In Search of Home

Deccan Herald 4/3/2012

‘Home sweet home’ or ‘home is where the heart is’. A multi-storey penthouse or a rural cottage? A place by the sea or a mountain retreat? Take your pick because cosy notions of home are almost ten a penny. Home is, ideally, the welcoming nest, a place to relax in and return to the family after a day’s work. It’s a place of familiarity and security.

Over the years, however, our perceptions of home have been shaped by various influences. Town planners and urban designers are well aware that spaces become places because of how they are laid out. Similarly, houses become homes as a result of how much of themselves people invest in them. People develop strong emotional bonds with their home and there is a whole industry out there playing to these emotions, telling us what homes should be like, how they should be furnished, what type of house we should aspire to live in, in what area and so on.

Home furnishings, carpets and tilings, ceilings and floors, kitchens and bathrooms, walls and fittings, gardens and patios… you name any one area of the home, any one perceived need within it, any single dream anyone ever had about a dwelling, and a market has been created and sold back to every one of us, seeking to create a world of aspirational home dwellers who crave salvation via the here and now comfort of their finely tuned, colour-coordinated living room.

Homes have been gradually transformed by the impact of every technical gadget ever known to humankind. As each new device came through the front door, the ‘home’ and what we did in it changed. And, as a new invention marched in, wiped its feet on the mat and sat itself down, others made an unceremonious exit through the back door, never to return and lost in the annals of time.

My mother had a mangle and clothes rack when she was growing up. The washing machine and tumble drier did away with them. She had a hearth for burning coal in the living room. Central heating got rid of that. Relatives would make their own music for home entertainment (or even converse!). The radio and then the TV saw to the death of that. And now we have the internet.

The invasion of home

If this tells us anything, it is that the home was never really a sanctuary, providing respite from the world at large. The world has always been on the doorstep, ready to enter. While it might be nice to regard the home as a place for nurturing private thoughts and feelings and for developing personal character, away from the often negative influences of the wider public domain, this has never really been the case. In modern times, the advent of the radio saw a major blurring of the private domain of the home and the public domain, as the world beyond the front door was invited in. TV accentuated the trend much further.

Is this a problem? You bet. German sociologist and philosopher Jurgen Habermas argues that public discourse should be open to criticism and systemic evaluation. The public is not and equal participant in the discourse being pumped into their living rooms, though, and is now misinformed on any number of issues – politics and the media have been hijacked by state-corporate concerns, with citizens having had any sense of responsibility for society’s goals ripped from them as they sit bedazzled in front of the TV.

Communication should be emancipatory and not repressive or based on achieving passive consensus that legitimises injustice and inequality. In the comfort of our own home, however, we are now subjected to a relentless bombardment of messages that try to tell us who we are or who we should be, what to think, how to act and who to praise or condemn. The home and the local community have been invaded like never before. Their traditional role in the shaping of personal character through the dissemination of values and standards now has to compete with what comes out of the idiot box.

These days, it is difficult to ascertain what is real and what is fantasy anymore. Vote for your favourite act by pressing this or that number on your cell phone. Vote for who you think won the political debate between the two presidential hopefuls. Who had the nicest smile, whose intonation was more appropriate, who looked better? Wait a minute, are we voting for the latest Simon Cowell protégé or the next leader of the US? Who cares, it’s just feel good factor stuff. Join in the media-led cheerleading from the safety of the arm chair. Sad but true.

The criteria used to evaluate a talent show and political events have been boiled down to knee jerk emotion. A 24/7 stream of world events and infotainment are beamed directly into the home. Private emotion and public discourse have become blurred into some kind of a meaningless unreality to produce enforced consensus.

The lines between rationality and emotion, politics and entertainment, news and gossip became all but lost within the home as the ad industry, political spin doctors and the marketing people all read from the same mind manipulation script, all learnt from each other and all used the same tug-at-the-heartstrings, guilt-trip tactics to convey their messages straight into the living room via the TV screen. We didn’t give the thieves the keys to our homes, they just took them.

The internet has hacked away at any distinction there may have been between the domestic and the public domain even further. We have been encouraged to think of spaces on the web as our homes, from personal home pages to Twitter and Facebook. We surround ourselves with people and images in order to give our lives meaning in an age of increasing rootlessness. People create web environments that symbolise belonging and identity. Creating a place on the web is home DIY by any other name.

The web has become another place for expressing the idea of home that has as much effect on our sense of well-being and who we are as the fully furnished, fully gadgetised bricks and mortar version where we live. But, as with TV and radio, the web has also allowed the outside world to invade our domestic space. Through the web, our homes connect directly to almost everything and everyone.

If home ever could have been regarded as an exclusively private domain, you can forget about that notion entirely now. Through Google, Facebook and the like, the authorities and large corporations can track your internet use to find out where you are, what’s on your mind, where you have been, where you plan to go, etc. This time around, they are not taking the keys to our homes, we are actively giving them away. In a quest for individuality via the net, we are in fact surrendering our privacy, giving away our identity and becoming yet another piece of data to be analysed, scrutinised and evaluated by powerful state-corporate interests.

Home, identity and culture

We may try to salvage at least a shred of comfort from all of this by noting that a strict distinction between the private and the public domains was always a false one anyway. Home was never really just a physical structure cut off from everything around it.

As a broad concept, home has always been regarded as something more than just a space to seek refuge from the wider world. It embraces notions of personal, social and even national identity and is imbued with ideas of birthplace, ethnicity, citizenship and culture.

Think of the people around the world who yearn to return to their ‘homeland’ or who fight to the death to call the strip of land they reside in ‘home’. Think of the refugees who yearn to return to their native places, or those people’s whose homeland is under occupation from foreign powers. And think of those who lead nomadic lifestyles and perceive ‘home’ in the broadest possible sense.

From Gaza and Kurdistan to Kashmir and Manipur, the underlying cause of many a conflict has over the years been related to asserting the right to an independent home, and I don’t just mean in terms of bricks and mortar. These conflicts make us realise that the relationship between home and the wider world is complex.

According to sociologist Peter Berger, religion has often been central to the psychology of home. Bound with notions of culture and ethnicity, religion is a canopy of sacred objects and rituals, a universe of built meaning that projects itself into the personal beliefs of the individual and the wider group. Religion can pervade every area of life, and it’s no coincidence that people rally around religion when they feel under threat.

