12 Jan, 2013

Asian Century Rising: At First Gandhi Lecture in Bangkok, Indian Activist Promotes “Soil Not Oil”

Imtiaz Muqbil, the only travel industry journalist to cover this historic lecture

Bangkok (14 December 2012) – India’s highly-decorated social and environmental activist Dr Vandana Shiva inaugurated the Mahatma Gandhi lecture series in Thailand on 14 December 2012 with a call for a Gandhian satyagraha against attempts by global agricultural and pharmaceutical corporations to control the global food and medicine chain. Warning that agricultural dependency on pesticides, herbicides, genetically modified organisms and patents would threaten the sovereignty of nations, she appealed for a popular movement such as Gandhi’s famous 1930 “salt march” to shift reliance back to “soil, not oil” and put sustainability at the heart of the development agendas. “Political freedom without economic freedom is not freedom,” she said.

In her lecture, which was accompanied by the launch of a Thai translation of her 2008 book, “Soil Not Oil,” Dr Vandana, 60, raised issues of critical importance to both the travel & tourism industry and agriculture, both of which are critical to the economic future of Thailand. Many of her ideas are widely shared amongst academics, media and civil society who feel that globalisation and control of the food chain is one of the major reasons for commodity speculation and inflationary pressures. As food is an important part of the travel & tourism industry, her call for support for organic products was also relevant, as was her warning against growing use of land for biofuels to power the transportation sector.

In an introduction to her talk, Indian Ambassador to Thailand Anil Wadhwa, said, “The subject acquires a terrible poignancy and urgency in our region today, given the exigencies and impact of an intensive process of globalization and industrialization and its consequent impact both on the vital traditional livelihood of agriculture and the best practices being evolved for sustainable development by people of conscience and foresight like those assembled here today.”

Assistant Prof Surat Horachaikul, Director, Indian Studies Centre, Chulalongkorn University, said, “Among our principle goals and in fact one of the primary goals of Chulalongkorn University is to also function as a pillar of the kingdom to help create sustainable society which requires us to take a holistic paradigm to work with others inside and outside the university to make sure that we nourish this Mother Earth, the root of our life sustenance.” He noted that “the theme of the recent academic expo of the university was His Majesty King Bhumibol’s Self-Sufficiency Economy. Every single faculty, college and center of the university devotedly participated in the event.”

Dr Sutiphand Chirathivat, Chula Global Network, said, “Our university and Chula Global Network take sustainable development seriously. We believe that the progress without sustainability is dangerous and will eventually bring about disastrous outcomes for the entire human society. The deteriorating environmental conditions, the social and economic discrepancies, and the different types of conflict that we witness today are serious and require us to take an interdisciplinary approach very seriously. As the main content of Vandana Shiva’s book Soil Not Oil suggests, things are intertwined and if we do not see this connectivity, we will end up wasting our efforts and may even worsen the existing condition of man and environment.”

Read the full texts of the three introductory talks at the bottom of this report. About 300 people attended her lecture. The food in the coffee break and lunch was all organic. Read an extract from the book here.

The Problem

In her lecture, Dr Vandana argued that the world’s food is being grown via unsustainable, polluting practises, a situation that is getting worse with genetically modified organisms and patenting of genes. This agenda is being driven by the financial interests of a handful of global chemical/pharmaceutical conglomerates. She said these same companies supplied chemicals such as the nerve gas used in World War II, then reinvented themselves to sell chemical-based pesticides and herbicides to the agriculture industry and are now also involved in the pharmaceutical industry. They have reinvented and renamed themselves after mergers and acquisitions to the point where five companies were said to be controlling the global food and health industry by the turn of the 21^st century.

