Preamble + 1000 Characters Only

Recently, the new Modi administration has taken to taken to conjuring tricks and spinning illusions. With a magician's hat, a waving wand, and a beaming smile, the public are kept entranced, engrossed and constantly applauding with flight to Mars, furor of 'Make in India', and a shiny, squeaky, benevolent India saving its Kashmiri brethren from the very wrath of heavens!!

 Meanwhile, behind the scenes, there is a rampage of real action - with stage hands running, sets changing, pulleys cranking; nuclear deals are secretly signed, forests are marked, tribals trivialized, and the entire natural environment under direct threat to the newly energized mantra of growth and development, in which the rich are always promised a continued supply of many golden eggs. An already centralized democracy is being silently squeezed by an executive autocratic authority - while we grin, bemused, ear-to-ear.

Three days back, accidentally, I learnt that the administration, no longer needy of parliamentary approval or sanction,  had set up on 29th Aug 2014, a high level committee to review five key environmental laws of the nation -  including the Environment Protection Act, Air Act, Water Act, Forest Conservation Act and the Wildlife Protection Act.  The purposes of this committee is to recommend amendments in each of these acts to ' bring these Acts in line with the current requirements (of who, by who, for who??) to meet (what, and whose??) objectives'.

The public had till Sept  29th, 2014 -i.e. a month, to contribute to this 'democratic' process - online, on the MoEF site - using less than 1000 characters; commendable in India characterized by a majority of educated, alert and internet accessed citizenship.

In Bangalore, a public notice was issued on 20th Sept 2014, for a consultation meeting on 27th Sept 2014, between noon and 1:30pm to 'offer views, comments, opinions,...hand over memorandum or have dialogue'  with the high level committee, amply demonstrating the seriousness of intent in a comprehensive public dialogue and feedback.

I have decided to contribute my 1000 characters concisely and publicly:

The high level committee set up to review India's five primary environmental Acts appears to be adhoc with vagueness of purpose and ill-defined ToR. The committee members are ill qualified to review or amend these environmental  acts. The public feedback sought is minimal and prejudiced towards opinions of the comfortable, least-to-lose class; large vulnerable population dependent on natural environment are excluded entirely from the process. The mandate of MoEF is the protection of India's natural environment and social justice for those indigenous/rural communities, dependent on it. MoEF therefore needs to clearly specify the lacunas and failures of the current acts that necessitate the simultaneous review of all five acts together. This process cannot be hurried and public participation cannot be reduced to mere tokenism, but must be decentralized, consultative, and rigorously participatory, especially of the effected communities, so as to inspire public confidence and trust in the democratic process.

Gaza Raging in Bangalore

Yesterday: a day of Gaza Rage. And...it rained in Bangalore. I dashed for the nearest cover. And then it hit me - it is also raining in Gaza - and it is not water - and there is nowhere to dash.

Some of us gathered at the Town Hall - about 50 or so - mostly dressed in black -many wore Keffiyeh 

A youth with pressed lips, knelt in front of us a drummed a death march - slow, pounding, resolute - like that in Gaza. We pressed our lips, held up our placards and also tried not to weep.

Palestinian poetry is like nothing I have ever read before - poetry of people being crushed - but surviving.

People spoke, shared, raged - and stood in solidarity with people in Gaza. We were shamed by a collective human shame for letting this happen. Three million in Gaza - and from a city of 10 million - only 50 cared?

Today I raged inside and shared this rage.

A friend asked " but how does one learn to feel...??"

How does one learn to open up plastic hearts and covered minds - dust off the cobwebs of apathy that cloak us in peaceful times? Of watching, knowing, and not caring? of awakening to the death dances in Gaza - of the very young, and also the frail and old, and everyone in between?

How does learn how to love? Can loving be taught? 

Listed

It was two days after the IB secret document was leaked that a friend alerted me that I was Listed. This was unexpected, but not unduly surprising in view of my open position against India's entire nuclear program, particularly that at Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant (KKNPP). I believed then, as I do now, that survival of any democracy depends on availability of public space for divergent and dissenting viewpoints and scope to express these openly, to persuade public opinion and thus to collectively influence decisions serving our combined destiny.

