Terrorism, Agriculture
And U.S India Cooperation
By Vandana Shiva
14 August, 2005
Zmag
Terrorism
and Agriculture are among the issues raised in the Joint India - U.S
statement issued on 18th July 2005 during Prime Minister Man Mohan Singh's
meeting with President Bush. As the statement declares, the two leaders
resolved -
- to create an international
environment conductive to promotion of democratic values, and to strengthen
democratic practices in societies which wish to become open and pluralistic.
- To combat terrorism
relentlessly.
The leaders also
agreed to -
- launch a U.S -
India knowledge initiative on agriculture focused on promoting teaching,
research, service and commercial linkages.
The MOU on Science
and Technology signed between U.S and India on 20th July, 2005 has made
it clear that teaching and research would focus on Biotechnology or
genetic engineering, also often referred to as the second green revolution.
The Science Technology Agreement cites the green revolution in the 1960's
as the beginning of U.S - India cooperation in India. To assess the
impact of the new agreement we need to do an honest appraisal of the
impact of the green revolution.
This is not the
first time a U.S driven agriculture agenda is being imposed on India.
The so-called green revolution was introduced forty years ago. And it
fuelled terrorism and extremism in the 1980's in Punjab.
While the two leaders
resolve, "to combat terrorism relentlessly" they are promoting
the technologies, and trade models, which serve the US corporate interests
and destroy farmers' livelihood security thus becoming the breeding
ground for terrorism as I have shown in my book "The Violence of
the Green Revolution" (Zed Books).
When we became independent,
our agriculture was in crisis due to neglect and exploitation. The Agriculture
Minister, K.M. Munshi put priority to repairing natures hydrological
cycle and nutritional cycle. These are the principles followed in sustainable,
ecological farming.
However, while Indian
scientists and policy makers were working out self-reliant and ecological
alternatives for the regeneration of agriculture in India, another vision
of agricultural development was taking shape in American foundations
and aid agencies. This vision was based not on cooperation with nature,
but on its conquest.
It was based not
on the intensification of nature's processes, but on the intensification
of credit and purchased inputs like chemical fertilizers and pesticides.
It was based not on self-reliance, but dependence. It was based not
on diversity but uniformity. Advisors and experts came from America
to shift India's agricultural research and agricultural policy from
an indigenous and ecological model to an exogenous, and high input one,
finding, of course, partners in sections of the elite, because the new
model suited their political priorities and interests.
There were three
groups of international agencies involved in transferring the American
model of agriculture to India - the private American Foundations, the
American Government and the World Bank. The Ford Foundation had been
involved in training and agricultural extension since 1952. The Rockefeller
Foundation had been involved in remodeling the agricultural research
system in India since 1953. In 1958, the Indian Agricultural Research
Institute, which had been set up in 1905, was reorganized, and Ralph
Cummings, the field director of the Rockefeller Foundation, became its
first dean. In 1960, he was succeeded by A.B. Joshi, and in 1965 by
M.S. Swaminathan
Besides reorganizing
Indian research institutes on American lines, the Rockefeller Foundation
also financed the trips of Indians to American institutions. Between
1956 and 1970, 90 short-term travel grants were awarded to Indian leaders
to see the American agricultural institutes and experimental stations.
One hundred and fifteen trainees finished studies under the Foundation.
Another 2000 Indians were financed by USAID to visit the US for agricultural
education during the period.
The work of the
Rokefeller and Ford Foundations was facilitated by agencies like the
World Bank, which provided the credit to introduce a capital-intensive
agricultural model in a poor country. In the mid 1960s India was forced
to devalue its currency to the extent of 37.5%. The World Bank and USAID
also exerted pressure for favourable conditions for foreign investment
in India's fertilizer industry, import liberalization, and elimination
of domestic controls.
The World Bank provided
credit for the foreign exchange needed to implement these policies.
The foreign exchange component of the Green Revolution strategy, over
the five year plan period (1966 - 71) was projected to be Rs. 1114 crores,
which converted to about $ 2.8 billion at the then official rate. This
was a little over six times the total amount allocated to agriculture
during the preceding third plan (Rs. 191 crores). Most of the foreign
exchange was needed for the import of fertilizers, seeds and pesticides,
the new input in a chemically intensive strategy.
The World Bank and
USAID stepped in to provide the financial input for a technology package
that the Ford ad Rockefeller Foundations had evolved and transferred.
The occurrence of
drought in 1966 caused a severe drop in food production in India, and
an unprecedented increase in food grain supply from the US. Food dependency
was used to set new policy conditions on India. The US President, Lyndon
Johnson, put wheat supplies on a short tether. He refused to commit
food aid beyond one month in advance until an agreement to adopt the
green revolution package was signed between the Indian agriculture minister,
C.S. Subramanian and the US Secretary of agriculture, Orville Freeman.
