7542.pdf
Media
- extracted text
-
GLOBALISATION
GANDHI AND SWADESHI
(What is Economic Freedom? Whose Economic Freedom?)
Dr. Vandana Shiva
I. The Seven Superstitions of Globalisation
There are seven superstitions or myths associated with
economic globalisation which are leading to the
assumption that it is inevitable and there is no alternative
possible.
Myth 1 Globalisation is a natural phenomena not an ideology
Globalisation is often described as a natural phenomena.
However, globalisation is not inevitable. There is not one
but many alternatives to globalisation based on the rights
of people rather than the rights of corporations, based on
democracy rather than corporate rule.
Globalisation is not a natural, evolutionary or inevitable
phenomena as is often argued. Globalisation is a political
process which has been forced on the weak by the
powerful through political institutions such as the
Structural Adjustment projects of the World Bank and
IMF and the free-trade arrangements of the World Trade
Organisation.
Myth 2 There is no alternative to globalisation
If globalisation is natural, it cannot be violent, and if it is
natural, it becomes inevitable. The TINA syndrome (There
is no alternative - therefore becomes inevitable. Once the
idea of inevitability is accepted the reality of inevitability is
created and each of us starts to participate in the violence
of globalisation.
Myth 3 Globalisation is a totally new stage of human evolution
Globalisation is not new. It was earlier simply called
colonialism. The first wave was the colonisation of the
Americans, Africa, Asia and Australia by European powers
over 500 years. The first free-trade treaty was a treaty
between the East India Company and the declining Moghul
Empire in India.
1
Myth 4 Globalisation will increase citizen freedom and democracy
by reducing the power of the state
Globalisation is basically a take over of the rights of citizens
by corporations through a dismantling of the structures of
the state that protect people. It is therefore leading to less
freedom for people, but more freedom for capital. The
search for absolute freedom by corporations is expressed in
the rules of the Multilateral Agreement for Investment (MAI)
being negotiated by the OECD, to then be imposed on the
rest of the world.
Myth 5 Globalisation will increase prosperity for all by leading
to limitless growth
The growth under globalisation is not a growth in goods
and services, but a growth in international trade and a
growth of the financial economy. There are 2 trillion dollars
of fictitious money moving daily. This economy is 70 times
larger than the economy of real goods and services. More
financial growth does not mean more access to the goods
and services we need. For the poorest of the world,
increased free trade internationally leads to an increase in
poverty by the diversion of or destruction of the resources
on which they survive and by the dismantling of institutions
which protect their rights.
Myth 6 Globalisation will protect the environment by leading to
economic growth and hence creating more resources
for environmental resources and a greater appreciation
of environmental values
This myth assumes that only the rich are environmentally
aware. The assumption is emperically falsified by the
movements of women, peasants, small fishworkers,
indigenous people and tribals for environmental protection.
The myth also ignores the fact that globalisation leads to
the globalisation of non-sustainable production and
consumption patterns - more cars and more fossil fuel
consumption, more industrial agriculture and more
2
consumption of pesticides and fertilisers, more use of toxics
and more trade in toxics. The environment is therefore
destroyed faster and on a larger scale. In addition,
globalisation leads to environmental deregulation and a
dismantling of laws and policies for environmental
protection.
Myth 7 Globalisation leads to peace because borders are
removed and everyone becomes a member of the global
village
Globalisation is increasing violence and disintegration in
society by increasing economic insecurity and by ethnicising
and ghettoising all forms of dissent, protect, and articulation
of alternatives. First globalisation empties cultures of their
economic and material base by transferring control over
production and markets to transnational corporations.
Materially emptied cultures are then pitted against one
another, because their common economic based has
disappeared. Cultural diversity is then pushed into conflict
and ethnocide as in the case of Rwanda, Somalia, Sri Lanka,
ex-Yugoslavia.
II. Globalisation as the Rule of Corporations
The first globalisation was based on the take over of lands
and territories by merchant adventures and pirates from
Europe.
On 17th April 1492, Queen Isabel and King Ferdinand
granted Christopher Columbus the privileges of "discovery
and conquest". One year later, on 4 May 1493, Pope
Alexander VI through his "Bull of Donation" granted all
islands and mainlands "discovered and to be discovered,
one hundred leagues to the West and South of the Azores
towards India" and not already occupied or held by any
Christian king or prince as of Christmas of 1492, to the
Catholic monarchs Isabel of Castille and Ferdinand of
3
Aragon. As Walter Ullmann has stated in Medieval
Papalism,
The pope as the vicar of God commanded the world,
as if it were a tool in his hands; the pope, supported
by the canonists, considered the world as his
property to be disposed according to his will.
Charters and patents thus turned acts of piracy into divine
will. The peoples and nations that were colonized did not
belong to the pope who "donated" them, yet this canonical
jurisprudence made the Christian monarchs of Europe rulers
of all nations, "wherever they might be found and whatever
creed they might embrace". The principle of "effective
occupation" by Christian princes, the "vacancy" of the
targetted lands, and the "duty'" to incorporate the "savages"
were components of charters and patents.
The Papal Bull, the Columbus charter and the patents
granted by European monarchs laid the juridical and moral
foundations for the colonisation and extermination of non
European peoples. The Native American population
declined from 72 million in 1492 to less than 4 million a
few centuries later.