In the West, Berger's concept of the ‘homeless mind’ has for many been central to explaining the effects of secularisation. Due to the decline of religion and the rise of individualism, people are seen to live in a meaningless state, and human life is less easy to bear. The mind has become homeless, as people search for meaning and belonging in a world cut free of religion, community, tradition and the cultural glue that used to bind them together. In the place of religion, though, secular ideological approaches have been nowhere near as successful in reaffirming communality or giving meaning to life and our place in the universe as religion has been.

The Soviet Union’s Marxist-Leninist symbolic universe of meaning never provided the depth of explanation required to enable people to come to terms with their questions about the ultimate meaning of life, death and the universe. Similarly, the great civil religion of our time, shop-till-you-drop hedonism, just doesn’t cut the mustard either. In the never ending quest for meaning, belonging and ‘ultimate reality’ in an age of secular modernity, people have often turned to any number of ‘New Age’ belief systems… or even Facebook.

In many regions of the world, however, in part as a reaction to modernity, religious beliefs have become more strident, reflecting the need to reaffirm tradition, the need to secure a sense of identity, the need to reassert a sense of ‘homely comfort’ for the mind. The rise of fundamentalism is in part a reaction to creeping modernity and social change, whether Christian, Hindu, Islamic or any other type.

Displaced people and diasporas re-find their networks and a sense of place also often via religion, but not necessarily of the fundamentalist variety. Certain communities have retained their sense of cultural identity through religion. For example, Italians did not give up their roots upon arrival in the US. In many cases, when people migrated to the US, they wanted to settle around people who shared religion. They wanted to create a home from home. Small surprise then that Little Italy in New York developed around Catholicism.

In London, there are many areas that are home to large populations of South Asians and other British cities have their own ‘little Indias’ as well. Leicester’s Diwali celebrations are legendary and are often said to be the biggest outside of India. Leicester is a small city with around three lakh inhabitants, but it boasts 22 Hindu temples, 28 mosques, 7 Sikh Gurdwaras and a Jain temple. People didn’t leave ‘home’ behind. They brought it with them from the subcontinent.

Home really is where the heart is

In the 1980s, the British politician Norman Tebbit seemed to be irked by the fact that many British Asians supported India or Pakistan when either team played England. Their ‘Britishness’ was called into question. After all, so the argument went, was England not now their home? This raised all kinds of heated debates about national identity, ethnicity and culture, which still rage today in the UK.

If those debates show one thing, it is that a sense of belonging, a sense of home, doesn’t just change because you or your parents are handed a new passport for a different country. Home is history. Home is ancestry. Home is a deep rooted cultural and ethnic cocktail, which is difficult to define, difficult to pin down. The concept of home is not necessarily where we are physically based at any one point, but somewhere where we feel we belong.

Whether we feel a sense of belonging on the net – home is where the hub is – or whether we end up on the far side of the globe in a ‘home from home’ location, many of us still tend to possess a memory of what and where home really is. And it usually involves a notion of where we started out, where we were raised, where our earlier personal history and memories are located and where most of our relatives still live.

For lots of people, it’s the ‘idea’ of home that counts. Home comprises a place, an area and certain people with whom we have some kind of affinity. It’s the notion that is carried around in our heads that matters. Even if when actually there, at home, the idea doesn’t match the sometimes disappointing reality, home is still home… however we care to define it.

That’s why millions struggle endlessly to assert their right to it. It’s where we ultimately belong.

Next Stop Iran: Who Will Save US?

Deccan Herald 18/2/2012

One of the most awe inspiring photographs ever taken was by a machine, not a person. The ‘Pale Blue Dot’ is the name of the photograph.It is an image of the Earth taken in 1990 by the Voyager spacecraft, some six billion kilometres away from our planet as the craft was about to leave the Solar System. The Earth appears as a miniscule dot, almost lost in the vastness of space.

The ‘Blue Marble’ is another image from space that also shows the Earth. It was taken by the US Apollo 17 spacecraft in 1972. The entire planet is a vivid, enchanting swirl of deep blue oceans, scattered white clouds and solid green land masses set in stark contrast against the apparent emptiness of space.

To see the magnificent fragility of Earth hanging in a mind boggling expanse of blackness is as wondrous as it is humbling. From out there in space, there is no inkling, no clue whatsoever, that there is life here. There is no hint of humankind’s squabbles, posturings, religions, civilizations or doctrines. There is no possible comprehension of the intensity or magnitude of human joys and wonder, prejudices and sufferings.

Beneath Earth’s colourful blue mask from space, though, lies a sorry tale. It’s a tale about the hundreds of millions of deaths due to pointless wars and conflicts that have taken place down the ages. We have had little compulsion in destroying living creatures in their droves and gorging on and depleting finite natural resources. And we destroyed in a blink of an eyelid what took the Earth millions of years to nurture.

On commenting on the ‘Pale Blue Dot’, the late astrophysicist Carl Sagan asked us to consider how much blood has been spilled by generals and emperors just to become temporary masters of one part of this small blue dot and how much cruelty has been visited time and time again by one set of the planet’s inhabitants on a barely indistinguishable other set of inhabitants. Sagan is not alone. During our more self reflective moments, each of us may care to chew over such sentiments ourselves.

But how easy they fall prey to hate, fear and anger and how easy we turn to killing and violence.

As we watch the possible build up to a US-led war with Iran and bear witness to the wail of propaganda and the deception of peace through the barrel of a gun, the world is told that Iran threatens global stability. Due to what is becoming an incessant pro war media onslaught, an increasing number of US citizens now favour a military attack on Iran’s nuclear installations – almost 50 per cent according to a poll by YouGov-Cambridge – despite no credible evidence that indicates Iran is actually developing nuclear weapons at all.

One news report by a US channel even showed a US aircraft carrier passing through the Strait of Hormuz saying the ship was ‘the world’s’ first line of defence in case non-nuclear-armed Iran decided to rein down ‘terror’ on nuclear-armed Israel in response to any first strike attack on Iran by Tel Aviv.

What gobbledygook. What twisted logic. What arrogance. In the case outlined, any ‘terror’ would be instigated by the said Israeli attack itself on Iran. That was conveniently brushed aside. And for ‘the world’ read only the US and its client states. And by what sort of garbled reasoning is Iran a threat to the US, the most militarily powerful country the world has ever seen – notwithstanding the fact that the US has military bases encircling Iran in neighbouring countries. Yet, the US media, like it did over Iraq, is convincing large sections of the public that Iran, on the opposite side of the world, is a direct threat to the US.

