{"id":77279,"date":"2016-08-08T12:00:25","date_gmt":"2016-08-08T11:00:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=77279"},"modified":"2016-08-06T17:23:07","modified_gmt":"2016-08-06T16:23:07","slug":"monsanto-in-india-meet-the-new-boss-same-as-the-old-boss","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2016\/08\/monsanto-in-india-meet-the-new-boss-same-as-the-old-boss\/","title":{"rendered":"Monsanto in India: Meet the New Boss \u2013 Same as the Old Boss?"},"content":{"rendered":"

4 Aug 2016 – <\/em>In capitalism, the state\u2019s primary role is to secure the interests of private capital. The institutions of globalised capitalism \u2013 from the World Bank, the IMF and the WTO right down to the compliant bureaucracies of national states or supranational unions \u2013 facilitate private wealth accumulation that results in the forms of structural inequalities and violence (unemployment, poverty, population displacement, bad food, poor health, environmental destruction, etc) that have become \u2018accepted\u2019 as necessary (for \u2018growth\u2019) and taken for granted within mainstream media and political narratives.<\/p>\n

When referring to Western countries, those narratives like to use the euphemism \u2018austerity\u2019 for deregulation, privatisation and gross inequalities and hardship, while hiding being the mantra \u2018there is no alternative\u2019. When referring to India, they use the euphemism \u2018assisting development\u2019 for corporate imperialism, while hiding behind the term \u2018investing in\u2019.<\/p>\n

Each year, in August, India commemorates the\u00a0anniversary of independence from\u00a0Britain. In the 1990s, however, the IMF and World Bank wanted India to shift hundreds of millions out of agriculture. In return for up to\u00a0\u00a390 billion in loans<\/a>, India was instructed to dismantle its state-owned seed supply system, reduce subsidies and run down public agriculture institutions and offer incentives for the growing of cash crops to earn foreign exchange.<\/p>\n

According to the World Bank\u2019s lending report, India has easily been the\u00a0largest recipient<\/a>\u00a0of its loans in the history of the institution, and these conditions form part of the broader World Bank-backed development plan for India that involves the mass displacement of people in order to restructure India for the benefit of powerful corporations.<\/p>\n

When a creditor demands changes are made to an economy in this way \u2013 changes that will ultimately radically alter the social fabric of a country \u2013 it leads many to question just how much \u2018independence\u2019 remains.<\/p>\n

In June, the\u00a0National Alliance of People\u2019s Movements stated<\/a>\u00a0that the real impacts of this \u201cdangerous financial institution\u201d \u2013 the World Bank \u2013 works only to increase the profitability of its shareholders and further the cause of powerful capital.<\/p>\n

Hostage to neoliberal capitalism<\/strong><\/p>\n

Hundreds of thousands of farmers in India have taken their lives since 1997 and many more are experiencing economic distress or have left farming\u00a0as a result of<\/a>\u00a0debt, a shift to (GM) cash crops and economic liberalisation.\u00a0Facilitated by the WTO and the US-India Knowledge Initiative on Agriculture, there is a\u00a0deliberate strategy\u00a0to make agriculture financially non-viable for India\u2019s small farms, to get most farmers out of farming and to impose the World Bank sanctioned model of agriculture.\u00a0The aim is to replace current structures with a system of industrial (GM) agriculture suited to the needs of Western agribusiness, food processing and retail concerns.<\/p>\n

If you want to see the kinds of eventual impact this could have, look no further than what has happened in Mexico on the back of NAFTA, in terms of rising\u00a0food insecurity, bad health and poisoned agriculture<\/a>\u00a0(not to mention\u00a0a devastated economy with former workers driven into\u00a0the arms of drug cartels<\/a>\u00a0to make a living).<\/p>\n

