Articles by Dr. Shiva

GLOBALISATION, THE HIJACK OF LAND AND WATER, AND THE DEATH OF DEMOCRACY
The violence of an economic system based on a limitless appetite for natural resources

by Dr. Vandana Shiva
11th April 2006

Today it is the 15th day of the fast unto death of Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA) activists, including Medha Patkar, Jamsingh Nargave and Bhagwati Patidar. The, government has refused to make public the report of 3 Ministers who visited the Narmada Valley to review the resettlement of the additional 35,000 people who are being uprooted to increase the height of the Sardar Sarovar Dam. Full and just rehabilitation is a precondition for the dam construction.

The secrecy around a report that was to have been made public is an indication that the Ministers had to recognize that resettlement and rehabilitation was not complete, which would mean that dam construction must be stopped. Therefore, the dam height can be raised only by drowning the democratic duties of the State and the democratic rights of citizens.

Across the street at Jantar Mantar, the only place in Delhi where protests are allowed in the era of globalisation, sit the 46 Bhopal victims who have walked 800 kms to get justice for the disaster that took place 21 years ago. Six of them - Shehzadi Bee, Champa Devi Shukla, Sanjay Verma, Satinath Saranga, Satish Kumar and Rachna Dhingra, have also started a fast to protest the refusal of the Prime Minister to meet them and respond to their demands. There demands are simple demands for justice in a democracy. They want the government to set up an inter-ministerial coordinating agency with necessary authority and funds to provide facilities for health care, medical, research, social support and economic rehabilitation of the people poisoned by Union Carbide/Dow Chemical and their children for at least the next 30 years. They are also demanding clean water, cleaning up of the contaminated water at the site, and setting up a special prosecution cell against Union Carbide. The Prime Minister views these demands for justice as interference in Foreign Direct Investment. In other words, in the political economy of globalisation, rights of citizens of a democracy do not count. Rights of global corporations and big business are all that needs to be considered.

The Narmada and Bhopal movements have emerged as peaceful responses to conflicts unleashed by the displacement and pollution threats inherent to an economic model which is undemocratic and non sustainable. Every part of India has become a Bhopal and a Narmada Valley. India's neo liberals have referred to the NBA's struggle against displacement an outmoded issue. However, the NBA's struggles and resistance over the past 20 years are forbearers of movements taking place across the length and breadth of the country in response to the virulent spread of an economic system, which has a limitless appetite for natural resources and is bent on grabbing the last inch of land and the last drop of water from the poor - the tribal, the peasant, the fishermen.

This wholesale uprooting is not mere displacement. Displacement is a Cartesian concept of being shifted from point to another. However, the tribals being evicted by mining and steel plants in Orissa, or peasant and tribals being evicted by dams like Sardar Sarovar on the Narmada or the people displaced by the dam at Daudhan in Panna National Park to divert the Ken river to the Betwa, as the first link in the river linking project or farmers being evicted for agribusiness farms in Punjab or real estate developments in Western Uttar Pradesh, are not just being "displaced", they are being uprooted. They are in fact being killed. On Jan 2, 2006 the police shot 12 tribals in Kalinga Nagar in Orissa during their peaceful protest against being uprooted. On 20th August 2005, five peasants - Prakash Mal, Smt. Gujar, Madan Lal Jat, Krishan Lal Chaudhary, Rama Narayan Chaudhary were shot by the police while they were peacefully defending their right to water from Bisalpur dam in Tonk, Rajasthan. Sarmukh Singh of Jethuke village died when he resisted the take over of his land for an agribusiness corporation. And more than 40,000 farmers have committed suicide since corporate farming and GMO were introduced in India. These are globalization's new wars over land and water.

Globalization requires the death of democracy, and the attempt to kill democracy is in vivid display at Jantar Mantar where two of the India's strongest people's movements, which have been fighting for the past two decades for the defense of fundamental rights of people to their land, lives and livelihoods get no response from the state.

But the crisis is deeper. It is a crisis evident in the fire tragedy in Meerut on 10th April 2006 at a Trade Fair. An India, which reduces herself to a market place for selling global goods, must sacrifice the fundamental security and safety of citizens. And an India, which transforms her vital land and water resources from being the basis of sustenance for her people, to inputs and commodities to be consumed for the global market place must uproot and destroy the lives and homes that tribals, peasants, fishermen have had for thousands of years. Globalisation needs a great uprooting, especially in an ancient and full land like India, where every ecological niche supports the life of 1.2 billion people.

The crisis of democracy unleashed by globalisation comes from the misconception that people and their rights are not at the core of democracy. The ecological crisis of globalisation comes from the illusion that we can live without nature and the ecological services and goods she provides. The mind shaped by economic globalisation has two major blind spots - it cannot see people and it cannot see nature, and of course it cannot see the intimate relationship between people and nature.

A neo liberal commentator has written an article, which argues that it is alright if those displaced by the Narmada dam cannot be resettled because there is not enough land, and there are far too many Indians working on land (Saubhik Chakravarti, "Ram, Roti, Romance" Indian Express, April 6, 2006) This need to empty out land of people, was the colonial concept of Terra Nullius, the Empty Earth. It is being reborn with globalizations' unending appetite for land. People must therefore be uprooted to make way for "infrastructure" - dams, highways, ports, and real estate development. And instead of recognizing that globalizations ecological footprint is crushing land and people, the new culturally and intellectually uprooted elite talk of too many people on the land. They even talk of natural resources as a comparative disadvantage, as if economics does not rest on ecological and vital resources like land and water. A recent article by the Secretary Finance of the Government of Kerala was titled, "When Natural Resources Are A Menace For Nations: Comparative Disadvantage" (Alok Sheel, Financial Express, April 12, 2006). The article states,

"The view that natural resources can contribute to the comparative disadvantage of nations is relatively recent. If the state is unable to maintain public order, economic activities either collapse or migrate. Natural resources, however, cannot migrate and are easy prey for militant groups."
The author goes on to argue,

"Natural resources have no economic value at source. Therefore, what gives these resources economic value are the ever increasing avenues of plugging into global trade facilitated by lowering of trade barriers"

However, it is precisely this trade liberalisation, which is allowing corporations to encroach on the ecological space of local communities, thus unleashing conflicts. For local people natural resources like there land and water have value. Denying value outsource" is denying the prior rights and prior uses of land and water. This how neo liberal economies creates an ecological and social blind spots, and can redefine natural resources, the very basis of life, as a "menace" and "comparative disadvantage". The problem is not natural resources but free trade and globalisation. The problem is not people but corporate greed and partnership of corporations with the state to usurp people's resources and violate people's fundamental rights.

If the government continues to be deaf to the people of Narmada and Bhopal who have left their homes to be heard by Delhi, it will destroy the very basis of democracy. People have to defend their rights to life and livelihoods, which in one context translates into the right to natural resources like water and land. If the state prevents them from peaceful defense of their rights, people will turn to armed struggle.

If the globalisers kill democracy, they will be handing over India to militant groups. 11% of India's land and 4% of her population have already turned to violence as a way of securing rights. Ajit Dovel, the Former Director the Intelligence Bureau has written about "Code Red: Naxals, the biggest threat" warned that "the nation may find its rural hinterland over run" (Hindustan Times, March 26, 2006).

An entire nation of 1.2 billion cannot be dispossessed of its rights to land and water without severe consequences. The blindness to this reality is symbolized in the blindness of the government to the crises in Narmada and Bhopal, Punjab and Andhra Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Orissa. Economic globalisation has transformed the country into a volcano waiting to erupt. Those who govern need to take into account the social and ecological devastation decisions on paper are causing.