998 and agreed to urge Annex-1 countries to expedite signing of Kyoto protocol for its ratification and coming into force and further to take urgent and effective steps domestically to implement commitments undertaken by them to reduce their emission of greenhouse gases. Significantly, they also emphasized fundamental prerequisite for designing emission trading,as provided in the Kyoto Protocol, is the determination of equitable emission entitlement of the Parties. It was maintained that the entitlements can not be derived from the past emissions which were inequitable.[25] Earlier, in tenth SAARC Summit held in July 1998, the leaders expressed their satisfaction on adoption of a common position prior to adoption of Kyoto protocol in following words:

The Heads of State or Government expressed their satisfaction over the adoption of a common position by Member States prior to the Third Session of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, held in Kyoto, Japan and welcomed the adoption of the Kyoto Protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in December 1997, and underscored the importance of the Protocol for the protection of the climate system. They urged all industrial countries to ratify the Protocol and to undertake urgent and effective steps to implement the commitments undertaken by them to reduce their emissions of green-house gases.[26]

SAARC Year of Green South Asia: 2007

SAARC declared year 2007 as the Year of Green South Asia. SAARC leaders meeting for Fourteenth Summit in April this year reiterated that collaboration in addressing the problem of arsenic contamination of groundwater, desertification and melting of glaciers and assistance to affected peoples should be deepened. They expressed deep concern over global climate change and the consequent rise in sea level and its impact on the lives and livelihoods in the region. They emphasised the need for assessing and managing its risks and impacts. They called for adaptation of initiatives and programmes; cooperation in early forecasting, warning and monitoring; and sharing of knowledge on consequences of climate change for pursuing a climate resilient development in South Asia. They agreed to commission a team of regional experts to identify collective actions in this regard.[27]

In December 2007 SAARC Council of Ministers discussed the issue of climate change in the context of increasing vulnerability of the region due to environmental degradation. The Ministers felt that given the vulnerabilities, inadequate means and limited capacities, there was need for rapid social and economic development in the region to make SAARC climate change resilient.

SAARC Environment Ministers Meeting 2008: Action Plan on Climate Change

SAARC Environment Ministers meeting in Dhaka in 2008 adopted SAARC Action Plan on Climate Change. The objectives of the Action Plan were to identify and create opportunities for activities achievable through regional cooperation and south-south support in terms of technology and knowledge transfer, to provide impetus for regional level action plan on climate change through national level activities and to support the global negotiation process of UNFCCC such as Bali Action Plan, through a common understanding or elaboration of the various negotiating issues to effectively reflect the concerns of SAARC Member States.[28] The thematic areas of the Action plan included adaptation to climate change, actions for climate change mitigation, technology transfer, finance and investment, education and awareness programme, management of impacts and risks associated with climate change and capacity building for international negotiations. The Action plan epitomized the predicament and frustration of the developing countries on the slow progress and virtual negation of the concerns of Non-Annex-1 countries defined in Kyoto Protocol. The efforts at collective self-reliance as indicated in the objectives of the Action Plan was reminiscent of older era when North-South stalemate debate was at its peak.

Sixteenth SAARC Summit: Green and Happy South Asia

Sixteenth SAARC Summit held at Thimpu, Bhutan in April 2010 was dedicated to the theme of Climate Change. The Summit declaration which was silver jubilee of the beginning of SAARC was termed ‘Towards a Green and Happy South Asia’. The Thimpu Statement on Climate Change adopted at the Summit meeting called for a review of the implementation of the Dhaka Declaration and SAARC Action Plan on Climate Change and ensure its timely implementation. There was an agreement to establish an Inter-governmental Expert Group on Climate Change to develop clear policy direction and guidance for regional cooperation as envisaged in the SAARC Plan of Action on Climate Change. It was resolved that the Inter-governmental Expert Group on Climate Change shall meet at least twice a year to periodically monitor and review the implementation of this Statement and make recommendations to facilitate its implementation and submit its report through the Senior Officials of SAARC to the SAARC Environment Ministers.

The Thimpu Statement as if anticipating probable failure of Cancun conclave resolved to attempt and carry on with comprehensive regional self-reliance efforts and adopted following:

Direct the Secretary General to commission a study for presentation to the Seventeenth SAARC Summit on ‘Climate Risks in the Region: ways to comprehensively address the related social, economic and environmental challenges’;

(ii) Undertake advocacy and awareness programs on climate change, among others, to promote the use ofgreen technology and best practices to promote low-carbon sustainable and inclusive development of the region;

(iii) Commission a study to explore the feasibility of establishing a SAARC mechanism which would providecapital for projects that promote low-carbon technology and renewable energy; and a Low-carbon Research and Development Institute in South Asian University;

(iv) Incorporate science-based materials in educational curricula to promote better understanding of the science and adverse effects of climate change;

(v) Plant ten million trees over the next five years (2010-2015) as part of a regional aforestation and reforestation campaign, in accordance with national priorities and programmes of Member States;

(vi) Evolve national plans, and where appropriate regional projects, on protecting and safeguarding the archeological and historical infrastructure of South Asia from the adverse effects of Climate Change;

(vii) Establish institutional linkages among national institutions in the region to, among others, facilitate sharing of knowledge, information and capacity building programmes in climate change related areas;

(viii) Commission a SAARC Inter-governmental Marine Initiative to strengthen the understanding of shared oceans and water bodies in the region and the critical roles they play in sustainable living to be supported by the SAARC Coastal Zone Management Center;

(ix) Stress the imperative of conservation of bio-diversity and natural resources and monitoring of mountain ecology covering the mountains in the region;

(x) Commission a SAARC Inter-governmental Mountain Initiative on mountain ecosystems, particularly glaciers and their contribution to sustainable development and livelihoods to be supported by SAARC Forestry Center;

(xi) Commission a SAARC Inter-governmental Monsoon Initiative on the evolving pattern of monsoons to assess vulnerability due to climate change to be supported by SAARC Meteorological Research Center;

(xii) Commission a SAARC Inter-governmental Climate-related Disasters Initiative on the integration of Climate Change Adaptation (CCA) with Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) to be supported by SAARC Disaster Management Center;

(xiii) Complete the ratification process for the SAARC Convention on Cooperation on Environmentat an early date to enable its entry into force.[29]

SEVENTEENTH SAARC SUMMIT 2011: Agreement on Rapid Response to Natural Disasters

An inter-governmental meeting on draft SAARC Agreement on Rapid Response to Natural Disasters held in Colombo, Sri Lanka in May 2011 reached a broad consensus on the Agreement. This agreement has now been adopted in the Seventeenth SAARC Summit held in Maldives in November 2011. The agreement based on the principle of respect for the sovereignty, territorial integrity and national unity of all member states aims to put in place an effective mechanism for rapid response to disasters to achieve substantial reduction in loss of lives and loss of social, economic and environmental assets in times of a disaster.

The Summit also resolved to ensure timely implementation of Thimpu Statement on Climate Change.

South Asian Response: Critical Appraisal

SAARC regional efforts in responding to the threat of Climate Change matching global exercise are neither short on rhetoric nor on inaction. There is a basic lack of political will both at global and regional level. While the dangers posed by this threat to the humankind as a whole and more so to the poor and vulnerable regions like South Asia are well acknowledged, the selfish abandon with which the rich and powerful globally and within poor regions love their life styles and consumption patterns, do not inspire confidence in their ability to change course. The prolonged deliberations and denial of negotiated and accepted basic principles symbolized by virtual repudiation of Kyoto protocol, makes the future of dealing with the threats of Climate Change rather bleak.

SAARC’s boastful rhetoric on regional cooperation was recently exposed during July-August 2010 super floods which hit Pakistan. These floods not only destroyed infrastructure in several parts of Pakistan but affected a huge population of approximately 20 million people. Except for a pledge of a meagre US$32 million by SAARC countries, there was virtually no action to help a member state suffering unprecedented damage due to this calamity. It was only in April 2010, i.e., only a few months before the super floods hit Pakistan that Silver Jubilee Climate theme SAARC Summit was celebrated at Thimpu, Bhutan.

In fact, SAARC is a captive and victim of bilateral contentious politics in the region. The end of cold war seemed to have provided greater leeway to India to promote her perception of South Asian regionalism through SAARC. However, the bilateral disputes between India and other SAARC countries, particularly between India and Pakistan, are deep rooted and defy the general global trend towards lessening of tensions in the post-cold war period. The core issue between India and Pakistan does not seem to be Kashmir (as claimed by Pakistan) but a more fundamental difference on the nature of the ‘States’ of India and Pakistan - the contradiction between the State of Pakistan created artificially on the basis of religion and the secular ideology of Indian State.

The bilateral disputes between India and other members of SAARC, particularly between India and Pakistan will continue to impede and torment SAARC process. India’s neighbours expect her to play down the big-brotherly attitude and keep a low-key but positive profile in SAARC. India, on the other hand, distrusts her neighbours particularly Pakistan which is seen as attempting to undermine the secular basis of the Indian State and harbouring and sustaining cross border terrorism and proxy war against India.

Being the ‘core’ state of the region India has to be a prime-mover in convincing her neighbours of her credentials in promoting the agenda of regionalism. India’s neighbours continue to be torn by the doubts on Indian policy objectives – Pakistani ruling establishment, in particular, seems to be convinced that India harbours hegemonic ambitions in the region. Except for a brief interlude of ‘Gujral Doctrine’ to resolve contentious bilateral disputes on the basis of non-reciprocity, India has not shown any significant shift in her approach for resolving bilateral disputes with her neighbours. A seemingly bold move by the new Indian government under National Democratic Alliance (NDA) in 1999 (bus journey by Indian Prime Minister Vajpayee to Lahore) to break the deadlock with Pakistan ended in the fiasco of Kargil border-war with Pakistan.

SAARC has traversed two and a half decades of tumultuous events. While the infrastructure and institutional framework for forging a strong, integrated South Asia is in place but there are no significant achievements in progress towards its goals and objectives. The relevance of SAARC in respect of reducing bilateral tensions, enhancing regional security and promoting economic well-being of people is almost negligible. Its structure as an inter-government body is seen as limiting its role and merely embodying the relationship of forces between member countries and their inter-state tensions. SAARC has generated considerable dynamism though at the social, NGO/Civil Society levels.

The common position adopted by SAARC during global negotiations on Climate Change is no consolation for the poor record on responding to disasters and joint efforts at modifying policy and action to adapt to and mitigate the threat of Climate Change. India, in any case, has joined other groupings like BASIC countries while indulging in bargaining on behalf of developing countries. The deliberations of Cancun conclave in 2010 have further eroded any significance of common regional positions at Climate negotiations. The common SAARC posture in global Climate sweepstakes , therefore, is more of an ornamental value aimed at deceiving regional population that SAARC is together in responding to the threats of climate change.

Alternative to Neo-Liberalism

If the neo-liberal economics with its unending quest for consumption and expansion has caused disequilibrium in nature and among/within nations and societies, we need to find an alternative to this ideology. Mahatma Gandhi in 1909 expressed his strong reservations against India welcoming western civilization under the guise of modernity. He maintained that the western civilization which equates consumerist lifestyle and abundance with development was akin to a mythical Indian demon called ‘Bhasmasur”, i.e., destructive monster.[30] The reckless and limitless industrialization by all nations is not sustainable and hence we are at the threshold of an existential choice of whether to pursue the mirage of a high consumption life style at global level or to moderate our idea of development and progress. This would involve a search for an alternative ‘in opposition to a process of capitalist globalization commanded by large multinational corporations and by the governments and international institutions at the service of those corporate interests. The alternative will respect universal human rights, and those of all citizens – men, and women – of all nations and the environment and will rest on democratic international systems and institutions at the service of social justice, equality and the sovereignty of peoples. … This is a vision against the neo-liberal economic agenda of the world and national elite which is breaking down the very fabric of the lives of ordinary people all over the world and marginalizing the majority of the world people, keeping profits as the main criteria of development rather than society and destroying the freedoms and rights of all women, men and children to live in peace, security and dignity.[31]

Conclusion

The global and South Asian political response to the environmental crisis are mere rhetoric and lack serious commitment both on the part advanced industrial countries and developing economies of South Asia which are trying to catch up with the rich world by imitating the economic growth ideology of neo-liberalism. The existential threat of Climate Change can not be wished away by drowning in studies and endless negotiations influenced by selfish national and geo-political considerations. The battle for supremacy due to continental shift of power and prosperity imbued with the spirit of neo-liberalism would be fought bitterly by the West, particularly the United States. The declaration by the US Secretary of Defence Leon E. Panetta in Singapore Shangri-La Dialogue 2012 to redeploy its naval forces in the ratio of 60:40 between Pacific and Atlantic regions, is seen as beginning of second Cold War vis-à-vis China.

What then does the future portend? Will the famed and much touted miracle of Western technology provide an answer in finding a viable renewable energy alternative to fossil fuels and render the search for energy resources for its expansionist, economic growth as irrelevant? Or will the South Asian Region with its claim of ancient wisdom and Hindus being the original environmentalists provide an alternative to neo-liberalism and non-renewable energy this time? There is no dearth of resources in South Asia to embark on the search for the alternative source of renewable energy. India which boasts of the third largest technical and scientific manpower in the world can take up this challenge. The financial resources are also aplenty – a fraction of the huge wealth which is siphoned off by graft and corruption of the ruling elite in South Asia would suffice for this purpose. An alternative life style and consumption pattern which does not gobble up earth’s resources like a glutton is probably the ultimate protection from the existential threat posed by Climate Change to the life and nature on mother earth. The ultimate goal should be Samanvya,i.e., a state of harmony and equilibrium whence there is perfect harmony among and within nations and communities, between nature and man and within nature itself. That is to say that the mother earth evolves into a real Shangri-La ,i.e., a permanently happy planet and not a strategic conflict prone world post Shangri-La Dialogues 2012.

[1] For details see chapter Continental Shifts in Rammanohar Lohia, Wheel of History, A Sindhu Publication, Bombay, India,1985.

[2] The Hindu, New Delhi, May 30,2011.

[3] South Asian Economic Outlook-2009, SAARC Secretariat, Kathmandu,2009, p.15.

[4] Prithvi Sukta in Atharva Veda quoted in Laxmi Mal Sighvi, Environmental Wisdom in Ancient India, Also see Guha Ramchandra, Environmentalism: A Global History, Oxford University Press, 2000, pp10-25.

[5] Ibid.

[6] For details see Richard A. Mathew, Introduction: Rethinking Security, Global Environmental Change and Human Security: Conceptual and Theoretical Issues Report prepared by: Richard A. Matthew Leah Fraser Global Environmental Change and Human Security Program Office University of California Irvine, November 2002

[7] Banuri Tariq, Human Security in Rethinking Security, Rethinking Development: An Anthology of Papers from Third Annual South Asian NGOs Summit, Sustainable Development Policy Institute, Islamabad, 1996.

[8] Human Development in South Asia 2005: Human security in South Asia, Mahbub ul Haq Human Development Centre, Oxford University Press, 2006, p.1.

[9] Ibid p.7

[10] Ibid, pp1-2.

[11] Weber Thomas, Gandhi and Deep Ecology in Journal of Peace Research, Vol 36, No.3, May 1999.

[12] Ibid.

[13] Climate Change 2007: IPCC Fourth Assessment Report, IPCC, Geneva, Switzerland, p30.

[14] Ibid, p.32.

[15] Sinha, Uttam Kumar, Climate Change: Process and Politics, Strategic Analysis, Vol.34, No.6, November 2010, IDSA, Routledge, New Delhi, p.858.

[16] Agenda 21, UN Economic and Social Development, Division for Sustainable Development, http://www.un.org/esa/dsd/agenda21.

[17] Report of The United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (Rio de Janeiro, 3-14June1992),http://www.un.org/documents/ga/confl5126-1 annex1.htm

[18] Kyoto Protocol to United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, United Nations, 1998,http://www.un.org

[19] Down To Earth, January 1-15,2011, p.28.

[20] Economic Times, New Delhi: New Answers to Climate Problems, July 11, 2011

[21] Kathmandu Declaration of the Heads of State or Government of the Member Countries of SAARC issued on November 4, 1987 Declaration of SAARC Summits (1985-1998), SAARC Secretariat, Kathmandu, Nepal, August 2001,p.30.

[22] Regional Study on the causes and consequences of natural disasters and the Protection and Preservation of the Environment, SAARC Disaster Management Centre, New Delhi, 2008, pp382-83.

[23] Ibid.

[24] Summit Declaration, Fourth SAARC Summit, SAARC Secretariat, Kathmandu, Nepal, August 2001.

[25] SAARC Workshop Climate Change and Disasters: Emerging Trends and Future Strategies 21-22 August 2008 Kathmandu, Nepal.

[26] Declaration of Tenth SAARC Summit, Colombo, July,1998, Declaration of SAARC Summits (1985-1998), SAARC Secretariat, Kathmandu, Nepal, August 2001

[27] Decration of Fourteenth SAARC Summit, New Delhi, April 2007. http://www.saarc.sec.org, p.1

[28] SAARC Workshop: Climate Change and Disasters – Emerging Trends and Future Strategies, 21-22 August 2008, Kathmandu, Nepal, SAARC Disaster Management Centre, New Delhi.

[29] Sixteenth SAARC Summit Thimpu, 28-29 April 2010, Thimpu Statement on Climate Change,http://www.saarc.sec.org

[30] Seth Pravin, The Eco-Gandhi and Ecological Movements.

[31] Policy Guidelines and Charter of Principles, World Social Forum. Downloaded from http//: wsfindia.org

Dr Suman Sharma

Asociate Professor,

Department of Political Science

Motilal Nehre College(University of Delhi),India

sumandmg@hotmail.com; suman110011@gmail.com

D.M.Gautam

NIOR Civil Servant

(At present a financial adviser with Indian Railways,Government of India)

dmgautam@hotmail.com; dmgsakshi@gmail.com

February 2013

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Churning the Earth: Making of Global India

By Ashish Kothari and Aseem Shrivastava

We bring to you Kothari’s speech at the 2012 Lovraj Kumar Memorial Lecture (LKML), made a couple of months back. Kothari, one of the authors of the book, spoke about the rampant environmental degradation in pursuit of the dystopic dream of globalisation that the Indian elite is currently enamoured with.

Ironically, India’s current PM Dr. Manmohan Singh, the father of the post-1991 reforms, had as the finance minister in 1992 delivered that year’s Lovraj Kumar Memorial Lecture. Dr. Singh had then said development needs and environmental concerns should be in harmony. He had claimed economic reforms would help the state raise the kind of resources required for environmental protection.

