kishor Jagirdar

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...