EONOMICS of HAPPINESS 2014 - An unspoken story of India (Part-2)

Yoji Kamata from Japan with his model of Localisation

Globalisation and Environment

In 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: rapid increase in exploitation of natural resources to earn foreign exchange, and a massive inflow of consumer goods and waste into India (adding to a rapidly rising domestic production). This has created serious disposal and health problems, and affected traditional livelihoods in forestry, fisheries, pastoralism, agriculture, health, and handicrafts.

Environmental standards and regulations have been relaxed, or allowed to be ignored, in the bid to make the investment climate friendlier to both domestic and foreign corporations.

The opening up of the economy to foreign investment is bringing in companies with notorious track records on environment (and/or social issues), with demands to further relax environmental and social equity measures. Domestic corporations have also grown considerably in size and power, and now make the same demands.

Privatisation of various sectors, while bringing in certain efficiencies, is encouraging the violation or dilution of environmental standards.

Had Manmohan Singh’s assertion worked, by now we should have seen a spate of measures and programmes to protect India’s environment. But the ecological crisis has only intensified. This, we show below, is an inherent and inevitable outcome of the globalization process. Just as the trickle-down theory does not work for the poor, so too the ‘having the resources to invest’ assertion does not work for the environment.

We should clarify here that criticism of a number of sectors and activities below, does not mean we are per se against them. We are not saying there should be no mining, no floriculture, no fishing, no exports and imports, and so on. What is crucial is to ask not only whether we need these, but to what extent, for what purpose, and under what conditions, questions that are currently shoved under the carpet. Second, many of the trends described below, are not necessarily a product of current globalization. Many of them have roots in the model of ‘development’ we have adopted in the last five-odd decades, and/or in underlying problems of governance, socio-economic inequities, and others. However, the phase of globalization has not only greatly intensified these trends, it has also brought in new elements that considerably enhance the dangers of this model to India’s environment and people.

Infrastructure and materials: Demand is the god

With a single-minded pursuit of a double-digit economic growth rate, demand achieves the status of a god that cannot be questioned. The need for infrastructure or raw materials or commercial energy is determined not by the imperatives of human welfare and equity, but by economic growth rate targets, even where, growth rates may have no necessary co-relation with human welfare.

The last couple of decades have therefore seen a massive increase in new infrastructure creation (highways, ports and airports, urban infrastructure, and power stations). This has meant increasing diversion of land, mostly natural ecosystems like forests and coasts, or farms and pastures.

Between 1993-94 and 2008-09 mineral production in India has risen by 75%. This is manifested in a rapid rise in forest land diverted for mining. If the nearly 15 lakh ha. of forest land diverted for mining since 1981 (when it became mandatory for non-forest use of forest land to be cleared by the central government): 1981-92: 13,000 ha. (8.7%) 1992-2002: 57,000 ha. (38.2%)2002-2011: 79,000 ha. (53%)

The ecological and social impacts have been horrifying. The blasted limestone and marble hills of the Aravalli and Shivalik Ranges, the cratered iron ore or bauxite plateaux of Goa, Madhya Pradesh, and Odisha, the charred coal landscapes of eastern India, and the radioactive uranium belt of Jharkhand, are all witness to the worst that economic ‘development’ can do.

Since 1991, some of the world’s largest mining companies are investing in India. This includes Rio Tinto Zinc (UK), BHP (Australia), Alcan (Canada), Norsk Hydro (Norway) Meridian (Canada), De Beers (South Africa, Raytheon (USA), and Phelps Dodge (USA). Many of these have as bad or worse environmental and socialrecords as India’s own mining companies.

The direction of policy change has been towards making life much easier for mining companies, e.g. by increasing the area that can be leased out (from 25 sq km in 1996, to 5000 sq km!), exempting larger areas from public hearing requirements, and so on. The 2008 National Mineral Policy even suggests that environmental regulations become voluntary!

The lack of regulation in the mining sector, an inevitable consequence of a demand-driven economy that is trying to meet the greed of India and the world, is clearly indicated in the spate of exposes regarding illegal. In Karnataka alone, 11,896 cases of illegal mining were detected between 2006 and 2009; in Andhra, 35,411 cases.

If the real aim of human society is happiness, freedom, and prosperity, there are indeed many alternative ways to achieve this without endangering the earth and ourselves, and without leaving behind half or more of humanity. This applies to India as to any other country, though the specifics of the alternatives will vary greatly depending on ecological, cultural, economic, and political conditions.

Broadly, an alternative framework of human well-being could be called Radical Ecological Democracy (RED): a social, political and economic arrangement in which all citizens have the right and full opportunity to participate in decision-making, based on the twin principles of ecological sustainability and human equity. Ecological sustainability is the continuing integrity of the ecosystems and ecological functions on which all life depends, including the maintenance of biological diversity as the fulcrum of life. Human equity, is a mix of equality of opportunity, full access to decision-making forums for all (which would include the principles of decentralization and participation), equity in the distribution and enjoyment of the benefits of human endeavour (across class, caste, age, gender, race and other divisions), and cultural security.

Linked to these are some basic principles or values that need to be respected: diversity and pluralism (as against the homogenizing tendencies of globalisation), cooperation and collective management of the ‘commons’ (as opposed to cutthroat competition and individualism), clear human rights and environmental responsibilities for all people, the dignity of labour (moving away from intellectual work as being necessarily superior), the pursuit of happiness in a mix of qualitative and quantitative ways (as opposed to full-scale materialism), stress on human relations and customary ways of dealing with conflicts, non-violence, ‘deep’ democracy in which all people have the right and capacity to participate in decision-making, and respect for the rights of nature and non-human species.

Taking the above principles together (and undoubtedly others that can be added), RED is a continuous and mutually respectful dialogue amongst human beings, and between humanity and the rest of nature. It is also not one solution or blueprint, but a great variety of them. These would include systems once considered valuable but now considered outdated and ‘primitive’: subsistence economies, barter, local haat-based trade, oral knowledge, work-leisure combines, the machine as a tool and not a master, local health traditions, handicrafts, learning through doing with parents and other elders, frowning upon profligacy and waste, and so on. This does not mean an unconditional acceptance of traditions — indeed there is much in traditional India that needs to be left behind — but rather a re-considered engagement with the past, the rediscovery of many valuable practices which seem to have been forgotten and building on the best of what traditions offer. This is not the kind of revivalism that India’s right-wing Hindu chauvinists talk about; traditions need to be rescued from those who use them in a bigoted way. 

The above information is the work of Ashish Kothari .He has been Co-Chair of the IUCN Inter-commission Strategic Direction on Governance, Equity, and Livelihoods in Relation to Protected Areas (TILCEPA) (1999-2008), and in the same period a member of the Steering Committees of the World Commission on Protected Areas (WCPA), and IUCN Commission on Environmental, Economic, and Social Policy (CEESP). He has served on the Board of Directors of Greenpeace International, and currently chairs Greenpeace India’s Board. He has also been on the steering group of the CBD Alliance.