Said Dr Vandana, “The chemical industry gives us food with poisons, then we get cancer and then the same pharmaceutical companies give us the medicine to deal with the cancer. This is slavery. The same companies which tried to convince the world that food cannot be grown without pesticides now are trying to convince us that the world needs GMOs to enhance agricultural productivity and meet the food needs of the world’s population. “

She said these multinationals are trying to patent GMO seeds and market them as “miracle seeds.” Genetic engineering is the only way to get a patent, she said, following which the patents are imposed internationally through trade treaties. She described how the whole system is geared towards making the Geneva-based body, the World Trade Organisation, a means of protecting the patents and by extension, the interests of the giant corporations. Senior officials of these international trade bodies are also serving the interests of the U.S. government, which uses the WTO as an instrument to push corporate agendas, she alleged. “(A major multinational corporation) is on record as saying that they wrote the agreement and took it to the U.S. government which then took it to Geneva and made it an international agreement.”

Dr Vandana questioned whether the objective of genetic manipulation of seed and grains was truly humanitarian, or something more sinister? “Will a seed be a means of growing food or an instrument of control? In the two decades since the introduction of GM crops, 95% of cotton seed is controlled by (a major multinational).” The whole idea of patenting is to collect money for royalties, she said, likening it to “the first kind of colonisation.” She also cited an example of how the names, too, are being changed. Basmati rice is being grown in Texas and known as Texmati. Jasmine rice has been fused with basmati and is called “jasmati.”

“This phenomena of taking over a millennium of indigenous knowledge, heritage, privilege and intelligence is inevitable if you start patenting seeds,” she said. “Life makes itself.  The plant makes itself. The toxic gene does not. In the WTO they have tried to make it a non-biological process. How have we landed up with a system where we reward those who have put a toxic gene into a plant with a monopoly for 20 years?A patent on life is wrong at every level, ethically and scientifically. Life is not an invention. Cumulative knowledge is not an invention. All patents on life are based on biopiracy.

“This idea of patenting life is the ultimate, false idea that began with the rise of industrialization and capitalism in the west, which shaped the world view of man’s empire over the world. People who hold culture sacred, venerate and celebrate nature are seen to be standing in the way of man’s empires. But we are not owners of the plants and animal life, rather their trustees. Lording over nature and over an “inferior people” are both manifestations of the same fundamentals.If continued unchecked, it means that no country will be sovereign. It will be the ultimate dictatorship over life. It will be a new form of slavery where all forms of life and biodiversity is enslaved through this new form of ownership, the privatisation of patents.”

She added, “How do you deal with structures when the top is totally unaccountable to society? When patents then become the properties of the companies, they can unleash their lawyers on countries. So, the issue of private of seeds and medicines is a life and death issue. Indigenous medicines, ayurveda, we need to reclaim the knowledge of these medicines which is also being patented. All colonisation is based on making you feel inferior about what you have and what you are and making the dominator look superior through the domination. And decolonization and freedom is recognising that diversity is not inferiority. Diversity is quality through differences.”

Dr Vandana also linked the new forms of “farming” and the many farmer suicides being reported in India. “If you do a map of the suicides, mostly they are in the same regions where cotton is grown. Why? Because they cannot live with the debt. Suddenly they face the shock of not being able to feed their children, send them to school, grow next year’s crop. Then the creditors come in and claim the farm. The shock drives them to suicide. 95% of the time the body is found in the field, due to the farmer’s bond with that land.”

She also highlighted the impact of unsustainable agricultural practises on climate change and natural disasters. “The soil can give us fibre, natural fibre, but petrochemicals are all derived from oil. In fact we are eating oil. If you look at the composition of food, its biggest footprint constitutes oil. The same is true with textiles and clothes. In the fashion world, you never think about this.

“After destroying the soil, the chemical fertilisers run off into the oceans and poison the marine life. And biofuels will make things worse as corn, palm oil and soya beans are diverted to make fuel.” She said that 20% of world food grain production is already going to run cars. Huge subsidies are being given which makes a handful of people rich. In India, use of herbicides is subsidized to a level higher than the defence budget. “And what does it give us? It gives us dead soil, polluted water and climate change.”

