More and more evidence is surfacing of the extent to which the poor and underprivileged are being sacrificed at the altar of the western gods of globalization and the gross national product. This despite the face that, more than any other country, India is committed to a very different value-system. The last to lay it down was Gandhi, by whose name India’s present rulers continue to swear. His definition of swadeshi, a doctrine that has yet to be officially discarded, is “the spirit in us which restricts us to the use and service of our immediate surroundings to the exclusion of the more remote.” This anti-globalization sentiment was rooted in his overriding concern for strengthening additional and community ties as more important than increasing production.

After the weavers now starving for lack of yarn, which is being exported, the latest victims of globalization are members of the indigenous fishing community. Their plight was highlighted by the recent strike that brought fishing operations to a halt in all eight maritime states. They were protesting against the Center’s new policy of opening Indian waters to global exploitation. This will can that large foreign mechanized ships will convert fishing into a large-scale industry in which local fishermen and their families cannot participate or compete. Experience has shown that the mechanized vessels do not limit themselves to deep sea areas but poach nearer the coast where fish may be found. Thus fish disappears in areas supposedly reserved for the locals.

Over the centuries, fishermen have risked their lives to cam a livelihood. They live in close-knit communities. Their encounters with the elements have created myths and music and inspired literature. They have increased their catch to meet notional needs, as evident from the many varieties available throughout the country. Yet their methods have not depleted the fish This, in fact, is what attracts the foreign trawlers which have so depicted other areas that they have been banned by some western governments.

The official justification for endangering the livelihood of more than seven million fisher folk and their families is that the new policy will cam foreign exchange of which there is no shortage now. Increased vulnerability to foreign pressure is a more likely reason. Unless this callous approach is countered, our fishing community will soon be extinct, as will the fish, while rich financiers at home and their partners abroad get richer and then look for other malleable governments with exploitable waters. Another justification for the new policy is that it is one of the moves to increase the gross national product (GNP), a measure in which human suffering does not figure. Nor does music and dance (unless they are marketed) or the emotional satisfaction of belonging to a community. Only goods and services that are bought and sold for money count. This leads to strange perversions. A housewife’s dawn-to-dusk labor at keeping the home going, however essential to the family and society, has no value, because she is not paid in money. If she does the same work in another house for payment, and someone else is employed to work in her home, they contribute to the county’s standing in the GNP race, irrespective of the social cost. In traditional society, no money is paid for many local services, which makes them all the more valuable in linking the community. But GNP ignores the village woman who labors all day at drawing water from the well or gathering fuel wood from the hill side. This is for consumption at home or given in exchange for similar services for others. She contributes nothing to society, according to economists. Nor do volunteer workers, however much they contribute to the well-being of the underprivileged. If they charged fat fees at the market rate. the economists would respect them more, though their services would then be limited to those already well-to-do. Yet if estimates of community and voluntary services were included in the calculation of GNP, India would rank much higher. But economists arc uncomfortable with considerations of family and community sentiment and pay no regard to culture, craftsmanship and tradition. An underlying objective of the present western-oriented model of economic enrichment, hidden from even some local enthusiasts, seems to be to eradicate all values that cannot be exploited monetarily.

Some economists, too few, have come to realize the limitations of their prescriptions. Paul Samuelson. one of America’s best known, cases his conscience in the introduction to his textbook on economics by asking: “Must modern economics make a fetish of quantity at the expense of quality of life? Or can we correct the official statistician’s measure of Gross National Product so that it becomes more of a measure of what people will consider to be true Net Economic Welfare?” He reproduces a chart showing the wide gap between GNP and NET in the USA as calculated by two other economists who take into account pollution and other dismantles of urban living But this is as far as he gels. Economists are out of their depth in non statistical waters.

In a country with as much poverty and unemployment as our India, is evident that employment should be the primary objective of economic development Gandhi faced the issue squarely. “We should be ashamed of resting or having a square meal so long as there is one able bodied mart or woman without work or food,” he wrote as long ago as 1921. When the total population of India was less than the number of Indians below the poverty line today. He was derived to identify himself with them by dressing like them in a loincloth Employment, unlike voluntary works is measurable. Yet it is scarcely mentioned in official documents like the annual economic survey, indicating the low priority it is given in control to GNP. But it cannot be taken for granted that employment will rise, with GNP. Data for the period after the new economic policy was for mall implemented in 1991 show that while GNP has risen, the rate of increase in employment has fallen noticeably. This means that the benefits of increased GNP are being appropriated by a few. Realizing the glamour of the GNP approach to national development to society’s haves, Gandhi was unsparing in his opposition to industrialization. He opposed machinery that supplanted labor, not machinery that cased labor. “I would categorically state my conviction that the money, for mass production is responsible for the world crisis,” he wrote in Hanja in 1934, because machinery separated production from distribution, otherwise there would be less chance for fraud, and none for specs, lotion.

Creating demand by pronoun consumerism is an essential element of the new market oriented economic policy. Yet, according to Gandhi, “Civilization, in the real sense of use term, consists not in the multiplication but in the deliberate and voluntary reduction of wants.” This no pointed out was the massage of Gautama Buddha, Jesus Christie Muhammad, Nanak, Dayanand Ramakrishna, Kabirand others. Froot) thus standpoinL, the markcl cult, wind its incitement of covey and greed, is a perversion of human civilization.

Article extracted from this publication >>  January 13, 1995