Ashish Kothari, founder of environmental group Kalpavriksh, gave a talk on his book ‘Churning the Earth: Making of Global India’ that he has co-authored with environmental economist Aseem Shrivastava at the Lovraj Kumar Memorial Lecture organized by the Society for Promotion of Wastelands Development (SPWD).

In ‘Churning the Earth: The Making of Global India’, Kothari and Shrivastava argue that the current development model was unstable and needed fundamental changes.

In his talk, Kothari said the current development paradigm was being achieved at the cost of weakening of environmental regulations. He said the Indian society has paid a heavy ecological price for the apparent record breaking economic growth of the last decade. “Do we have ways that not just confront the current crisis that globalised development has caused but also provide answers to human well being?” he asked.

He established how our planners are besotted with a single minded pursuit of double digit economic growth rate despite a mountain of evidence that this growth has not trickled down to the millions of India’s poor. But our political leaders and economists have continued to assert that economic growth has to happen at any cost. And they are actually quite right for it does happen at any cost.

But that cost is actually hidden from our decisions makers in North Block and Yojana Bhavan. Kothari cited how in the last twenty years much more is being fished out of Indian territorial waters than ever before. Big operators with mechanized trawlers have moved in threatening livelihoods of millions of small fishermen and putting immense stress on sensitive marine ecosystems. The result is that fishing stock in our territorial waters has declined.

Similarly, unregulated mining has had horrific ecological and social impacts. Thousands of acres of forest land is currently under mining reconnaissance. Central and state governments have become liberal with giving permissions for reconnaissance and exploration of mining with the result that 15 per cent of India’s land mass is under mining reconnaissance at present. A company can today get up to 50000 sq km of area for mining exploration. The 2008-09 mining policy actually suggests that if a mining company is given exploration and reconnaissance license then they should be automatically considered for undertaking mining in the area if they find minerals can be extracted viably.

Analysis of information released by Ministry of Environment and Forests, Centre for Science and Environment and later by Kalpavriksh indicates that there has been a significant increase in the rate at which forest land is being diverted for mining and other development projects. All of this is happening while the government is talking of the need to harmonize environment and development concerns and to protect the environment for future generations.

Plastic production and its use has increased multiple times. The per capita plastic consumption has gone up significantly. India produces 5,500 tonnes of plastic waste every day. In 2012, it produced 8 lakh tonnes of electronic waste.

In April 2009, there were 403 million mobile users in India; a little less than half of them did not have bank accounts. This goes on to show the consumption pattern of electronic goods and the manner in which redundancy is built into the electronic systems so that phones go out of fashion every two-three years and new ones need to be bought.

The Supreme Court had in the year 1997 issued an order banning the import of hazardous wastes into the country. Yet, toxic e-wastes find a way into the country under the garb of recyclable wastes. While it is widely known that we are facing biodiversity loss, we lack robust data on this. Some years ago many scientists were of the opinion that the rate of India’s biological diversity loss and threat of extinction ranged from 10% to 65% based on varying projections. This, Kothari said, was extremely alarming.

According to a 2008 report “India’s ecological footprint: A business perspective”, produced by Global Footprint Network (GFN) and Confederation of Indian Industries (CII), India has the third largest ecological footprint in the world next only to USA and China. The report also said that we were using nearly twice the sustainable level of natural resources that the country can provide. And that the capacity of nature to sustain humans has declined sharply, by almost half, in the last four decades or so.

Kothari said our developmental-ism was clearly unsustainable. The adverse impact on us as human beings was evident in terms of loss of livelihoods of people who directly depend on natural ecosystems, like fishing and farming communities and tribal people.

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Well Being By Eating Well

A Report from Chittoor District (Andhra Pradesh)

Presented at the Conference ‘Tracking Hunger’

(Delhi: 25-26 February 2013)

Dr. Uma Shankari

(This piece of writing is not a ‘scientific’ study of the village; it is informed by 25 years of farming, living, observing, and dialoguing with the community in a village in Chittoor District: Author)

Agriculture is about food. This is to state the obvious, but it looks like everyone has forgotten it. The farmers, the planners and the consumers (those who eat food - is there anyone who doesn’t eat?) have all come to believe that farming is about making money. Money is of course important, but it is a by-product of agriculture. The primary goal of agriculture is to provide ourselves with good, nourishing and safe variety of foods. But alas, these are times when we have to state the obvious.

Coming to the report on a village in Chittoor District of Andhra Pradesh, one can divide the time span of the last 50 to 100 years into three periods:

1. Bullock period - pre-electric pump-set

2. Borewell period

3. NREGA period

But before we go into the three periods, I need to give a brief background of the terrain, climate and social structure. The village and the district in general is part of the Eastern Ghats, and wherever you stand, you would see small and big hillocks, near and far, within one to three kilometers. Tiny hamlets and villages (20 to 100 families) and farms are located in the small valleys in between the hills, covered with forests. The district enjoys the benefit of two monsoons, intermittent rainfall of around 700 to 900 mm for six months - June to November - and the climate is cool through the year except for two months.

The social structure is constituted of peasant castes like Reddis, Kammas and Kapus; trading-cum-peasant castes like Balijas; service castes like barbers, washermen, potters, etc., and Dalit castes like Malas and Madigas. Each of these castes lives in well-defined separate spaces - either separate hamlets or in a group of houses of their own in one part of the village; only larger villages have two or three castes living next to each other. Hence, there are Kamma hamlets and they would not be found living with Reddi hamlets; Malas would not live with Madigas; and so on. Brahmins are quite rare and Karnam (or the village accountant caste) often officiates as the priest in rituals of non-Brahmin families. Today, most families in the village have some land, including the Dalits, due to the program (started in the British period, but executed actively in the 1970s by the state government) of “assigning” government lands to poor people, particularly the Dalits.

An important thing to remember in the context of nutrition and health, is that farmers have a certain mindset; if they grow something they will eat it, or if some food item is freely available in the vicinity, they will collect it and eat it; otherwise they will go without it; but they do not usually buy and eat. This is of course also changing, but it still continues to a large extent, even in the highly monetized context of today. For instance, if the cow goes dry, they will go without milk. A rupee saved is a rupee earned. There is reluctance to spend cash on food. Even from the PDS, they take minimum food items; they will take full quota of rice, but just one kilo of pulses, one kilo of oil, and half kilo of sugar. Cash is meant to be spent on “luxury” items, or on needs which cannot be fulfilled locally, i.e., allopathic doctors, English medium education, college fees, plastic/aluminum/steel vessels, machinery, foot-wear, clothes, mobile phones, motorbikes, house construction, etc. Therefore, even if a son is earning comfortably, the money would be saved to build a house, to perform marriages, to buy gold, or for health emergencies, but not on food. The only exception to this rule is the meat on Sundays and festivals; that is readily bought and eaten.

1. Bullock Period (Pre-Electric Pump-Set - Upto 1970s):

I am stressing on water as much as on agriculture, since they are intimately related like man and woman - some plants need a lot of water and others less, but no plant can survive without water/moisture.

a. People reported that there is plenty of water in ponds, tanks, lakes, fields, wells and soil. Wells supplemented surface irrigation, wells had water at the depth of 30 to 60 ft. Only one-third of the land got assured irrigation for wet crops like paddy and sugarcane, and these were occupied by dominant castes; the rest were rainfed lands, but soil moisture was good, and yields were good too.

b. Wide variety of crops grown in both wet and dry lands:

· Paddy, sugarcane, coconut, vegetables, under assured irrigation through tanks and wells.

· Millets: jowar, bajra, ragi, maize, korra (foxtail), aarikalu, etc.

· Pulses: arhar, broadbean (only seed is cooked), cowpea, horse gram, green and black gram.

· Oil seeds: peanut, sesame.

· Vegetables: brinjal (a few varieties of brinjal), bhindi (two varieties), gourds of various kinds - pumpkin, ridge gourd, bitter gourd, bottle gourd, different kinds of beans - cluster bean, creeper bean (a few varieties); some experimented with beetroots, carrots, radish, cauliflower, and cabbage. A dozen or more varieties of green leaves, berries and fruits were freely available in nature.

· Herbs and spices: chilies, onions, garlic, turmeric, ginger, betel leaves, tobacco.

· Milk and meats: Meat was a highly preferred food, but exactly how much a person got to eat is anybody’s guess. Every family, even the landless Dalit agricultural workers, kept cows and bullocks for ploughing, water lifting and milk; buffaloes were kept for milk. Since milk was not sold, there was plenty of buttermilk, after ghee had been extracted. Sheep were raised for dung as sheep manure was highly valued, and sheep meat was of course highly appreciated in Andhra Pradesh especially during special occasions. Poultry was raised for eggs and meat. Fish was available for free in paddy fields and ponds. Dalit agricultural workers ate beef quite frequently. The meat of wild pigs, deer and rabbit was a luxury for hunters. Specific communities/families ate some specific meats; the caste of bangle sellers ate cat meat, the nari kuravars ate birds, some Dalit families ate field rats and termites during monsoons, many families ate mushrooms during rainy season.

The point to be noted here is that although many Dalit families did not have land and were dependent on upper castes for employment, there was enough food because of three factors:

i. The main mode of payment was in kind (crop and food).

ii. The poor, Dalit families too kept livestock.

iii. There was not much of a market for everything, so most of the produce was consumed locally.

iv. Many foods were available for free.

v. Food was readily shared - anybody who came asking for food would be given either cooked food or grain, nobody would be turned away. This opinion was confirmed by Dalit families - that there was enough food; what was in short supply was land and cash.

Cash payment was very rare; clothes were given by the employers. Since cash was scarce, even the farmers had only two or three pairs of clothes. Farmers who had surplus produce sold the produce and bought gold which was a status symbol, given to daughters as dowry, but it was also a fixed deposit which could be encashed at any time for emergencies, to buy land, to raise money for construction work, etc.

There was year round cropping. Starting from June, paddy would be sown in wet lands; groundnut, millets, pulses in rainfed lands; mango and coconut gardens were ploughed and sown with legumes like black gram or horse gram, to loosen up and fertilise the soil. Weeding and watering these crops kept the people busy till October-November when they were harvested; the second crop was planned – legumes in rainfed lands, chilies and vegetables in lands with water; sugarcane in wet lands. Another round of watering and weeding till March, followed by harvesting. In April and May farmers are busy harvesting tamarind, de-seeding and cleaning, which keeps them occupied for two to three weeks, followed by harvestingpongamia (karanj) and neem seeds for oil (karanj oil was mainly used for lighting lamps) - both of which grow wildly and can also be used as fence crops. Then came mango harvesting, and even while that was going on till the end of June, paddy lands were being prepared for the next season. In between, coconuts were harvested and oil was extracted; ropes were made out of ambadi; cows and sheep were coming to heat or calving, etc. I found the farmers and their wives working hard all the time, all through the year, the only difference was that they were not rushing like the city folks, time was measured not by clocks but by the Sun and the Moon, by seasons and festivals. For 30 odd acres of ours in which there were only seven acres of field crops of annuals, we employed five workers on a monthly salary basis, and one or two families as sharecroppers at 50:50 shares, and 10 to 30 workers on daily wage basis for weeding, harvesting and other such work. Of these, many were women workers.

2. The Borewell Period (1970s to 1997):

The electric pump-set to lift water was truly, literally a watershed for the village. The 1970s not only witnessed electrification of pump-sets but also introduced the concept of cropping for cash. In our area sugarcane, milk, meat and mango became the main cash crops.

From then on, water started depleting gradually but surely. Basically, the fact of the matter is that before the electric pump-set came into being, the discharge was roughly equal or even less than recharge. In this region, because of the hard rock geological formation, water did not percolate too deep except in certain pockets/blocks, and typically in good rainfall years, open wells would get filled beyond capacity and overflow, while streams would flow for about three to six months, filling pits and ponds, lakes and farms, and recharging the wells. In fact, keeping the farms from water-logging was an issue and care was taken to drain out the water from them. Periodic droughts were also common, people do talk about a seven-year drought in the ‘40s, but much more commonly discussed is the abundance of water. Only one-third of arable lands received assured irrigation through lakes and wells, water was drawn by bullock power, from wells 30 to 50 feet deep, to grow wet crops like paddy and sugarcane. The rest were rainfed lands growing millets, pulses and oil seeds, and tree crops like coconuts and mango, but since the soil moisture in rainfed lands was of healthy levels, there were good yields and no one complained of water shortage.

By the late 1980s, borewell failures were already becoming a reality, just within fifteen years after electric pump-sets were introduced. This is the period we went to the village (1985). Cash needs were increasing. Wages and payments to workers included both food and cash, roughly half-and-half. Milk cooperatives were opened (1983) and milk became a cash crop. Since then milk practically disappeared from farmers’ diets, except for tea and coffee. Goats replaced sheep, and broilers replaced backyard poultry. There was still a fair amount of rainfed groundnut, millets and pulses, as well as paddy, supplemented by the PDS.

Look at the following maps:

(The maps are from a study of the village: Community Mapping and Empowerment: Case Study of Water Management in a South Indian Village by Nagesh Kolagani, Dr. Palaniappan Ramu and Dr. Koshy Varghese, Indian Institute of Technology Madras, Chennai 600036, India. Presented at the 3rd International Open Source GIS Conference, Velp, The Netherlands, June 25-28, 2012.)

Even as water was steadily going down and under, an additional disaster struck: a seven-year drought between 1997-2004! There was neither crop, nor food, nor cash! It was a period of mass migration. This is also the period when opportunities in cities and towns were opening up. A few things happened in this period:

a. Farmers and farm workers began to realize that there is future in agriculture and rural areas, and started educating their children and sending them away from home to residential schools with a vengeance. Committed family labour became scarce.

b. Sensing water problems and worker shortage, farmers also started shifting to perennials like mango, and to cows and milk. Milk gave them short-term cash flows and mango long-term lump sum money.

c. The DWCRA or self-help thrift groups of women got started and made a big change in the rural economy by putting some money in women’s hands and putting some self-confidence in women’s hearts. Some of the money hopefully goes into food!

3. Now Comes the NREGA Period (2006 – the present):

The district government introduced and supported on a very large scale mango plantations in private lands as part of NREGA without any assurance of forward linkages. NREGA also hiked up the daily wages for workers from Rs. 50 to 100, to now Rs. 200, and this made the farmers decide in favour of mango, as it is a less labor-intensive crop. The problem with perennials, unlike annuals, is once you plant them, you cannot go back to any other crop; whereas annual field crops gave flexibility to shift to different crops as per the demands of the market. Yet another problem with mango is that you have to water it during summer for up to seven years, till the plants are established, as well as to get good yields. Therefore, another round of borewells, pipes and drips started off, depleting ground water further. Last year, a desperate farmer drilled 6 borewells without striking water, and two more borewells were dug down to 700 ft. without striking water. Farmers are getting weary of the borewell, but do not know how to continue farming without it.

Most farmers have become milk farmers; they sow jowar or fodder grass for cows on a small piece of land, graze them here and there on naturally grown grass, and buy feed. Milk production it seems has already reached a “glut” (so the milk companies claim), and they are refusing to raise the price of milk, in fact even lowering it (!) even as farmers who sell 4 to 8 litres of milk a day hardly keep 200 ml. to half a litre of milk for tea and buttermilk, or none at all. The average milk availability in Andhra Pradesh is 280 ml. per day, but the average milk consumption is 100 ml.

Today, typically a farmer is a male, 30 to 50 years of age, with a motorbike, one or two cows, a mango garden and a wife (if she has not gone away to the town to educate her children). He goes about doing practically everything (a to z) without any help from his children, cannot afford workers, is jittery about the prices of milk and mango, as usual indebted to private money lenders, and short of committing suicide. The farmers endlessly discuss among themselves the bleak present and future, pitching all their hopes on educating their children, hoping they will be able to go to places. Educational institutions are laughing their way to the banks.

In the meantime, landless agricultural workers have fled even faster to the cities, as they cannot remain on hungry stomachs. Mango plantations cannot give them year round work, and MNREGA is able to give employment for hardly 20 to 40 days in a year (the state average of Andhra Pradesh is 60 days per year, but it is estimated that probably 20% of the workers do not go to work at all, and their wages are being claimed by some middlemen). In our village, MNREGA typically happens for about two to three weeks in summer, and that too with all the corruption, nobody knows who is organizing the MNREGA work and whether and when they will get work. Remittances from brothers and children working in the cities are becoming common, thanks to Manmohanomics. Those remaining in the village go around in groups as contract labour, to nearby villages, and sometimes even as far as the neighbouring districts, wherever there is work. There are no takers for sharecropping since daily wage is more profitable and less risky.

With food inflation ranging in double digits since the last three years (although food grain production is all time high at 250 million tons), people have become dependent on PDS as an important source of food items. The PDS gives them 10 days’ supply of rice for a song, at Rs. 2 per kilo. Almost everyone has a BPL card (as well as a job card!). The rest they buy, reluctantly, and “adjust” with minimum quantities. At this juncture direct cash payment instead of food is a cruel joke on the people. More cash flows have meant more alcoholism among men. Not only the women but also men are against it, but are uncertain about how to voice their dissent and whether it will be heard.

Let us look at some state figures: Gross State Domestic Product (GSDP) of Andhra Pradesh grew at an average rate 8.2% per annum during the last decade, i.e., 2002-2012, while agricultural sector grew at 4.6%, while industry and service sectors grew at 9.5% and 9.3% respectively during this period. There are regional differences too, for example, per capita income of North Telangana and Rayalseema regions have been consistently below the state average since 1990s.

As for nutrition levels, around one-third of the children under 5 years of age in the state are underweight, about 43% of the children in the state are classified as stunted, and 12% of them are classified as wasted. Around three-fourths of the children in the state are found to be anaemic. The state had witnessed a marginal reduction of 4 percentage points in underweight children in the state. Andhra Pradesh has a share of 3% of underweight children at the national level. The nutritional status among the women in the state shows that more than one-third of them are below 18.5 BMI (Body Mass Index). Between 1998-99 and 2005-06, there is a marginal decline in the percentage of women who are having BMI below 18.5 – a four percentage points decline. Increasing incidence of anaemia among women is an alarming concern. In 1998-99 almost half of the women in the state who were anaemic were in the reproductive age group (15-49); and it increased to two-thirds in 2005-06! In Andhra Pradesh there are about 90,000 Anganwadi centres, yet its impact on under-nutrition among women and children is not evident.

What questions are being thrown up by the above write-up?