The combination
of science and politics in creating the green revolution goes back to
the period in the 1940s when Daniels, the US Ambassador to the Government
of Mexico, and Henry Wallace, Vice President of the United States set
up a scientific mission to assist in the development of agricultural
technology in Mexico. The office of the Special Studies was set up in
Mexico in 1943 within the agricultural ministry as a cooperation venture
between the Rockefeller Foundation and the Mexican Government.
In 1944, Dr. J.
George Harrar, head of the new Mexican research programme and Dr. Frank
Hanson, an official of the Rockefeller Foundation in New York invited
Norman Borlaug to shift from his classified wartime laboratory job in
Dupont to the plant breeding programme in Mexico. By 1954, Borlaug's
'miracle seeds' of dwarf varieties of wheat had been bred. In 1970,
Borlaug had been awarded the 'Nobel Peace Prize' for his 'great contributions
towards creating a new world situation with regard to nutrition'.
However, the green
revolution did not bring peace to Punjab, it brought terrorism.
The Green Revolution,
awarded a Nobel Prize for Peace in 1970, has contributed to two social
and environmental disasters in India. One was the extremist movement
and terrorism in Punjab, which led to the military assault on the Golden
Temple and finally the assassination of Indira Gandhi in 1984. The other
was the gas leak from the Union Carbide pesticides plant in Bhopal,
which killed 3,000 people on that tragic night of December 1984. In
the two decades since that tragedy, 30,000 people have died in Bhopal
due to the leak of these toxic gases. The Punjab violence also took
the lives of 30,000 people in the years following 1984.
Why did a 'Revolution'
awarded a Nobel Peace Prize lead to so much violence? The Green Revolution
came with a promise of peace. But its crude linearity - Technology ->
Prosperity -> Peace - failed. The reason for this failure was because
the technologies of the Green Revolution, like technologies of war,
leave nature and society impoverished. To expect prosperity to grow
out of violent technologies that destroy the earth, erode biodiversity,
deplete and pollute water and leave peasants indebted and in ruins was
a false assumption made during the launch of Green Revolution. This
false assumption is being repeated in the launch of the Second Green
Revolution based on biotechnology and genetic engineering, which are
at the core of the US - India agreement.
The 'terrorism'
and 'extremism' in Punjab was born out of the experience of injustice
of the Green Revolution as a development model, which centralized power
and appropriated resources and earth from the people. In the words of
Gurmata from the All Sikh Convention (quoted in my book, The Violence
of the Green Revolution), on 13th April 1986,
"If the hard-earned
income of the people or the natural resources of any nation or the region
are forcibly plundered; if the goods produced by them are paid for at
arbitrarily determined prices while the goods bought are sold at higher
prices and if, in order to carry this process of economic exploitation
to its logical conclusion, the human rights of a nation, region or people
are lost then the people will be like the Sikhs today - shackled by
the chains of slavery."
The peasants and
people of Punjab were clearly not experiencing the Green Revolution
as a source of prosperity and freedom. For them it was slavery. The
Green Revolution, the social and ecological impacts it had, and the
responses it created among an angry and disillusioned peasantry, has
many lessons for our times, both for understanding the roots of terrorism
and searching for solutions to violence.
These are connections
our leaders fail to make. The more they fight terrorism, the more they
create it with their policies that create economic insecurity. The more
they talk democracy, the more they destroy freedom by imposing trade
rules and policies that deny people freedom and work against farmers
and citizens. The Agreement on Agriculture of the WTO was drafted by
a Cargill official. TheTrade Related Intellectual Property Rights Agreement
was drafted by a group of US corporations including Monsanto. Monsanto's
seed monopolies have already pushed thousands of farmers in India to
suicide. Promoting commerce for Monsanto and Cargill through the US
India Agreement on Agriculture will kill more farmers, and ultimately
destroy India's food security, sovereignty and democracy, fuelling more
terrorism and extremism.
The Science and
Technology Cooperation Agreement between US and India establishes intellectual
property protocols of research by passing consultation with Indian scientists
and the Indian public which has been resisting the US style IPR regimes
which force countries to patent life, and create monopolies on seeds,
medicine and software. For us, these agreements are instruments of corporate
dictatorship; they are not instruments of democracy. And as dictatorship,
they will fuel more anger, more discontent, more frustration.
Terrorism is a child
of economically unjust and anti-democratic policies, as became clear
in Punjab in India and Oklahoma in the US. As Joel Dyer says in the
Harvest of Rage, an investigation on the Oklahoma bombing and its roots
in the US farm crisis, farmers loosing their farms and livelihoods are
victims of long-term stress. If they are not helped, they get violent.
If they blame themselves, they direct violence inwards and commit suicide.
If they blame others, they turn their violence outwards.
This is the violence
of terrorism and extremism. The only lasting solution to dealing with
terror is to increase people's freedom and security by protecting their
livelihoods, their cultures, their rights to resources, and their democratic
choices in how their society and lives are organized.
The India - US Agreement
on Agriculture and Science and Technology will do the opposite. It will
breed more insecurity and erode people's capacity to make choices. It
will therefore fail in its two prime objectives of promoting democracy
and ending terrorism.