The threat to global peace and stability does not lie with Iran, or with China for that matter or any other bogeyman the Pentagon cares to dream up. Historian William Blum last year wrote that, since 1945, the US has attempted to overthrow more than 50 governments, most of them democratically elected. It has attempted to suppress a populist or national movement in 20 countries. It has grossly interfered in democratic elections in at least 30 countries. It has dropped bombs on the people of more than 30 countries. And it has attempted to assassinate more than 50 foreign leaders.

In response to the recent explosions in India, Georgia and Thailand, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu says Iran is destabilising the world and its aggression must be stopped. Tehran says Israel’s accusation that it is responsible for the bombings is baseless. No mention from Israel of the assassinations of nuclear scientists in Iran. No mention of cyber attacks on Iran, the funding of anti-government militias inside Iran or other destabilisation strategies waged against Tehran by the US, Mossad, the CIA or MI6.

It’s not a case of who will save us from Iran, but who will save us from the type of terror and instability we have seen instigated by US or US-backed forces in Pakistan, Libya, Afghanistan and Iraq. Who will save us from militarism and imperialism? Who will save us from the economic terror brought to Greece or any other number of countries, including the US itself, by the corporate cartels and the financial institutions who salt away profits in tax havens while expecting ordinary people to bear the brunt of their criminality?

In all our obscurity and isolation on this insignificant blue dot, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere. We must act to save us from ourselves.

Fuming Brits Find India A Convenient Whipping boy

Deccan Herald 11/2/2012

Last year, British PM David Cameron led one of the largest-ever business delegations to India, comprising six Cabinet ministers and around 60 business leaders. He lobbied heavily in favour of the British built Eurofighter. But, asFrance emerges as the firm frontrunner to supply India with 126 fighter jets, the knives are now out in Britain – for Cameron and for India too.

The loss of the defence contract to the French company Dassault, which makes the Rafale fighter, would deny Eurofighter's Typhoon an important export order that could in turn jeopardise thousands of British jobs. Many in Britain have accused the Cameron-led government of not properly supporting British industry in the past and therefore regard the probable loss of the Eurofighter deal as emblematic of its general inadequacy.

As a backlash over India’s decision, however, sections of the public and various commentators have taken it upon themselves to also apportion blame to India bylinking the loss of the contract to the issue of aid. They have been quick to point out that the British government is sending 280 million pounds to India for each of the next four years and that the aid package is around 15 times larger than what France sent to India in 2009.

They ask, “Where is the trade dividend?” – especially in light of International Development Secretary Andrew Mitchell saying last year that the aid relationship with India is very important and the focus of the relationship was also about seeking to sell Typhoon jets. For him, aid was linked to trade. But this is a stance which is now being strenuously denied by various members of the government he is part of in order to dampen criticism in view of the French having possibly bagged the prize.

Vociferous protests have subsequently taken place concerning sending aid to India, especially at a time when massive public sector job losses and slashes to services are being made in Britain.

It is being asked why should the overburdened British taxpayer give aid to a country with 300 billion dollars worth of foreign reserves and year on year growth that has been over 8.5 per cent? It has also not gone unnoticed that India has funds not just for its own aid and space programmes, but for nuclear weapons too, while Britain itself has no space programme and has been debating scaling down its own nuclear weapons systems.

Many in Britain question why aid should be given to India, which has an economy that is on course to overtake Britain’s in the next ten years, and that, according to financial advisers Merrill Lynch, has 1,53,000 dollar-millionaires - a number that grew by 20 per cent in just one year, compared with Britain’s own increase of less than one per cent.

They argue that India might do better to scrap its space programme, aircraft carriers, nuclear weapons and its huge aircraft buying programme worth billions and redirect all those funds to invest in improving the plight of the poor. Britain could then drop its aid and save money.

Banner headlines in the British press have claimed that giving money to India is a waste anyhow, given that rich Indians and politicians have silted away billions in Swiss bank accounts since independence. The accusation is that much aid money to India is thus chewed up by corruption and fraud. The lavish spending of India’s rich has been targeted too, with much focus on multi storey Mumbai penthouses, Formula 1 and the like.

Such arguments aside, though, what has often been ignored during this tirade against India is that, as a strategy for poverty alleviation and within the broader context, the impact of aid is minimal at best. There is no denying that, despite India's rising power on the world stage, poverty remains rife and the country is home to a third of the world’s malnourished children. India's annual average income per person is around 2.5 per cent of Britain’s.

However, much of the hardships are today fuelled by rising inequality brought about by neo-liberal economic policies. Inequality in India has increased significantly since it opened up its economy in the early 1990s. India's rich elites have benefited enormously, and this has often been at the expense of the poor. Look no further than the real estate speculators and the land grabs from the poor, the rising obesity levels and the persistent malnourishment, the corporate rich and the theft of natural resources in the tribal areas and the high GDP and the low poverty alleviation statistics. Aid is like using a plaster to stem a burst dam.

Regardless of whether India actually wants or needs this aid in the first place, it’s a pity that sections of the British media and certain politicians do not highlight the fact that the sum given by Britain to India is anyhow only less than one per cent of Britain’s debts - hardly a drain on the British economy. It’s also a pity that they don’t focus more on the real drain placed on the economy via the hundreds of billions that are being picked from the pockets of ordinary Brits via bank bail outs, corporate subsidies and fraud and tax avoidance and evasion by the rich.

Much easier for them to point the finger at India in order to divert attention from the neo-liberalism that continues to fuel Britain’s economic woes and exacerbate poverty in India. Much easier to use aid toIndia, just like welfare for Britain’s own poor, as a convenient whipping boy.

Wallowing in Consumerism, Passive Citizens Will Make Us Pay

Deccan Herald 3/2/2012

As the debate rumbles on about India opening its doors further to powerful transnational companies, the question to be asked is just what is there to discuss? The neo liberal agenda of the US via the policies of various institutions, such as the World Bank and World Trade Organisation, has generally negatively impacted local economies, democracy and people’s rights, while fuelling inequality and lining the pockets of the rich and a relatively small section of the population.

Too ideological a standpoint? Not really, especially if you dig out the various reports on the rising inequalities in India, the low level of poverty alleviation (the same as it was 20 years ago, prior to economic liberalisation), the persistent deprivations and witness the ongoing often violent conflicts. It’s for good reason that reactions against the US agenda are taking place and credible alternatives are being forwarded and implemented elsewhere in the world, such as in Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador and other places in Latin America via popular movements and democratically elected governments. Even in theUS, where the ‘Occupy Movement’ has been prolific over the last six months or so, people are protesting and offering a plausible agenda for change.