Far worse has already happened at KKNPP, way before this IB report. At the height of the anti-Kudankulam agitation, peaceful protesters were harassed, beaten, jailed for opposing an energy project that could endanger their lives  and that of their progeny; would jeopardise health, and seriously damage local livelihoods and ecology. Thousands of FIRs were lodged against protesters, young and old, women and children, on grave charges of being seditious and for waging war against the state.  Yet, protests continued and spread far beyond the KKNPP zone, to other states and metros.

Bogey and myths of foreign funded(FF) NGOs were conjured by the state way back in 2012, by our PM himself (see here)to derail  increasingly serious public discussions that protesters against the KKNPP had succeeded in bringing to media's attention and in open forums. The debate was not merely about running KKNPP from within a thriving and independent community of fisher folks and subjugating them, but increasingly on the topic of rights. For the first time the image of the protester radicalized - from voiceless, downtrodden destitute, to strident communities with women alongside men, young children and very old, who were fully informed on the project and also their rights; they had the temerity to challenge the establishment; they were loud, articulate, engaging, debating and very determined. The State, refusing to engage on either the necessity of KKNPP, or the issue of people's democratic rights, had no option but to attack the questioners with an elaborate fiction. The leaked IB report just substantiates and perpetuates an old lie - with many more lies, more names, and utterly ridiculous figures, without any supporting arithmetic, for the net national fiscal loss due to these anti-national FF NGOs.

KKNPP 1 is commissioned and is now producing at full capacity. Yet, the orgy of repression is not stemmed; there continue to be those who are inconvenient, who think and dare question, the dangerous ones - these have been identified and blacklisted because thinking, speaking, having a different viewpoint hurts our democratic nation. Others, like me have been listed, as merely supporting these anti-nationals.

One thing that leaking this secret report does: it has made state's position very clear; dissent is anti-national and unpatriotic. Right to complain, legitimately, has expired. Those wronged must accept in grace that their sacrifice is mandatory for a larger national good - forget that the rich always benefit  and never get to make sacrifices or be patriots. New lows in democratic standards have been set in this largest democracy where might is not just right, but also rich and corporatized.

But India's public, its civil society, will not stomach this. We will continue to challenge set notions, ideologies, and politics of globalized development. We recognize that to convert legitimate, peoples movements into an elaborate web of ill-conceived lies is just that - a huge charade - and we laugh. People are waking and the state is nervous!

State of In-Security

After a longish break away, I have returned to realise many things, anew. We are a country dominated by suspicion, fear and paranoia.  Nowhere else, in even the developed world - with supposedly far more to lose - have I come across these many metal detectors, sniffer-dogs, high level security - just to enter a mall, a movie theatre or some ordinary public space. It seems that we have succumbed to living in perpetual security alert, and co-exist with fears of being terrorist targets in very little, simple things of ordinary life.

But, is this fear wholly of our making? What if this is imposed on us? by the State, by the corporates, or actually their nexus that require that we do not question? A nexus that seeks to manufacture fears to exercise control over our combined lot - for corrupt profit and personal gain? What if this elaborate, unsolicited security charade, is not about preventing us from being blown up, en-masse, by Mujahuddin, Naxals, Separatists, Terrorists, Mafia, but is a deeply manipulative propaganda by an increasingly authoritarian state seeking a blanket public acquiescence on an ever increasing repressive regime that seeks to constantly curb/erode/undermine our expressions of either individual dissent  and collective civil liberties, by keeping us all afraid? What if we are afraid of spooks-in-the-dark that don't exist, but are manipulated to keep away from questioning the dark days of our times?

And, what would happen if we decided to be unafraid?  What if chose freedom over fear? What if? What if?

Global Colonization

I have been thinking...what creates wealth? I am forced into this consideration during this sojourn to France by the visible, widespread and wanton displays of wealth and consumption. I am unable to ignore questioning what attributes make this nation so wealthy, its people so unmindful/indifferent of their privileges and so careless in their squandering.  Experience has taught me that the situation is not fundamentally different in any of the other industrialized nations of plenty, with plenty for their all, or among the more privileges classes of the economically weaker nations.

 I am now putting down my purely subjective opinion based on my recent thoughts on the subject, knowing that this act of writing often clarifies thoughts and crystallizes a personal opinion

If by wealth we mean currency, or units by which we keep a track of a bartering system for trade, then origin or creation of wealth boils down to trade of fundamental resources - natural or human. In fact, saying that (supposedly) mankind no longer barters or participates in human trade, wealth originates only from trade able natural resources - capturing it with presence (or via creation) of a market where it can be exchanged, as commodity, for other types of resources or services.