The opening up of India to foreign capital is supported by rhetoric about increasing agricultural efficiency, creating jobs and boosting GDP growth. This jargon is used to try to convince the public that an increasing concentration of wealth in the hands of a relative few \u2013 via, for instance, deregulations, privatisations and lower labour and environmental protection standards \u2013 is for their own benefit because it is good for \u2018growth\u2019.<\/p>\n

We can already see the outcome of these policies across the world: the increasing power of unaccountable financial institutions, record profits and massive increases in wealth for elite interests and, for the rest, disempowerment, mass surveillance, austerity, job losses, the erosion of rights, weak unions, cuts to public services, environmental degradation, spiraling national debt and opaque, corrupt trade deals, such as TTIP, CETA,\u00a0RCEP<\/a>\u00a0(affecting India) and TPA.<\/p>\n

PM Modi recently stated that India is now one of the most business friendly countries in the world. The code for being \u2018business friendly\u2019 translates into a willingness by the government to facilitate much of the above, while reducing taxes and tariffs and allowing the acquisition of public assets via privatisation as well as instituting policy frameworks that work to the advantage of foreign corporations.<\/p>\n

When the World Bank rates countries on their level of \u2018Ease of Doing Business\u2019, it means national states facilitating policies that force working people to take part in a\u00a0race to the bottom\u00a0based on\u00a0free market fundamentalism. The more \u2018compliant\u2019 national governments make their populations and regulations, the more \u2018business friendly\u2019 a country is.<\/p>\n

In the realm of agriculture, the World Bank\u2019s \u2018Enabling the Business of Agriculture<\/a>\u2019 entails opening up markets to Western agribusiness and their fertilisers, pesticides, weedicides and patented seeds.<\/p>\n

Rather than improve poor management, inept bureaucracies and deficiencies in food logistics, the mantra is to let \u2018the market\u2019 intervene: a euphemism for letting powerful corporations take control; the very transnational corporations that receive massive taxpayer subsidies, manipulate markets, write trade agreements and institute a regime of intellectual property rights thereby indicating that the \u2018free\u2019 market only exists in the warped delusions of those who churn out clich\u00e9s about letting the market decide.<\/p>\n

According to the neoliberal ideologues, foreign investment is good for jobs and good for business. But just how many actually get created is another matter, as is the amount of jobs destroyed in the first place to pave the way for the entry of foreign corporations.<\/p>\n

For example, Cargill sets up a food or seed processing plant that employs a few hundred people, but what about the\u00a0agricultural jobs<\/a>\u00a0that were deliberately eradicated in the first place or the\u00a0village-level processors<\/a>\u00a0who were cynically put out of business so Cargill could gain a financially lucrative foothold?<\/p>\n

The process resembles what Michel Chossudovsky notes in his 1997 book about the \u2018structural adjustment\u2019 of African countries. In \u2018The Globalization of Poverty\u2019, he says that economies are:<\/p>\n

\u201copened up through the concurrent displacement of a pre-existing productive system. Small and medium-sized enterprises are pushed into bankruptcy or obliged to produce for a global distributor, state enterprises are privatised or closed down, independent agricultural producers are impoverished.\u201d (p.16)<\/em><\/p>\n

If people are inclined to think farmers would be better off as foreign firms enter the supply chain, we need only\u00a0look at the plight<\/a>\u00a0of farmers in India who were tied into contracts with Pepsico. Farmers were pushed into debt, reliance on one company and were paid a pittance<\/p>\n

India is looking to US corporations to \u2018develop\u2019 its food and agriculture sector with foreign investment in retail, cold storage and various other infrastructure. Looking at what this could mean for India, food policy analyst Devinder Sharma\u00a0describes<\/a>\u00a0how the industrialised US system of food and agriculture relies on massive taxpayer subsidies and has destroyed many farmers\u2019 livelihoods.<\/p>\n

The fact that US agriculture now employs a tiny fraction of the population serves as a stark reminder for what is in store for Indian farmers.\u00a0Sharma notes that agribusiness companies (whose business model in the US is based on\u00a0overproduction and taxpayer subsidies<\/a>) rake in huge profits, while depressed farmer incomes, poverty and higher retail prices become the norm.<\/p>\n