500 hundred years after Columbus, a more secular version
of the same project of colonisation continues through
patents. The Papal Bull has been replaced by the (GATT)
treaty. The principle of effective occupation by Christian
princes has been replaced by "effective occupation" by
modern day rulers, the transnational corporations
manipulated by modern day rulers. The "vacancy of
targeted lands" has been replaced by the vacancy of targeted
lifeforms and species manipulated by the new
biotechnologies. The duty to incorporate savages into
Christianity has been replaced by the duty to incorporate
local and national economies into the global market place,
and to incorporate non-westem systems of knowledge into
the reductionism of commercialised western science and
technology.
4
The creation of property through the piracy of others wealth
remains the same as 500 years ago.
The freedom that transnational corporations are claiming
through intellectual property rights protection in the GATT
agreement on TRIPs is the freedom that European colonizers
have claimed since 1492 when Columbus set precedence
in treating the licence to conquer non-European peoples as
a natural right of european men. The land titles issued by
the Pope through European kings and queens were the first
patents. The colonizer's freedom was built on the slavery
and subjugation of the people with original rights to the
land. This violent take-over was rendered 'natural' by
defining the colonized people into nature, thus denying
them their humanity and freedom.
John Locke's treatise on property1 effectually legitimized
this same process of theft and robbery during the enclosure
movement in Europe. Locke clearly articulates capitalism's
freedom to build on the freedom to steal; he states that
property is created by removing resources from nature
through mixing with labour. But this 'labour' is not physical
labour but labour in its 'spiritual' form as manifested in the
control of capital. According to Locke, only those who own
capital have the natural right to own natural resources; a
right that supersedes the common rights of others with prior
claims. Capital is thus defined as a source of freedom, but
this freedom is based on the denial of freedom to the land,
forests, rivers and biodiversity that capital claims as its own
and to others whose rights are based on their labour. Because
property obtained through privatization of commons is
perceived to be depriving the owner of capital of freedom.
Thus peasants and tribals who demand the return of their
rights and access to resources are regarded as thieves.
These Eurocentric notions of property and piracy are the
bases on which the IPR laws of GATT/WTO have been
framed. When Europeans first colonised/ the non-European
world, they felt it was their duty to "discover and conquer",
5
to "subdue, occupy and possess". It seems that the western
powers are still driven by that colonising impulse to discover,
conquer, own and possess everything, every society, every
culture. The colonies have now been extended to the interior
spaces, the "genetic codes" of life forms from microbes and
plants to animals, including humans.
John Moore, a cancer patient, had his cell lines patented by
liis own doctor. Myriad Pharmaceuticals has patented the
cancer gene in women in order to get a monoply on
diagnostics and testing. The cell lines of the Hagahai of
Papua New Guinea and the Guami of Panama are patented
by the U.S.Commerce Secretary.
The assumption of empty lands, terra nullius, is now being
expanded to "emptgy life", seeds and medicinal plants. The
take over of native resources during colonisation was
justified on the ground that indigenous people do not
"improve" their land. As John Winthrop wrote in 1869:
Natives in New England, they enclose nor land,
neither have they any settled habitation, nor any
tame cattle to improve the land by soe have nor other
but a Natural Right to those countries. Soe as if we
leane them sufficient for their use, we may lawfully
take the rest.2
The same logic is now used to appropriate biodiversity
wealth from the original owners and innovators by defining
their seeds, medicinal plants, medical knowledge into
nature, into non-science and treating the tools of genetic
engineering as the yard stick of "improvement". Defining
Christianity as the only religion, and all other beliefs and
cosmologies as primitive funds its parallel in defining
commercialised western science as the only science, and all
other knowledge systems as primitive.
Five hundred years ago, it was enough to be a non-christian
culture to loose all claims and rights. 500 years after
Columbus it is enough to be a non-Westem culture with a
6
distinctive world view and diverse knowledge systems to
loose all claims and rights. The humanity of others was
blanked out then and their intellect is being blanked out
now. Conquered territories were treated as peopleless in
the patents of the fifteenth and sexteenth centuries. People
were naturalised into "our subjects and naturals". In
continuity of conquest by naturalisation, biodiversity is
being defined into nature-the cultural and intellectual
contributions of non-western knowledge system are being
systematically erased.
Today's patents have a continuity with the patents isued
to Columbus, Sir John Cobot, Sir Humphery Gilbert, Sir
Walter Raleigh. The conflicts that have been unleashed by
the GATT treaty, by patents on life forms, by the patenting
of indigenous knowledge and by genetic engineering are
grounded in processes that can be summarised and
symbolised as the second coming of Columbus.
At the heart of the Columbus' "discovery" was the
treatment of piracy as a natural right of the coloniser and
necessary for the deliverance of the colonised. At the heart
of the GATT treaty and its patent laws is the treatment of
biopiracy as a natural right of western coroprations and as
necessary for the "development" of the Third World
Communities.
Biopiracy is the Columbian "discovery" 500 years after
Columbus. Patents are still the means to protect this piracy
of the wealth of non-western peoples as a right of western
powers.
Through patents and genetic engineering new colonies are
being carved out. The land, the forests, the rivers, the
oceans, the atmosphere have all been colonized, eroded,
and polluted. Capital now has to look for new colonies to
invade and exploit for its further accumulation. These new
colonies are, in my view, the interior spaces of the bodies of
women, plants and animals. Resistance to Biopiracy is a
resistance to this ultimate colonistion of life itself - of the
7
future of evolution as well as the past and future of non
western traditions of relating to nature and knowing nature.
It is a struggle to protect the freedom of diverse species to
evolve. It is a struggle to protect the freedom of diverse
cultures to evolve. It is a struggle to conserve both cultural
and biological diversity.