Should I grow crops or should I buy food? Farming has become so unviable because of cost of cultivation being higher than returns resulting in year-on-year losses, that many farmers feel you save money keeping the land fallow and buying the food rather than growing it. But if you do not cultivate you have no income. Therefore, it is a catch 22 situation, if you grow you lose, if you do not grow you lose even more! Joan Robinson said, “the misery of being exploited by capitalists is nothing compared to the misery of not being exploited at all.”

2.We are moving from self-grown food to purchased food, whether from the PDS or from the open market. The question is, how much nutrition can the market or the PDS deliver? Obviously, the PDS even in the best scenario will have limited reach. The ICDS are doing their bit and people are using them but can they deliver enough? Poor people who have the resources and the knowledge to produce food are becoming consumers at the mercy of the market, which is fine if the market practices are fair, if all the citizens have equal access, can afford the prices, and are organized well enough to influence and play the market. The question is: Do these conditions exist?

3.Women farmers were doing a lot of work: planting/sowing, weeding, harvesting, and most importantly, food processing at the homestead level, including cooking. After all, no one can eat paddy, brinjal or tuvar straight from the plant. They have to be processed and cooked. A lot of agriculture operations were at the homestead level. These were operations on a huge scale, but they go unrecognized, just because women do it. Increasingly, food processing is being done by machinery, in the mills. If food crops are not grown and processed locally, they have neither employment, nor cash, nor food. Transport costs and profit margins would force food purchases to the absolute minimum. Should we not bring back crop and food processing to rural areas to the hands of women? Light machinery, technology – friendliness, and cooperative as well as private management of enterprises have to be promoted.

4.Perennial-horticultural-industrial crops in the place of annual-food crops are happening with the active support of the governments. Is this a foolish thing to do? In the last five years, the number of children going for higher education has jumped from 30 million to 60 million. They will all want employment in towns and cities. Can the government generate employment to this scale? Decadal growth of workforce in agriculture has predictably declined from 2.28 to - 0.37 to -1.32 from 1983-94 to now, but the rate of growth in employment in the non-agricultural sector has also declined from 3.08 to 3.22 to -0.47. Hence, people coming out of agriculture and rural areas, what is happening to them?

5.At the national level, shortage of pulses and oils leading to imports is a well-known fact. However, if this trend continues, would we become a net importer of food? Many countries, after they have taken to export-oriented growth, have become net-importers of food. Are we moving towards the same situation? 250 million tons of food grain production is a consolation, but can this continue, with land being diverted for non-agricultural purposes, agricultural workers fleeing to cities, and water shortage becoming worse?

6.There is a view that areas which are suffering from water shortage should use their scarce water resources for industry, forestry, and other services and domestic purpose, rather than for growing food, which takes up on an average 1,000 litres to produce one kg. of food. In fact, this is rapidly happening even in our place. Farmers are finding it more profitable to sell water for drinking and construction than to grow food. Should the supply of food be left to better water-endowed regions? This is what we did to Punjab and Haryana. However, today they too are witnessing acute water shortage due to unsustainable use of ground water. There is wisdom in using rainfall to the best use to produce less-water-intensive crops, like millets and pulses, and we really need to strengthen our rainfed agriculture.

7.But the other question is: Why import food and therefore water as well, why not move people to uninhabited areas with less water stress? Look at the following maps: water stress is happening typically in areas with very high population densities (except deserts). (Source: Water: Adapting to a New Normal, by Sandra Postel, in The Post Carbon Reader: Managing the 21st Century’s Sustainability Crises, Richard Heinberg and Daniel Lerch, eds. Healdsburg, CA: Watershed Media, 2010.)

8.I am not suggesting, go grab land in Africa, but what about uninhabited places with very low populations? Should this become a part of WTO negotiations? Right now unregulated land grab by Indian private companies is happening, especially in Africa, and civil society groups are protesting both in India and in Africa. Why not bring them under some regulation at the global level?

9.When people grew food, there was also more sharing of food. The first thing people would say at any time of the day to a visitor is “come and eat”. And there was always extra food at home. Food was never wasted, the leftovers from one meal were eaten at the next meal, and if there was still some thing left, it was given to beggars, cows, dogs, cats, birds, etc. These days women calculate and cook just enough food for the family, because everything has to be purchased and the incomes are meager and uncertain. Beggars have become rare; they too seem to have moved to greener pastures, to the traffic signals in the cities, where people in cars can be generous donors.

10.Cultural attitudes obviously influence nutrition and health in communities. Women and children are often victims of such cultural restrictions. Very often illnesses are traced to what one has eaten, and when combined with poverty, these restrictions can be very harmful. Brinjal, groundnut, eggs and chicken are often forbidden foods, at certain stages of life, whereas chily-spicy food is seen as good for better digestion, and a little curry with a lot of rice is the usual pattern. For instance, we have been eating brown rice since twenty odd years but we have not been able to convince others to do so. Similarly, the youth have lost touch with the tradition of eating millets, since millets are not grown anymore; and they are considered less prestigious. Manual labour has always had a low value in our culture. People are also working less, and on less hard tasks. And therefore, eating less too. How to inculcate dignity of manual labour? How to encourage better eating traditions in this context of deep-seated cultural attitudes?

11.Corruption and inefficiencies in the PDS is making the GOI to think seriously of cash support. I think they could certainly experiment with direct cash for kerosene, but not food. This would be a cruel joke on the poor people of India in many areas, who are becoming more and more dependent on the PDS and on purchased food for their food supply. Instead, there is a case in the short-term for supplying more through the PDS rather than less, as in fact some states are doing already - giving pulses and oil. There has been a long-standing demand that locally grown nutri-cereals (millets) and pulses should be supplied through the PDS, but that has not come to be.

In the long term, everyone would agree that we should not imitate the way of Midas and that we should provide ourselves good safe enough food, but the question is: can it be done by starving the farmers?

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Liquid Assets on Steep Slopes

Anupam Mishra

Renowned Gandhian Anupam Mishra on how one man inspired a small Himalayan village to confront and convince government officials of the folly of pursuing their plans to cut down forests. Today, 136 villages in Uttarakhand have followed ecological warrior Sachidanand Bharati's lead to conserve and regenerate their forests, their traditional water bodies and rivers, their pastures and sources of fuelwood but above all it has won them back their dignity.

“The water in springs of my hills is cool. Do not migrate from this land, o my beloved.”

This village is quite small – not even large enough to make a mark on any map of the Himalaya. Located 6,000 feet above sea level, it is removed from the rest of the country. Even the stream flowing deep in the valley seems a little less than a thin line that gets obscured by sheets of rain and blankets of fog. In the central square of a village called Daund, deep in the heart of the Indian Himalayas, a group of 15 young girls danced to this lyric. The villagers sat watching, undeterred by the heavy June showers of the monsoon that had just arrived. Among those who had gathered, were many young and old women, their fathers, brothers, husbands, and sons having spent several springs in pardes , which literally means “foreign” but in this case means “the plains of northern India”. There were also old men, retired to the hills after spending years of working in the plains. On drenched woven cotton rugs sat young children – those most likely to migrate out of the hills. Did the lyrics of the dancers' songs have the pull to stop mass migration from this Himalayan village to cities like Delhi?

If your curiosity compels you to seek out this village, you first need to journey to that part of the western Himalaya that was carved out of the country's most populous state, Uttar Pradesh, and made into the new province of Uttarakhand. When you reach Jim Corbett National Park, along the Ramganga River, travel upstream and you will hit the Doodhatoli Range, rising up to 11,000 feet.

Doodhatoli means ‘land of milk’, a name that characterizes the ecology here in these pastures above the tree line. Nestled in this range is Daund village. Here the clouds recede, but the water does not. The upper reaches send it down with velocity. Every drop erodes a little bit of the soil and carries it into the stream that joins the Ramganga and makes the soil into the silt of Corbett National Park.

The dance troupe performing in Daund packs up its instruments and prepares for the next stop on its road show. Today it is Daund, tomorrow the village of Dulmot, then Janadriya or Ufrainkhal. This is no vaudeville troupe. It does feature a few dancers, singers, musicians, and country-made musical instruments. What the show does not feature is hundreds of implements like spades and picks that labour harder than the troupe to slow down the water gushing downhill, to hold together the soil – all this to revive the forest and farming that has suffered years of neglect. The instruments – and the implements – are attempting to bring back the melody and the rhythm of ecology to the cacophony of mindless development that has overwhelmed the Himalaya.

This alignment of culture and ecology started in the village of Ufrainkhal, in the Pauri Garhwal district of the province of Uttarakhand. That was 25 years ago. Today, it spans 136 villages. Its aim: creating an atmosphere of conserving ecology, to get people to rediscover that their lives cannot advance without such an improvement. That includes getting them to tend to their forests, their water sources, their pastures, their fuel sources, and their dignity.

Sachidanand Bharati is the leader of this troupe. He teaches at the local college. His own education, however, was in the neighbouring district, best known for its Chipko (Hug the Trees) movement.

In the early 1970s, some of the neighbouring villagers had confronted contractors with permits to log their surrounding forests. The villagers knew well that hill slopes do not obey government land records. If the forest department’s land was deforested, they would face landslides, flash floods, and, eventually water scarcity. To save their homes, villagers protested against the logging by wrapping their arms around surrounding trees, literally hugging them. The contractors lost their nerve in the face of the entire villages showing the kind of non-violent commitment that Mohandas Gandhi’s troops showed during the struggle for independence from British rule. Soon after, the Chipko movement became a symbol of popular environmental conservation in the face of the state’s ecological short-sightedness.

During his college years, Bharati got a crash course in environmental management as an associate of Chipko leader Chandi Prasad Bhatt.

He experienced firsthand how a popular non-violent movement could both stop deforestation – the government was impelled to scrap the logging leases and declare a decade-long moratorium on logging – and inspire people to plant more trees, to regenerate their forest. His efforts resulted in a student group, whose name, translated into English, means ‘Friends of the Trees’.

Bharati graduated from college in 1979 with a realization that protest and constructive efforts go hand in hand. He returned home to find that the state’s forest department had declared a logging moratorium in the village as a result of the Chipko movement, but had granted fresh logging leases in the forests around the neighbouring village. The contractors were eyeing fir trees (Abies concolor, a slow growing species that supports a diversity of life in its undergrowth).

Bharati’s training, tact and temperament were suited to this challenge. He got together some friends and went from village to village, talking to people in a calm voice that persuaded but did not agitate. Villagers could see the sense in the simple message the local boy delivered, which was essential for those living in the Himalayan ecosystem. Although the forest might stand on government land, its felling would bring destruction to their doorstep. His message continued: if we stand together, the forest will remain standing. His tone and delivery – as well as the truth of his words – resonated with the villagers.

However, dealing with the government officials – known for their arrogance and corruption required tact. Bharati’s calm approach, backed by the strength of the support he had mobilized, persuaded a senior official to send up a team to see if the terrain was suitable for logging. The government faced what the villagers had encountered shortly before: a man armed with truth. The inquiry team agreed with Bharati’s claim. The logging leases were scrapped.

The villagers learned two lessons from Bharati even before he took up a teacher’s job: One, a united village could resist bureaucratic power and reverse unfavourable government decisions. Two, if the villagers could prevent ecological destruction, they could also join forces to regenerate their forests. Bharati decided to hold a two-day environment camp, inviting neighbouring villagers.

There was no road going to the village then (there is an unpaved one now). No means of communication, no funds to gather the people, spread far and wide across difficult terrain. Additionally, those who came would have to be fed and lodged. Bharati wrote a letter to New Delhi’s Gandhi Peace Foundation, which had been the first to report on and support the Chipko movement. The response was quick: a money order for Rs 1,000 (at that time about $70).

July 1980 saw the first environment camp in Doodhatoli mountains. Villagers reported on the state of the surrounding forests, exchanging notes on legal and illegal logging that had carried on silently. The state of Doodhatoli’s forests was no longer secret. The camp ended with the planting of seedlings and saplings. The camp had also planted an idea, although the hands planting the saplings did know that one day the idea would grow into a large tree under which many other constructive ideas would germinate.

Doodhatoli Lok Vikas Sangathan was formed in March 1982, a small organization with no budget. Bharati’s approach was written into the group’s charter. It would not ask for government or foreign funds but would rely on the resources of the people whose survival depended on the hill ecology. It would take the organization another 13 years to take up water conservation on a larger scale. In the beginning, it was primarily about forests, the forest department nurseries offered saplings of commercially viable trees like pine, which are of no use to the hill ecology or to the village economy, which required people to collect seeds. Children and women were recruited for the job – for no payment and no benefits. Volunteers knew the dividend would accrue sometime in the future. Nurseries require water, which was becoming scarce, especially in the summer months, when seeds germinate.

Summer in these hills is the season of forest fires, primarily because of the pine trees the forest department had planted for its sap, which it harvested for turpentine. Pine needles stack up on the floor and ignite with the slightest spark, which sets hill after hill ablaze. The fires here also consume the natural forests, which nurture more diversity than pine plantations and hold healthy levels of water in the soil. The villagers reeled under a vicious cycle: lack of soil moisture made the forest vulnerable to fires, and fires smoked out the trees that could hold moisture in the soil. Breaking this cycle required an engineering intervention.

The local boy decided to look in the nearby area. He had read about age-old water conservation systems in the Himalaya, which varied according to the slopes. Cultured over the centuries, these were the work of people who had observed the interplay of water, soil, vegetation, and gravity. The answer lay closer than they had imagined, in the village’s name: Ufrainkhal. While ‘Ufrain’ is the name of a goddess, the suffix ‘khal’ refers to a type of pool characteristic of this region. It is smaller than a taal (lake) but bigger than a chaal (a series of very small pools along a slope). Several villages and towns in this region carry such suffixes, showing that habitation was built around water conservation – a village in the neigbouring Tehri Garhwal district is called Sahastratal, which means ‘1,000 lakes’.

The villagers, though, had forgotten the relevance of this nomenclature, the relevance of pools in the names of their habitat, and the pools’ relevance to their survival. For this, they paid a heavy price by way of land and forest degradation. Floods and drought had become a part of the annual cycle; and soil erosion an everyday affair. When villagers had even forgotten the meaning of their village name, there was no hope of finding the method of making these bodies of water. With no examples to follow, Bharati decided to experiment. The people who had devised the form of these pools were his own ancestors.

Bharati began with the smallest form: the chaal. It was suitable for the steep slopes of Ufrainkhal, as its small size allowed water to be retained in small quantities, without succumbing to gravity’s demands. The Doodhatoli group experimented with varying shapes and sizes in the early 1990s. People accustomed to soil and water management in their fields did not take long to settle on a calibrated proportion for the chains of pools they had in mind. From 1993 to 1998, the pools they had envisioned became a reality on the slopes.

The first dramatic impact was on a small river that had once flowed down to the valley. Several years ago – nobody can remember when – the name of this river was changed to Sukharaula, meaning ‘dry channel’. In 1994, water once again appeared in the riverbed and ran for a few months after the rainy season. Each subsequent year saw greater and longer water retention in the river. By 2001, it had acquired the shape of a full-fledged seasonal river. They called it Gadganga, combining the name of the village on its back, Gadkharak, with that of the holy Ganga. This rivulet is a tributary of the river Pasol. Its newfound robustness added to the Pasol’s flow.

While the villagers invested efforts in creating the pools that retained large quantities of water, nature responded with its invisible efforts. The vegetation began changing around the villages where chaals were dug – in the forests and in the fields. The vegetation multiplied the water retaining effect of chaals.

In 2000-01, the newly created state of Uttarakhand faced severe drought, which exacerbated the annual phenomenon of forest fires. Up to 80,000 hectares of forests burned in the state that year. However, the villages in and around Ufrainkhal did not burn due to their new water-pooling practices. Fortified with the additional moisture in the soil, the healthy vegetation offered stiff resistance to fire; so did the villagers. Yet three women who worked with the Doodhatoli Lok Vikas Sangathan died fighting fires in government forests. They had taken water from their chaals to put out the fires because they feared the inferno would soon reach their lands and forests. The hundreds of villagers who fought the fires here – like the three women who paid the ultimate price – did not have the benefit of a privileged education, but they had learned an ecological lesson that consistently eludes highly educated people in the parts of world considered far more developed (think of the forest fires in California, Greece and Australia).

The villagers’ efforts benefited a government scheme, too. The state government had installed pipes to supply drinking water to villages from hilltop springs. Although some water sources dried up, the installations around Ufrainkhal consistently found water to pipe.

A few years earlier the government had built an office building to start a watershed development plan above Ufrainkhal. Bharati wrote a letter to the authorities, saying that the village did not need the government’s largesse as it was able to satisfy its own needs. A government team visited the village and affirmed this claim, and the watershed plan was withdrawn. The building, instead, was used to provide a shed for cattle and goats. The forest in the meantime had begun to do better.

Bharati’s troops have built 12,000 chaals in 136 villages to date. Within these areas there are several patches of thick forests, varying in size from 30 hectares to 300 hectares. In several parts of these forests, the areas, which the villagers have regenerated, are even healthier than the government’s special preserved forests – those of the villagers have a greater diversity of vegetation in them, with several broadleaved trees like oak, alder, rhododendron and fir. The canopy is usually 100 feet high. The ground covering is several inches thick, with a springy texture that makes walking difficult. It is safer to walk the trodden path in these forests for another reason: wild animals thrive in forests regenerated by this rural waterworks compared with the protected forests of the government.

The cadre that has brought about this transformation is well worth an introduction, because Doodhatoli Lok Vikas Sangathan does not have a regular budget, does not have any funding from any government or non-governmental entity, and is not supported by any non-profit organization. Some well-wishers send in a cheque once in a while. The annual expenditure seldom exceeds Rs. 25,000.

The organization does not have any full-time staff, though it works full time; three associates of Bharati’s form the core. There is Devi Dayal, a postman who has to walk through the villages to deliver mail, for there are no automobiles or passable roads here. Along his route, he observes the forests, gathers information, and delivers ecological messages (without charging postage!). There is Dinesh, a medical practitioner trained in the Ayurvedic system of traditional medicine. Like Devi Dayal, his line of work involves meeting many people and talking to them. He wraps medical remedies in messages aimed at healing social and ecological relationships. The quartet is completed by Vikram Singh, who runs a small grocery store in the neighbouring village. His merchandise comes packaged with social provisions, and his shop is a hub of conversation and social exchange in a region where large community halls are impossible to build.

This quartet maintains regular communication with about two dozen volunteers in each village. Invariably, they are women, for the men migrate to the plains for employment. In the work of Doodhatoli Lok Vikas Sangathan, they see hope of a prosperity that would allow their husbands, sons and brothers to stay in the village, much as the chaals retain the water. The thousands of chaals built here and the hundreds of hectares of regenerated forests are their only hope. They guard these waterworks and the forests like mothers guard their broods. They number in the hundreds, though their names are not on any roster.