But what of the rest of the population? What of the ‘don’t knows’, ‘don’t cares’ or ‘can’t be bothered’? How can they be galvanised into action?

On a recent train trip from Chennai to Delhi, a student told me that many of his friends at college are uninterested in politics or the problems facing India and the world at large. They were more taken with the marvels of the latest life changing i-pod, world shattering laptop or revolutionary smart phone to hit the shelves. For such students, a college degree would be their passport to a nice job, nice car and a never ending stream of consumer products – everything a ‘model citizen’ could ever dream of.

But politicians have known for a long time that if economic prosperity can be guaranteed, then key sections of the population could be bought off and passive ‘model citizenship’ assured. The same compliant consumerist mindset is prevalent among many in western countries too, even as they watch others taking to the streets to protest against corporate capitalism, job losses and attacks on the public sector and state provided welfare.

Certain people only have the luxury of not caring, however, because others who went before them did care. And because they cared, they struggled for access to education, workers’ rights and equal rights for women, black people and gay people. It was a long and hard battle to ensure things like decent wages, housing and healthcare that the ‘not-my-problem’ set now take for granted.

Today, as people are struggling to obtain or maintain hard won freedoms and rights, many who were given them courtesy of others or previous generations of activists look around and say, while no doubt tapping away on their cell phone in some macburger hellhole and gorging on the products offered to them via the irresistible output of the entertainment and information industry, “Not my problem, leave me alone.”

As debate rages over the pros and cons of the opening of the Indian economy to outside interests, many have already been softened up to accept the ‘benefits’ of neoliberalism and consumerism.

But what’s the problem? They have a right to indulge in the crassest form of crass consumerism they like, don’t they? Well, maybe. But when people talk about democracy and the will of the people, or at least those privileged enough to express their will via their purchasing power, there is often a blind spot. How can there be democracy when giant corporations, through advertising, rich and well-connected lobbysists and PR machines, have been able to prescribe attitudes, habits and emotional reactions, which bind the consumers to their products and thus the perceived legitimacy of the free market system?

Even almost 50 years ago, French social philosopher Herbert Marcuse could see then that consumer products had the function of corrupting and manipulating. They promoted a false consciousness, which was immune against its falsehood. He had his finger firmly on the pulse as far back as 1964, when he argued that corporate capitalism had succeeded in tying people aggressively to the commodity form via the need for possessing, consuming and constantly renewing the gadgets and devices offered to and imposed upon them.

And politics has come to mirror the mindset of the marketplace. Think of some meaningless political slogan such as ‘We are change’ or some ad slogan that states ‘Cola is life’, even though it should actually read ‘is death’ for those farmers whose water supply has been contaminated or depleted near the local bottling plant. Nobody really knows what these slogans mean and perhaps nobody really cares. After all, it’s that feel-good, knee-jerk emotional factor that counts. That’s what the market is. That’s what politics has become.

Noam Chomsky once said that neo liberalism reduces the population to mouthing empty phrases and patriotic slogans and watching gladiatorial contests between politicians who are little more than models designed for them by the PR industry. He is of course correct because, as long politics and people are in the shadow of big business, any belief that we have genuine democracy is illusory.

Somehow, this neo liberalism, this passivity, this neo colonialism, by means of propaganda and garbled logic, is passed off as constituting freedom. And because it’s freedom, so the lie goes, it is also democracy. So we must have more of it. And the more we have of it, the better. Right?

Myth and Reality: The Lies of Neo Liberalism

Appeared in Deccan Herald on 21/1/2012

It is often said that there’s a fine line between success and failure. But any evaluation depends on where you draw the line and who is actually doing the drawing. Despite upbeat public statements from the Pentagon about Afghanistan, a recently leaked CIA report says the situation there is stuck in a stalemate. Khalil Nouri, co-founder of the New World Strategies Coalition, says the position is so grim that the US might be having second thoughts about withdrawing. After almost 11 years, the occupation is a failure.

US government spokespersons and President Obama are prone to telling the public that everything is fine in Afghanistan, however -- no doubt just as ‘fine’ as things are in Iraq, plagued as it is by sectarian divisions, ongoing violence, faulty infrastructure and terrible social deprivations. Based on official US public proclamations on Afghanistan and Iraq, are we to conclude that the word ‘failure’ no longer exists.

But this type of whitewashing is not exclusive to military ventures, as it applies to many other policy areas too, where we are also led to believe by various ‘experts,’ advisors and corporate backed think tanks that all is well. It’s more than a politician’s job is worth, or for that matter a highly paid corporate executive, economist or Pentagon official, to admit to failure.

Think of those who inform us that neo-liberalism has been great for humankind and that ‘globalisation’ has brought freedom of choice, democracy and untold prosperity. Think of those who tell is outsourcing is wonderful, Forbes rich-listers are role models and that poverty is soon to be done away with. And these people will also try to convince you that the ‘war on terror’ is going to plan and the ‘war on drugs’ even more so.

This propaganda continues even as, before our very eyes, crises abound with the poor continuing to suffer, civil liberties being stripped away, drugs crippling communities throughout Europe and North America, people being made homeless, wages continuing to fall in real terms and taxpayers’ money pouring into the black hole of needless wars and the pockets of the arms companies. Yet, we are patted on the head and told that we must stick with the prevailing system because there is no ‘credible’ alternative. That’s an extremely low standard to beat people into submission with and to measure success by – the yardstick of ‘things could be worse, so life is therefore better than you think’.

But that’s the trouble with proponents of the type of predatory capitalism and associated militarism that now engulfs the word. The system is in crisis and a patent failure, but is sold to us as a success story. While it is indeed a wonderful wealth creating machine for some, capitalism cannot solve its own problems. It just has a habit of shifting around the system the many problems it creates.

Capitalism is based on the need to maximise profit and beat down competitors. In the 1960s and 70s, in the face of increasing competition from abroad, not least from Germany and Japan, the US began to outsource production to bring down costs by using cheap foreign labour. Other countries followed suit. To provide a further edge, trade unions and welfare were attacked in order to suppress wages at home. Problem solved. Or was it?

Not really. As wages in the west stagnated or decreased and unemployment increased, the market for goods was under threat - if people have no money to buy things, then what to do? New problem, new ‘solution’ -- lend people money and create a debt ridden consumer society. Of course, it produced new opportunities for investors in finance, and all kinds of dubious financial derivatives and products were created, sold to the public and repackaged and shifted around the banking system. Now all of that has hit the fan too, this time the ‘solution’ is bailouts for the banks to get them lending once again.

