Book review - 'Churning the Earth: The Making of a Global India' - by Aseem Srivastava & Ashish Kothari
Churning the Earth: The Making of a Global India
Aseem Shrivastava and Ashish Kothari
Reviewed by Bittu Sahgal
Aseem Shrivastava and Ashish Kothari have put together a critique of an extremely flawed economic developmental model that has been driven by powerful forces for over a century, from John Maynard Keynes to Dr. Manmohan Singh. It deals as much with human nature as with economics. And, while human nature has remained relatively unchanged over the centuries, the magnified, collateral damage of globalised economics now threatens the life support systems of countless species, including (Homo sapiens).
Aseem Shrivastava and Ashish Kothari
Reviewed by Bittu Sahgal
Aseem Shrivastava and Ashish Kothari have put together a critique of an extremely flawed economic developmental model that has been driven by powerful forces for over a century, from John Maynard Keynes to Dr. Manmohan Singh. It deals as much with human nature as with economics. And, while human nature has remained relatively unchanged over the centuries, the magnified, collateral damage of globalised economics now threatens the life support systems of countless species, including (Homo sapiens).
Taking us through the chronology of globalisation, the authors have taken pains to detail the ascent of economic ambition in Indians and the inequality inherent in that misadventure: “We are on different coaches of a long accelerating, burning train. The few air-conditioned coaches in the front are insulated for the time being from the fire that is blazing in the coaches at the back, where the majority of the passengers travel. Some of the coaches have already derailed (think of the 200,000 farmer suicides). However, the wealthy people in the A.C. coaches want the engine staff to run the train even faster... There is very little doubt that the reforms, which began in the early 1990s (though many of the policy trends date to the 1980s) have brought great material benefits to the richest 10 to 25 per cent of India’s population.”
The book is easy to read. It is also easy to understand: “India’s drinking water crisis is severe today. At least part of the blame for this has to be shouldered by the bottled water industry. It has contributed both to falling water tables and ground water depletion as well as to its pollution across many regions of the country... There are infinitely simpler ways of addressing people’s drinking water requirements than shipping fancy mineral water from across the oceans in oil-guzzling vessels or mining out and polluting the groundwater of poor rural communities.”
Correctly identifying ‘reforms’ as the cause of the widening rich-poor divide, they explain: “As apprehensively acknowledged on occasions by the Prime Minister himself, the reforms have been socially divisive. The votaries of the reforms, however, argue that they have served not only the interests of the rich, they have answered – or perhaps will eventually answer – the needs of the poor as well. This is what gives the reform process its moral legitimacy. It is this contention we take issue with.”
It is a complicated canvas, but the dice is loaded in favour of those who control markets. The authors know this and try to pin down specifics as best they can: “Another consequence of the entry of FIIs into India is that they now own significant chunks of Indian firms. Between 1993 and 2007, while net FII inflows into India added up to $70.8 billion, their market value was $251.5 billion by December 2007... FII’s held 37 per cent of the free-float shares in the top 1,000 firms listed on the Mumbai Stock Exchange.” And just in case you still don’t quite get it, the authors succinctly suggest: “Greed in this case, as in so many others, actually undercuts industrial capitalism.”
Tearing into the like of Coca Cola and Lavasa, the Tata’s Dhamra Port, Monsanto and more, the authors quote example after example of the misdemeanors of commercial organisations that privatised profits and left the public to pay in terms of both usurped resources and environmental degradation.
This is a book that everyone involved with public and developmental policy must read. Equally those affected by such policies should read this book. The gargantuan task ahead of us prompts individuals to take a resigned, almost defeatist, “what can I do about it all” attitude to the massive tearing down of the social and environmental canvas in which our lives are plotted, but this apathy they suggest will be a disaster: “We are rapidly approaching the moment when the choices before us would be stark: an institutionalised, hazardous corporate totalitarianism and indefinite war with the people and the earth, or the consensual emergence of a radical ecological democracy which will leave everyone with a semblance of hope. The middle ground between these two choices is already beginning to vanish.”
The one discussion that has been inadequately touched upon probably merits more plain talking, is whether it is only the ruthless rich who are punching holes in a sinking Titanic, or whether those at the “receiving end of the environmental excesses and economic exclusion” are also now playing a part in tearing the tapestry of nature, albeit out of desperation. More importantly, will the direct participation of the underprivileged in decision-making, justifiably advocated by both authors, be able to avert the double-barreled attack on our ecological integrity if both rich and poor set upon ecosystems that had evolved without the inexpert touch of human hands?