They have a simple way of handing over forest protection duties to the next shift – typical of how the women here combine music and rhythm in daily chores. The woman in charge of forest protection for the day carries a baton with a string of mini bells tied on top. The sound of the bells works like Morse code across the hill forests. When a woman is done with her shift, she returns to the village and leaves the baton at the doorstep of a neighbour. Whoever sees the baton lying in front of her house takes up the guard duties the following day, no questions asked.

This is the routine. It is broken by the periodic environmental camps, for which all the women turn up. There is song and dance, the same song and dance made stronger by the ecological notes:

“The water in springs of my hills is cool. Do not migrate from this land, o my beloved”.

Born in 1947, Anupam Mishra spent his childhood in Gandhian communities across central India. He moved to Delhi with his family after All India Radio employed his father, a renowned poet, and in 1969 obtained a Master’s Degree in Sanskrit from Delhi University. A Gandhian and environmental activist, Mishra has spent decades in the field of environmental protection and water conservation and is among the most knowledgeable people on traditional water harvesting systems in India.

Mishra has been associated with Gandhi Peace Foundation since its inception and is the winner of the Indira Gandhi National Environment Award (1996). He has written two books on traditional water management and water harvesting systems in India, Aaj Bhi Khare Hain Talaab (Ponds are Still Relevant) and Rajasthan ki Rajat Boonde (The Radiant Raindrops of Rajasthan). Mishra lives in Delhi with his wife and son and edits the periodical Gandhi Marg for Gandhi Peace Foundation.

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Developmentality: The Ruling Faith

Aseem Shrivastava

“The family car cannot drive the poor into the jet age.”

- Ivan Illich, Energy and Equity (1974)

“Prophesy now involves a geographical rather than historical projection; it is space not time that hides consequences from us.”

- John Berger, The Look of Things (1974)

Time was when it took a prophet to know the future of the world. Today, we only need to travel to those parts of the earth which have already suffered the onslaught of capitalist modernity – which have lost their water, soil, forests, birds, animals, ecological balance, people – to know what might await the rest of us whose privileged lifestyles are founded on systematic extraction of resources from “colonized” hinterlands normally invisible to us. It is as though time has spawned spatial dimensions, revealing the contours of the future – if only we know where to look.

Since the very dawn of the industrial revolution, such has been the nature of exploitation and unequal exchanges between town and country, in nations both capitalist and communist, that today city-dwellers can no longer know the true cost of anything that they consume. The countryside subsidizes life in the cities by being forced to pay much of the ecological cost of goods and services whose full social cost of production is never reckoned in market transactions, especially in an era when governments are busy deregulating and promoting corporations. Thanks to the “veil of money” and the market economy; in this whole matter of ecological costs, we are besieged by great ignorance, leading a famous establishment economist to remark recently that:

“The problem of climate change involves a fundamental failure of markets: those who damage others by emitting greenhouse gases generally do not pay…Climate change is a result of the greatest market failure the world has seen…”

The frontier of environmental devastation, hitherto quite far from pockets of urban privilege, is moving in the direction of the cities. The evidence is too vast to deny. What we have done to villages may soon come to haunt city-dwellers. In many cases, such as we saw in Mumbai during the flash floods in July 2005, cities are already under severe ecological pressure. We find ourselves today struggling to slow down the closing movement of the two deadly blades of the global ecological scissors: resource depletion on the one hand, and climate change and pollution on the other. Matters are yet more troubling when one recognises the many smaller ecological scissors which occupy the space between the two gigantic blades, their blades moving ceaselessly towards each other.

The ecological – and social – impact of growth has been such that one is immediately led to ask what its relationship with economic development and human well-being is. Consider a country which has built impressive expressways, airports, shopping plazas and luxury homes at the cost of precipitating ecological havoc either within or beyond its own borders, and having a substantial proportion of its population living in poverty, without access to adequate nutrition, clean drinking water, sanitation, affordable health, housing and education. Now compare it with one in which everyone’s basic needs, as listed above, are met, and its natural environment is well-preserved, but it has only modest roads, airports and other infrastructure. Which of the two nations is more developed?

If one uses standard measures, such as HDI, it may be ambiguous on the issue. While the second country will have better numbers for education and health, it may or may not have a higher per capita income compared to the first country. If one asks experts and common people, they both might answer that the first country is the more developed one – if only because it appears to have a more advanced level of technological development (although this may not be the case in all areas: a country can be advanced in construction technology while being relatively backward in the provision of public health and education).

The question needs to be asked, however, whether it is more important for everyone’s basic needs to be met, or for a small minority to enjoy access to great luxuries even as the majority starves and survives at a poor material standard? The question goes to the heart of the issue of what economic development is.

As we know all too well, the dominant view everywhere nowadays is that overall affluence per se is equivalent to development, and this is best achieved via rapid growth in the GDP of a country. It is taken for granted under such a view that poverty will decline over time and ultimately vanish as long as economic growth continues. We call such a way of looking at things “developmentality”.

Before we outline the key features of the reigning paradigm of “developmentality”, it is necessary to excavate the historical and political origins of the concept of development itself. Where was it created, for what purposes and for whom?

The Historical Origins of the “Development” Doctrine

“We had no right…to assume that people everywhere around the world wanted to be like ourselves…we ought to preserve native customs, for the binding cement of native society lies in such customs and institutions…rather than in the tin-can borrowings and the acquisitions of the white man’s outlook.”

- Isaiah Bowman, Advisor to President Theodore Roosevelt

Bowman went on to add that all such people from the so-called underdeveloped regions of the world enjoyed a form of freedom alien to the modern world: “the freedom to be left alone!”

If we are not to read history with a biased, retrospective eye, it should be quite clear that “development” is a notion of quite recent vintage. It first arose in America. Of course, the word has existed for long (and first emerged from 19th century evolutionary biology), but before the 1940s it was never applied conceptually to describe the needs of poor countries. Importantly, so far as we are aware, India’s freedom fighters and men like Gandhi did not use the term.

As a matter of fact, prophets like Tagore mocked at the idea of “progress” and warned against imitating the ways of the West. And most certainly, the poor of the world did not themselves come up with the concept of development. The word itself just makes a few shy appearances in the Indian Constitution. It was always a “top-down” idea, not one emerging from democratic practice.

So where was the concept of “development” forged? It can be dated to the 1940s, when Washington began a reordering of the world to meet the interests of its corporations and the consolidation of state power. It starts appearing frequently in official documents in the US after President Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Churchill signed the Atlantic Charter in 1941.

History reveals its secrets with the passage of time. Intentions held in secret by men in power produce consequences that unfold over the decades and the centuries. Taking a bird’s eye view of the whole development experience since World War II, one can’t escape the conclusion that the whole ideology of development was spawned by the US policy elite in the 1940s to ensure that after the war was over, American corporations would have a pretext to gain access to cheap resources, labour, investment opportunities and markets across the ex-colonized world, hitherto controlled by Europe. Institutions like the IMF, the World Bank and GATT were created to ensure that corporate goals were met. They have succeeded in that purpose, even as they have understandably failed to meet many of their stated goals. Not surprisingly, while we have seen plenty of corporate growth, development by any reasonable criteria is conspicuous by its absence in most areas of the world for which the concept was intended. The beauty of the concept of development – premised as it is on economic growth led by private corporations – is that it panders to the aspirations of Third World elites and middle classes even as it caters to the interests of the elites in the rich countries. In doing so, it usually neglects the needs of the poor majorities.

Decolonization began after World War II, and Europe was forced by wars of liberation and independence movements in the colonies to retreat to its own shores in the decades after the war. Continued domination of the countries emerging from colonialism had to be justified by other means. The new emerging world powers were the USSR and the US, though the latter was miles ahead by any reckoning. The Atlantic Charter, signed by Churchill and Roosevelt aboard a warship on the ocean in the midst of the war, had taken an open stance against European colonialism, "affirming the right of all peoples to choose the form of government under which they will live". The Charter expressed the "wish to see sovereign rights and self-government restored to those who have been forcibly deprived of them." It also offered nations "access on equal terms, to the trade and to the raw materials of the world which are needed for their economic prosperity", something that sounds laughable today, after decades of experience with unfair trade and wars over resources.

At the same time, Roosevelt, arguably the greatest American President of the past century, proposed that "minor children among the peoples of the world" be placed under the "trusteeship" of the "adult nations". He had apparently inherited the paternalism of his British allies during the war. Small wonder that Washington planners came up with a new moral idea to exercise influence and control in the resource-rich countries emerging from European colonialism: “development”.

It now becomes clear what really happened on USS Augusta on August 14, 1941: the imperial baton was passed on from Churchill (as he realized Britain’s economic limitations and desperate need to get US support on the side of the Allies) to Roosevelt (who, in turn, realized America’s historic opportunity). To the leaders themselves it was already quite clear who was going to be the paramount power in the world at the end of the war.

The era of European colonialism reached the beginning of the end by the end of World War II. The hidden imperial motives behind the various defensive ideologies – from the “Christian Mission” to the “White Man’s Burden” – which had supported the colonial enterprise at different points of time in history were by then abundantly transparent not only to people in the colonies, but even to the citizens of metropolitan countries. A new idea was needed to continue privileged access and plunder of resources around the world. This is when opportunistic American planners came up with the idea of “development”.

“Development” was needed as a persuasive ideology to inveigle and integrate the large areas in Asia, Africa and Latin America newly liberated from European dominance into a post-war world economic order founded and designed by Washington. Even a casual perusal of the documents of the era leave little doubt that US planners made very conscious and concerted efforts to ensure that American corporations would be in a position to access the vast resources and investment opportunities of the decolonized world. The post-war “global” institutions – the IMF, the IBRD (later, The World Bank), GATT (now WTO) and, for that matter, the UN – all ostensibly multilateral in nature, were in fact designed largely by Washington planners to ensure favourable terms for American transnational corporations and to expand American influence and power in the world.

All this took executive shape and form in President Truman’s Second Inaugural Address in 1949:

“We must embark on a bold new program for making the benefits of our scientific advances and industrial progress available for the improvement and growth of underdeveloped areas. The old imperialism - exploitation for foreign profit - has no place in our plans. What we envisage is a program of development based on the concept of democratic fair dealing.”

It is noteworthy that we hardly hear of poverty and underdevelopment in the decades preceding World War II. After the war, once the World Bank was set up, “development” arrived in the economics profession as a new field. Funds were allocated to expand economics departments in universities; seminars and conferences were organized; and books and papers were published. Nobel Prizes were also awarded (to Gunnar Myrdal, Arthur Lewis and Theodore Schultz, and much later to Amartya Sen and Joseph Stiglitz).

A good statement of the founding goals of the World Bank can be found in Article 1 of its statutes, a document adopted at the 1944 Bretton Woods conference. The institution, which claims to work today for “a world without poverty” (if you visit its website), failed to mention the “basic needs” of people or the need to end poverty across large areas of the world. Instead its aims, according to the document, was to “promote private foreign investment”, the “growth of international trade” and various related goals.

Powerful Western elites had succeeded in forging a set of arrangements with which continued economic domination of the rest of the planet could be ensured. A new kind of “empire”, in which “development” was promised to the recently decolonised poor countries, had come into being to take the place of declining European powers. Such a development had been foreseen decades earlier by men who had fought for India’s freedom from Britain:

“Most of us think of empires... like the British in India, and we imagine that if the British were not in actual political control of India, India would be free. But this type of empire is already passing away, and giving way to a more advanced and perfected type. This latest kind of empire does not annex even the land; it only annexes the wealth or the wealth-producing elements in the country. By doing so it can exploit the country fully to its own advantage and can largely control it, and at the same time has to shoulder no responsibility for governing and repressing that country. In effect both the land and the people living there are dominated and largely controlled with the least amount of trouble…It is quite possible that Britain’s visible hold over India might go before long, and yet the economic control might remain as an invisible empire. If that happens, it means that the exploitation of India…continues…

Economic imperialism is the least troublesome form of domination for the dominating power. It does not give rise to so much resentment as political domination because many people do not notice it.”

This is how Jawaharlal Nehru prophetically foresaw the future from Ahmednagar Jail in 1933. It was published as an essay called “The Invisible Empire of America” in his scholarly classic, Glimpses of World History. After decades of experience with developmental imperialism, now increasingly debt-leveraged via the mediation of the World Bank and the IMF, we have evidence of the sophistication of exploitative arrangements that have been put in place to allow ever more privileged elites to continue a predatory way of life.

The “development” rage survived till the 1970s, when the oil crisis and stagflation hit the West. As political conservatism rose to ascendancy in Britain and the US, conservative paradigms of thought made a resurgence within the economics profession. Keynesianism receded and the monetarism of Milton Friedman won the day with Thatcher and Reagan.

By the mid-1980s, when (as we shall see) the enormous failure of the “development” project was obvious, the US government actually pronounced the death of “development economics”. Newsweek reported the US representative to the Asian Development Bank as saying that "the United States completely rejects the idea that there is such a thing as ‘development economics’. In the words of economist John Toye, development had become the "Orwellian un-thing". So much for the holy words signed by Churchill and Roosevelt in the Atlantic Charter in 1941. The era of using development as an ideology for domination of the Third World was over. It was no longer necessary. Development aid was now seen as a redundant expense once Western capitalism was seen to have won the ideological war with Soviet communism. It was no longer forced to perform well on social indicators in comparison with its former rival.

Since the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War in 1990, Washington’s rhetoric for intervention in the affairs of other countries shifted to spreading "democracy", "human rights" and, more honestly, "free markets" (for the corporations). The rhetoric masks the unfolding truths of growing poverty, malnutrition and hunger that capitalism in the era of accelerated globalization continues to bring to much of the underprivileged world.

It is important to note here that a more obvious form of neo-colonialism has resumed after the end of the Cold War and the launch of the “New World Order” by Bush Sr. American global power has (quite literally) returned with a “bang” since the first invasion of Iraq in 1991 and has really accelerated its military assaults upon the world since 9/11. We live in a time of renewed imperialism. Resource and energy wars are being launched under transparently false pretexts to ensure the continuance of the fossil-fuel-based global economy. “Water wars” also lurk on the horizon.

In the bargain, the ideology of development has also made a strong comeback. On the one hand, global financial elites have realised that they can make a far greater killing by investing in poor, but rapidly growing, economies, as against their own saturated markets with stagnant growth rates. On the other, wealthy elites in Third World countries have also jumped on the global bandwagon and have come to see the enormous gains that they could make. This is a winning combination as far as the policy-making offices of the world are concerned. The rise of what may be called “corpocracy” – euphemistically understood widely as “neo-liberalism” – can be traced to economic and political events that date back to the 1970s (such as the breakdown of the Bretton Woods system). But its real consolidation has happened after the end of the Cold War, and its accelerated impact on human affairs has followed 9/11 and the age of terror.

It is only in the light of such a historical and ideological background that one can understand the obsession with economic growth (and the purported “development” that follows from it) in recent times. So long as globally powerful TNCs and financial firms need resources and investment opportunities beyond their shores, no one is allowed to opt out of the world capitalist system. This is the meaning of “opening up” and “liberalization” of economies. Attempting a path of economic independence (such as Cuba or Venezuela have been attempting, howsoever imperfectly) would immediately invite sanctions, if not bombardment, especially if the country is resource-rich. You must “freely” opt for integration into the globalized economy on the terms suitable to the great powers.

Thus, the concept of “development” has constituted the core of the economic relationship between rich and poor nations since World War II. It lies at the very heart of contemporary imperialism. It is obligatory for poor countries to want to develop along the lines of the West. There can be no two ways about it. If we normally don’t manage to see this fact with clarity, it is because of the persuasive corporate propaganda with which virtually everyone is soaked. Disturbing data on malnutrition or farmer suicides is kept at bay by keeping the public imagination fastened to flattering growth statistics, as if the poor were obvious beneficiaries of the growth process.

Development As War

The rosy-eyed textbook conception of development is that over a period of time it improves the life-chances and well-being of the majority of the people in a poor country and thereby brings them a greater measure of freedom. “Development as freedom” has actually become the mainstream orthodox view, championed not just by so many Third World governments but even by someone as widely regarded as Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen.

However, the way “development” is actually happening under conditions of rapid globalization, the metaphor of war (rather than freedom) in fact captures its realities much better. There are, in fact, many wars taking place. The most important one is the cut-throat competition between giant global TNCs trying to capture markets, resources and investment opportunities everywhere. Other wars, such as Operation Green Hunt currently underway in Central India, are being waged by governments against their own people in order to ultimately clear the land and its resources for the corporations. Land acquisition and the resulting displacement are other facets of the same war. Yet other wars are being caused by the vanishing resource-base for the traditional livelihoods of the poor, as a consequence of the expansion of the globally networked mainstream economy. This leads the poor to fight among themselves over a shrinking pie. All of this can be considered the “collateral damage” of “economic development”.

In the light of the historical facts about the origins of the modern conception of development, the question that begs to be asked is: is this imported model of economic development not a war in disguise? The battles in this war are fought both in the negotiating rooms of the IMF, the World Bank and the WTO, where Indian policy-makers often “hide behind the poor”, and on the ground, where women farmers, landless labourers, fisherfolk, forest-dwellers and artisans fight desperately but tenaciously to defend the nature on whose ample back their livelihoods are spread out. If a government is voted to office, per chance, that resists the TINA alternative and seeks to implement a different vision, surely our wealthy elites will protest and if that is not enough, sanctions will be made against us by the imperial guardians of the world for “closing” up our economy. In the limiting case, greater aggression will be argued to “free” the country.

The problem with our times is that we have all been misled into believing that “growth” is the same as “development”. As a result, the latter serves as a convenient rhetorical mask for the former. There is an army of economists today willing to defend economic growth at any cost. Little do they realize, as the quotation from Abba Lerner above hints, their own political prejudice, even as they cast a disgruntled eye towards what they call “the politicization of development”.

It is obvious that technologically driven economic growth based on heavy industrialization is a source of national power in a world made ever insecure by the greatest human failing of all: the persistent search for power. Today, more than ever before, when we live in the age of corporate empires, wealth alone confers power. If development could actually happen and give genuine physical economic security to each citizen, it may not make the nation’s elites feel strong and proud before their counterparts in the high offices and conference halls of the world. It is not enough there to say that we are able to feed, clothe, house, care for and educate our people. (So is Cuba.) One has to demonstrate with credibility how much one commands and controls (by way of men and materials) and what harm can be brought upon those who try to challenge or threaten that. This is the age-old logic of power in the world of men. Today it takes the form of announcing and anticipating the arrival of India and Asia as forces for the world to reckon with.