Over a century, the merchant adventures organised
themselves into corporations. The development of
commercial corporations was linked with colonial
expansion. The Crown of England created through Royal
Charter, Chartered Corporations) in the 1600s and early
1800s to carry out business of merchant adventuring and
colonial plunder. The East India Company, which received
its Royal Charter in 1600 was the first Chartered
Commercial.’
The first free trade treaty was a treaty between East India
Company and the declining Moghul Empire.1
The contemporary globalisation based on the rules of freetrade is in fact the establishment of the rule of corporations
over governments and people. The fiction of the corporation
has become the only legal personality which can be
protected under globalisation — people and their rights have
been reduced to "protectionist" forces which interfere in
free-trade and economic growth. Through the fiction of the
corporation a minority has used the corporate form to
dominate the majority. Corporate entities which were first
equated with human persons, have now been elevated
above people. In Europe and the U.S., the original
corporations were given the legal personality of white, male,
property owners. The fiction was based on the exclusion of
nature and her species, non-westem cultures, women, men
without property. Now the option has grown to exclude
all humans
The courts, when dealing with a corporation, accept the
fiction that the corporation has a birth or death and more
importantly entitlement to human and civil rights. A
8
corporation, which exists solely on paper, can assert that it
has the right to do something and that right can prevail
over real persons. Over times all responsibilities of
corporations have evaporated system of absolute rights and
absolute irresponsibility
The rights of this fiction have increasingly become higher
than those of real people. Further, while real people have
rights and responsibilities, the fictious persona of the
corporation only has rights. Collections of opeople as
communities, as cooperatives are not recognised as not
having a distinct legal personality like the commercial
corporation.
The latest proposal of the Multilateral Agreement
Investment (MAI) is the ultimate statement that only the
corporation has rights — neither people nor governments
have rights.
The MAI prevents governments from interfering in foreign
investments in any way. The rules of the MAI apply to all
levels of government: Federal, state, county, city. Under
the new MAI, no country can prevent entry by foreign
companies in any economic sector. The "free flow of
capital" will be sanctified in MAI. To further empower
corporate dominion over nation-states, the MAI gives
private corporations and investors "legal standing" to sue
sovereign governments. Director General of the World
Trade Organisation, Renato Ruggero, admits the MAI is
designed to become the "Constitution for a single global
economy".
Globalisation has in effect made the citizen disappear, and
it has reduced the state into being a mere instrument of
global capital. The persona of the fiction has displaced the
human persons on which it was modeled. Their only role
is as consumers in the market place - the roles of human
beings as members of productive, cultural communities is
being erased. On the one hand this is rendering human
beings dispensable to the production process, on the other
9
hand it is eroding the cultural diversity of people shaped
by the diverse ways in which they have produced goods
and met their needs.
The absolute power of corporations is being established by
making the rights of corporations absolute and eroding the
rights of people that have been built through democratic
struggle. Food provisioning, health care, education, social
security are all being transformed into corporate monopolies
under the code words of "competitiveness" and
"efficiency". People's rights and the public domain are being
eroded by exporting the economic label of "protectionism"
to cover all domains — ethical, social and political. The
protection of the environment and the protection of people's
security are treated as non-tariff trade barriers which need
to be dismantled. While corporations have absolute rights,
they have no responsibility. While citizens and the state
have no rights, they have to carry all the responsibilities.
Food is a good symbol to see how the powers of citizens,
the state and corporations are shifting.
On the one hand, the roles and the function that the state
used to perform to guarantee the right to food are being
dismantled. During the World Food Summit, the U.S.
Secretary of State stated the food could not longer be
recognised as a right since the right to food would interfere
in free trade of food commodities.
On the other hand, domains in which people have
organised themselves are being taken over by the state on
behalf of corporations. Two examples of this threat to
people's freedom in the area of food are the denial of farmers
to save seed and denial of citizens to set food standards.
Patents on seed are being used by corporations to treat the
inalienable right of farmers to save seed as a theft and a
crime.
Organic standards and labelling are a means which people
have created to have the freedom to get food free of
10
chemicals. It is the means of survival of small organic
farmers and the means to guarantee food safety for
consumers.
Now the U.S is changing the standards of "organic"
labelling. The USDA will allow Now the U.S. is changing
the standard of "organic" labelling. This USDA will allow
fruits and vegetables to be labelled "organic" which have
been genetically engineered, erradiated, treated with
additives and raised on contaminated sewage. Under the
new proposals, "organic" livestock can be raised in batteries,
fed with the offal of other animals. Organic food is thus
being redefined to include all that it was meant to replace.
The law also forbids setting of standards higher than those
established by the department. Farmers will, in other words,
be forbidden by law from producing and selling good food.
Similarly, in the area of genetically engineered crops and
food, while the corporations are claiming absolute rights
through "intellectual property rights", they are also
ensuring that they will have no responsibility for the
ecological and social costs arising from genetic
engineering.
Genetically engineered crops and foods are being launched
in a context in which profits are privatised through IPRs
and costs are socialised, even though the public is kept
deliberately ignorant of those costs. Social and ecological
costs are being collectively pushed out of the public mind
through denial of the need for biosafety regulations and
the consumers "right to know" through labelling of
genetically engineered foods. Society is thus being pushed
into a situation in which citizens increasingly become
victims of ecological and public health disasters but can do
nothing about it. They are being robbed of their basic rights
as producers and consumers, and they are being forced to
accept costs to their health and environment which as free
and informed citizens exercising democratic rights they
would never accept.