Some solution. Even as the Euro teeters on the brink of collapse and markets are flooded with goods due to the over accumulation of capital and low consumer spending, failures are spun by politicians as glitches that can be put right by, for example, printing more money and handing out even more debt.

And on a global level, as local democracy is usurped by the influence of international finance and powerful corporate interests, local economies are being destroyed and people booted from their land. The fact that such people can then at least swarm to some sprawling, overburdened city and, if lucky, get a few dollars a day job in an outsourced sweatshop is also passed off as some kind of success story or economic miracle.

When the media paint a rosy picture of the world and when politicians inform us that everything is okay, according to the sacred scriptures of neoliberalism, why should we believe them? They are, after all, both sides of the same coin, feeding from the same gilded trough and sucking on the same corporate teat.

Surely any evaluation of where the world is currently at should be left to the ordinary folk, many of whom have already provided their assessment of the situation through the ongoing global protests against the bankers, inequality, imperialist wars and corruption.

There is indeed a fine line between success and failure. And millions of ordinary people have already taken to the streets to show where it really lies.

Poison, Eat, Inject: Big Pharma and the Food and Healthcare Scam

Appeared in the Deccan Herald on 11/1/2012 and in the State Times on 19/1/2012

Walk down the local high street and see the shell of what it once was. Where local grocery stores, banks and quality clothes stores used to comprise the cornerstone of a thriving local community, there now exists a sense of decay and loss. The only people who shop here these days are the low paid, those in receipt of old age pensions and people on welfare. Most of the manufacturing jobs were outsourced abroad because it was ‘good for the country’, but not good for many of the people, who ended up jobless or underemployed.

The banks centralised, ‘rationalised’ and left. Their former premises have been converted into bars selling beer at bargain basement prices, where people can drink away their empty days. The clothes shops have been replaced with second hand stores and the grocery stores selling fresh produce are now betting offices or pawn shops, offering people the chance of a few pounds to get them through till the next payday or welfare cheque. Betting or booze, take your pick, they are opiates to dull the senses by any other name.

The big supermarket chains and retail megastores opened up a few miles away on the edge of town, catering to the car owning people with good credit ratings who could spend their hard borrowed cash on all manner of goods. Their hard ‘earned’ cash was never going to be enough given the downward pressure on wages and their decline in real terms for many years now. So debt became the saviour and pumped up the economy. The years of ‘maxing out’ on the credit cards were laughingly known as the boom years, until the market became saturated with debt that no one could afford to pay back. Many western nations lived in a bubble… then it burst!

Still, there’s always decent food if you can get to the edge of town supermarket, isn’t there? Wander down the massive aisles, and cast your eyes on aisle after aisle of brightly coloured produce from all over the world. There are no seasons in the modern supermarket. Everything appears ripe, appears fresh, even if it was picked green then artificially ripened between field and shelf. A seemingly endless supply of food from all over the world. Food grown for export, food as cash crops, food grown on fields in other countries. It’s no coincidence that most of the world’s poor tend to be involved in the production of food. It ends up on the tables of others in far off places.

And just look at those shelves. Chicken breasts, chicken wings, whole chickens, half chickens… all tightly wrapped in cling-film. Well, at least it looks like chicken. I guess before they were slaughtered, they looked like chickens, clucked like chickens and acted like chickens. Or did they? People prefer white meat from the breasts. So the chicken is pumped full of hormones to make its chest develop more in comparison to the rest of the body.

People want convenient food, always available. So, why not pump animals full of growth hormone and antibiotics? Why wait months for the chicken to grow when weeks will suffice? As the chicken buckles under the weight of its growth and its internal organs have difficulty in coping with such rapid growth, what eventually appears on the supermarket shelf is the ‘idea’ of a chicken.

The meat looks like chicken meat, it’s labelled as chicken, so it must be chicken. Right? But why focus on the illusionary chicken? We could quite easily apply the same logic to say the cow or the pig. These are animals that are made sick by chemical-industrial agriculture, some of which never see a field or even daylight, imprisoned in their shed. And people eat these sick, unhealthy animals. And while we are at it, why not apply the ‘idea of the chicken’ analogy to the banana, tomato of some other food item too, which has been painted and pumped?

With this amount of hormones, antibiotics, food additives, preservatives and colourings, artificial sweeteners, aluminium, sulphur, flavour enhancers and heavy metals being put into what we eat, is it any wonder that we are becoming sick?

Severe anemia, permanent brain damage, Alzheimer’s, dementia, neurological disorders, reproductive problems, diminished intelligence, impaired immune system, behavioural disorders, cancers, hyperactivity and learning disability are just some of the diseases linked to our food. Of course, just like cigarettes and the tobacco industry before, trying to ‘prove’ the glaringly obvious link will take decades as deceit and lies are passed off as ‘science’ by the corporations involved in food production.

In the meantime, enter the pharmaceuticals racket, sorry, I mean industry...yes, the very industry in the US that’s spends more on lobbying politicians than any other industry and more on marketing its bogus miracle drugs than researching them. The very industry that is involved in the manufacture of all those poisonous chemicals and additives that find their way into our food.

Big pharma has the US Food and Drugs Agency in its pocket and regards chemical industrial food production, the consequent diseases produced and chemical industrial ‘healthcare’ as a huge money making scam. Why prevent illness when you can produce it, then cash in on it? The production of contaminated food, the manufacture of bad health and the subsequent government sanctioned drug pushing in the name of pharmaceutical-led ‘healthcare’ begs the question, what price human life?

As India opens its doors to western agri-business, chemically laden supermarkets and drug pushing pharmaceutical companies, I beg the question what future your health? Indeed, what future India?

Greek Myths, an Arab Spring and a Million Mutinies Now

Appeared in Deccan Herald on 25/12/2011

If one thing appeared to define 2011, it was ‘people power’. Most notably, there was the ‘Arab Spring’. This was followed by mass protests against social and economic inequality in the form of ‘Occupy Wall Street’ and the international ‘Occupy Movement’. And let’s not forget the anti-corruption protests in India as well. Dissent could be witnessed across the globe, and events reminded many of the radical days of the 1960s when ordinary folk believed they could effect meaningful social change by acting together. The year’s end presents an opportunity to look back on events and evaluate whether the optimism surrounding ‘people power’ was well founded.