Bargaining on such a hunger for power among our still mentally colonized elite, the ultimate rulers of the world – in Washington and London, Geneva and Hong Kong – have laid out a baiting strategy that suits both them and their junior partners.

Growth serves the needs of power. It is doubtful if in a modernity so obsessed with appearances, mere development can ever serve the cause of national pride. This is the nub of the difficulty. In the name of the nation we, the elite of this beleaguered country, want economic growth no matter what the consequences. The problem is with a national heart which is turned towards a gluttony for power learnt from our imperial masters.

It is commonplace that every economics undergraduate gets acquainted with that development is not reducible to economic growth. Minimally, it involves, apart from a rise in purchasing power across all income groups (for which an aggregate measure like per capita income is a very poor summary measure), significant improvements in the health and educational levels of the population. Some have rightly pointed out that even this is actually very inadequate, that development should actually involve a transformation in ordinary people’s lives, not merely in a few quantitative, measurable indices of economic change.

However, if one scans the horizon of policies and their consequences today, especially as they are reported in the print and electronic media, it is quite clear that the overwhelming obsession is not with development taken in its widest sense, but with a narrow concern with economic growth. The numbers on economic growth have become all-important. While the tiny, increasingly pampered corporate minority breathes the air of private jets, luxury hotels, and African safaris, dreams of creating “world-class cities” are launched by pushing the urban poor out of their modest homes in the tens of millions, many among them previously uprooted in the countryside to make way for power plants and industries to service the needs of the globalized urban elite.

The reason for this state of affairs is quite obvious. The media has to report a booming economy which is giving birth to more billionaires every week, because the perception of prosperity and future growth is essential to attract foreign investors and global financial markets and maintain India’s creditworthiness with the world’s bankers and underwriters. In the business pages they make a clear distinction between “the markets” and “the economy”, using the former only with respect to finance. The latter term is used only when “fundamentals” are under the scanner in the event of “bearish investor sentiment”. This, more than any other single factor, lies behind the phenomenon of media spin and hype. It is necessary to hold aloft “investor confidence”. Hence the chorus of lies and half-truths. And if the habit of dreadfully transparent exaggerations carries over into other domains of reportage, converting the most serious events into excuses for generating sensations, is it any surprise?

Again the question has to be raised: is this state of affairs a coincidence? Or is the almost exclusively external orientation of the Indian economy one more of the consequences of the Bank-Fund grip on Indian policy-making? Has India not been invited to the club of “emerging markets” (the famous BRICS group) to help tackle the crises that capitalism faces in its native hinterlands, where growth rates and returns have been low for decades now?

The truth is that India Inc. is now an outsourced project of global finance. Markets in the West have been saturated for some decades now and, as plain arithmetic shows, it is harder to grow faster when you are already very large. But financial investors look for quick and high returns. Why invest too much in manufacturing industry and have to wait for years to earn modest returns when you can make several times that much, and much quicker, by playing with the inevitable uncertainties of the financial markets? That is why the drive for portfolios is strong on financial investments.

The Indian corporate elite, junior partners in the gigantic capitalist enterprise led by global finance, is enriching itself like never before in the name of the growth that will ultimately trickle down to the poor. Consider just a few numbers from our media headlines. On October 8, 2007 The Times of India reported on its front page that in the three months between July and September 2007, the collective wealth of India’s top 10 billionaires grew 27%, by $65 billion. The average Indian billionaire in the top 10, in other words, saw his wealth grow at $3 million every hour! To get a flavour of just how much money this is, it would take 60 Indians earning at the present per capita income of the country a lifetime each of labour to earn so much money! Little wonder that such people of affluence are normally unaware of the size of their wealth and have to hire teams of companies to handle their assets. The money does not look after them so much as them having to look after the money. This explains the growing number and size of billboards in our metros, announcing the arrival of reliable fund managers from abroad.

As far as foreign investors are concerned, they would not be here unless they were able to take away huge returns. It is normal for global funds in India to multiply their investments by a factor of 4 or 5 in as many years. As we have seen, there are few stock markets in the world which are fetching returns like the ones possible on Dalal Street.

Who, other than the large population of this country, bears the cost of such loot and plunder? The shift in income distribution towards the corporate classes has been quite dramatic.

Is it any surprise that “development” in India is anything other than a constant war on the poor? Since the days of Nehru, tens of millions of the vulnerable poor have been displaced from their homes, fields and forests to make way for “development” projects in the countryside. What is “development” to some has been displacement to many India’s tribals, Dalits and women have paid a disproportionately large price for what we in our confident delusion have come to see as “modernization” and “progress”. Estimates of the displaced population since 1947 vary between 30 and 60 million people. But today, such displacement for “development” projects has become so routine that up until the time of the Narmada movement and later, the beginning of land acquisition for SEZs a few years ago, there was barely a whisper in our media about the matter. As far as this writer is aware, the textbooks still leave the topic unmentioned.

It is time that we called displacement by its proper name: uprooting of peoples and cultures. We should recognize what we do to our subject populations as a form of “internal colonialism”. (While tribals are only 8% of India’s population, they have suffered 55% of the displacement, according to a recent study.) It is also time that “development” projects were called “growth” projects. The experience since 1947, and especially since 1991, has made it abundantly clear that while development may sometimes involve economic growth, the latter by no means leads in any direct way to the former. If it did, our health, education and other social indicators would look very different by now. No one looks any more at the content and character of the growth process.

It should be obvious that globally benchmarked corporate elites (even though they may be Indian passport-holders) are not in a position to make credible promises to the Indian poor. The competitive pressures, norms and rules of capital in a globalized world are such that they cannot possibly afford patriotism, unless it is also commercially attractive. Under such circumstances, corporate growth does not translate in any direct way into “trickle-down” for Indian masses. Indian big business is increasingly a global player, not just running concerns of merely national scope. Tatas may invest in China to sell $800 million worth of shoes in Europe. Its implications for Indians and linkages with the Indian economy are minimal in such cases; likewise, if someone from Bangalore is setting up an IT Park in Serbia. This is the reason that economic accounting makes a distinction between GDP and GNP, and why the former is the more relevant for a country’s well-being. The truly ironical paradox is that corporate nationalists are making acquisitions abroad under the Indian flag!

Global competitive pressures also imply that everything today has a “China price”, which is based on ruthless exploitation of labour under a totalitarian system. Thus, market fundamentalism readily translates into corporate totalitarianism in practice. Sub-contracting and outsourcing to the informal, unorganized sector by the big corporations of the Indian economy is not new. But it has assumed truly super-exploitative dimensions under the IMF-World Bank dictates of flexible labour markets. Faced with labour demands in the organized sector, companies are readily able to downsize their workforces and let the sub-contractors in the informal sector do the dirty work. Workers here put in long hours, without overtime. They enjoy no benefits, job security or retirement plans. There is also the phenomenon of growing self-exploitation by a growing mass of people (the number of enterprises in India has risen dramatically according to the Fifth Economic Census in 2005, mostly not because of more free market entrepreneurship, but on account of greater displacement and migration) who supply the corporate sector. The number of self-employed is estimated at 260 million!

The growth that we have in India today is a cancerous pathology. It is anything but the balanced growth that undergraduate students of development economics used to be tutored in. It is happening at the cost of nature and people in a way which shall prove quite unsustainable in the future.

In one of his lectures in China during the first quarter of the last century, Tagore had quoted Plato: “An intelligent and socialized community will continue to grow only as long as it can remain a unit; beyond that growth must cease or the community will disintegrate and cease to remain an organic being.” I think that the caution applies urgently to India at this perilous juncture of its history. Delaying the recognition of this truth will make the damage well-nigh irreversible before too long.

Without further ado, we can outline the key features of developmentality:

The Hallmarks of Developmentality: A Catalogue of Cognitive Disorders

What rules India today is the hegemony of what can be called “developmentality”. Let us briefly consider some of its key features and see why it constitutes a cognitive disorder which is proving pathologically destructive.

1. Developmentality draws theoretically upon a tradition of abstract economic theorizing (neo-classical economics) which aims to demonstrate the ultimate superiority of free markets as a way to organize the economy. Its finest practitioners (Frank Hahn, for instance) have long ago warned against its applicability even to understand, let alone prescribe policies, in countries of advanced capitalism. How much more the theoretical tradition has to be suspected before being borrowed to make policies for a country like India! And yet contemporary market fundamentalism, pushed by the IMF and the World Bank, and implemented by our policy elites, advocates and practices just such an approach, leaving deeper questions of the distribution of property or the specificity of local institutions and culture largely untouched.

2. In brief, this (mainstream) tradition of economic theorizing emphasizes the idea of optimal allocation of resources through the functioning of free markets based on voluntary exchange. With certain exceptions (externalities – which involve unpaid costs to third parties from a transaction between two agents, public goods – which entail the provision of goods or services to people who can get away without paying for them, and market power – which involves distortions in resource allocation on account of monopolies or oligopolies) it argues against any sort of government intervention in economic affairs. The truth is that in the real world – especially in a context like India –these exceptions come quite close to constituting the rule! The core idea of the efficacy of “the invisible hand” is as old as Adam Smith. It has been challenged both within and outside the economics profession, including by such seminal thinkers as John Maynard Keynes. But the tradition holds sway over the vast majority of mainstream economists, advisers and policy-makers around the world today – even after such irrefutable proof against it as the 2008 global financial crisis. The problems with “free” markets are discussed below (see Sl. No. 6).

3. In keeping with the traditions of mainstream economics, “developmentality” is premised on the goal of economic growth, as though trickle-down is a matter of near-term inevitability. Faith in trickle-down economics, as John Kenneth Galbraith once said, is a bit like feeding race horses golden oats in the hope that the sparrows can forage in the dung. Given the resource scarcities and other ecological constraints the expanding economies are running into, all countries cannot become developed by the standards of the nations presently regarded so. This obviously means that we change our notion of what constitutes development or risk widespread ecocide.

4. Dominant mainstream economics, in its mathematically sophisticated analysis of the market economy, focuses on the relative scarcity of resources. It is deeply ironical that it never really takes into account the absolute scarcity of resources, since this would imply in one way or another putting limits on growth. It would mean discussing the controversial matter of the distribution of a pie which cannot keep growing without limit. It would imply discussing how we produce things since it is this that shapes how what is produced is distributed.

5. Also in keeping with the neo-classical tradition, “developmentality” is unable to take a holistic view of economic matters. It is necessarily reductionist, one-dimensional in its approach. Thus, growth at any cost seems reasonable to it. Ecology, biodiversity and the limits placed by nature mean little to people who have put all their faith in technologies for “remodelling” nature to create a viable hardware for modernity. “Let’s build a smarter planet”, as the hubristic IBM ad has it. Also irrelevant to such reductionist thought are the burdens and hardships placed upon the hundreds of millions who are vulnerable to predatory growth for the rich classes. Economics in such a perspective is seen as independent of politics (hence the talk on “politicization of development” must be avoided), culture, society and history.

6. It is thus no surprise that developmentality is singularly focused on one particular goal, shaped by a very narrow-minded conception of rationality. The goal is the economic growth that results from the familiar profit-maximizing calculus which is justified by mainstream economic theory. Too long has economics pretended that nature is just a resource to be extracted and allocated “efficiently” according to the impeccable logic of the marketplace. It has been prey to a narrow notion of rationality driven by consumer greed and corporate avarice, organized by the forces of competition. It is as though considerations other than greed can play no part in a rational mind! If social and ecological irrationalities – such as the fact that the costs of growth and development are almost never justly and equitably distributed across or within countries – routinely arise from rapid growth under such market fundamentalism, it is surely no coincidence. When governments far and near have been forced or led to adopt policies prescribed by the imperial high priests of market theology, allowing free play to the forces of corporate and consumer “rationality”, a necessary consequence must surely be the social and ecological irrationalities that we find surrounding us today. Whether it is the destruction of pristine mangrove forests for an SEZ in Gujarat or the recent launching of “the world’s most irresponsible car”, the Nano, the results are a direct consequence of the deregulation of corporations in order to generate higher growth in a “free” market economy. The fact that the not so invisible hand of corporations lies behind what is euphemistically described as “the invisible hand” of the “free” market is a convenient blind spot for believers in developmentality.

7. All that matters to developmentality are the numbers – on growth of GDP, per capita income, returns on investments and suchlike. The precise content, qualitative character and spread of growth are entirely secondary, if taken into account at all. After two decades of aggressive propaganda, quantity has outstripped quality in the consciousness of the educated Indian public. Our media has taken matters to a new depth whereby numbers and shallow quantitative reasoning have taken the place of imaginative approaches to economic problems, consistent with ecological necessities and social justice. We are letting numbers do our thinking for us.

8. Even the data being used for policy-making is often horribly inaccurate. The poverty data, for instance, is still based on a consumption basket from 1973-74, when so much of the material needs of the rural poor could actually be met by circumventing market transactions, through such means as access to the village commons. There is little recognition of the fact that the living environment of the rural poor has undergone a dramatic change in recent times. Small wonder that the poverty line in rural areas comes out to be Rs.12 (30 cents) a day: it is not even a starvation line! Similarly, inflation figures avoid any reckoning with the rising cost of what used to be public services till recently. The rise in the price of (increasingly privatized) health services and medicines, for instance, is not reflected in the reported inflation rates. (This factor has worsened after the introduction of the new patents regime under WTO.) Using such ridiculously poor data as the government releases, the World Bank realized recently that it had been overestimating the GDP of India in real (purchasing power parity) terms by as much as 65%! The numbers on key matters like poverty, unemployment and inflation are undeserving of a reasonable democracy.

9. Needless to point out, “developmentality” postpones any reckoning with the ecological crises that beset us. This again is consistent with the growth fetish driven by global financial markets via the multilateral institutions. A particularly perilous line of thought argues that with greater economic growth society will have more resources to tackle environmental challenges. (Perhaps a lapse of memory allows policy-makers to forget that the Rio conference on the environment in 1992 had advocated a “precautionary principle” to safeguard nature and ecological balance in a great many cases where scientific knowledge was not adequate to ascertain the facts about ecological losses.) If ecological costs, losses and risks were valued and reckoned, a lot more environmental data would have to be gathered than the market (to the mutual convenience of the producer and the consumer, not to forget the government) ordinarily generates. This would perhaps require a participatory environmental democracy in which not merely scientists and experts but also ordinary women and men – losers from “developmental” projects – would have to be consulted to learn of the extent of potential damage from a certain growth project.

10. The mood in which Indian ruling elites (Chief Ministers of all political hues, in addition to policy-makers in New Delhi) find themselves today suggests that for “developmentalists” there is no limit to such universal goods as economic growth. There is no recognition of the intrinsic value of balance, both ecological and socio-economic. Too much of a good thing is usually a bad thing. But for those who take their lessons from economists who have a deeply rooted microeconomic prejudice that for anything worthy of being called a “good” or a “service”, “more is preferred to less”, such caution is anathema. In the long run, such prejudice can’t be anything but ecologically and socially destructive. A 15% growth rate along the present lines, if it could be achieved, will destroy India.

11. Developmentality does not dare to measure the true costs of growth. If it did, the numbers may come out looking unfavourable to India Inc. and make the government’s economic achievements look somewhat embarrassing. It would have to gather and release data on livelihoods and agricultural production lost to “development” projects. It would have to do systematic cost-benefit analyses of projects like SEZs (which may often turn out to be adverse from the public point of view), and so on. By not measuring accurately what is of importance to the public successive governments are merely indicating the low priority accorded to such matters. Imagine the hoopla if industrial production, exports or foreign exchange reserves were severely mismeasured!

12. It is obvious that GDP (or even HDI) is a poor index of sustainable development. They pay no attention to environmental costs and risks. GDP stands for gross domestic product. The letter “G” represents the fact that the depreciation of the economy’s productive base is not taken into account by today’s pre-eminent measure of economic activity in a country. It is hardly obvious – especially in a time of rapid ecological degradation – that an economy’s productive base is growing along side its GDP. The loss of climatic balance, biodiversity, top soil, arable land, forests, water bodies, minerals and energy sources is never reckoned in the GDP data that is presented to the public. No one notices the shrinking of the resource base if all eyes are on the growth of GDP and stock values. If the productive resource base continues to shrink, (unless there are large compensating increases in the productivity of the resource base) at some point economic growth will turn negative, causing unexpected falls in the standard of living. All may appear to be well when in fact it is not. If we have already crossed critical tipping points, there is no way of knowing it! Research carried out by Cambridge economist Partha Dasgupta on the extent of sustainability of the growth process in the developing world reveals disturbing insights. Using World Bank data on natural resource losses (excluding losses in many areas such as water resources, soil, fisheries, air and water pollutants, etc.) he finds that economic growth in the South Asian sub-continent was probably “unsustainable” between 1970 and 2000. In the case of Pakistan, the productive base may have shrunk as much as 20% since 1970. Given the acceleration of ecologically destructive growth in India after 2000, one can imagine that things have grown far more grave since then.

13. The argument is often heard that poor countries – unlike rich ones – cannot afford to prioritise environmental protection over development. The eradication of poverty ought to take precedence over making the landscape aesthetically pretty, believed to be an unaffordable luxury for a poor country. It is said that as incomes rise with greater international trade, people will get richer and be willing to devote a greater fraction of their resources to environmental protection. There are many problems with this view. Firstly, it misses the fact noted earlier that the productive resource base of an economy may be declining faster than the growth of incomes, but we will not know it because we hardly care to measure it. It’s not as though other things in nature are stationary while measured incomes rise. Secondly, there is plenty of evidence to suggest that the economic fate of the poor – especially in rural areas, as well as in cities – is more directly dependent on the quality of the natural environment than that of the rich. When dams are built, or mining is allowed in a rainforest, or a common property resource is seized for an industrial project, it is the poor who directly stand to lose, not the rich. The poor are also far more dependent on what are called nowadays “ecosystem services” (biodiversity, clean air, common water, etc.). They will never get rich enough to demand better environmental quality. The rich (including the government), in the meantime, have no incentive to demand a better environment if they don’t suffer the consequences of their actions and can let the poor carry the burden of their consumption excesses. They always have alternatives which the poor don’t. In other words, economic growth, which is premised on and generates great inequalities, has a perverse built-in mechanism which leads to ecological deterioration. Besides, if our goal is the eradication of poverty, we ought to be strengthening, rather than weakening, the poor’s access to their resource base. Ecological capital is not just an amenity in poor countries. It also constitutes the resource base of the poor. There is no reference to ecological capital in the most influential texts of development economics, or in development policy.

