kishor Jagirdar

Over the past 30 years, giant banks and corporations have become wealthier and more powerful than ever before. This has happened because governments, in the name of ‘ economic growth’, have supported ever-increased global trade while neglecting local business potential.  Through a series of ‘free trade’ treaties, trade and financial deregulation continues today, weakening and impoverishing governments and whole countries. This is the essence of economic globalisation. Despite the rhetoric of inevitability that supports it, globalisation is a process of planned change — the consequence of government policies that support the profit-driven agendas of big businesses and banks.  These policies include the building up of transport, communications and educational infrastructures tailored to the needs of global corporations; the over-regulation of local and national businesses; and the use of misleading indicators like GDP. Since globalisation is at the root of so many...

What is Localisation ?   Localisation, a trend diametrically opposed to globalization, is based on the belief that those living closest to the resource to be managed (the forest, the sea, the coast, the farm, the urban facility, etc), would have the greatest stake, and often the best knowledge, to manage it. Of course this is not always the case, and in India many communities have lost the ability because of two centuries of government-dominated policies, which have effectively crippled their own institutional structures, customary rules, and other capacities. Nevertheless a move towards localization of essential production, consumption, and trade, and of health, education, and other services, is eminently possible if communities are sensitively assisted by civil society organizations and the government. There are thousands of Indian initiatives at decentralized water harvesting, biodiversity conservation, education, governance, food and materials production, Irreplaceable ...

Yoji Kamata from Japan with his model of Localisation Globalisation and Environment I n 1992, soon after heralding in the new economic policies constituting globalization, the then Finance Minister of India (now its Prime Minister) Manmohan Singh delivered a lecture on environmental aspects of the reforms in Delhi. His main argument was that environmental protection requires resources, which would be created by the new policies. Two decades later, has his prescription worked? Broadly, economic globalisation since 1991 has had the following impacts: Rapid growth of the economy has required a major expansion of infrastructure and resource extraction, and encouragement to wasteful consumption by the rich. The economy has tended to be demand-led, with no thought given to how much demand (and for what purpose) is to be considered legitimate and desirable, and what its impacts are.  Liberalization of trade (exports and imports) has had two consequences: r...

India ’s meteoric economic rise in the last two decades has been   impressive. There is however a dark side to it, hidden or ignored. Well over half its people have been left behind or negatively impacted; and there have been irreversible blows to the natural environment Globalised development as it is today is neither ecologically sustainable nor socially equitable, and is leading India to further conflict and suffering There are, however, a range of alternative approaches and practices, forerunners of a Radical Ecological Democracy that can take us all to higher levels of well-being, while sustaining the earth and creating greater equity According to the Tendulkar Committee on poverty estimation, which submitted its report to the Planning Commission in 2009, the proportion of people who were poor in India in 2004-05 was 41.8% in rural areas and 25.7% in urban areas. The poverty lines used to reach these numbers were Rs.15 per capita a day in villages and a bit...