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Dec 01
Where have
all the coconuts gone?
Bindu makes a case against
globalization in the context of Auroville
“It is Rs 9 at the Pour Tous snack bar, Rs
10 at the Ganesh Bakery, and Rs. 11 at the Visitors’ Centre. We refer,
ladies and gentlemen to the price of Coca-Cola at various places in
Auroville” announced the “Akademic Genius Brothers” - a community
cabaret - with obvious sarcasm.
Hardly five years ago
Coca-Cola was not available anywhere in Auroville. One stopped for a sip
of green coconut at Vinod’s organic food shop or a chai at Ganesh
Bakery in Kottakarai. Today, Vinod’s shop has changed from an
exclusively organic food outlet to a mini super mart where, as in Pour
Tous, the community’s main grocery store , one finds chocolates from
USA, pasta from Italy, olive oil from Spain, apples from South Africa
and tinned sausages from Australia. Vinod no longer sells green coconuts
because….Ganesh Bakery while continuing to supply chai has invested in
a huge fridge which is stocked with Coca-Cola and other soft drinks,
which are increasingly becoming the preferred beverage for thirsty
Aurovilians. An Auroville Village Action Group study indicated that the
sale of green coconuts has drastically dropped in the neighbouring
village of Kuyilapalayam as the villagers too, seduced by invasive
advertising, opt for Coca-Cola to quench their thirst.
Coca-Cola, long recognized
as a symbol of the global economy, signals Auroville’s mute acceptance
of the prevailing economic order in India and the world. In the early
nineties, when India made its first hesitant step towards opening its
market to the global economy, I confidently assumed that India was too
diverse, too gargantuan and unmanageable in its economic base to succumb
to the homogenizing effect of globalization. Today, as India
increasingly frees up its markets, allowing the powerful tentacles of
the corporate global economy to reach out to the most inaccessible
villages, I no longer have the blithe confidence that India can so
easily weather the changes of globalization.
To be sure, the initial
effects of a global economy or globalization have been positive. As with
the political colonization by the British, this recent economic
colonization has shaken up the country from its lethargic stupor of
inefficiency and corruption that were the hallmarks of its socialist
economy. At first sight, a free market, by virtue of open competition,
makes available better quality goods at lower prices. But there is more
to globalization or a so-called free market economy than meets the eye.
The concept of a free market
stems from the long-standing theory of foreign trade that it is
economically advantageous for products to flow from the places where
they are most efficiently produced to the places where they are most
needed. For centuries, this policy did not adversely affect the quality
of human life in individual nations as the volume of foreign trade was
small. In modern times, the advances made in technology, transport and
communication facilities has shrunk the world, and with the saturation
of the markets of the developed world, corporations have turned their
attention to the teeming populations in developing countries as
potential consumers who can further their economic growth .
Consequently, an aggressive policy of foreign trade, based seemingly on
a “free market” system but in reality dictated by corporate power,
has come to dominate the world economic order.
A free market or an open
competitive market implies a capitalistic economic system that in turn
implies the accumulation of capital as the primary aim of economic
activity. It further means that corporations that have a greater capital
at their disposal have a greater say in the market. Viewing corporations
as “engines” powering globalization, social thinker, Tony Clarke,
points out that “70 percent of global trade is controlled by just five
hundred corporations; and a mere 1 percent of the transnational
corporations on this planet own half the stock of foreign direct
investment”. Furthermore, in their bid to maximize economic growth,
corporations encourage unbridled consumption and insidiously target a
change in the mind-set of people through massive advertisement
campaigns. Clarke estimates that “transnationals spend well over
half-as-much money in advertising as the nations of the world combined
spend on public education.”
What is deliberately
overlooked by the money-spinning corporations, and remains an issue that
has not received sufficient public attention and debate, is the fact
that the limited resources of the world cannot sustain continued
economic growth. What goes largely unchallenged is the concept that
greater economic activity (measured by the Gross National Product and
Gross Domestic Product of a nation) means a healthier economy. If
economic growth were the only criterion of a society’s health, then
activities such as the depletion of natural resources, the making of
bombs and armaments, the selling of body parts of human beings and
animals, would all be justified while other activities such as unpaid
household work and child care, production of food to be consumed etc.
would be regarded as undesirable since they do not command a monetary
value. Not surprisingly, the greater economic growth in the world today
has been at the cost of the environment and the poor who are
marginalized by the global order. The United Nations Devlopment
Programme’s (UNDP’s) Human Development Report this year poignantly
exposes how globalization has worsened the human condition in many
countries.
Global financial and trade
institutions namely the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World
Bank, and the World Trade Organization are all controlled by a handful
of developed or to be precise, “over-developed” nations that protect
their own interests. Economist Jerry Mander points out that loans from
the World Bank “are granted only to countries that agree to dismantle
their economic and social structures and redesign them according to an
imposed free market/free trade ideology. The international humanitarian
institutions of the United Nations are emasculated from doing any real
good by the fact that they have no economic power.
In short, as poet and
ecologist Wendell Berry puts it, that those who believe in a global
economy believe “a farm or a forest is or ought to be the same as a
factory…that for all practical purposes a machine is as good as (or
better than) a human; that the industrial standards of production,
efficiency and profitability are the only standards that are necessary;
that the nature of the ecology of any given place is irrelevant to the
use of it; that there is no value in human community or neighbourhood;
and that technological innovation will produce only benign results. …that
knowledge is or ought to be property and power…that education is
job-training…that the summit of human achievement is a high-paying job
that involves no manual work.”
I fear Aurovilians are
ignorant of the destructive forces that are behind globalization, or
worse still take a laissez faire attitude towards it. If we continue to
stock our shelves with imported goods ignoring local goods, if we
continue to subscribe to globalization without sufficient thought or
public debate, we make a complete mockery of our own collective economic
experiments and our ideals of a socio-economic system where “money is
not the sovereign lord”.
I admit that for many
Western Aurovilians, it is indeed tempting to finally be able avail of
the food that they are culturally used to. But, one should realize that
not all, especially those on a “maintenance” salary from the
community, can afford the imported goods that are now available. More
importantly, if we are here to bring into being a new world, if we are
here for the founding of a truer world order, then we should not blindly
accept what is being dictated to us by the world economy. We should have
the courage to experiment, as the Mother wanted us to, with a local
self-sufficient economy. While there are as yet no fool-proof formulas
on how to achieve local self-sufficiency, there is a sizeable bank of
knowledge on how communities can manage local economies. It is true that
the green coconuts can still be found, but they may not be for long if
the advocates of globalization continue to have their say. Without
resistance from conscious individuals and local communities, soon not
only coconuts but whole coconut plantations may disappear, to be
replaced by shopping malls.
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