The long-term plan is for an overwhelmingly urbanised India with a fraction of the population left in farming working on contracts for large suppliers and Wal-Mart-type supermarkets that offer a largely monoculture diet of highly processed, denutrified, genetically altered food based on crops soaked with chemicals and grown in increasingly degraded soils according to an unsustainable model of agriculture that is less climate\/drought resistant, less diverse and unable to achieve food security (Bhaskar Save\u2019s\u00a0analysis<\/a>\u00a0of what the Green Revolution did for India makes for interesting reading).<\/p>\n

The\u00a0alternative<\/a>\u00a0would be to protect indigenous agriculture from rigged global trade and trade deals and\u00a0corrupt markets<\/a>\u00a0and to implement a shift to sustainable, localised agriculture which grows a diverse range of crops and offers a healthy diet to the public (alongside appropriate price and\/or income\u00a0support<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0infrastructure<\/a>).<\/p>\n

Instead, we see the push for bogus \u2018solutions\u2019 like GMOs and an adherence to\u00a0neoliberal ideology\u00a0that ultimately privileges profit and control of the food supply by powerful private interests, which have no concern whatsoever for the health of the public: for example, see\u00a0this new report<\/a>\u00a0on how the food lobby destroys heath in the EU\u00a0and\u00a0this<\/a>\u00a0on how taxes in the US ultimately promote obesity and disease by supporting the health damaging practices of the food industry.<\/p>\n

Is this what Indians want to see happen in India to their food and health?<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, the process is already well on track as \u2018Western diseases\u2019 take hold in the country\u2019s urban centres (see \u2018India: Obesity, Malnutrition and the Globalisation of Bad Food<\/a>\u2019).<\/p>\n

Devinder Sharma<\/a>\u00a0has highlighted where Indian policy makers\u2019 priorities lie:<\/p>\n

\u201cAgriculture has been systematically killed over the last few decades\u2026 60 percent of the population lives in the villages or in the rural areas and is involved in agriculture, and less than two percent of the annual budget goes to agriculture\u2026 When you are not investing in agriculture\u2026 You are not wanting it to perform\u2026\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Support given to agriculture is portrayed as a drain on the economy and is reduced and farmers suffer yet it still manages to deliver bumper harvests year after year. On the other hand, corporate-industrial India has failed to deliver in terms of boosting exports or creating jobs, despite the hand outs and tax exemptions given to it [see\u00a0this<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0this<\/a>].<\/p>\n

The number of jobs created in India between 2005 and 2010 was 2.7 million (the years of high GDP growth). According to\u00a0International Business Times<\/a>, 15 million enter the workforce every year. And data released by the Labour Bureau shows that in 2015,\u00a0jobless \u2018growth\u2019<\/a>\u00a0had finally arrived in India.<\/p>\n

So where are the jobs going to come from to cater for hundreds of millions of agricultural workers who are to be displaced from the land or those whose livelihoods will be destroyed as transnational corporations move in and seek to capitalise small-scale village-level industries that currently employ tens of millions?<\/p>\n

Monsanto in India<\/strong><\/p>\n

Thanks to its political influence, Monsanto already dominates the cotton industry in\u00a0India with its GMOs. It is increasingly shaping agri-policy and the knowledge paradigm by funding agricultural research in public universities and institutes. Its practices and colonisation of institutions have led to it being called the \u2018contemporary East India Company<\/a>\u2018, and regulatory bodies are now severely\u00a0compromised and riddled with conflicts of interest<\/a>\u00a0where decision-making over GMOs are concerned.<\/p>\n

