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.