11
The imposition of genetic engineering and its potential
hazards on society is a product of totalitarian structures in
which citizens are being denied their fundamental rights
to safety and security, and are being prevented from
exercising their democratic choice in the vital area of food
production and consumption.
The emergence of genetic engineering has been based on
the violation of democratic rights of people. The future of
genetic engineering can only be built through the
establishment of totalitarian structures.
Corporate totalitarianism is different from other forms of
totalitarianism because it is exercised through a fiction and
hence is not like dictatorships in which the dictator has a
clear identity which people recognise and see. Corporate
totalitarianism is also different from the dictatorships we
are more familiar with because it is the first slavery which
does not need the slave. It rules through dispensability
rather than exploitation. It treats communities, people,
countries, ecosystems, species as disposable and dispensable.
They have no protection no sanctity. The only sacred is the
dollar.
III. Swadeshi as Economic Freedom
Globalisation is generating social, economic and ecological
insecurity on a global scale. It is undermining citizen
freedoms. What we need is a new movement for freedom
from corporate rule.
Central to India's movement for freedom from colonisalism
were the concepts of 'Swadeshi', 'Swaraj', and
'Satyagraha'.
Swadeshi is the spirit of regeneration, a method of creative
reconstruction in periods of dependency and colonisation.
According to the Swadeshi philosophy people possess both
materially and morally what they need to evolve and design
12
their society and economy and free themselves of oppressive
structures. Economic freedom according to Swadeshi is
based on endogenously driven development rather than
externally controlled development.
Swadeshi for Gandhi was a positive concept based on
building what a community has in terms of resources, skills,
institutions and transforming them, where they were
inadequate. Imposed resources, institutions and structures
leave a people unfree and are non-sustainable. The collapse
of the Nehruvian model based on import substitution rather
than endogenous development shows how patterns of
development which do not emerge from self-organisation
cannot be sustained. Swadeshi for Gandhi was central to
the creation of peace, freedom and sustainable
development. Swadeshi is based on people's economies and
their ability to organise themselves. Swadeshi or self
organisation in economic affairs is the basis of economic
freedom, and without economic freedom, there can be no
political freedom, or self-governance and self-rule.
Swaraj, or self-rule, is the birthright of all people. The phrase
that echoed most during our freedom movement was
"Swaraj hamara janmasidh adhikar hai" — Self rule is our
birth right. For Gandhi, and for the contemporary social
movements in India, self-rule did not imply governance by
a centralised state, but decentralised self-governance by local
communities "Nate na raj" "our rule in our village" are
slogans of our grass roots environmental movement from
the mountains to the sea.
In periods of injustice and external domination, when people
are denied economic and political freedom, reclaiming
freedom requires peaceful non-cooperation with unjust laws
and regimes. This peaceful non-cooperation with injustice
has been the democratic tradition of India and was revived
by Gandhi as 'Satyagraha'. Literally, Satyagraha means the
struggle for truth. According to Gandhi, no tyranny can
enslave a people, who consider it immoral to obey laws
13
that are unjust. As he stated in Hind Swaraj,
As long as the superstition that people should obey unjust
laws exists, so long will slavery exist. And a non-violent
resister alone can remove such a superstition.5
Satyagraha is also the key to self rule or Swaraj.
IV. Globalisation: Whose Economic Freedom?
Swadeshi is not obsolete in today's context. It is more
relevant than ever before. It is the creative alternative to
both the rule of the centralised national state under the
Nehruvian model and the rule of global corporations and
global institutions such as the W.T.O. Economic freedom
requires reduced control of the state and reduced control
of World Bank, IMF, W.T.O. and the G-7 and Global
Corporations. Economic freedom is more freedom for the
people of India to have secure livelihoods, to have control
over the policies and resources that make their livelihoods.
The contemporary discourse on 'Swadeshi' and 'Swaraj'
has however been severely distorted by the discourse on
globalisation.
The Congress party in its election manifesto referred to
globalisation as 'Arthic Swaraj' but equated economic
freedom with Globalisation.6
The BJP Government which had won elections on the anti
globalisation and Swadeshi plank has made a rapid turn
around and announced that Swadeshi is not anti
globalisation. The Commerce Ministry removed restrictions
from 336 items in its new Export-Import policy, including
black pepper and shrimp and said this was Swadeshi. The
Industry Ministry stated that he would implement TRIPs
and this was not inconsistent with Swadeshi.7
Whether it is the BJP or Congress, Swadeshi and Swaraj
are being used rhetorically, but not for economic policy.
14
Every government implements the globalisation agenda
when it comes to power even if they have criticized
globalisation as opposition parties. This is evidence of the
growing lack of economic freedom and economic
sovereignty.
Globalisation has undermined the conditions of self-rule,
self-governance and self-organisation especially the
countries of the Third World and for the poorest and
smallest producers. Globalisation is in fact recolonisation
and the trade liberalisation polices of the World Bank, IMF
and W.T.O are no different from the free trade treaty of the
East India Company which allowed a trading corporation
to become the rulers of our land.