However, Monsanto\u2019s enterprise in India is corrupt.\u00a0Vandana Shiva<\/a>\u00a0has described how on a global level the company has succeeded in imposing the false idea of \u2018manufacturing\u2019 and \u2018inventing\u2019 seeds in order to slap patents on them (in India\u2019s case, \u2018royalties\u2019).\u00a0Monsanto\u2019s collection of royalties as \u2018trait value\u2019 or as a \u2018fee for technology traits\u2019 is an intellectual property rights category that does not exist in any legal framework. It was concocted by Monsanto lawyers to work outside of the laws of the land and is thus illegal. Shiva also notes that the introduction of GMOs without approvals, and thus Monsanto\u2019s original entry into India, was a violation and subversion of India\u2019s biosafety regulations.<\/p>\n

In India, the Biological Diversity Act 2002 grants explicit rights to farmers over ownership of plant varieties. Even if a breeder holds a right (patent) to a variety, they cannot prevent the farmer from producing or saving the seed. It acknowledges that a breeder does not create a seed from thin air. Seeds are not \u2018invented\u2019 but have been developed by farmers over many generations. However, this does not fit the corporate business model of companies like Monsanto, where farmers are to be consumers who purchase corporate owned and controlled products (seeds and chemicals).<\/p>\n

While Monsanto works on or around that particular obstacle, it is also hard at work with its propaganda campaign to convince us all that GM food is necessary to feed the world\u2019s burgeoning population. Its claims are always hidden behind a flimsy and cynical veil of humanitarian intent (helping the poor and hungry), which is\u00a0easily torn away<\/a>\u00a0to expose the self-interest that lies beneath. The world (including India) does not need GM to feed itself. GM and these humanitarian sentiments are little more than a Trojan horse aimed at securing greater control of food and agriculture.<\/p>\n

Various high-level official reports (listed in\u00a0this<\/a>\u00a0piece) in India have advised against adopting GM food crops, and, in addition to numerous other bodies and sources (many of which are documented\u00a0here<\/a>), the\u00a0International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge and Science for Development Report\u00a0<\/a>stated that smallholder, traditional farming (not GMOs) can deliver food security in low-income countries through sustainable agri-ecological systems. The roots of hunger and food poverty are political are related to an increasingly globalised and\u00a0exploitative system<\/a>\u00a0of industrialised agriculture and food production. The companies behind the GM project are part of that system: they\u00a0fuel it and profit from it<\/a>. Patents, royalties and GMOs ensure more profit and greater control over food and agriculture.<\/p>\n

Agriculture and the projection of US power<\/strong><\/p>\n

In his book \u2018Seeds of Destruction: The Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation<\/a>\u2018, William F Engdahl describes how the oil-rich Rockefeller family\u00a0set out to control and profit\u00a0from global agriculture via the Green Revolution. Along with other players (eg Cargill), Rockefeller interests set out to destroy family farms in the US and the indigenous agriculture and food security of other countries. This hegemonic strategy was actively supported by their proxies in the US government\u00a0and facilitated globally through \u2018free\u2019 trade agreements, the IMF, World Bank and WTO.<\/p>\n

GMOs represent the ultimate stranglehold of US interests over global food via \u2018terminator\u2019 seed technology, seed patenting and intellectual property rights.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0political backing<\/a>\u00a0for GMOs by the US State Department, the strategic position of the US GM biotech sector in international trade agreements (from TTIP to the US-India Knowledge Initiative on Agriculture) and at the WTO and the push to get GMOs into\u00a0India does not bode well.<\/p>\n

Given the history of the US in using agriculture as a tool to leverage global influence, in India on 15 August, we would do well to remember that patriotic sentiments have always been used by the powerful to help disguise the true nature of power.<\/p>\n

_________________________________________<\/a><\/p>\n

Colin Todhunter<\/em>\u00a0is an extensively published independent writer and former social policy researcher based in the UK and India.<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 counterpunch.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

GMOs and private wealth accumulation. GMOs represent the ultimate stranglehold of US interests over global food via \u2018terminator\u2019 seed technology, seed patenting and intellectual property rights.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[180],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-77279","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-brics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77279","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=77279"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77279\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=77279"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=77279"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=77279"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}