14. As students of national income accounting know all too well, there are serious problems with using growth of GDP or per capita income as measures of material well-being. This is especially problematic in an economy which is supposed to be expanding on the back of growth in services. When pollution rises and medical expenses go up, we are supposed to believe that the nation is doing better. When divorces happen, it is a known fact that consumption levels rise, even if they don’t double. If old people are looked after in homes for senior citizens rather than by their families, a similar misunderstanding can arise. The same applies to the situation when mental illness grows in society and the clients of psychiatrists grow in number. Likewise, for a thousand other instances in which a hitherto unmonetized part of social life (which a lot of people value for the enormous contribution it makes to human happiness, precisely because it is priceless) gets converted into a paid service. It is absolutely vital to recognize that in a society like India, where communities have been traditionally strong, a breakdown of community life will all too often express itself precisely in the form of a spurt in growth led by the service sector. The perversity of such a measure of human well-being as GDP, or per capita income (or even HDI), then becomes all too obvious.

15.It is of the nature of developmentality to name things wrongly. Growth in GDP, a purely quantitative phenomenon, is mechanically equated with development, which is meant to be a qualitative transformation in people’s well-being. The ruling form of globalization does not distinguish between growth and development anymore. As a result, growth projects for the affluent classes are described as “development” projects for the nation. Along the same lines, outright uprooting of peoples and cultures is described euphemistically as “displacement”. Easy entry of foreign goods, services and investments into the country is called “liberalization”. If a country’s government does not allow all this to happen, it is not regarded “open”, and so on.

16.Developmentality takes globalization in its current form as an inevitability that India has no choice about. It is assumed that India will industrialize along the same lines as the West, using up energy, water and other resources with the same intensity, because we will use the same (fossil-fuel-based) technologies. That the use of such ecologically destructive technologies involves implicit choices, which will ultimately jeopardise development itself, is not considered.

17.Central to globalizing, developmentality is the abandonment of any remaining concern with national, regional or local self-reliance or self-sufficiency. With the current form of development comes great dependency – on imports of essential goods (such as food) and services, capital and technology, even skilled personnel and enterprise. Most of the “development” we have seen during the last two decades is “dependent development”. (For related reasons, it is also extremely uneven in the degree to which it enables access to its benefits.) It is as though global economic interdependence, howsoever undesirable, risky and perilous in some respects (such as finance), is an end in itself. While it is undoubtedly true that countries can benefit (and have benefited) from exchanges of know-how and technology (not to forget culture and education), it is also the case that so much of it (such as technology transfer of certain varieties) comes at high cost (such as permanent loss of jobs because of automated machinery or high patent fees). In a time when we are besieged by environmental threats, there are clear merits to evolving local and regional economies which can plan the use of resources and the management of pollution in a democratic manner sensitive to ecological considerations. But such alternatives are not on the radar of our policy-makers, perhaps because they do not involve big markets (in monetary terms), which alone interest the giant corporations.

18.A definite teleology (belief in a pre-determined future) informs the developmentalist world-view. According to this view, all nations are pre-destined to follow the same development path to endless prosperity that the affluent nations of the developed world have followed. The main features of this path of “progress” are:

a-Rapid, labour-substituting technological change.

b-The shift of large numbers of the working population from agriculture and related activities towards industry and the modern service sector over time.

c- As a result of these factors, rapid urbanization.

These, in and of themselves, are nowadays taken as indices of prosperity. We have already seen why the Western experience is unlikely to be repeated in India.

19.With “globalized developmentality” – and especially with the enormous growth of traffic between India and the Western world – Indian elite and middle classes (the top 10-15% of the population) have begun measuring their consumer lifestyles against the affluent culture of the West. The demand for products nowhere on the consumer’s horizon just a few decades ago, has grown dramatically. The demand for perceived needs has outpaced necessities. Mass needs have been forgotten or postponed as the demand from privileged classes for new brands of packaged solutions forever beyond the pockets of the majority has grown. Underdevelopment, when juxtaposed with the affluent world, also becomes a state of mind. The “development gap” then has to be filled, and so a teleological view of the future – howsoever unrealistic – becomes imperative to embrace. Understood thus, “underdevelopment” (as a mental condition) is growing even if the overall availability of cars and gadgets is rising.

20.“Developmentality” also fails to distinguish between public and private interest, readily confusing the latter with the former. Thus, under the “public purpose” clause of the 1894 Land Acquisition Act, land has frequently been acquired by the state and handed over to private corporations. Especially after the passing of the SEZ Act of 2005, there is virtually no distinction in practice between public and private interest.

21.“Development” is a profoundly political process, involving choices made by the powerful. It is not primarily technocratic. Logically and morally, prior to any choice of means, is the question of goals and criteria for balancing the different needs and interests at play. No development strategy can avoid the fundamental question: what/who is to be “developed” and for whom? Yet, in the many decisions that are taken routinely by state and central governments across the country, these questions are rarely asked. A super thermal power plant is not a necessity to light up India’s villages, which can perhaps do much better with micro-hydels. But it is taken as an article of faith that they are necessary for the country’s “development”. That they feed exclusively into powerful industrial interests is thus ignored.

22.Industrialization must be led by corporations for development to come about. This is another article of faith for the reigning world-view. But corporations are in a global race to maximize profits and grow bigger than their competitors – it is not their aim to transform people’s lives, except incidentally! As the American ecologist Wendell Berry says, “A corporation, essentially, is a pile of money to which a number of persons have sold their moral allegiance…It goes about its business as if it were immortal, with the single purpose of becoming a bigger pile of money.”

23.Corporate nationalism is one of the pillars of developmentality. It is assumed by the corporations and their patrons abroad and in the government that “what’s good for us is good for the country and its people.” It matters little that Indian capital is investing in mines in Bolivia or Australia. What’s important to the reigning ideology is that an Indian is calling the shots, even if the implications are irrelevant to India’s toiling millions. The fantasy of making India into a superpower has been accepted widely as credible, even if the country continues to slip from an already shameful ranking on the HDI.

24.Developmentality aims at democratising consumption, but not production. “Let every Indian fly!” goes the cry of India Inc. Neither is there ever any discussion of whether this is possible or desirable, given severe resource constraints, nor is there ever talk of letting ordinary citizens participate in key decisions to do with the running of the economy.

25.Exclusion under developmental rule happens quite normally through the very failure of cognition. For all the tall talk about the aam aadmi/aurat, the truth is that s/he is thought of only in the months preceding an election. For the most part, our leaders and policy elites feel quite at ease to busy their heads over the problems of global financial markets and their consequences for Dalal Street and India’s growth prospects. Exclusion is also built into the system when customary rights to land and other resources remain largely unrecognised by the state despite the passage of such legislation as the 2006 Forest Rights Act. The British decided to overlook such rights when they took control of non-agricultural lands and forests in India in the 19th century. Their successors in independent India, especially since 1991, are opting to do the same.

26.Most of all, developmentality takes it for granted that all values are ultimately reducible to money. On this view, human health, irreversible damage to rainforests, biodiversity and soils, loss of physical security and social peace, human life itself – to name just a few intangibles at stake today – can ultimately be valued in terms of money. The belief in consumer society reduces human needs to purely individualistic ones, which can be materially serviced at supermarkets and e-bays. However, human needs are far more varied and complex and require attention well beyond what people can find with their money in the marketplace. Even within the material realm, money is often the wrong index of needs. It has been noted by many observers that women are far less inclined to accept compensation for loss of cultivated land to industry. They are keen on real economic security, instead of money whose value can fluctuate. Actually faced sometime back with an Andhra farmer’s query as to why she should give up a certain benefit (meagre as it is), for a very uncertain future gain (unwritten promise of job in an SEZ), we had no answer for her.

27.The most lethal illusion that the advocates of developmentality have is: that which is not measured, or often cannot be, does not exist, or is secondary or unimportant. It is just such a cognitive lapse which enables some of our most learned economists to write off the huge subsistence economy in this country because it is outside the measurable sphere of the market. Today’s planners live in a world of measurable abstractions. But their decisions have concrete consequences which are often not so. The latter are thus readily ignored without anything like a transparent cost-benefit analysis even being attempted. This is quite typical in so many areas of the country which suffer social and ecological losses from industrial projects meant for the city-dwellers. Policy haste is making plenty of waste not visible to the decision-makers.

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Framing of the progressive interventions and agrarian transition: Lessons from the Indian experience.

Dinesh Abrol

The author Dinesh Abrol is a Scientist at National Institute of Science, Technology and Development Studies (NISTADS),Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) and convener of AIPSN Sub-committee on Agricultural S&T interventions; prepared for the Workshop on Emerging Challenges in Agriculture and Allied Sectors, Ananatpur, September 29-October 1, 2010.

Introduction

Over the past sixty years the two most important intersecting policy perspectives influencing the discourse of the dominant forces in policymaking on agricultural development have been technological change and economic growth. In technological terms, the discourse of dominant forces is shifting away in the production-innovation framework of policy development from the mere spread of “green revolution” technology to the extension of “gene revolution” or “evergreen revolution / double green revolution”. In economic terms, the shift in discourse on policymaking can be seen from the emphasis on the regular development of “conventional agriculture” for food self-sufficiency, having its role in the provision of cheap food to urban population and in the transfer of resources and free labour to the industrial sector to the “new agriculture’ assuring plenty of food through the application of latest technology and diversification into horticulture, floriculture, poultry, etc. The new evergreen agriculture plays also its growth related role through export of food grains. It integrates agriculture with the production of processed foods targeted to meet the newly arising urban elite demand for processed foods in the country with the help of agribusiness. It generates more opportunities for the “rural non-farm systems” through the post-harvest operations as a residual adjunct in the supply chain being built by agribusiness entering into food retail in the country. It envisages through this new linkage the absorption of surplus labour becoming now available in plenty on account of the inevitable operations of the capitalist growth process. Simultaneously, as the structural reforms of the 1980s and the policies formulated on the basis of the so-called ‘Washington Consensus’ have thrown a spanner in the design of the above described strategy of management of agrarian transition under perusal by the dominant forces, some of the policymakers also now speak not only of moving the people away from agriculture to the industrial sector but also are willing to introduce some supplementary schemes which are aimed at the development of rural livelihoods on the basis of bringing about an increase in productivity in small-scale agriculture through “sustainable agriculture”, with fresh spin-offs to the rural non-farm sector.

This article aims to put across an alternative perspective and pathway to the development of sustainable agriculture which seeks to integrate agro-ecological alternatives with the rural non-farm systems that are capable of organizing the operations of input supply and output processing within the boundaries of local economies. The rationale of this alternative is that the agenda of progressive forces needs to include such initiatives and demands which will reduce the farmers’ risk as well as generate local employment opportunities through the systemic upgrading of local economies. It suggests that the need of the hour is to undertake agenda making and collective self-learning for such a strategy of agricultural development which would make the production of diversified output of mixed integrated farms totally viable by linking the production and innovation system to the possibilities that can be captured from the local market demand itself through appropriate socio-technical innovations. It claims that such a strategy of agricultural and rural development would also allow the agro-ecological engineering alternatives to act as the growth engine for the development of enterprises of group enterprises of rural labour and self-help groups of women who are also interested to improve their own livelihood conditions.

Progressive traditions and policy discourse on agricultural development

Focus here is therefore on the question of what should we be doing to build the appropriate political response to the emerging challenges of agricultural development in the above described contemporary conditions in India. In particular how we should frame the future progressive interventions in order to effectively respond to the policy discourse of dominant forces and mobilize the people for their participation in the politics of shaping of development of agriculture and allied sectors which are also the target of forces arising out of the world of national and international agribusiness. We need to discuss the past experience of framing of the responses from within the progressive tradition to the policy discourse on agricultural development. We wish to achieve gradually much in the field too through this initiative in which the participants from diverse traditions have come together for the development of an alternate perspective where the dimensions of technological change and economic development would be suitably integrated for the empowerment of rural poor. It is our hope that we will be able to contribute to the knowledge and skills required for the development of resources to be utilized in the construction of a new pathway which would have much potential to combine the progress being made worldwide with regard to the development of the knowledge and practice of “agro-ecological engineering” with the possibilities of economic development being shaped on the basis of the “upgrading of local economies” as relatively autonomous systems of production and innovation for the supply of food, fodder, fuel and materials to the local markets in India.

Agricultural policy discourse and the left challenge

In an important “progressive left” tradition of policy discourse the issue of the dynamics of the Indian agrarian transition has been debated in terms of determining the conditions and factors responsible for the completion / incompletion of all those changes in the countryside that are necessary to the overall development of capitalism, and to the ultimate dominance of capitalist mode of production in the national social formation of India. Debate on the theme of “whether or not peasant production continues to exhibit the tendency of class differentiation in India” is an important subject matter of the discourse influencing the framing of interventions. The outcome of this debate is expected to provide advice and guidance to the practitioners for the advancement of the resistance of those basic classes (peasantry and rural labour) that they also favour and support. While there are a number of analyses already made in respect of the arrested, blocked or incomplete transitions in the great variety of historical contexts by the students of this important tradition on the basis of their study of both types of national social formations, colonial and non-colonial, but as there is also much to be investigated about the contemporary conditions of economic growth and technological change. But even today the debate and theory are still focused mainly on the question of how much the class of peasantry continues to persist in a differentiated form without being transformed into capitalist farmers and wage labourers in India. In practice, the left politics has certainly been in the forefront of the opposition mounted in the country to the policy discourse of dominant forces over the last five decades. It has been a leader in respect of the the initiatives taken for the implementation of the land reforms, decentralized planning and environmentally sensitive technological innovations like the system of rice intensification (SRI) in areas where its influence exists.

In this tradition, however, much of the theory related literature still pursues this debate in the framework of a distinct approach to political economy of agrarian transition in which the problem of success and failure is viewed mainly through the lens of making of progress or development of barriers to the introduction and diffusion of new technology being introduced by the dominant forces. It does not take into account the possibilities of exploiting the instrument of socio-technological innovations itself for the organization of peasantry and rural labour. Discourse undertaken in this tradition is largely neglectful of the possibilities available to the leadership of these movements in terms of organizing the unorganized for undertaking the struggles for access to those technological and organizational innovations that have the potential to strengthen the alliance of peasantry and rural labour vis-à-vis the forces of agribusiness and empower them better vis-a-vis the large capitalist farmers whose power is also growing and denying easy access to resources, capabilities and markets to the peasantry and rural in the local economies. It remains concerned mainly with the making of investigations into the socio-economic effects of technology or institutional and policy changes in question that make the capitalist agrarian transition possible or impossible. Strike against the actions of dominant forces is seen to be limited to undertaking actions through the struggles countering them mainly on the questions of access to land, incomes and wages for peasantry and rural labour.

Agro-ecological alternatives and NGO approach

In the other emerging progressive tradition, in which there is much emphasis on the advocacy for approaches that focus on the introduction of ‘agro-ecological’, ‘sustainable’, ‘natural’, ‘low-external input’, ‘organic’, ‘biological’ farming systems, the contribution has been focused on developing mainly the understanding of what kind of agri-food systems and resource conserving technologies are compatible with small-scale agriculture. In addition, as they also focus on the question of how to tap into the knowledge and skills of farmers to understand and respond to the changes in environment and local agri-food systems and do not have support the formal systems of research in to the development of technologies for agriculture and allied sectors and rural industrialization, they have also ended up in focusing mainly on the potential of indigenous technological knowledge and traditional community based approaches. But it needs to be kept in view that agro-ecosystems are also part of wider socio-ecological (climate change) and socio-technical (class and gender) relations, embody inequalities and differentials in terms of access to resources, capabilities and markets, can be utilized by the dominant forces to advance their own agenda and be neglectful of the dimension of social justice. Studies are now available in respect of knowledge and labour constraints facing the socio-economically differentiated strata of peasantry and rural labour in respect of the implementation of agro-ecological approaches and the gaining of economic advantage from local-agri-food systems. These studies indicate that the complex trade-offs between the availability of house-hold labour and the gendered dynamics of family labour, markets for hired labour, off-farm income and migration and other agricultural activities.

Even from the advocacy of NGOs it is apparent that their reification in the implementation is missing the wider point about how to encourage appropriate innovation systems which will consciously empower the groups of poor peasants and rural labour better to take care of the diversity of needs of highly differentiated farming communities, and how, through such kind of knowledge and skill enhancing processes, offer to the local economies a wide range of technology choices , deploying scientific and indigenous knowledge. Pathways to sustainability need a focus on more than developing resource-conserving technologies and practices of integrated practices to be followed on the farms by farmers. Innovation systems must encompass the complexity of resource and capability use by addressing both the biophysical and social dimensions of agriculture, including equity of distribution of benefits. In this tradition, there is need to focus on broader processes emerging in respect of the influences on agri-food systems, including processes concerning the conservation and conversion of natural resources, efficiency of production, processing of food, marketing and consumption issues. There is a need to look at how the national and global food chains are interacting with and impinging on local food systems.

Participatory agricultural technology development and NGOs

The other related progressive tradition of “participatory research and development” approach to innovation system building has had its own share of failures. Today a wide array of people-centered approaches falling under the banners of ‘farmer participatory research’, ‘participatory technology development’ , ‘participatory rural appraisal’, ‘stake-holder analysis’, ‘sustainable livelihood research’, ‘community based natural resource management. These diverse yet interrelated approaches are aimed at enabling the rural people to engage with the processes of research and development to understand and improve their own agri-food systems. One important area of work in the field of participatory development of agricultural technology has been participatory plant breeding. It has shown some success in bringing about yield increases in rain-fed agro-ecosystems. Nevertheless, they have also shown their limitations and have not been able to deliver all the anticipated benefits with regard to the empowerment of rural poor. In particular, they have not been able to address intra- and inter-community differences of power and the social tensions that exist over access to control over resources, capabilities and institutions.

Towards an effective peoples’ democratic politics for the advancement of appropriate socio-technical transition

This politics will have to explore how through what routes the goals of environmental security and social justice would be available in a better way and the space available for the introduction and diffusion of pro-poor technological and institutional innovations has to be expanded by the social and political movements in the contemporary conditions in India.

In no way our analysis of the various approaches discussed above implies a repudiation of these traditions; in fact we believe that this analysis should take us forward and can facilitate the coming together of these approaches for the creation of a united progressive strategy in respect of building our common resistance against the policies and systems that the dominant forces are imposing in the current context on the rural poor in India. It does call for a reflection on the politics, and each and every tendency must consider how this reflection can be made a systematic affair in which the elements of capability building, experimentation and struggles to be undertaken by the rural poor for the enhancement of their own access to resources and markets are an integral component of the politics. This politics will have to find out in practice what kind of space is available to the social and political movements to mobilize the peasants and rural labour for the organization of technological and institutional innovations to affect a change in the socio-technical conditions prevailing in the country.