Complex human societies and their economies are just derivatives of this basic system via the many complex steps by which wealth is then redistributed from those who initially  possess it, by ownership of  natural resources or its products, to those who have some other product/commodity or service with which they can purchase this.  Social structures with their political systems and cultural/religious ideologies, determine the hierarchy of human position and privileges within communitiesand societies, and these govern the processes of redistribution or economic structure of that social system. Resources possessed directly via prospecting, mining, logging, or derived/harvested from nature, like agriculture, form the first tier of wealth creation. While the amount of this wealth depends directly on the quantity of resource under control, it also strongly depends on the availability of markets that need/desire these products - and are also capable of paying for it via some other products or services.For example, while diamond companies are currently extremely wealthy, this wealth could disappear without markets driving their desirability. Therefore, the value of natural resources, other than those needed for human survival like food, air, water, shelter, depend on creation of real and imagined need and desirability of a commodity.

Earliest colonisation featured nations, with strong and aggressive armed forces, capturing territories of high resources (plentiful and cheap natural products and human services required for exploiting this).  There is a story frequently told in India that when the British East India Company first arrived, they possessed no products for barter - their ships were weighed down by mud and guns.  Forcefully capturing/harvesting resources from less militarised regions of the globe, for commercial and/or national interests was essence of the early history of western colonisation.

If one were to consider national wealth to also include national resources, it is likely that global distribution of wealth might look a little different. Yet, in the developing world, these rapidly depleting and exploited resources are for a large part already lost to their regions and people, being misdirected by corrupt states into hands of greedy global corporations -i.e. a lot of the natural resources no longer remain national assets. Global colonisation now continues under a slightly different ruse. Without laying direct territorial claims, globalised and large Multi National Corporations (MNCs), with primary memberships from the wealthy industrialised nations, hold large sections of globe and its resources captive. Global character of this colonisation comes from the spread of their tentacles across nations of their resource bank and also the partnering of nations across globe in a particular area or type of resource diversion.

Under the guise of a free market route to development and progress, these MNCs buy valuable basic resources, cheap, from economically weaker nations and then recycle them back after processing  into the same poorer nations by creating markets of need and a desirability of emulating the western lives and lifestyles. There is coercive pressure at both ends, to first open up national resources for external exploitation, openly and freely to global commercial interests, and also to open the markets of these nations to globalised consumer products, irrespective of any cultural preference or need. Nations and markets of resource rich, and exploitable developing nations are thus captured and governed by globally structured systems with historical proclivity for colonial greed - and in the post Reagen era, this is morally acceptable, for greed is good. Global colonisation, as is now openly acknowledged, is about the preservation of extravagant lifestyles of the few who have - at the enormous expense of many who have-not, and this will be protected all cost - or any human cost.

Globalisation and Malthusian Realities

We live in a globalised world, connected and interlinked in layers and dimensions unimagined before. And, we are irreversibly transformed by these technological advances that have brought us closer.  The ease of communication and faster travel has facilitated globalised trade, commerce and inter-dependent economies . The world has shrunk and there are many reasons why this is very good - at least for a small fraction of the global population. I belong to this small fraction.

This exercise is to challenge myself to see realities beyond the global averages and cliches of less hunger, more human progress, and commonly perceived failures of Malthusian and neo-Malthusian realities. For, I would contend, we only see those realities which confirm our experience, and comfort our existence.

I live in India. I work as a volunteer on issues of human rights and civil liberties. Each experience opens a veritable Pandora's box of similar abuses and violations, each complex, inter-dependent and often globalised in origin and scope. It would be wrong to say that there aren't national human wrongs perpetrated culturally, historically - like a strong caste system,  or a repressive patriarchy.  But it is also true that a lot of human rights abuse - and I would consider primary amongst these to be deliberate deprivation of food, shelter and pursuing of livelihood - have a strong globalised component.

Let us for the moment, consider hunger. World population is exploding, i.e. expanding exponentially. By all counts, the human society is currently doubling its numbers every 70 years.  As early as in 1798, Thomas Malthus predicted that a exponential population increase was unsustainable and earth would eventually run out of its capacity to feed this increasing population, leading to catastrophic consequence - termed Mathusian Catastrophe.  Similar and more recent predictions of imminent human tragedy, due to exhausting of basic resources, have found little popular favour, being countered by gains due to technology advances, eg. green revolution, which is believed to have greatly enhanced the world food supply to stave off wide spread  hunger and starvation. It is commonly believed that the world is both richer and less hungry, despite the huge increases in global population.