She said small farms can be much more productive. That is the difference between extensive and intensive agriculture. In the U.S. they practise extensive agriculture – large tracts of land with extremely low efficiencies, harvested by hundreds of Caterpillar machines moving down in “military formation.” “But in our small farms, we can grow enough for two Indias, if they can be made biodiversity intensive.”

Stressing that the vast majority of greenhouse gases are still being generated by the industrialised countries, Dr Vandana noted that the world long ignored the problem of climate change and is now having to face the possibility that polar ice caps will disappear much earlier than forecast. “Climate change is climate warfare. Because oil is a non-renewable resource, and is being found in fewer and fewer places, wars are being waged to grab it, and its continued usage is leading to pollution which in turn is causing climate crisis and natural calamities such as deforestation and floods. More people are dying by floods than wars. Drought is a quiet killer, flood is a dramatic killer.”

She also raised questions about the way land is valued. “When the land is in the hands of farmers, it is not real estate. When it is in the hands of a speculator, it is real estate. Something has gone wrong. Is that real or unreal estate?’ At the same, she added, “oil gives us oligarchies. A small handful of families control most of the world’s wealth which becomes more and more concentrated as a result of policies that deregulate global money flows. And institutions such as the IMF and World Bank are central to keeping the old means of money making alive. So all of this debt-creating mechanism, with all its conditionalities, has became the new colonialism.”

The global culture of consumerism does not help, she said. “While a certain degree of physical comfort is necessary, beyond a certain level, it becomes a hindrance. Creating an unlimited of wants and then trying to satisfy them is a huge mistake. This unrealistic scenario is the reason for the economic crisis in Europe and the riots that took place there.”

The solution

She said that in order to feed the growing world population, productivity must be measured in terms of health not in terms of commodities. Only when agriculture is about improving health will the level of diseases and sickness come down. There are clear signs this is happening as well-being is moving to the centre stage of global agenda. “If I can grow turmeric and heal myself, the antibiotic patent does not work.  The world has to increase the connection between farmers and people who want organic products. You have to build from the bottom and squeeze from the top. The struggle to promote organic farming as a nonviolent option has to be two pronged. First, spread the word. Second, the accounting has to be right. We should be looking at nutrition per acre, and health per care not yield per acre.”

She said this is what compelled her to write “Soil, Not Oil” and raise awareness of the double tragedy, viz., the problem itself and those not doing anything about it. The causes that Mahatma Gandhi fought and died for in the 1930s and 40s are even more relevant today. “My work has been shaped by the legacy has he has left,” Dr Vandana said. If the world becomes more aware of the looming dangers, Gandhi’s legacy of resistance to economic domination and social segregation offered solutions. His satyagraha (it literally means “the power of truth”) against South African apartheid had in fact begun on “the other 9/11” (more on that by clicking here). And he continued this satyagraha for peace and justice against British colonialism after returning to India.

Dr Vandana said that Gandhi knew that he was fighting a very, very powerful empire. But rather than resorting to the conventional militaristic means of resistance, he chose a counter-intuitive approach. “He pulled out a spinning wheel. That was his tool of liberation. There was no spinning as the British had destroyed our textile industry. The women had forgotten how to use it. We were exporting our products and then reimporting them. And precisely because the spinning wheel is so small, it can be crafted in any household. The last woman in the poorest hut can spin. She can therefore become part of the freedom movement. Gandhi turned the spinning wheel into our instrument of freedom. By the end of it, everyone was wearing khadi. We weren’t talking of khadi as inferior cloth but the machine-made textiles as inferior cloth. 70% of our textiles then began to be made by hand because of one man who had the courage to say we don’t have to be dependent, but can become self reliant, courage to redefine progress not on the basis of how big your machinery is but on the basis of how free your people are. He totally shifted the way we think about progress.”

She described how Gandhi worked with other Indian independence activists to battle the British and their salt tax under which the British colonial authorities had given themselves the exclusive authority to make and sell salt. “Then Gandhi did this amazing Salt March. He walked 240 miles to the sea, scooped up a lump of salt and said, ‘Nature gives it free. We will not pay for it. We will continue to make salt. I have a higher law to obey and therefore I will not obey your law’.”