It is however clear from the above analysis that this politics will have to apply the lenses of co-evolution / co-shaping of productive forces and production relations to explore precisely the important neglected question of political economy of technological and institutional innovation. This politics will have to answer the inter-related questions of whether the prevailing socio-political conditions in respect of the introduction of selected appropriate technological and institutional innovations in the society are favorable for the development of peasant worker alliance. This politics will have to explore how through what routes the goals of environmental security and social justice would be available in a better way and the space available for the introduction and diffusion of pro-poor technological and institutional innovations has to be expanded by the social and political movements in the contemporary conditions in India.

Glimpses of Insecure Lives in South Delhi Slums : Field Reports by Rita Kumari

Anita Soni

Slum is where ecological refugees live:

One of awe-inspiring thematic vistas opened up by SADED for dialogic engagement and academic inquiry is named “Ecology, Dignity and the Marginalized Minorities”. Under this evocative title, a unique research programme has been pursued at SADED since 2009, on the strength of a single dedicated female worker deployed for field studies in selected slum areas of Delhi. Her work reports unfold a vivid panorama of tension- filled human lives in the multi-ethnic milieu of migrant working class inhabiting shanty towns and hut clusters of south Delhi’s sprawling backyard known as the Okhla Industrial Area.

In India there is no dearth of field studies on slums, with plentiful quantified data on deprivation and civic neglect of their hapless denizens. The impact of such dry statistics on public opinion is nil. Several academics and activists prefer to write on evictions and demolitions of slums that provide the dramatic backdrop for tirades on human rights violations and callousness of the judiciary. A fine collection of articles in this category has recently been published by SADED. [The Urban Poor in Globalizing India . Dispossession and Marginalization, Ed. by Lalit Batra, Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam Publication Pvt. Ltd., Delhi 2007] ‘The urban poor’ is the stereotype appellation given to slum dwellers by well meaning human rights activists from elite backgrounds, in accord with UNDP and World Bank. SADED’s own vision and method of accessing the social reality of slums stands apart from that stereotype projection. The difference lies in the weightage SADED gives to the fact that slum dwellers are migrants from rural India. They do not shed their peasant identities and thought habits to become overnight, rights-conscious urban folks. The home village remains present in a slum dweller’s psyche. It is the place where family elders live, where money has to be sent for the upkeep of dependants, where weddings of relatives are celebrated, where field labour fetches high wages in harvesting season.

But the village is the place of misery and hunger: slum dwellers come from families of long suffering landless or land-poor peasantry; the contempt and neglect which the ruling class shows towards them mirrors the marginalization of rural Bharat – still holding the majority of the country’s people – by omnivorous urban India.

The term ‘ecological refugees’ introduced by Madhav Gadgil and Ramachandra Guha in their path breaking treatise Ecology and Equity (1995) most aptly describes the collective tragedy of slum dwellers. A passage from 1995 publication by TN Khoshoo “Mahatma Gandhi – An Apostle of Applied Human Ecology” sums it up:‘At present… a village cannot support people .They have to leave their hearths and homes and become ecological refugees. They reach the nearest mega-city and all such cities have in fact become twin cities; the mega-cities per se, and the associated slum cities where ecological refugees live. In slums, these refugees have their own economic and social problems which are hardly supportive of a healthy society”.[TN Khoshoo , Tata Energy Research Institute, New Delhi 1995, p.40]

In SADED’s parlance the slum dwellers are referred to as migrants --pravaasi in Hindi; and SADED’s ‘emissary’ interacting with them makes sure to inquire about their home villages, and would endeavour to bring them together onto a ’Migrants Forum’ – ‘Pravaasi Jan Manch’.

The Migrants Forum is a postulated entity which may take time to materialize, but the reports of SADED’s field worker are the best proofs of relevance of this approach.

Rita Kumari can write authentic stories of slum dwelling migrants because she is one of them herself. She knows their troubled world inside out; it is her own world. A plump, charming and voluble girl in her late twenties, she hails from Bihar’s Madhubani district and shows the kind of culture confidence that comes naturally to genteel natives of the region, with its hoary artistic traditions. She is skilled in the symbolic Madhubani drawings. She has a sturdy sense of self worth, and is not at all bothered about her inability to speak and write English, and operate a computer. She dismisses both these skills as fake markers of globalized intellectual prowess without any bearing on the quality of social engagement. Volunteering for public causes and internalizing socialist ideals was part of her childhood upbringing; her father was a respected social worker. That background made possible her transition to full-time social activism after a gap of several years when personal misfortune resulted in her migrating to Delhi and taking up a job with a garment company in Okhla.

Over the past four years Rita Kumari has been employed at SADED as the junior-most member of the staff, a veritable ‘foot soldier’ to be put to work on odd assignments. Her job description as ‘Field Assistant’ is according to her a misnomer : she has been working all alone without a supervisor, and could only call SADED’s Convenor or the head of office staff , senior journalist Mr. Rajnikant Mudgal, for help in critical situations.Her routine duties have consisted of doing rounds of various slum areas in all parts of Delhi State (National Territory of Delhi), as well as attending numerous public meetings, conferences, workshops, protest rallies, demonstrations , both in and out of town – the obligatory fare of a social activist. The outcome of that busy routine has been quite voluminous --pages after pages of work reports, diligently submitted every week at SADED office.

Written in a flowing long hand, in Devanagari script, they would be given for typing (and mindless editing ) by her computer-savvy colleagues, printed, Xeroxed and stacked in archives for some presumed future use. It became a tough task of this ‘reviewer’ to retrieve, identify and sort out Rita’s original manuscripts from dusty heaps of mixed up spiral-bound stacks. About a half of this material pertains to her field work in slums.

Rita’s preliminary assignment ( in 2009) was to conduct door to door household surveys of a few slum areas near to where she lived, with a ready-made questionnaire. She duly filled hundreds of questionnaire sheets with names, addresses (including home villages), information on number of male and female children, and problems faced by the respondents. She recorded identical complaints about acute scarcity of drinking water (supplied very inequitably by tanks), about lack of sanitation ( the only block of community toilets being closedto the public and used for keeping cattle of some locally powerful bullies), about denial of subsidized food rations ( the earlier issued ration cards withdrawn for corrections and not re-issued).

A similar litany of woes and grievances awaited Rita in other slum areas she toured traversing large swathes of Delhi’s territory. In 2010 the special item on her prescribed agenda was the survey of living and working Conditions of the most oppressed among the dalits (‘untouchables’) – the sweepers of Balmikicaste . She visited all localities in south Delhi with sizeable populations of the Balmiki–GovindpuriBhumiheenCamp, JaitpurKhaddda Colony,KotlaMubarakpur, Chunari LahraBasti,PilanjiHarijanBasti ,BudhVihar (Munirka) , SangamVihar ,Badarpur, in addition to Harkesh Nagar and Sanjay Colony in her own area. Her reports on meetings with them reveal bitterness and despair of a community in deep distress, ‘cheated’ of their previous security of job reservations as municipality sweepers, now that sanitation has been outsourced to private contractors, and imported sweeping machines (operated by high caste people!) replace broom wielding workers in prestigious establishments. What has remained unchanged for the young generation is illiteracy and stigma of untouchability.

In ChunariLahrabasti, where all 60 Balmiki families own three- or four- storey houses rented to well paying Manipuri migrants, and children play cards or roam in the streets, none of them going to school, Rita gets rebuked : “Our youngsters are jobless, if you cannot get us jobs then what is your survey for, have you got any authority proof? Everyday some people come here to do survey. Why shall we tell our house numbers or reveal our problems to anybody?” [date: 11.3.2010]

The fact that Balmiki children stay away from school education, or drop out early andremain illiterate, is differently explained byfamilies of low paid workers of private contractors “we cannot afford sending our kids to school , when even food is so expensive” ( Kiran Devi, Sanjay Colony, 7.2.2010), and by those where both husband and wife still hold their MCD jobs (not made permanent even after 10 or 15 years of service) but have to commute long hours to their place of work : “one has to catch the bus by 5 or 6 in the morning, how can one get children ready for school?”[Ramesh Devi, Sanjay Colony , 11.2.2010].

Lurking behind, there is the bitter reality of caste discrimination : “ if Balmiki children fall sick, the teacher (of municipal school) scraps their names from the roll. Then we submit an application for taking them back, but the teacher refuses. And when the children of Jats or Gurjars remain absent for weeks together, their full attendance is certified and they get promoted without any hassles.” [Kundanji, LahraBasti, 11.3.2010]

There is widespread resentment among the Balmiki community against discriminatory conditions of employment. Balmiki workers are selectivelyused by both MCD(Municipal Corporation of Delhi) and private contractors for the hazardous jobsof clearing choked gutters, while mechanized cleaning of shining floors has become a caste-less occupation : “ Earlier everybody knew that sweeping roads and cleaning drains was done by our Balmiki community from time immemorial. But now the government has taken away our right. In a big hospital or a five star hotel now a machine would do in one hour the work that fifty men did in a whole day. Machine operators are mostly JhaBrahmins(sic) but when it comes to descending into the gutter, then there is search for a Balmiki boy , and he is sent down without a protective gear, without Oxygen mask, and if he dies from poisonous fumes, nobody cares –neither the government , nor the contractor.” [Mahendr, Jaitpur

KhaddaColony , 3 .3.2010].

At some point during 2010, Rita was advised to focus her field work on one contiguous spread of slum population. Okhla Phase II, where she has been based since 2001, became the obvious choice.

Okhla is the collective name for a number of localities that have come into existence around the historic Okhla Village on the Jamuna river bank, with an olddhobi ghaat and a barrage built in late 19th c. After India’s Independence, the Okhla Industrial Estate was notified here to boost development of small scale industries. By the turn of century the whole area, divided into three phases, got transformed into a prime industrial and commercial suburb occupied by thousands of companies -- ready-made garment and leather garment exporters, pharmaceutical manufacturing units, plastic and packaging industries, printing presses etc.

The number of skilled industrial workers – especially tailors – runs in tens of thousand. They are predominantly migrants from Bihar and West Bengal, toiling long hours for miserable piece-rated wages. The absolute lack of labour welfare, in terms of housing, work safety, medical aid, even drinking water—reduces them to human wrecks before they reach middle age.

Rita’s investigation in April 2010 revealed the extent of cruel exploitation of the labour force by the company owners. Only very few favoured employees get the stipulated minimum wages and permanency benefits. Others are intimidated into keeping quiet : they have to sign a resignation letter along with their joining letter. Most have to work under contractors without any written proof of employment.

A barbaric method of squeezing the workers dry is reported about the company ‘Boutique’ at 4/3 D Block, Okhla Phase II, fully managed by a contractor .Here the workers, employed for serial production of garment pieces in chain system /assembly line, are not allowed even a few minutes break unless with severely restricted permission, and must rush upstairs to the fourth floor to drink water. Scared of abuses and threats when a piece gets ‘stuck’ , they stay thirsty till the end of the shift.[date:02.04.2010]

The living quarters of those workers and all other migrants inhabiting the area lie at a distance from the wide roads and tall boundary walls of company compounds. It is a dense maze of streets and lanes forming diverse neighbourhoods – urbanized villages like Harkesh Nagar and Tehkhand, long established slums like Sanjay Colony, and miserable clusters of huts typically bordering the railway line or canal, with generic name ‘camps’ : Priyanka Camp, Priya Camp, Indira Camp, Raju Camp, Jagjivan Camp . All these place-names come up in Rita’s reports, confirming their authenticity. Also importantly present in her reports is the Police Post at Sanjay Colony and the Railway Line which is crossed every day by thousands of people going on foot from Harkesh Nagar to Mathura Road.

It did not take Rita more than ten minutes to draw a delightful little map showing the contours of the scenery of her reports, and the specific locations. All details are etched in her memory. The mode of Rita’s functioning in the field, and her public persona, have significantly evolved since her earlier days of conducting surveys.

Her reports in past two years show that she has found her own way of engaging with social issues on the ground by reaching out to individual persons in distress, volunteering to render help in every emergency, and intervening boldly in defence of justice. Thus her reports become real-life stories with gripping plots, suspense and denouement . They are about people and situations she has been actively involved in. She writes about her proletarian friends with sympathy and politeness, always adding the respectful suffix ‘ji’ to their names [like the Japanese ‘san’]. And she gives her stories quasi-journalistic headings indicating topicality of their themes. The themes are varied, as the following examples may show : “The rag-pickers’ travails ” [14.9.2012] is the story of Mukesh ji, a docile Bengali boy who took to collecting and selling recyclable waste as the only available livelihood option. Brutalized by a police constable as an alleged ‘Bangladeshi’, he becomes a cripple when a private doctor puts a plaster on his wounded broken arm. Getting him a government dole for disabled is all Rita can do now .

“ Elders not cared for by families” [4-5.11.2012] presents the sorry fate of Shivkumar ji, an ailing old labourer from UP turned beggar after 30 years of hard work in Delhi, as his three sons, educated and well-to-do, would not keep him in the house he had built and bequeathed to them. A policeman requested to mediate is told that Shivkumar ji is mentally unsound, that is why he begs at the temple and sleeps in night shelter. Rita brings him a blanket and self-cooked food.

“The witch” [17.10.2011] is how a poor widow, Mira Devi, becomes vilified by her greedy daughter- in- law who forces her to leave the house, and spreads rumours all around about Miraji’s ‘evil eye’, so that nobody would give her a room on rent.

Victimisation of widows , and also of unmarried daughters with inheritance rights, by relatives taking advantage of the superstitious belief in witchcraft, is according to Rita very common in Delhi , so much so that the state government enacted a law against it in 2001. But alerting the police about such case in Harkesh Nagar was in vain : “it is a matter for society to tackle”

“The hardship of single woman” [28.4.2012] is a narrative about Asha ji, an unmarried working woman from Bengal who when fell sick became the mistress of a caring neighbour, Dinesh ji. He paid for her treatment and neglected his family obligation in the village . Asha ji got hounded by local community when Dinesh ji’s aggrieved wife with children arrived from the village. Rita alone gave compassion and shelter to the hapless woman.

“Inter-caste marriage” [16.3.212] is an ironic tale of Jaydevi ji, an Adivasi working girl from Jharkhand who got married to Chhattar ji, a truck driver of Balmiki caste, a widower with two daughters. Jaydevi helped to marry off Chhattar ji’s daughters with her own money, but her own marriage ran into trouble when she gave birth to a girl. Son-obsessed Chhattar ji took another wife, a widowed mother of four sons, from his own community, and Jaydevi instead of serving as provider to the expanded household, devoted her whole income to pay for her daughter’s education in a hostel.

‘Pregnant woman raped by relatives of party leader” [20.4.-5.5. 2012] is the case of Baby,

a newly wed bride from Bengal brought to Delhi and abandoned by her husband.

She got noticed by rowdy cousins of a powerful local politician from the Gurjar community, and cruelly gangraped by four of them. Neighbours who rescued her knew the culprits but did not dare to speak out. RIta after taking the traumatized victim for medical termination of advanced pregnancy tried valiantly but in vain to get police case registered.

Dues to daily wager not paid for months” [23.7.2012] is the case of Anitaji, a labour from Bihar, mother of three little children and wife of a TB patient. Her employer, a building contractor, had delayed paying her wages for four months and manhandled her when she came to demand her money. Rita called a panchayat (conciliatory court) of the locality and negotiated full payment with arrears.

“ Labourer crushed to death at work in packaging company” (30.8.2011) is a chilling account of Rita’s intervention in the case of Ram Praveshji, her neighbor, who was killed by 800- kg cardboard roll that fell on him when its holding line snapped. The company owner attempted to hush up the monstrous accident and stall enquiry by bribing the police and taking away the dead body. Rita, undeterred by 16 constables standing guard outside the compound and a menacing SHO(police station in-charge ) sitting inside, barged in, made calls to the press and took took photographs of blood-splashed floor, using her mobile phone. After getting the dead body delivered to the family from the morgue, she skilfully negotiated with the company owner a high compensation amount and a permanent job for the widow.

“Newborn girl rescued from railway tracks” [6.6.2012] is the latest, though certainly not the last, In Rita’s record of saving lives. ( Two earlier ones were saving a little girl stranded on the same railway tracks [6.5.2010], and taking to hospital the bleeding victim of a hit-and -run road accident [18.4.2011]). While crossing the notoriously dangerous unguarded railway line near Harkesh Nagar Rita spotted two dogs fighting over a bundle of cloth and licking blood; she rushed to the spot on hearing an infant cry and reached in time when the dogs started devouring the placenta. A small crowd followed her, and a childless wife of a jeweler made a plea that the girl be given to her. Rita called the policeman on duty at the nearby booth to register adoption case, and got it confirmed there and then at the Okhla Police Station. The girl now lives happily with her foster parents.

Rita’s sparring exchanges with police functionaries have been quite frequent and make for an interesting part of her reports . She claims to be the feared visitor at eight police stations. ‘‘I am not afraid of policemen, I make those uniformed braggarts bow down at my feet. If one is to survive in Delhi, one must not fear the police. In fact nobody is scared of them, it is only their harassment and loss of time in being summoned many times over as witnesses, that people fear, so that victims of accidents and crimes are left unattended.”

It may be an attractive proposition to publish a collection of Rita Kumari’s reports, stories and essays as a book, richly illustrated with photographs and carrying bi-lingual Hindi and English versions on opposite pages.

Anita Soni is a Polish-born indologist and social anthropologist (initially associated with The Institute of Orientalist Studies, University of Warsaw), since 1978 permanently based in India and working as independent researcher and grassroots activist, especially among nomadic tribal communities faced with ethnocide. In the recent few years she has been preoccupied with the question of Constitutional recognition of tribal self-rule. She has now joined SADED with a view to work on a Campaign for Tribal Autonomy

Women in Agriculture: Recognizing them and Re-prioritizing them?

Biraj Swain & Ranvir Singh

According to the 2011 census, women account for 586.47 million in absolute numbers and represent 48.46 per cent of the total population of the country. Women have been increasingly recognized as the future faces of Indian farmers. According to the 64^th round of the National Sample Survey Organization’s (NSSO) data, women accounted for 38.51 percent of the total rural workers engaged in primary sector during 2007-08[1].They constitute a significantly large proportion (about 80-83 percent) of the women workers as compared to 63-66 percent among rural male workers. Women also play a significant role in the various allied activities - as per the ‘time use survey’ covering six states in the country during 2000, women spent almost an equal amount of time on crop cultivation and allied activities. Unfortunately they receive payment for only 60 per cent of the time they spend in agriculture for a substantial part of their work is likely to be on family farms.