The 1717 firmans granted to the East India Company by
Faruksheer Firman, the great grandson of Aurangazeb,
addressed to the Governors of Bengal, Hyderabd and
Ahmedabad, were recorded as follows:Dilly, January Anno 1716-17
A translate of three Phirmaunds granted to the Right
Hon: English East Company for a free trade, by
Faruksheer
King of Indostan
The language and concept of free trade was therefore very
central to the East India Company policy for laying the
"foundation of a large, well grounded, sure English
dominion in India for all time to come".8
The dominant thinking of the Indian elite views
globalisation and trade liberalisation as a miracle cure for
poverty at a time when the high costs and vulnerability of
economic globalisation have become visible through the
South East Asian crisis. The dominant thinking of the Indian
elite views globalisation and foreign direct investment as a
recipe for economic freedom at a time when entire
economics are being taken over and recolonised by western
powers.
15
The South East Asian countries carried out all the steps
prescribed in the globalisation recipe. Today their banks
and financial institutions, their industries and their natural
resources have been taken over by western banks and
transnational corporations.
In a recent article, Gerald Segal, Director of International
Institute for Strategic Studies in London has written "Next,
a Western Era with Europe Sharing the Leadership"
After the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of
the Soviet Union, we spoke of a post-cold war world.
What we can now foresee, amid Asia's financial
crisis, is a period dominated by the west.9
The western powers and their strategists view globalisation
as recolonisation of the countries that became independent
from western colonial rule half a century ago. Today, the
political parties including the Congress, which had played
a major role in the independence movement, have adopted
this agenda for recolonisation in its election manifesto. What
is worse, it has named the arrangement for new economic
slavery "Arthic Swaraj" or Economic freedom.
The recipes for "arthic swaraj" are neither informed by the
economic reality of India, nor by the lessons and experiences
from other parts of the world. They are literally lifted from
the Bretton Woods institutions and their prescriptions for
trade liberalisation and economic reforms.
The South East Asia crisis has been created precisely by
financial liberalisation and economic deregulation. The
consequence has been a total take over of the economy
through the currency crisis and the IMF programme.
Foreign banks and companies are already going through
the wrecked economies and buying up local assets and
institutions at throw away prices. What we are seeing in
South East Asia is the result of the package that the Congress
is trying to sell to the Indian people as "economic swaraj"
but which has only one outcome — total economic bondage
and economic take over.
16
On 5-6th December 1997, the "Wall Street Journal" wrote
that the restructuring of Thailand's financial system is
expected to result in foreign majority ownership in many
of the country's 15 commercial banks.10
In Korea too, the IMF required that 'Foreign investment in
the capital markets will be liberalised and direct foreign
investment procedures will be simplified and made more
transparent. Foreign entities will be allowed to buy 50% of
the equity of a listed Korean company by end 1997 and
55% by end 1998 paving the way for foreign take-overs of
Korean firms.11
When a major party in the country states in its election
manifesto that the threat of foreign take over no longer exists,
and there is no enemy outside, only an enemy within, and
hence the concept of 'Swadeshi' is no longer relevant, it is
either ignorant about the state of the world's economics or it
is deliberately misleading its potential voters. If the former,
it is unfit to rale. If the latter, it is guilty of being anti-national.
Instead of taking lessons from countries which have
implemented trade liberalisation and financial liberalisation
and are today in deep crisis as a consequence, promoters
of globalisation repeatedly state that :
We should not be afraid of the world
To be aware of the consequences of liberalisation on the
basis of the South East Asia cannot be interpreted as fear,
and blindness to facts is not fearlessness, it is foolhardiness.
To put your hand in fire and insist it will not burn is a sign
of stupidity, not smartness. The volatile global economy is
like a fire, and it 'burns'livelihoods and national economies.
Integration into it without limits and cautions is not a cure
for poverty, it is a cause for poverty. It is not a cure for
unemployment, it is a recipe for unemployment on
unimaginable scale. The assessment of unemployment in
Thailand and Indonesia as a result of the crisis is 4 million.
In Korea and Malaysia, prosperous workers are suddenly
on the street.
17
South East Asia is looking towards India for finding models
that provide economic alternatives. The concept of
Swadeshi is today even more relevant that during the
independence movement. It is the key to genuine economic
freedom in a period of economic totalitarianism dominated
by World Bank, IMF, W.T.O. and TNCs. Swadeshi leads to
"Arthic Swaraj". "Arthic Swaraj" without Swadeshi is
like a building without foundations. It must collapse.
Even though we have the colonialism of the past and recent
experience of globalisation as recolonisation, many
commentators refer to globalisation as economic freedom
and equate Swadeshi with the past fifty years of the
Nehruvian model. As Gurcharan Das12 says,
There is nothing new about Swadeshi, we have practised it
since independence and "Swadeshi will bring back the
license - permit raj".
However, Swadeshi is as an alternative to Nehruvian
socialism based on centralised state power, and the
usurpation of the functions of the community by the state.
Swadeshi is people centred, not industry or government
centred.
Sharad Joshi, in his article, "Swadeshi the Third Battle"
has also equated Swadeshi with the Nehruvian rathen than
the Gandhian legacy. Joshi goes even further to suggest
that Swadeshi means violation and India has been isolated
for thousands of years.
The Swadeshi brigade is in power now. It would try to set
back the clock and go back to a closed India. It imposed
isolation in India for thousands of years. It succeeded in
keeping its domain despite the British. It succeeded again
50 years back under the banner of socialism, and hopes to
succeed this time once again.”
However, India has been a more open society than any
other, welcoming guests, and integrating cultures.
What seems to be common to these critics of Swadeshi is
18
that they equate globalisation with freedom and nationalism
with slavery. However, globalisation is leading to the
recolonisation of Third World countries.
V. False Dualisms: Swadeshi Vs Videshi
Our magazines and newspapers often refer to Swadeshi vs
Videshi, and describe Swadeshi as a form of xenophobia.
