India’s independence is under threat from corporate rule, reports Andrew Simms
Namaste is the traditional Indian greeting, meaning “homage to you”. As India celebrates its 50th anniversary of independence, a different kind of respect is being paid – to the gods of global economic integration. And, as worship of this new idol grows, encouraged by the high priests of liberalisation, many believe India’s independence is threatened by a new colonial era dominated by rich multinational companies.
The world’s largest democracy, like other Asian nations, wants benefits from the globalising marketplace. But gene-hunting multinationals, the rise of the new international trade order under the World Trade Organisation (WTO), and Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) proposals for a multilateral agreement on investment, bring meaningful future independence for India into question.
For a government presiding over a volatile democracy, with 40% of its population below the poverty line, losing economic control could be disastrous: memories of colonialism are still alive in India, strongly influenced by a culture of self- reliance.
Jayati Ghosh, economic commentator for the Indian current affairs journal Frontline, says a recent World Bank report on India obscures the fact that economic liberalisation since 1991 has meant a “severe setback” to poverty reduction achieved since the early Seventies. In nearly every state, rural poverty was worse in 1992 than in 1989-90.
Indian economists Amit Bhaduri and Deepak Nayyar question why the World Bank and International Monetary Fund need to strengthen further the multinationals’ game in poor countries.
They say there is no reason why the principles of banking, which guide the IMF and the bank, should coincide with the objectives of human development.
But who is really in charge? As just one example, in the next few weeks the bank will decide on a loan of hundreds of millions of dollars to further develop coalfields in Bihar, which have already caused environmental devastation. It is quite possible that the decision to apply for the loan, and whether to give it, will be made by people trained in the same ideas in exactly the same offices. Staff regularly move back and forth between the New Delhi-based ministry of finance and the bank. After a time it is said to be impossible to tell who is on leave from where.
Threats to sovereignty go further: the control of plant genetic information. In gene-rich India industrially exploitable plants are considered the new gold. But one United Nations estimate puts the annual loss to developing countries due to “bio- piracy” at $4,5-billion. Even then “piracy” is possibly less of a threat than the control of intellectual property rights under new international trade law. In the new order, companies such as Cargill, Monsanto, ICI and Shell can take indigenous seed types, adapt them to fit proprietary herbs and pesticides, and sell them back to small farmers at a profit, dictating what gets grown, where and when.
“The state is under siege,” writes Vandana Shiva, Indian scientist and environmentalist. “The proposal is to replace the small peasant and farmer-based agricultural economy of India with agribusiness-controlled industrial agriculture.”
She explains that Pepsi wants to grow tomatoes and potatoes for its fast food chains KFC and Pizza Hut, Cargill wants sorghum and maize for animal feed, and Monsanto wants to promote herbicide- resistant rapeseed in order to sell its customised weedkiller. The problem is such crops neither fit the Indian diet nor the plans of local farmers.
This is not a petty squabble about resistance to some notion of the “modern world”. Fearful of losing the rights to plant their own seeds, 50000 farmers in Karnataka staged a rally against legislation on plant genetic resources in 1992. The following year farmers from across the country marched on Delhi. In July an office of seed giant Cargill was burnt down. “The installation of a patents regime in genes, plants and farm inputs, when none exists, is to gain control of a nation covertly,” said the president of the Kanataka Farmers’ Association.
Symbolically, farmers chose independence day in 1993 to declare their knowledge and biodiversity protected. Any company using local resources without community permission, they said, would be carrying out intellectual piracy. Patents already filed against Neem tree products justified their fears. However, without trade sanctions to back them up, these brave words have little effect.
The WTO now makes it more difficult for sovereign states to ensure the activities of foreign investors are in their best domestic interests. But the corporate lobby is not satisfied. A new charter to protect multinationals’ investments around the globe is being proposed by the OECD. Third World lobby groups such as Christian Aid have petitioned United Kingdom MPs, arguing that under the proposed Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI), multinationals would be free to drain local resources and put nothing back into the host country. They are calling for a moratorium on the agreement pending more open debate.
New international trade regulation eroded India’s independence arch. Giving free rein to profit-hungry corporates could pull out the keystone. The MAI is either the last gasp of a crumbling neo-liberal Washington consensus or the herald of a new dark age of unaccountable corporate governance.
— Andrew Simms writes on environment and development