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Uncle
Sam, a friend or a foe?
Amit Sengupta
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Waterworld:
our thirst, their profit
photo by sharad saxena |
Globalisation
can’t experience
Gandhi. That is why you have
Coke and Pepsi in the interiors
of India, but not quinine |
Gandhi knew that in a
nation where groundwater pollution, scarcity of drinking water, recurrent
dysentery, archaic sanitation systems, manual scavenging, hunger and malnourishment
were so intrinsically integrated, the path to the Indian mind was also through
the bad stomach. That is why after readings from the Bible, Gita, and Quran,
he would speak about the ‘social contract’. Hence, his discourses
on innovative sanitation systems (he himself designed many such toilets),
hygiene, food habits, water, etc. It was not a joke therefore if Gandhi
asked his companions the first thing in the morning: “So, did you
have a good shit today?”
Surely, the profit fanatics of US-inspired globalisation can neither experience
nor imagine Gandhi. That is why you have Coke and Pepsi in the remotest
interiors of India, but can’t find as cheap a tablet as quinine or
an anti-diarrhoea drug, especially when thousands still die of malaria and
stomach ailments, something inconceivable in the advanced capitalist world.
The subliminal American culture industry of simulated desire works on the
principle that one satiable desire can only lead to another. The more you
have it, the less you are. This is the paradox that has, tragically, woven
itself with the oral tradition of dying farmers in Andhra Pradesh, especially
when Chandrababu Naidu was celebrating the great American dream backed by
US-backed funding agencies. Witness the typical case of desire’s unity
with suicide. Coke or Pepsi mixed with pesticide shared by a family, the
man aware that the drink is a longing even in his parched waterless village.
This is a classic synthesis of American capitalism with third world despair.
 But
not everyone agrees. There are real movements of real people now against
America and its commodity industry’s insatiable profit quest for world
domination: from Iraq, where it’s blood for oil, to Venezuela, where
it’s coup for oil, to South America’s banana republics which
were fleeced and sucked dry, to Plachimada in Kerala. Millions are protesting
— from Davos and Seattle to the World Social Forums — against
war, dumping of toxic waste and left-overs of the arms industry, ecological
devastation, water and air pollution, multinational mining, big dams, privatisation
of water and the patent regime.
This is a quest for a new culture of resistance. In Plachimada, the Coca-Cola
plant has been pushed to the wall by a movement protesting against the depletion
and contamination of groundwater and the dumping of effluents. In Mehdiganj
near Varanasi, communities have faced police lathis, but the struggle against
Coke is intense and spreading. Due to the Coke plant, the water table has
reportedly declined by 25-40 feet, the plant has discharged waste water
into the surrounding fields and a canal that flows into the Ganga. People
are now aware that there is a nexus between these multinationals and the
state and Central governments. That’s why the resilience.
As for patents, India is fighting a losing battle to protect its drug industry,
which makes cheap drugs, and local products such as Basmati rice, neem and
turmeric, among other things. Indeed, American monopoly has blocked Indian
drugs from being easily accessible to millions of aids victims in Africa.
Instead, expensive mnc drugs monopolise the market. And people continue
to die.
As Arundhati Roy told this reporter, talking of American giant Bechtel’s
role in India and Iraq: “There is no space. Institutions of democracy
are being hallowed out. They are playing this macabre game. The Enron story
is the perfect one. In 1993 the Congress government signs a deal. The bjp-Shiv
Sena campaigned on a single point agenda against Enron. Then they come in
and sign a bigger 30-billion deal. Today Bechtel and ge have majority shares
and they are suing the Government of India for Rs 27,000 crore. What is
that money? It’s the profit they would have made if this contract
had gone through. Their own investment is nothing… It’s raised
from public financial institutions. It’s public funding, private profits
and no accountability. Supposedly, the reason for privatisation is accountability,
but it is zero. Zero.”
With inputs from Tehelka Bureau
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January
08, 2005
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