However, a look at any recent world map on hunger reveals large areas of serious-to-alarming hunger, which seems also more or less aligned in world population map, to areas of large population. The global increase in population is dominated by the developing and under developed nations, as is hunger - consistent with a Malthusian view. According to conservative estimates by FAO here are 870 million hungry people in the world - and almost all of them in the developing countries. India itself is home to 836 million people who live on less than rupees twenty per day (equivalent to 0.32 USD or 0.24 euro) and with many more millions who have just a little more.

So rather than adopt a complacent and globally averaged world view of more food and more wealth,  is it possible that we are actually living in a malthusian sea of starvation and depravation populated by islands of prosperity? New research indicates that as the world wealth grows, so does inequality. It is time to ask, is this hunger and starvation Malthusian in origin? That is, have we run up against a hard boundary that food produced is just insufficient for the numbers, or are some other factors also involved?

In 1978, India achieved its first self-sufficiency in food, with no net imports of food grains. This situation is expected to last till 2020s. That is, India is expected to remain food secure for a little while longer. This makes the high level of its poverty and hunger, surprising. So what causes this hunger?  One is the rising food costs in India  and monetising of all human sustenance needs. Thus even though there is enough food in India, the poor cannot afford to buy this food, even at the BPL (below poverty line) rates(see here).

Opening up of Indian markets and globalisation of its trade sectors seem to have driven a high fiscal growth in India. Yet, by many indicators this has not percolated down to its really needy and higher wealth has not led to a more equitable distribution of its wealth or decrease in its poverty (here), but has actually widened this inequality, in India and worldwide. Oxfam reports that 85 of the world's wealthiest own as much as bottom half of the world's population - 3.5 billion!

Market driven commerce has had catastrophic consequences on India's top two rural industries', agriculture and weaving, leaving a huge number of people unemployed or gainfully employed - and usually hungry. The agriculture sector in India is dominated by small holdings and employs 56% of India's workforce, but only contributes 16% to its GDP - making it the least rewarded and poverty ridden sector in the nation. The transformation from smaller, organic, independent, and indigenous holdings growing subsistence produce into the prevalence of high input cash based chemical and BT agriculture with focus on cash crops have created an agrarian crisis, leading to large scale farmer suicides.  Since the opening up of India's markets, it is estimated that more than fifty thousand farmers have committed suicide, since 1995, in the state of Maharashtra alone [here], driven to debt by the high input costs of seeds and chemicals, both in hands of large global corporations who walkway with giant profits. For example, the cost of Monsansto seeds dominating the market have increased 8000%, contributing to a total income for the company of 69 crores ( more than 10 million USD) for the quarter ending march 2013, and primarily leaving the system.

Similarly, even with a sharp decline in hand looms, India's second largest rural industry still supports an estimated 13 million people, who barely eke out a livelihood - but insufficient to feed themselves (here). Power looms using Bt cotton dominate the market although employing a  much smaller fraction of people.

Compounding these are the high human cost of large infrastructure projects, mining, rapid industrialisation, all by forceful acquisition of lands by the state, and creating a large pool of poverty in the internally displaced people (IDPs). While the 2010 world bank numbers place this figure near 650,000,  others estimate a number as large as 21 million! Meanwhile, diversion of diminishing resources like water and energy  from human based sustainable systems to industries in hands of MNCs further channel the profits upwards to the wealthy and most often out from community systems of the developing world into the profits of the already wealthy industrialised nations.

To conclude, it appears that the Malthusian catastrophe is already a reality for a large global population, and it is currently driven, not by enormous shortfalls in food and basic commodities, but due to profit driven globalised systems that suck resources and profits from large numbers of have-nots, into the pockets of small numbers of voraciously consuming haves of a globalised world.
There is compelling evidence that this is so.  One has to only open one's eyes and ask, what makes wealth? and where does all this wealth go? And, where it goes, does not bode well for the rest of humanity.  The world is in a era of globalised colonisation of nations, not by countries, but by ruthless market forces directed by mafiasized MNCs. Under such circumstances, globally sustainable solutions are non-viable until those really privileged wake up and acknowledge who really fund their lives and lifestyles - and at what devastating cost to man and nature.