Citing the political and economic freedom which resulted from the satyagraha movement, Dr Vandana said, “We must make the seed our spinning wheel and with the inspiration of salt satyagraha, pledge ourselves to a seed satyagraha. We must commit ourselves to never obey a law that falsely the defines the seed and life forms as an invention. Unjust laws can only be obeyed so long as slavery exists.” She said women can play a particularly important role in this, noting that Gandhi himself had called on the women of Asia to come together. If that happens, Dr Vandana quoted Gandhi as saying, “they would dazzle the world. My experiment in nonviolence would be instantly successful.”

She said that Gandhi gave us three instruments, 1) swaraj, (freedom for self organisation, governance and self rule), to harness the anger that lies within you and to act on the basis of what is right and wrong; 2) swadeshi (self-reliance), to abandon junk food and frozen dinners, and avoid diabetes and heart attacks by improving the quality of food intake; and 3) satyagraha, the ability to force change through non-violent resistance. And yes, she said, the “system” will resist change. “A system that is dominating will try to do everything possible to close the option to contest it.”

Citing the writings of E.F. Schumacher, author of the book “Small is Beautiful,” and Bhutan’s bid to become the first 100% agriculturally organic country, Dr Vandana said that making peace with the earth and organising human life for better welfare, was the new imperative. She said, “It’s all about changing mindsets. I don’t think humanity has ever had a deeper opportunity to be collectively creative both in constructive action and resistance. We’ve never had a opportunity to do so much creative work together. Let’s use it.”

Introduction to the Lecture by Anil Wadhwa, Indian Ambassador to Thailand

It is an honour and a privilege to be invited to address the gathering at this landmark event at this new Indian Studies Centre in Thailand – the first Mahatma Gandhi Memorial Lecture on Sustainable Development. The subject acquires a terrible poignancy and urgency in our region today, given the exigencies and impact of an intensive process of globalization and industrialization and its consequent impact both on the vital traditional livelihood of agriculture and the best practices being evolved for sustainable development by people of conscience and foresight like those assembled here today.

Without these inputs in the landscape of reality, there cannot be an imaginative and authentic development or food and water security or indeed a positively proactive approach to dealing with climate change, with land use and – critically – with social change of an inclusive and universally beneficial nature. More than 50 years before the term ‘sustainable development’ became the clarion call to action that it is today, Mahatma Gandhi warned India of the dangers facing a rapidly developing world.

In 1928, he wrote, “God forbid that India should ever take to industrialisation after the manner of the West. The economic imperialism of a single tiny island kingdom (the UK) is today keeping the world in chains. If an entire nation of 300 million took to similar economic exploitation, it would strip the world bare like locusts.” Unquote.

However, decades in the after this observation, the population of India has quadrupled to over 1.2 billion. As eminent agri-scientist Dr MS Swaminathan, lauded as the father of India’s Green Revolution, says, “Agriculture is the backbone of the livelihood security system of nearly 700 million people in the country and we need to build our food security on the foundation of homegrown food. It has therefore been a long, fraught and toilsome journey for the Indian state from the shattered wreck it was left agriculturally and economically in the last days of British rule. The Great Bengal Famine of 1943 was followed by the Partition of India in 1947 and the largest known displacement inhuman history, of 10 million people.

Consequently, in its first decades of existence, the modern Indian state was virtually a “ship-to-mouth economy”. Nevertheless, the modern Indian state was expected to cross the Past, Present and Future in one giant stride, as though equipped with the magic Seven League Boots of fairytale. India has been under this constant pressure both internally from its growing population and from a critically watching world, quick to critique but offering assistance on terms that a sovereign state is not always in a position to pay, given the real politik and geopolitik currents that affected and affect the comity of nations today. However, though having chosen the slow, difficult path of democracy to attaining selfhood, though being weighed down by the detrimental baggage of millennia and though having to recover lost ground from wrong turns inadvertently taken at various points in the last six decades, the modern Indian state was wholly aware of the harsh ground realities it faced.