For a Red-Green alternative
1991 heralded the end of ‘the licence raj’ in India and the beginning of the free market economy with an inflow of foreign capital to steer it. Within a decade India had begun to shine. A couple of years later the Indian miracle of a near two-digit growth rate had become the talk of nations throughout the world. Soon predictions were being made of the distinct possibility of India becoming one of the three super powers in the world by the middle of the century. Towards the end of the decade it could be proudly proclaimed that India could withstand the global meltdown. A couple of years later, end of 2011, clouds began to appear on the horizon. And, just a few weeks back a commentator wrote: “The worst economic situation that this country has seen”. “Industry growth grinds to near zero” proclaimed the media. An international rating agency threatens to downgrade India's economy for the second time in 2012, this time to the lowest investment grade, lower than even that of beleaguered Spain’s, putting the blame on policy paralysis. India Inc concurs and a highly respected business leader confesses: “I feel sad we have come to this state”. What has gone wrong? Turn to Aseem Shrivastava’s and Ashish Kothari’s book. It argues that the set-back has not been sudden or a recent event, but the inevitable result of the faulty step, haltingly started in the 1980s and dramatically inaugurated in the 1990s — the handing over the Indian economy to global capital, global finance capital, to be more specific... http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-features/tp-bookreview/for-a-redgreen-alternative/article3571051.ece
In Churning the Earth: the Making of Global India, economist Aseem Shrivastava and ecologist Ashish Kothari interrogate what is unarguably the question of greatest consequence for our times: does contemporary globalisation, as a “definitive prescription not just for a certain arrangement of economic affairs, but for a way of life”, offer solutions to the impoverishment of billions of people, and for unborn generations and non-human species? This immensely significant and compelling book—one of the most important in recent years—maps painstakingly the political economy of both the socio-economic consequences and environmental impacts of the current growth path. The picture emerging from this densely argued treatise is bleak and harrowing—a picture of greed, inequality, suffering, and the reckless, irresponsible destruction of the planet’s resources...
http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?281531
http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?281531
"Building a Sustainable India", by Aseem Srivastava - YouTube
‘Churning the Earth: The Making of Global India’, a book launched earlier this year, examines the socio-economic and ecological impact of globalization on India, in the context of India’s emergence on the global stage over the last two decades. Authors Aseem Shrivastava – a professor of economics and philosophy, and Ashish Kothari – founder of the environmental group Kalpavriksh, review the impact of reforms, arguing that the high growth of the Indian economy has been of a predatory nature, and pose questions on their political and ecological sustainability.
Fifteen years ago, Aseem Shrivastava was having lunch with a friend at Boston. Having placed an order for Italian pizza and Japanese sushi with Brazilian coffee to wash it down, they realized that none of the food they ordered came from the continent they were sitting on – “Thank you, Globalisation. Our lunch just came in, jet-lagged!”
Here at IIM Calcutta, in a talk organized by Colloquia on November 18, Aseem Shrivastava interacted with students, presenting arguments from his recently-launched book and discussing problems created by issues believed to have been settled. According to him, what we have today is growth for growth’s sake, where machines produce for the affluent to consume while the vast labour majority becomes redundant. Kothari and Shrivastava compare India to a speeding train – “There are a few air-conditioned coaches in the front that are insulated for the time being from the fire that is blazing in the coaches at the back, where the majority of the passengers travel”.
Shrivastava likens big-ticket corporate notions of sustainability to getting trapped in a ‘green bubble’. Here, he explains, one convinces oneself of doing sustainable businesses while being conveniently located at a great distance from the consequences of one’s actions. However, having traveled extensively across the length and breadth of the country in search of positive evidence of inclusive growth, he chanced upon the self-sufficient region around Kodambakam – where a formerly caste-divided village in Tamil Nadu brought back jobs from cities, thereby stemming migration, and implemented integrated housing, education and health reforms through community dialogue. As he points out, Kodambakam’s success was in the fact that it did not outsource its problems, and is a sterling case of ecological responsibility in action.
He believes that India’s globalization sprint benefits only a small segment of the population with access to global financial resources – ‘the classes’, at the cost of the larger interest of ‘the masses’. Drawing up interesting metaphors, Shrivastava compared the Indian economy to a stunted dog whose 3 legs were shrinking while the fourth leg was growing disproportionately because of reforms that threw open the gates to the stock market & facilitated mindless foreign investment. Land acquisition by big businesses that displaced the original dwellers, often accompanied by clearing vast tracts of agricultural land or forests, is of utmost concern today.
Employing yet another metaphor of a ‘gilded fan with several blades’, Shrivastava says ‘the classes’ are situated on the blades near the hub of the fan – tightly networked and able to enjoy globally integrated economic growth – while the free ends of the blades are occupied by ‘the masses’ who are largely cut-off from one another. Shrivastava also points out the difficulty of politically organizing people at the far ends in a globalised world; for instance, the forest dwellers in the Amazon basin and those in Jharkhand or Odisha – both of them being marginalized communities living in ecosystems under threat. Conflicting interests force this fan to rotate in opposite directions, which will ultimately bring about further social inequity and economic stagnation.
Thus, the authors propose the idea of a Radical Ecological Democracy, which brings control back to the local level and displaces the desire for a rising GDP with larger goals centered around citizens’ welfare. According to them, Panchayats should be vested with legislative power and more up-down transparency in the 3-tier system of government should be facilitated. As is the prevalent system in countries like Norway, local communities need to have the right to veto decisions taken above them. With a focus on community rights, localizing economies and boosting agriculture and agribusinesses, better ecological rationality can also be achieved. A more sustainable city-village balance also needs to set in for such a model to be sustainable. In a nutshell, true globalization of people all over the world is possible only by localization of where they are.