In the countryside fields, women work as agricultural labourers, farmers and in certain cases as farm entrepreneurs. Because of male outmigration in search of better employment opportunities, women’s roles and responsibilities increase a lot but their access to resources still remain limited. Women also get engagement in sub-sectors and allied non-farm works as well. Landless women agricultural labourers are involved in most of the agricultural operations, but they still remain largely unacknowledged as farmers and agricultural workers.

In 2010, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) famously concluded "if women had the same access to productive resources as men, they could increase yields on their farms by 20–30 percent. This could raise total agricultural output in developing countries by 2.5–4 percent, which could in turn reduce the number of hungry people in the world by 12–17 percent." Whatever the validity of this calculation, the reality is that food security today depends, even more than in the past, on combating discrimination against women, in order to allow women and female- headed farming households to produce under better conditions.[2]

Workforce in Agricultural Sector

About 50% of total workforce is engaged in agricultural activities contributing 16.6 percent in the total GDP (including forestry and fishery). Currently, women constitute 40 percent of this agricultural workforce and work in a variety of roles: in land preparation, seed selection and seedling production, sowing, applying manure, fertilizer and pesticide, weeding, transplanting, threshing, winnowing and harvesting and other farm related activities till the crop reaches the market. It is interesting to know that 53 percent of all male workers, but 75 percent of all female workers (85 percent of all rural female workers) are engaged in agriculture. Out of a total of 582 districts for which data is available, about 46 percent of the districts have more female laborers than male. Only 8.70 percent of the districts have more than 50 percent women as cultivators. Female agricultural labor is concentrated in backward districts. Although women’s contribution in the agricultural sector is enormous but their efforts have not been recognized with deserving attention. Their limitation in decision making, challenge in ownership and control over land and their limited access to credit play a devious role in the status quo. Their vast involvement in the sector cannot be ignored and they deserve entitlement of key stakeholders in the agriculture sector.

Ownership and Control over Productive Assets i.e. Land and Livestock

Although half of India’s population continues to depend on agriculture as its primary source of livelihood, 83 per cent of farmers operate with holdings of less than two hectare in size, and the average holding size is only 1.33 hectare. This is often in fragments and mostly based on rainfed irrigation. There are also those who are entirely landless, although agriculture is their main source of livelihood. It is very important to note that a small share of landholding also gives certain amount of food security to the households. While considering women’s equal ownership and control (which is not much in practice) it will surely raise their overall situation in the society.

In India, less than 2 percent of women own land. About 86 percent of land is private and 89 percent of rural households own some land, though this may be in the form of small plots. Access to this land is mainly through inheritance. Inheritance laws vary by region and religion, and although they confer much greater rights to women than custom did, significant inequalities remain. Even more important is the enormous gap between women’s rights in law and their disinheritance in practice. This has critical implications for welfare, efficiency, equality and empowerment (Agarwal, 1997). Male control over agricultural technology, especially taboos against women ploughing, and gender biases in extension services, are additional barriers (Velayudhan 2009).

Based on NSS 59th Round data, in animal husbandry, more than 60 percent of livestock-rearers across all size categories are women (NCEUS 2008). About 75 million women as against 15 million men are engaged in dairying in India (Sulaiman et. al. 2003). During the 1980s, 65 percent of the labour requirement in the livestock sector was contributed by women, and this increased to 71 percent during the 1990s (Ali, 2007). Women have greater control over this resource, compared to other resources like land in the village. The ultimate lesson learnt from IFAD-supported Tamil Nadu Women’s Development Project is that land-based activities (including livestock rearing) will invariably yield sub-optimal results when the majority of the target population have neither titles (document of possessions) nor access to land.

In a country where majority of the population still depends on the primary sector for their livelihood, gender inequalities (social, economic and political) can be challenged by granting ownership and control over land to women. It can be done through:

a) inheritance

b) direct government transfers

c) purchase or lease from the market

To enhance women’s land access from these three sources, a range of initiatives are needed, including joint land titles in all government land transfers, credit support to poor women to purchase or lease land from the market, increase in legal awareness and legal support for women’s inheritance rights, supportive government schemes and recording of women’s inheritance shares, and so on. There is also need for reliable, fair and accessible mechanisms such as social audit with greater participation of women in the audit bodies for resolving disputes and providing remedies in matters related to tenure and security of lease. The 2005 Hindu Succession Amendment Act (HSAA) is a step forward in this direction.

(12th Five Year Plan)

The 2005 Hindu Succession Amendment Act (HSAA) brings all agricultural land on par with other property. This makes Hindu women’s land inheritance rights legally equal to men’s across states, overriding any inconsistent State laws. Various provisions need to be reviewed and strategically acted upon. This includes devolution of a woman’s property in the same manner as a man’s, restricting the right to will to prohibit disinheritance of wives and daughters, protecting women’s right to property by eliminating forced coercion aimed at women relinquishing their shares, and ensuring that HSAA overrides State laws related to agricultural land. In addition, the Ministry of Women and Child Development in collaboration with the Department of Land Resources should start intense monitoring of the progress in implementation of HSAA, and ensure its speedy implementation.

States should also consider the adoption of a “collective approach” in land cultivation and investment in productive assets. States could undertake an assessment of all uncultivated arable land presently with the Government and give women’s groups long term usufruct rights to it for group cultivation. As many states have already given joint pattas on government land in the past, and this trend may continue.

Land entitlement and control over livestock ensure various other essential opportunities for women empowerment, e.g. improvement in social status, food security and access to credit. Velayudhan (2009) also felt the same and mentioned that land entitlement by women is important in the context of growing feminization of agriculture. Supporting women farmers would also enlarge the information base of farming because in many regions women know/practice more than men about indigenous seed selection and cultivation methods.

Women and Food and Nutrition Security

The malnutrition burden of India is double that of sub-Saharan Africa. A higher proportion of children are underweight if their mother has experienced spousal violence than if she has not. The NFHS-3 gender re-analysis clearly reveals, controlling for wealth, this association is explained away for girls, but remains significant for boys. Controlling for wealth and education, employment, not having a main say in decisions about large household purchases, and experiencing spousal physical or sexual violence are all negatively associated with women’s nutritional status. However, women who have the main say alone on the use of their earnings are less likely to be too thin than other employed women.

Twelfth Plan Strategy towards achieving nutrition security for all, especially the most vulnerable children, adolescent girls and women who are locked into an intergenerational cycle of deprivation, is based on a detailed situation analysis and evaluation during the Eleventh Plan. The nutrition strategy outlines: (i) the evolving multisectoral interventions for nutrition, including introducing a strong nutrition focus to sectoral programmes, strengthening and re-activating Institutional Arrangements and the Multi-sectoral Nutrition Programme in 200 High Burden Districts; (ii) Promoting Optimal Maternal, Infant and Young Child Care and Feeding Practices; (iii) Combating Micronutrient Deficiencies in a holistic manner; (iv) Addressing the Dual Burden of Malnutrition; (v) Nutrition Capacity Development; (vi) Nutrition Education and Social Mobilization—including a societal campaign against malnutrition and (vii) Nutrition Monitoring and Surveillance Systems, to monitor and review nutrition outcomes.

But the 12^th Plan is silent on an inter-sectoral approach to address violence against women and its knock-on impact on malnutrition. In the context of the national outrage over violence against women, it is increasingly important to recognize the linkage and programme for it.

Technological Incorporation in Agriculture

Since the time of Green Revolution, incorporation of technology in agriculture sector was promoted by the government. Behind it, there was a key notion - technology reduces drudgery, increases productivity and leads to a better and healthy life. Although within a vast country like India where topographic conditions differs a lot from region to region, it was not easy to boost the agriculture sector on technological front. Where earlier it was mainly men’s control over these innovations, after many years access to agricultural technology by women has been recognized by the Government and 12^th FYP (Five Year Plan) mentioned that:

(12^th Five Year Plan)

Technology transfer to women would be prioritized in all aspects of farming and farm management, including dry land farming technologies, animal husbandry, forestry, sustainable natural resource management, enterprise development, financial management and leadership development. They would be provided training in pre and post-harvest technologies. To train women farmers in new technologies and practices, gain access to information on schemes and subsidies, training in crop planning and so on. Special Resource Centres would be provided. Women and young girls will be given training in the use and repair of bore wells with special focus on promoting low cost irrigation.

Although, small land holding pattern and existing power relationship in village settings are some major challenges which raise serious concerns over the affordability and accessibility for such technologies. Technological inputs and incorporation of global market changed the agricultural practices to certain extent in the past but it also put the farmers in a new domain where their lack of expertise makes them more vulnerable. This vulnerability severely affects women while putting their livelihood practices at severe risks (i.e. market, environmental and social).

Access to Credit

The relative significance of agricultural credit has been on the decline since the 1990s. The percentage of agricultural credit to gross bank credit increased from 15 percent to 17 percent in the 1980s, came down to 11 percent by the mid-1990s and has remained at that level since. Women received on an average only 6 per cent of the total direct agricultural credit in the period 2004-06. The remaining 94 per cent of direct agricultural credit was given to men, who formed about 67 percent of the total cultivators. Such low access to credit for women farmers is because land is the crucial determinant for availing agricultural credit from formal institutions and most land titles are in the name of men (Chavan, 2008). Considering the agrarian credit itself is in a mess and credit to small farmers is increasingly dwindling, prioritization of women’s access to credit requires a holistic approach of prioritizing access to agrarian credit (especially by the small farmers) in the first place.

Male Agricultural Workforce Out-Migratory and its Impact on Women

Most of the farmers are engaged with small and fragmented land holdings which do not allow them to generate sufficient household income. It leads them (male workforce) to migration into other sectors, leaving the family farms to be tended largely by women and children. Following table makes it clear that in the last decade despite the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme which provided certain employment opportunities to those prospective out-migrated farmers, the proportion share of agriculture sector has been reduced. It is still a big challenge to tackle such out-migration which eventually leads to feminization of poverty.

Proportion Share of Sectors in Employment

Sectors	1999-2000	2004-05	2009-10
Agriculture	59.9	56.6	53.2
Manufacturing	11.1	12.2	11.0
Non-Manufacturing	5.3	6.5	10.5
Services	23.7	24.7	25.3
Total	100	100	100

(Source: 12^th Five Year Plan, Vol III)

The Twelfth Plan recognizes the need to increase awareness about the growing feminization of agriculture through sensitization of policy makers, so that the gender stereotype of farming being solely a male activity is adequately challenged.

But the 12^th Plan is silent on the prevalence of wage discrimination inspite of increased female work force participation. A study by Yoshifumu Ushami clearly demonstrates that not only agrarian wage discrimination persists, women work force participation notwithstanding but increased work force participation and feminization of agriculture has led to increased work load on women.

Feminisation of agriculture and care economy:

However, the feminization of agriculture raises questions that go beyond the discrete forms of discrimination they are subjected to and that human rights must guard against. The fundamental question is how the increased role of women in agriculture shall be reconciled with their role in the "care" economy (the minding and education of children, or the care of the elderly and the sick), as well as with the household chores for which, in all regions, they remain chiefly responsible -- the purchasing and preparation of food, laundry, or collection of firewood or water. This is work that is essential not only to the health and nutrition of family members, but also to the maintenance of the agricultural workforce. Yet, it is work that is unremunerated, unrecognized, and largely invisible, because it is work done by women.

It is important to invest in services and infrastructure that reduce the burden this represents for women, for example, by childcare services in rural areas or by water pipes linking villages to water sources. As the discourse on “how to support rural development” proceeds, need to recognize the importance of this "care" economy as a vital adjuvant to the "market" economy increases – and the importance of, for instance, adaptation of extension workers’ providing advice or how employment on farms being organized, to fit the responsibilities women assume within the household needs to be recoginised. Lack of work site facilities in almost all MGNREGS sites after seven years of its launch is an evidence of lack of such recognition.

Gender in Government Policies and Plans

Having analysed the scale of the challenges and its multi-faceted nature and deep-rooted patriarchy that is prevalent, it is important to recognize the evolution in policy approaches towards gender in agriculture since the Sixth Plan, when ‘opportunities for independent employment and income’ for women was recognized as a necessary condition for raising the social status of women.The present approach of `gender mainstreaming’, which means that women have to be part of all the schemes/programmes of the agriculture sector and the strategy of agenda setting aims to provide structural, legislative, and material resources so that women can participate and benefit on par with male farmers by setting their own agenda. According to the National Agricultural Policy, there are three components of Gender Mainstreaming Approach. These are: Women’s Empowerment, Capacity Building, and Access to Inputs as well as technology and resources.

Since many of the programmes most relevant for women are implemented at the third tier of governance - Panchayati Raj Institutions —success in achieving the outcomes depends critically on women’s participation in governance and their empowerment with respect to programme implementation. While realizing the key elements for Gender Equity, the Twelfth Five Year Plan addressed gender issues within the following categories:

1. Economic Empowerment

2. Social and Physical Infrastructure

3. Enabling Legislations

4. Women’s Participation in Governance

5. Inclusiveness of all categories of vulnerable women

6. Engendering National Policies/Programmes

7. Mainstreaming gender through Gender Budgeting

Putting small farmers and women farmers at the heart of 12^th plan needs to be applauded. As the movement at the national and various state levels towards women’s land entitlement including enactment of legislations is laudatory (Rajasthan, Odisha, Chhatisgarh, Kerala, West Bengal, Assam), so are positive/progressive legislations like the tabling of the National Food Security Bill after its passing by the Parliamentary Standing Committee, the emphasis on PDS reforms and enactment of a very progressive, almost universal, Chhattisgarh Food Security Act.

Making the vision a reality:

The government’s endeavors to increase women’s employability in the formal sector as well as their asset base are evident from the 12^th FYP document. The government’s commitment to improve the conditions of self employed women, with special focus on women’s workforce participation, particularly in secondary and tertiary sectors, however, does raise serious concerns over the future implications for women’s status in primary sector. Plan document ensured decent work for women by their financial inclusion in agriculture and manufacturing while extending land and property rights. But, it is also important to note that the major impediments mentioned in the document which affect women’s participation as the workforce, particularly in secondary and tertiary sectors, is the lack of skills. Abundant focus on skill development puts a scanty picture of State’s willingness to improve women’s stature in agriculture sector.

On policy and programme front, it is desirable that the methodologies, time frame, physical access and other factors must be appropriate to the needs of women. Women must also be acknowledged in their central role in production, processing and ensuring of household food and nutrition security. With the charged public discourse on status of women in India, the post-2015 processes around the country and globally, the increased focus on MDGs and India’s achievement of the same, this is an opportunity which cannot be missed.

The government of India can achieve a lot when the public discourse and political will are at a tipping point. The concrete agenda for the next five years (not in the order of importance or chronology) should include the following but even push the ambitions further, i.e:

1. Generating gender disaggregated data for reportage, monitoring and programming

2. Supporting the policy and programme implementation environment for women’s collectives

3. Engendering the department from highest policy making level down to the extension services

4. Operationalising a coordination mechanism between Women and Child Development Department and the Agriculture Department for linking agriculture, nutrition and recognizing spousal violence’s impact on malnutrition

5. Supporting research towards drudgery reduction

6. Generating evidence and policy on farmgate discrimination

It is only a maximalist vision and sincere resourcing (human and financial resources) coupled with prioritization of agricultural sector that can bring meaning to the platitudes in the 12^th Five Year Plan document.

References:

Agarwal, B. (1997); A Field of One’s Own: Some Salient Features of the Book; In Rao, N. and Rurup, L. (Ed.) A Just Right: Women’s Ownership of Natural Resources and Livelihood Security; Friedrich Ebert Stiftung; New Delhi

Ali, J. (2007): Livestock sector development and implications for rural poverty alleviation in India. Livestock Research for Rural Development.Volume 19, Article #27.http://www.lrrd.org/lrrd19/2/ali19027.htm; Accessed January 6, 2011

Chavan, P. (2008); Gender Inequality in Banking Services, Economic and Political Weekly, Nov 22

De Schutter, Olivier, The Recivilisation of Men by Women, Oxfam Discussion on “Making the Food System Work for Women”, November 2012

Ghosh, Jayati, Nutrition Policies that work for Women, Oxfam Discussion on “Making the Food System Work for Women”, November 2012

GOI (2012); 12^th Five Year Plan 2012-17, Planning Commission, New Delhi

International Institute of Population Sciences, National Family Health Survey III (2005-6), 2007

International Institute of Population Sciences, Gender, Equality and Women’s Empowerment in India, National Family Health Survey III (2005-6), 2007

Kabir, Rokeya, Working Harder isn’t working, Oxfam Discussion on “Future of Agriculture”, December 2012

NCEUS (2008); A Special Programme for Marginal and Small Farmers; National Commission for Enterprises in the Unorganised Sector; New Delhi; December 2008

Saxena, NC, Hunger and malnutrition in India, IDS Bulletin, Volume 43, Special Issue 1, July 2012

Shabodien, Fatima, Women Farm Workers Dying for Food, Oxfam Discussion on “Making the Food System Work for Women”, November 2012

Shah, Amita, Priority Changes for Strengthening Women’s role as Producers, Processers and Providers of Food and Nutrition, IDS Bulletin, Volume 43, Special Issue 1, July 2012

Sulaiman, R.V., Jafry T., and Ashok M.S. (2003); Cafeteria for Women in Agriculture, NCAP Working Paper 4, National Centre for Agricultural Economics and Policy Research, New Delhi

Usami, Yoshifumi, A Note on Recent Trends in Wage Rates in Rural India, Foundation of Agrarian Studies, 2009

Velayudhan, M. (2009); Women’s Land Rights in South Asia: Struggles and Diverse Contexts; Review of Women’s Studies; Economic and Political Weekly, Volume XLIV No. 44, October 16

[1] Biraj Swain is an independent researcher working on the inter-sectionality of food, nutrition and agriculture policy and the citizen-state interface. She has various teaching affiliations, including the UN University Tokyo, Swedish University of Development and Agricultural Sciences, Uppsala and the Pondicherry Central University, India. She claims to be dedicated to working (read nomading) over the poorest and hungriest parts of the world i.e. South Asia and East Africa respectively.

[1] Ranvir Singh finished his PhD in Public Health from Jawaharlal Nehru University and has keen interest in spatial dimensions of the social aspects. He has expertise in information management system for efficient modeling, monitoring and evidence based planning. His expertise on Geographical Information System (GIS) and its usage in various settings by putting equity on the centre stage further enhanced his research and programme implementation skills.

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Wednesday 1 February 2017

Ecological Democracy : Vol.1 Issue 3 September 2013