A glimpse of its daunting task may be had from the Republic Day address to the nation in January 1953 by Dr Rajendra Prasad, the first President of the Indian Union. Quote: “Nature has been unkind to us and there have been successful failures of monsoon in important tracts of our land and the crops have dried up for want of water. Indeed this failure of rains has even affected the level of sub-soil water in these tracts and people there had difficulty of even obtaining drinking water. Besides, in several places, floods and cyclones caused quite a great damage to crops and property. All these natural calamities have compelled us to import food from countries at prices not wholly of our choice.” Unquote.

As you are all aware, the monsoon still plays hide-and seek with us, the floods and cyclones continue, and the responsibility to feed 1.2 billion people weighs heavily. Swift and drastic measures were and are needed to feed the people, along with the need to propagate preserve and traditional methods of agriculture, which are the natural heritage of the land and the people. And it is one of the luxuries of being a free country that various options and methods can be voiced and pursued simultaneously. For as the new republic took stock of itself in the voice of its first President, it said unflinchingly, that though it had abolished feudal land owning systems and thereby effected a revolution in the agrarian system.

Quote: “This agrarian revolution could not be fruitful unless you (the people) were provided also with the benefits of modern sciences, particularly those relating to agriculture and health. With a view to carrying to your doors the advances of sciences and technique, 55 community projects were launched on Mahatma Gandhi’s birthday. Every new measure takes some time to make its appeal to the popular mind … it may well be that some you may not be satisfied with the targets fixed by the (Five Year) Plan or may have honest differences about the methods proposed. In a democratic society such differences about approach and objectives of any policy would always be there. But these differences do not imply that any of us would withhold his or her cooperation from the implementation of a policy or plan accepted by the vast majority of the chosen representatives of our people … We have not a moment to lose.”

As you see, the Indian state was fully cognizant of the urgency of its task and harsh ground realities it had to overcome. The natural and historical tribulations that the Indian people have staunchly faced and continue to face thereafter in their six decades of statehood make them more determined than ever, to never be a ship-to mouth economy again. And along this long, slow and difficult path, every state needs its conscientious objectors, every country needs outspoken, active people with a plan, as Mahatma Gandhi exemplified with far-reaching global counter-consequences, most recently re-affirmed in the US Presidential elections.

For the Mahatma’s living legatees are not restricted to people with Indian passports — like Dr Shiva, me and some of you here – but to all those honourably engaged in various contributory walks of life, like the activists, experts, scholars and sympathizers assembled here today, who share his long term view, the homeopathic approach, or natural and gently-unfolding road to Earth-Wisdom, as we may honourably term it. We look forward greatly to listening to and learning from the views expressed here today at this historic event and to each fulfilling our role in sustaining the ‘culture of agriculture’ with due honour and attention to both the needs of the land and the needs of our people, for we in India are a Work in Progress and are united in our shared underlying concerns. Thank you. Sawasdee khrap.

Introduction to the Lecture by Assistant Professor Surat Horachaikul, Director, Indian Studies Centre, Chulalongkorn University

On behalf of the Indian Studies Center of Chulalongkorn University, I would like to welcome you to this auspicious the First Mahatma Gandhi Memorial Lecture on Sustainable Development (2012). Indian Studies Center began its activities last year and was formally opened this year on 6^th March by HRH Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn. Since last year, we have joined with others to conduct several activities including the two Bharatasamay International Conferences to commemorate the 150^th Birth Anniversary of Rabindranath Tagore and the Indian Writing in English recently held in this November. Apart from this, we also had Bharatanidesha Public lectures on India and Indian related issues, and two major cultural events on Dance Drama and Ganesh Chaturthi. All of these events are in according to our principle objective, that is, to create better understanding about India and build network of the like-minded individuals.