First off, the ‘Arab Spring’, probably the most important phenomenon of 2011. The media coined the term to describe a series of protests that took place across the Arab world against a range of autocratic rulers. The ‘Arab Spring’ began in January after a market trader set himself alight in protest against the regime in Tunisia. The government subsequently fell after a month of increasingly violent protests, and President Ben Ali fled to Saudi Arabia.

The focus then shifted rapidly to Egypt, where the world’s media homed in on the thousands who occupied Cairo’s Tahrir Square demanding democratic rights and for President Mubarak to step down. Well, he did, eventually. A military junta took control and sanctioned elections, but not before launching a major assault on thousands of people in November who were still occupying Tahrir Square in protest against the army.

The King of Bahrain declared a three-month state of emergency in March as troops from the Gulf Co-operation Council were sent to quell unrest there. The West stood by as Saudi soldiers attacked civilians in Bahrain and put a brutal stop to any notion of democracy. Its attitude was rather different when it came to Libya, though.

A ‘spontaneous’ anti-Gadhafi uprising took place in the Libyan city of Benghazi, or so we were led to believe. Unlike the events in Bahrain, the US, Britain and France fell over themselves to get a UN resolution to ‘protect civilians’ from what they claimed was going to be an imminent, merciless attack on the people of Benghazi by government forces. Many pondered the West’s underlying motives in intervening in Libya, given that it was turning a blind eye to (even sanctioning) the violent attacks on civilians by troops in Bahrain.

Fuelled by an intensive NATO bombing campaign, an eight-month-long civil war ensued, leaving tens of thousands dead. A ragtag bunch of anti-government fighters, ably assisted by western special forces, subsequently captured and murdered Muammar Gadhafi. Not so much part of any ‘Arab Spring’ — more a preplanned policy of regime change by foreign powers.

The ‘Arab Spring’ rumbled on into Yemen and then Syria, with thousands fleeing that country to Turkey as protests and a government crackdown followed. Over the next few months, many were reported dead.



Apart from the turmoil in the Arab world, the tumultuous impact of the 2008 economic meltdown continued. As the economy nosedived in the UK, young people rioted in towns and cities across the country. Later in the year, however, a more constructive tactic emerged across the world in the form of the ‘Occupy Movement’, a kind of ‘democratic awakening’ that was partly inspired by the ‘Arab Spring’ and aimed at redressing various injustices, including more equal distribution of income, banking reform and a reduction of the influence of big business on politics.

Taking their cue from events in Cairo, ordinary people occupied and set up camps in key locations, such as Wall Street, London’s financial centre and outside the European Central Bank in Frankfurt. Much of the movement was directed towards the bankers and financiers who had been responsible for the economic crisis and its crippling effects on the lives of millions.

Over the weeks, despite attempts to discredit it by much of the media, the movement had more than a few politicians squirming, especially in the US, by drawing particular attention to the crooked links between Wall Street and various Washington politicians. Barack Obama, David Cameron and Manmohan Singh expressed a certain sympathy with the aims of the movement, implying that protesters were expressing legitimate concerns about fairness in society.

Fine words, but with no substance. A violent, co-ordinated police crackdown on protesters took place in many cities across the US during late November. Moreover, not wanting to pay any sort of financial price for their actions that had resulted in the destabilisation of so many economies, the bankers and speculators plunged Europe into a state of permanent crisis throughout 2011 by insisting that political leaders should fall in line and make ordinary people bear the cost. Politicians meekly obliged.

The good people of Greece, despite their highly publicised street protests, appeared powerless to prevent the onslaught on their public services and living standards to pay for a crisis they had no part in. The situation reverberated around Europe, with Italy, Portugal and a number of other countries sliding towards their own Eurozone sovereign debt nightmares.

Sections of the media in northern Europe conveyed the message that the ‘lazy’ Greeks (or ‘feckless’ Italians) were bleeding everyone dry with their failing economies and bailouts. It was a great Greek myth based on lies about the work-shy, welfare-loving people of Greece.

It was much easier to delegitimise the Greek protests by blaming the ordinary folk of Greece and their perceived character defects for a bulging national debt rather than focusing on culpable financial speculators and skewed economic relations between nations within the Eurozone. Europe’s pre-World War Two spectres of scapegoating and nationalism were thus beginning to rear their ugly heads again on the back of a major economic crisis.

And so to India, where scam after scam just keeps coming to light — the 2G telecom affair, the UP rice scam, Commonwealth Games corruption, the 2010 housing loan issue and… well, let’s be blunt, there are just too many to mention and on so many levels. In 2011, people had just about had a gutful.

Anna Hazare spearheaded the anti-corruption protests that sprang up across the country, and Swami Ramdev also led protests over the repatriation of black money from foreign banks. The government appeared to give way. Then it backtracked and dithered over the nature of the Lokpal Bill. Widespread support from various civil bodies and prominent figures across the country put pressure on the government to act. Things turned ugly with on-off hunger strikes, beatings and government crackdowns on protesters, and on Hazare himself. Bitter verbal attacks have become the order of the day.

Just as Julian Assange was threatening to declare precisely who had siphoned off what from the Indian economy into their personal foreign bank accounts, the US Government, Bank of America, PayPal and the like willingly lined up to financially cripple WikiLeaks and effectively prevent it from operating.

Under house arrest in the UK on what may well be bogus sexual abuse charges, Assange appears to be moving closer to being extradited to Sweden and then possibly the US to face espionage charges over the leaking of sensitive government information. With WikiLeaks and Assange on the ropes, it’s not just Washington that is letting out a sigh of relief. Many an Indian politician, private organisation and ‘high net worth’ individual might be too, who, according to a report by Global Financial Integrity, are the ones mainly responsible for depriving the ordinary people of money equivalent to 13 times India’s national debt.



What else happened in 2011? The new state of Southern Sudan came into being, Formula 1 roared its way into India, and there was pandemonium in parliament, as US retail giant Wal-Mart and other international multi-brand retailers took a step closer to entering India’s retail sector.

The ‘William & Kate’ spectacle took place in London, a royal wedding that some say drew in an estimated two billion TV viewers, corruption yet again reared its head in cricket, with a number of Pakistani cricketers being sent to jail, and the global population officially reached seven million.

A massive earthquake and subsequent tsunami hit Japan and dominated the headlines for weeks. Leaving a trail of death and havoc in its wake, particularly around the Fukushima nuclear power plant, some serious questions were raised by governments around the world about nuclear power and its safety, so much so that Germany decided to phase it out.

The UN declared a state of famine in Somalia, a car bomb killed 100 in the capital Mogadishu, and Norway mourned after 76 people were murdered in Oslo because a gunman had a grudge against the ruling political class and decided to go on a shooting spree.