This is a false dualism and a distortion of the meaning of
Swadeshi. Globalisation is in fact the xenophophic project
because it is extinguishing all diversity, it is extinguishing
autonomous small producers. It is a project of total control
arising from the fear of everything that is alive, free and
autonomous. In fact, the Intellectual Property Rights, which
are central to the globalisation agenda is based on a racist
view of knowledge. This racism allows the appropriation
of indigenous knowledge as in the case of biopiracy of neem,
turmeric, basmati, pepper etc.
Globalisation also breeds xenophonia by creating massive
insecurity, which in turn breeds fear and violence among
communities and societies. Ethnocide and ethnic cleansing
are the gifts of global economic integration which robs
people of their basic insecurities.14
The concept of 'Swadeshi' is not based on the fear of the
foreigner. It is based on the recognition that economically
powerful global forces are taking over the economic and
political structures of our society and hence threatening
the livelihoods and freedoms of the people.
Swadeshi is based on the recognition that self-organisation
is the basis of freedom. Since self-organising systems are
autonomous, and self-referential, though not insulated from
others, they are at peace with themselves and they interact
under conditions of freedom and peace. A self-organising
system knows what it has to import and export in order to
maintain and renew itself. It needs nothing else but reference
19
to itself. Self-organised systems interact with their
environment but in autonomy. The environment only
triggers the structural changes; it does not specify or direct
them. It is tire living system, which specifies its structural
changes and which patterns in the environment, that trigger
them. At the political and cultural level, it is this freedom
to self-organise that Gandhi saw as the basis of interaction
between different societies and cultures. "I want the
cultures of all lands to be blown about as freely as possible,
but I refuse to be blown off my feet by any".
The Chilean scientists, Maturana and Varela have
distinguished between two kinds of systems — autopoietic
and allopoietic. A system is autopoietic when its function
is primarily geared to self renewal. An autopoietic system
refers in the first place to itself and is, therefore, called selfreferential. In contrast, an allopoietic system, such as a
machine refers to a function given from outside, such as
the production of a specific output.'5 Swadeshi, in scientific
terms, refers to the building of antopoietic systems as the
basis of our cultural, economic and political life.
Globalisation is an example of the transformation of what
were autopoietic systems into allopoietic ones. Globalisation
is not the cross cultural interaction of diverse societies. It is
imposition of a particular culture on all others. Nor is
globalisation the search for ecological balance on a
planetary scale. It is the predation of one class, one race
and often one gender of a simple species on all others. The
"global" in the dominant discourse is the political space in
which the dominant local seeks global control, and frees
itself of local, natural and global control and responsibility
and limits arising from the imperatives of ecological
sustainability and social justice. The global in this sense
does not represent the universal human interest; it represents
a particular local and parochial interest and culture, which
has been globalised through its reach and control, its
irresponsibility and lack of reciprocity.
20
Swadeshi is an anti-colonial concept, it is not an anti
foreigner concept. It is not about people, who are outsiders
— it refers to structures of power which colonise. It is not
xenophobic, it is liberatory because it arises from a spirit of
freedom, not the basis of fear.
VI.‘Swadeshi’ and Citizen Freedom under
Globalisation’
When the rights of farmers to save, exchange, evolve seed
are denied, when the rights of consumers to safe and
adequate food is denied, what we have is totalitarianism of
a most basic kind since it is a totalitarianism based on the
total control over the vital necessity — food.
Swadeshi and Satyagraha became the only path to
reclaiming citizen freedom in this context of economic
totalitarianism. Society in which the only citizens with
rights are corporations and their rights are so absolute that
they can totally extinguish citizen rights, is not a free society.
It is corporate totalitarianism created through free-trade
arrangements.
Economics in which most people are rendered dispensable,
and in which most people cannot meet their basic needs
are not free economies for the people. They are free only
for capital.
Building free societies and free economies means, above all,
putting people before capital. The liberation of people is a
very different issue from the liberalisation of trade. In fact
trade-liberalisation is based on either the dispensability of
people or their enslavement.
How do we build alternatives in the context of this
totalitarianism of a new kind — a totalitarianism based on
the rule of fictions rather than the gun boat, a totalitarianism
built on dispensability of the majority rather than their
bondage, a totalitarianism in which there is no dictator, no
2542
person, no government, but all prevading corporations
which are themselves a legal fiction?
Non-violence requires a withdrawal from participation in
violence. The first step in building free societies again is to
recognise that globalisation is not a natural phenomena, it
is an exercise of absolute power for total control. It is a
new kind of totalitarianism in which corporations are the
rulers and are attempting to gain total control over life itself,
domains that have been beyond the control of the market
or the state.
The second step in a non-violent search for freedom is to
start to reclaim our self-organising capacities as citizens and
communities.
Reclaiming our self-organising capacities includes a non
cooperation with the systems of control that deny us our
self-organisation capacity. Just as in agriculture, the shift
from chemical to organic farming requires becoming free
of external inputs and building up the internal inputs on
the farm, in society, a shift to freedom requires becoming
free of or less dependent on the "external inputs" through
which corporations control our lives — through finance,
through control on knowledge and information, through
monopoly control on production systems.