Among our principle goals and in fact one of the primary goals of Chulalongkorn University is to also function as a pillar of the kingdom to help create sustainable society which requires us to take a holistic paradigm to work with others inside and outside the university to make sure that we nourish this Mother Earth, the root of our life sustenance. The theme of the recent academic expo of the university was His Majesty King Bhumibol’s Self-Sufficiency Economy. Every single faculty, college and center of the university devotedly participated in the event.

In consultation with the university’s administrators and our friends from School for Wellbeing, Suan Ngern Mee Ma and Sathirakoses-Nagapradipa Foundation, we decided to inaugurate this memorial lecture on sustainable development and to be followed by a panel discussion on how to put these sustainability principles into practices. Gandhi ji advocated and practiced many things that are necessarily true in accordance with the Mother Nature. Importantly both his principles and practices are also directly relevant to our daily life today. One of the most important quotes of his that inspires us who work behind this memorial lecture was “there is enough on Earth for everybody’s need, but not enough for everybody’s greed.”

Ladies and Gentlemen, as the Director of Indian Studies Center, I will do my very best to ensure that we have this memorial lecture every year by different individuals who have dedicated their lives in working for sustainable development.

Let me also thank every single person from all walks of life who have made this memorial lecture come true. I sincerely thank Suan Ngern Mee Ma, Sathirakoses-Nagapradipa Foundation, Chula Global Network, the staff who has put so much of their effort into this memorial lecture. Many thanks also go to the students who vigorously believe so much that there will be positive changes and attitudes to the way we conduct our lives. Many have so much put their efforts without any monetary incentive. Let me give you one example, like this shield of honor for Dr. Vandana Shiva.

Please also bear in mind that this memorial lecture will also boost the morale of those who work so hard for the program “Toward Organic Asia”. I am also certain that the content of the book Soil Not Oil which will be launched today will help guide us to the direction of sustainability.

Last but not least, let me also thank Dr. Vandana Shiva, without her this First Mahatma Gandhi Memorial Lecture would never be possible.

Introduction to the Lecture by Dr Sutiphand Chirathivat, Director, Chula Global Network

First of all, I would like to mention that our university and Chula Global Network under my responsibility here take sustainable development seriously. We believe that the progress without sustainability is dangerous and will eventually bring about disastrous outcomes for the entire human society. The deteriorating environmental conditions, the social and economic discrepancies, and the different types of conflict that we witness today are serious and require us to take an interdisciplinary approach very seriously.

As the main content of Vandana Shiva’s book Soil Not Oil suggests, things are intertwined and if we do not see this connectivity, we will end up wasting our efforts and may even worsen the existing condition of man and environment. I was very glad to learn that our Indian Studies Center was planning to inaugurate the First Mahatma Gandhi Memorial Lecture on Sustainable Development {2012}. Today I am very pleased to see that this memorial lecture is taking place. Mahatma Gandhi has been known widely to the world as the person who advocated and practiced ahimsa to end the British Raj in India. In reality, his ahimsa is much more than what is widely known. The ahimsa principle of Gandhi clearly denotes that we are not to be violent with the Mother Earth as well. We have to live in accordance with her real nature.

I am sure the book by Dr. Vandana Shiva which will be launched today will be guidance for all of us. I am very happy today that there are many organizations’ representatives here in this hall. We have to work together so that sustainable development becomes everyone’s personal agenda. At the ASEAN Studies Center of Chulalongkorn University, we have assigned different scholars to help conduct researches on sustainable economy so that the researchers will provide us the tangible recommendations towards the path of sustainable development. But, this is just part of the overall picture on how we take sustainable development very seriously.

On behalf of Chula Global Network under which Indian Studies Center operates, I thank as well as congratulate the Indian Studies Center for inaugurating this auspicious memorial lecture. My sincere thanks also go to Sathirakoses-Nagapradeepa Foundation, Suan Ngern Mee Ma School for Wellbeing, and those individual staff and students who have dedicatedly invested all of their energy to make this memorial lecture come true. Last but not least, I wish to express my sincere gratitude to Dr. Vandana Shiva and all the panelists for the afternoon session. Thank you for your dedication and I wish you all the success.