And there was, of course, also the increasing instability in Pakistan. The US killed at least 24 Pakistani troops on the Pakistan side of the Afghan border in November, adding to the ongoing destabilisation of that country. With its influence in Libya already having been curtailed by NATO intervention there, warnings came out of China concerning possible military confrontation with the US over its role in Pakistan. This was preceded by Osama Bin Laden’s illegal assassination by US personnel, again on Pakistani soil, and unbeknown to the Pakistan authorities at the time.

Throughout the world, thousands of people lost their lives due to various natural and manmade disasters, including floods in Pakistan, Brazil, Thailand and Cambodia, a pipeline explosion in Kenya, a massive earthquake in Turkey and the bombing of Moscow’s Domodedovo International Airport.

But it was the rich and famous that tended to get more column inches. And on that note, 2011 said goodbye to Hollywood legends Jane Russell and Elizabeth Taylor, spiritual leader Sathya Sai Baba, painter M F Hussain, British singer Amy Winehouse, actor Dev Anand, director and actor Shammi Kapoor and computer guru Steve Jobs.

Looking back, the general narrative for 2011 was shaped by the mainstream media. However, although much news was underreported, or only featured in little known yet well respected ‘alternative’ websites or niche journals, we can safely say that 2011 was a year of uprisings and instability.



It would be nice to state that 2011 was the year when autocracies came crashing down in the Arab world and democracy prevailed, when the corrupt in India were shaking in their boots and when the bankers and politicians in the West were trembling in the face of protests on the streets. If only that analysis rang true. Unfortunately, it doesn’t.

Although the media focussed on the spontaneity and grassroot nature of events in the Arab world, and there’s no denying that many ordinary folk with genuine grievances were involved, there is evidence that many of these ‘uprisings’ were sparked off or manipulated from outside, with the US helping to fuel protests in the region for its own self interest.

Egypt’s President Mubarak had become a thorn in the side of Washington by disagreeing with US policy in West Asia. He was removed. The West’s erstwhile bogeyman Muammar Gadhafi was conveniently got rid of too. And with Iran’s ally Syria also being destabilised, USA’s long time goal of toppling the regime in Tehran appears to be a step closer.

As for the ‘Eurozone crisis’, with French and German leaders Sarkozy and Merkel zipped firmly into their pockets, the bankers and speculators are attempting to secure a guarantee that their future financial losses will be offset by the European taxpayer. An increasingly banker-dominated, centralised and autocratic Europe is looking less appealing by the day, with many, not least in Britain, demanding their government retain some semblance of national sovereignty and leave the European Union.

And, in India, the highly placed crooks seem likely to do their utmost to intimidate, procrastinate, water down or dodge the consequences of any anti-corruption parliamentary bill.

Too negative an assessment of ‘people power’ in 2011? Not really. Perseverance is the key to change. Nothing worth anything ever came easily, as Egyptians, more than most, know full well.

Notwithstanding the role of outside forces in the ‘Arab Spring’, many protesters seem likely to continue with their efforts to try to leverage at least some measure of democratic accountability from the new regimes. Despite media hostility and the crackdown on the ‘Occupy Movement’, the various occupation protests could be regarded as some kind of a starting point for effectively challenging the erosion of democratic rights and the corrosive power of big finance. Same too with India. A broadening of the anti-corruption movement beyond what it has now become is required to force politicians’ hands.

Whether this is at all realistic lies in the resolve of the people themselves. But given our digital age and the much talked about power of social media, it’s not wholly unreasonable to assume that perhaps many more Assanges, Hazares and dissenters will eventually emerge, especially if Julian Assange gets extradited to the US, Anna Hazare’s shoulders prove too narrow to carry the fight in India, or the occupation movements hit a dead end. After all, in ancient Greek legend, didn’t the Hydra of Lema sprout more heads after one of its originals was chopped off?

Too much wishful thinking? Yet another fanciful Greek myth? Only time will tell.

Softening Up a Population for War

Appeared in Deccan Herald on 15/12/2011 and in Morning Star on 12/12/2011

Many in the UK swore that it would never happen again. A hugely unpopular decision to go to war at the time, Tony Blair is still vilified to this day by large sections of the British public for his decision to support the Bush administration and illegally invade Iraq.

Fast forward eight years, and the now British PM David Cameron and Foreign Secretary William Hague are spewing out a similar brand of finger pointing bravado that we once heard from Blair towards Iraq, but this time in the direction of Iran. The ransacking of the British Embassy in Tehran has served to ratchet up existing tensions between Britain and Iran a few notches more.

Hague, the blood on his hands not yet dry from Libya, has used the embassy episode to exploit to the full what have become ‘common sense’ perceptions of a demonic Iran that have become prevalent among the British public. And the British media can always be relied on to fuel such beliefs and then cheer-lead the public into supporting aggressive actions and policies towards other states, as it did over Iraq and Libya.

During the past few years, the British public has become used to media stories about Ahmadinejad ‘the crazy man’ and the ‘mad mullas’ in Tehran, as well as the Iranian regime being hell bent on wanting to acquire a nuclear bomb that would only threaten the ‘peace and stability’ of the region.

What peace and stability? Look what the meddling and carnage by the US has done to neighbouring states, such as Afghanistan and Pakistan. And why single out Iran over the nuclear issue? Iran is a nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) signatory, and there appears to be no firm evidence that it is in breach of it. Nuclear armed Israel and India are not NPT signatories, yet it’s Iran that has been subject to economic sanctions and nuclear inspections for years, while India basks in the warm glow of US ‘favour’, if that’s what compliance with US hegemony can be termed.

The UK government is perhaps softening up its public for possible British involvement in what could be an eventual military attack on Iran. With Washington already having done its level best to destabilise Iran and its ally Syria from within, a huge build up of US troops has been taking place in the region for many months. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is also crying wolf over Iran’s intention to acquire a nuclear weapon, which is hardly surprising given that a US diplomatic cable released by WikiLeaks describes the new Director General of the IAEA Yukiya Amano as "solidly in the US court" and "ready for prime time."

China’s ambassador to the UN has already warned Yukiya Amano not to create “unfounded” evidence to justify a military attack on Iran in the name of halting its nuclear programme.

“Ready for prime time” is a very revealing term. Journalist John Pilger, writing recently in the UK’s New Statesman, highlights the propagandist role of the British media over Iran and how Pentagon press releases are passed off, even in the ‘serious’ press, as genuine investigative journalism.