LETS systems, local credit unions are some of the civil society
initiatives which are "short circuiting" the global money
economy - community is quite evidently the substitute for
global capital, just as internal organic inputs are a substitute
for external chemicals. The alternative to free-trade is
building free local economies in which every one has a place
and every one's needs are met.16
Rejuvenating our knowledge and skills to meet our needs
with our own resources, and our own capacities is the
alternative to the monopoly on life inherent to patents on
life. I have often described patents on life as the enclosure
of the intellectual and biological commons. The alternative
to enclosures is the recovery of the commons - protecting
22
the free domain of knowledge exchange by non-cooperating
with IPR laws which make knowledge exchange, seed
exchange, biodiversity exchange at the local level illegal and
we can only be truly free if our minds are free. Controlling
and owning the mind, and products of the mind is a much
deeper slavery than slavery itself. The bodies of slaves were
bought and sold, their minds were not. Under the new
regime of "free trade", both body and mind of the people
are tradeable commodities, the property of the powerful to
be bought and sold freely. Breaking free of this slavery
requires making our bodies and mind free of the ultimate
bondage inherent to patents on life.
We have to begin again to build free societies and free
economies, where knowledge is free.
The Third World people and women have from the
beginning of the waves of globalisation have had to organise
ourselves again and again to define our personhood so that
we too could govern ourselves, fulfil our humanity, defend
our communities and other species. We know what it is
like to be excluded. We need to remember how we have
organised in the past, how we have built democratic
institutions and cultures. Corporate rule has excluded all
people as persons. It has reduced citizenship to being
consumers — and by new mechanisms such as denial of
the right to know, especially in the area of genetically
engineered foods, the consumer too is a captive consumer.
The corporate fiction has to be treated as what it is — a
fiction, which can rule over us only to the extent that we
allow it to. The most fundamental human rights agenda of
our times is to reclaim our humanity in all our diversity.
An inclusive concept of personhood is also an inclusive
concept of freedom since it does not gain freedom of one
kind for a privileged part of society but protects
multidimensional freedoms for all. We can only become
free people if our rights are not extinguished by the rights
of the corporate fiction.
23
All liberation movements in recent history have been partial
and exclusivist. They excluded other species and they
excluded diverse cultures. For the first time we have an
opportunity to seek freedom in inclusive ways, in our
diversity, to seek freedom for humans in partnership with
other species and to seek freedom non-violently. This
freedom of and through diversity is the alternative to
globalisation.
VII.
Towards an Ahimsic Artha Vyavastha
(a Non-Violent Economic Order)
Violence and non-violence are primarily relational
categories. As Gandhi has said, non-violence is not just the
absence of violence. It is an active engagement in
compassion. Ahirnsa, or non-violence, is the basis of many
faiths that have emerged on Indian soil. Translated into
economics, non-violence implies that our systems of
production, trade and consumption do not use up the
ecological space of other species and other people. Violence
is the characteristic of dominant economic structures and
economic organisation which rule our lives in which the
ecological space for other species or other people is usurped
or enclosed.
In the Isho Upanished it is said,
The universe is the creation of the Supreme Power
meant for the benefits of (all) creation. Each
individual life form must, therefore, learn to enjoy
its benefits by forming a part of the system in close
relation with other species. Let not any one species
encroach upon others rights
Whenever we engage in consumption or production
patterns which take more than we need we are engaging
in violence. Thus non-sustainable consumption and nonsustainable production constitute a violent economic order.
24
According to an ancient Indian text, the Ishopanishad:
a selfish man over utilising the resources of nature
to satisfy his own ever increasing needs is nothing
but a thief, because using resources beyond one's
needs would result in the utilisation of resources over
which others have a right.
This relationship between restraint in resource use and
social justice was also the core element of Mahatma
Gandhi's political philosophy. In his view:
the earth provides enough for everyone's need, but not
for everyone's greed.
The eurocentric concept of property views only capital
investments as investment, and hence treats returns on
capital investment as the only right that needs protection.
Non-western indigenous communities and cultures
recognise that investment can also be of labour or of care
and nurturance. Rights in such cultural systems protect
investments beyond capital. They protect the culture of
conservation and the culture of caring and sharing.
Non-violence or ahimsa combines justice and sustainability
at a deep level. "Not taking more than you need" ensures
that enough resources are left in the ecosystem for other
species and maintenance of essential ecological processes
to ensure sustainability. It also ensures that enough resources
are left for diverse livelihoods of different groups of people
so that they can derive their sustenance and meet their
needs.
The criteria of not taking more than you need is not merely
an ethical criteria — it is also the highest expression of the
precautionary principle since it ensures avoiding harm in
the absence of full knowledge of the impact of our actions.
Diversity and pluralism are necessary characteristics of an
ahimsa or non-violent economic order. If the criteria of not
encroaching on others rights is fully followed diverse species
will survive and diverse trades and occupations will also
25
flourish. Diversity is therefore the litmus test for non
violence and reflects the sustainability and justice that non
violence embodies.
Diversity' is intimately linked to the possibility of self
organisation. It is, therefore, the basis of both Swadeshi and
Swaraj of economic and political freedom.
Decentralisation and local democratic control are political
corollaries of the cultivation of diversity. Peace is also
derived from conditions in which diverse species and
communities have the freedom to self-organise and evolve
according to their own needs, structures and priorities.
Living societies, living ecosystems, living organisms are
characterised by three principles -
a) the principle of diversity
b) the principle of self-organisation, self-regulation, self
renewal
c) the principle of reciprocity between systems, which is
also called the law of return,
the law of give and take.
Our diversity makes mutuality and a critique of 'give and
take' possible. Mutuality makes self-organisation possible.
There are two conflicting paradigms of biodiversity. The
first paradigm is held by local communities, whose survival
and sustenance is linked to biodiversity utilisation and
conservation. The second is held by commercial interests,
whose profits are linked to utilisation of global biodiversity
for production of inputs into large scale, homogeneous,
uniform centralised and global production systems. For
local indigenous communities, conserving biodiversity is
conserving their rights to their resources and knowledge
and conserving their production systems based on
biodiversity. For commercial interests, such as
pharmaceutical and agricultural biotechnology companies,
biodiversity in itself has no value, it is merely, "raw
26
material". Production is based on biodiversity destruction
since local production is based on diversity are displaced
by producttion based on uniformity.
These two paradigms are coming into conflict because of
the emergence of new biotechnologies for the manipulation
of life and new legal regimes for the monopoly control on
life.
India's freedom struggle was based on perennial concepts
of freedom based on non-violence which still have relevance
today.
50 years after independence, a massive movement is needed
which gives these non-violent concepts of freedom based
on diversity and non-violence, a new relevance and a new
life.
References:
1 John Locke, "Two Treatises of Government, ed. Peter
Caslett, Cambridge University Press, 1967
2 John Winthcop, Life and Letters", quoted in Djelal Kadir,
"Columbus and the Ends of the Earth, Berkeley, University of
California Press, 1992, p.171
’ Daniel Bennett, "The Development of Commercial Corporations
and the Restrictions on the Public Right to Control Corporate
behavior in Eng Lang 16001998".
4
Reuter, 5.12.1997
5 Gandhi, "Hind Swaraj or Indian Home Rule", Navjivan
Publishing House, Ahmedabad, 1938 p29
6 Vandana Shiva, "Arthic Swaraj or Economic Slavery?", The
Observer, February 3,1998
7
Vandana Shiva & Claude Alvares, "BJP on Swadeshi: The Great
U-Turn?,
T7
flourish. Diversity is therefore the litmus test for non
violence and reflects the sustainability and justice that non
violence embodies.
Diversity is intimately linked to the possibility of self
organisation. It is, therefore, the basis of both Swadeshi and
Swaraj of economic and political freedom.
Decentralisation and local democratic control are political
corollaries of the cultivation of diversity. Peace is also
derived from conditions in which diverse species and
communities have the freedom to self-organise and evolve
according to their own needs, structures and priorities.
Living societies, living ecosystems, living organisms are
characterised by three principles a) the principle of diversity
b) the principle of self-organisation, self-regulation, self
renewal
c) the principle of reciprocity between systems, which is
also called the law of return,
the law of give and take.
Our diversity makes mutuality and a critique of 'give and
take' possible. Mutuality makes self-organisation possible.
There are two conflicting paradigms of biodiversity. The
first paradigm is held by local communities, whose survival
and sustenance is linked to biodiversity utilisation and
conservation. The second is held by commercial interests,
whose profits are linked to utilisation of global biodiversity
for production of inputs into large scale, homogeneous,
uniform centralised and global production systems. For
local indigenous communities, conserving biodiversity is
conserving their rights to their resources and knowledge
and conserving their production systems based on
biodiversity. For commercial interests, such as
pharmaceutical and agricultural biotechnology companies,
biodiversity in itself has no value, it is merely, "raw
26
material". Production is based on biodiversity destruction
since local production is based on diversity are displaced
by producttion based on uniformity.
These two paradigms are coming into conflict because of
the emergence of new biotechnologies for the manipulation
of life and new legal regimes for the monopoly control on
life.
India's freedom struggle was based on perennial concepts
of freedom based on non-violence which still have relevance
today.
50 years after independence, a massive movement is needed
which gives these iion-violent concepts of freedom based
on diversity and non-violence, a new relevance and a new
life.
References:
1 John Locke, "Two Treatises of Government, ed. Peter
Caslett, Cambridge University Press, 1967
2 John Winthcop, Life and Letters", quoted in Djelal Kadir,
"Columbus and the Ends of the Earth, Berkeley, University of
California Press, 1992, p.171
’ Daniel Bennett, "The Development of Commercial Corporations
and the Restrictions on the Public Right to Control Corporate
behavior in Eng Lang 16001998".
4
Reuter, 5.12.1997
5 Gandhi, "Hind Swaraj or Indian Home Rule", Navjivan
Publishing House, Ahmedabad, 1938 p29
6 Vandana Shiva, "Arthic Swaraj or Economic Slavery?'', The
Observer, February 3,1998
7 Vandana Shiva & Claude Alvares, "BJP on Swadeshi: The Great
U-Turn?,
27
Mainstream, April 25,1998
’ Vandana Shiva, "The East India Company, Free Trade and GATT",
1994
’ International Herald Tribune, 27.1.1998
10
Wall Street Journal, 5-6th December 1997
11
Reuter, December 5,1997
12
The Fatal Charm of Naturalism, Times of India, April 24,1998
” Sharad Joshi, "Swadeshi:The Third Battle", Business Line, April
29, 1998
14 Vandana Shiva, "Biopiracy: The Plunder of Nature and
Knowledge", South End Press, USA, 1997 and RFSTE, New Delhi,
1998
” Humberto R.Maturana & Francisco J.Varela,"The Tree of
Knowledge:The Biological Roots of Human Understanding"
Shambala Publications,Boston, 1992
16 Richard Douth Waite, "Short Circuit", Green Books, Devon, 1997
28
Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology
A-60, Hauz Khas, New Delhi -110 016
Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology
A-60, Hauz Khas, New Delhi -110 016
Position: 982 (5 views)