In a document by the British Milinistry of Defence leaked to WikiLeaks, investigative journalism is described as a "threat" greater than terrorism. As military commander General David Petraeus once said, the US strategy is to conduct war of perceptions continuously through the news media. No surprise therefore that, as was the case with Iraq, lies, misinformation and bogus dossiers all have a role to play in trying to demonise Iran.

The reality is that the British government is once more falling in line with US policy. What was once referred to as the ‘Great Game’ during the days of the British Empire to describe the struggle for influence between Britain and Russia in the strategically important West and Central Asia regions is now a battle between the US and China, with Iran’s oil and fresh water sources being a vital prize.

As a client state of the US, something the Brits foolishly regard as a ‘special relationship’, Britain can be relied on to do Washington’s bidding. When the drum is beaten over the ransacking of embassy in Tehran, the drum is provided courtesy of Washington. Like a clockwork toy monkey, Foreign Secretary Hague beats it on cue. While many in Britain too easily swallow the ongoing demonisation of the regime in Tehran, others see things differently, not least China.

Having had their influence curtailed in Libya and in the wake of the US killing of 26 Pakistani troops, a top Chinese government official has warned that any threat to Pakistan would be taken as a direct threat to China, according to the JunshiJia website, which cites a report by China’s Central TV. The report also states that as the US war in Afghanistan deepens and the threat of military action against Iran becomes stronger, the threat of confrontation with China increases. A western-led military assault on Iran is strongly discouraged, a point China also hoped to stress by way of a huge show of force in its recent war games near the Pakistani border.

As William Hague possibly contemplates another dose of murder and mayhem after Libya, surely the lies in the build up to Iraq are too fresh in the mind for the British public to be fooled once again. By now they should have seen through the ongoing US-led deception of perpetual war for perpetual peace. Ultimately, there’s no peace to be found in Armageddon.

The Battle for the Corporate Control of India

Appeared in Deccan Herald on 1/12/2011, Meghalaya Guardian and North East Times on 2/12/2011 and Morning Star on 7/12/2011

In recent years, India has increasingly conformed to an US-led economic agenda driven by the policies of the World Bank, World Trade Organisation and associated institutions.

The likes of Cargill and Monsanto could smell big profits and moved into the agricultural sector with their costly, non-renewable chemical-dependent seeds. Apart from undermining biodiversity and an indigenous agricultural sector, many farmers became trapped in debt and were left in an impossible situation. Under what is termed ‘Mode 4’, India’s pharmaceutical and financial sectors are now being prized open by European Union interests.

The coup d’etat for transnational corporations, however, occurred in 2005 with the US-India nuclear deal. It was a master stroke in securing India’s strategic geo-political and economic compliance. The deal not only created a market in India for US nuclear sector technology and fuel companies, but also secured India’s role in containing China and supporting US aims in Iran.

Environmentalist Vandana Shiva has argued that what many are unaware of, though, is that the deal was also linked to the Knowledge Initiative on Agriculture agreement, which was aimed at widening access to India’s agricultural and retail sectors for US companies. This agreement was drawn up with the full and direct participation of representatives from various companies, such as Monsanto, Cargill and Walmart.

Little surprise then that following in the steps of US agribusiness, Walmart is now possibly on the verge of gaining access to India. And it’s not difficult to be left with the impression that, as with the cash for votes scandal in securing the nuclear deal, Walmart’s entry into India is going to be pushed through (or at least attempted to be) at any cost, as demonstrated by the uproar in parliament concerning the undemocratic nature of the decision taken by the government to allow 51 per cent direct foreign investment in multi brand retail.

Anyone who says that giant foreign retail chains will squeeze out most of the competition and exert undue pressure on suppliers is attacked for being stuck in the past. The ones mired in outdated thinking, though, are the proponents of this policy who exhibit a blind faith in the ‘globalisation’ project that underpins the opening up of various sectors of the economy to foreign interests.

It’s ironic that at a time when India is opening its economy even more to the forces of international capitalism, tens of thousands are involved in the ‘Occupy Movement’ throughout the US and across the globe, protesting against the policies that have granted so much power to transnational corporations. The message from the protesters is that free market globalisation is a moribund ideology, which is underpinned by corrupt networks of interest and has created unemployment and enormous inequalities.

Take the food retail sector in the West, for instance. Big supermarkets have squeezed farmer’s margins, much of the retail competition has been eliminated and the type of ‘long life’, ‘always available’ food on display has been pumped full of chemicals from field to shelf, or is shipped half way around the world from poorer countries that produce cash crops for export to rich nations, which impacts their own agricultural sector. While beneficial to certain consumers, there are many losers.

Think of the local neighbourhoods with boarded up high streets that have given way to soulless, out of town retail outlets that are inconvenient for the old or the less well off without access to carbon emitting transport.

Think of the massive profits that are reliant on low paid labour and a heavily taxpayer subsidised, heavily squeezed chemical-industrial intensive agricultural sector.

Think of the long-distance, energy inefficient food supply chain and the large volumes of purchase from single producers at take-it-or-leave-it cut throat prices.

And now India wants to import this system for the ‘benefit’ of its own food sector.

India has a decentralised retail sector, where the vast majority of vegetables come to the doorstep, and has a system that is arguably quite effective at meeting consumer demand. Freshly picked, locally sourced vegetables are available from countless competing vendors, whether in tiny grocery stores or from community markets/street traders. Of course, there are certain problems, but this type of small-scale retail not only generates millions of jobs, but is also more eco-friendly and able to provide food at affordable prices.

The myth of western chains being the great saviour of India’s retail sector is partly justified on the basis that food price increases are caused by an inefficient, wasteful food supply system, while ignoring the price effects of the ongoing restructuring of India’s agriculture in favour of a handful of corporate interests. Moreover, authors Jonathon Bloom and Andrea Segre argue the western model based on corporate retail accounts for the waste of half of the food in the world.

The big supermarket chains in the West negatively impact the environment because their profits derive from a system that employs the extensive manufacture and use of chemicals. They compel farmers to grow tampered-with food to ‘enhance’ appearance and to ensure long shelf life, while also drastically reducing labour costs and increasing energy use by shipping food around the globe.

The fear is that the increased corporate control of agriculture in India will lead to the destruction of jobs and existing retail infrastructure, while placing decisions of what people eat and how it is produced into the hands of large foreign corporations. The fear is that surrendering control of India’s sovereignty and self determination by way of binding lop-sided international agreements is colonialism by any other name.