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Special Feature
People’s Conference against Globalization
21st-23rd March 2001, New Delhi
Decisions and Action Plan
Having adopted the Delhi Declaration launching the joint initiative against
Globalization;
Recognizing that the crisis caused by the multifarious onslaught
of Globalization requires all those who love the independence and democratic
polity of this country to join hands together;
Convinced that the broadest
possible consolidation of all such forces, movements, activists and concerned
citizens into a rainbow coalition must be attempted;
the People’s Conference
against Globalization held in New Delhi on 21st-23rd March 2001 decides to move
towards setting up such a coalition; and, to this end, further decides to form
a Convening Group consisting of the following persons to initiate the process
of wider consultations and interaction with various organizations and forces
opposed to and engaged in the fight against Globalization in its various manifestations:
S.P.Shukla - Convener
Medha Patkar
B.D.Sharma
Vandana Shiva
JagjitSingh Layalpuri
Surendra
Mohan
Prabir Purkayastha
Dr. Sunilam
Ashok Manohar
Binod Prasad Singh
Vijay
Pratap
Ashok Rao
Dinesh Abrol
B.Sivaraman
K.N.Kabra
Sawai Singh
Arvind
Sinha
Aruna Roy
Ram Dhiraj
The Conference identified the priority issues on which the Struggle against
Globalization needs to be intensified in joint action with all those who were
already engaged in such struggles. Such issues and actions include:
- • With effect from 1st April 2001 all quantitative restrictions on imports
including all agricultural commodities will stand removed. The process of
removal of quantitative restrictions under pressure from WTO and major developed
economies, particularly USA, has already created a crisis for important sectors
of Indian agriculture, which will now be further deepened. Indian farmers
have spontaneously risen to offer resistance to the supine and self-destructive
policies of Government of India. It is our urgent task to support and strengthen
such resistance. Government of India will have to be obliged to insist on
claiming unqualified right to impose quantitative restrictions on agricultural
imports in the ongoing negotiations in WTO and to exercise this right forthwith
to protect Indian agriculture from the impending disaster. At the level of
people’s initiative, blockade of ports where import of agricultural commodities
is or will be taking place and boycott of imported commodities will play a
crucial role. Such agitations have already been successfully organized in
Kerala and similar protests and agitations will be supported.
- • Government of India have announced National Policy on Agriculture which
is only an alibi for unquestioning compliance of WTO discipline; abandonment
of national control on vital areas of production and multiplication of seed
and bio-diversity; corporatization of Indian agriculture; and negation and
reversal of the agenda of land reforms which was an important legacy of the
freedom struggle. This is tantamount to collaboration with the final assault
of global corporate capital on the last bastion of the national economy. This
distratrous policy needs to be exposed. The masses of small and marginal farmers
and agricultural labourers will have to mobilized to fight and defeat this
unprecedented threat to the backbone and the very substance of the Indian
economy.
- • The paradox of overflowing stocks of food-grains in FCI godowns side -by
-side with the burgeoning masses of hungry poor without any prospect of gainful
employment and purchasing power can not be tolerated any longer. The Government
policy of virtually dismantling the public distribution system and near- total
reliance on market operaions for procurement, storage and distribution of
foodgrains will only exacerbate the misery and indignity of the poor. While
pressure will have to be brought to bear on the Government to give up the
IMF/ World Bank dictated policies which are responsible for the present crisis,
it is even more important to mobilize people’s intervention in freeing the
stocks from FCI godowns for implementing people’s programme of “food for work”
at selected places with adequate prior preparation.
- • The Government policy of destroying the public sector to promote crony
capitalism has been thoroughly exposed in what has happened in regard to BALCO.
The workers of BALCO have set up a sterling example of resisting such policies.
Intellectuals and social activists will make a common cause with the workers
of BALCO in their struggle against privatization
- • BALCO has brought to surface another vital link between the workers’ struggle
against privatization and the right to livelihood and resources of the adivasis.
The special dispensation guaranteed by the Constitution of India in favour
of the adivasis in regard to industrial and mining activities in the scheduled
areas and further made explicit in the Samatha Judgement of the Supreme Court
is being negated as a result of privatization. Such situations will recur
more frequently as the public sector enterprises in the basic and heavy industry
and mining sectors are subjected to the accelerated programme of privatization.
This calls for steps to forge a united stand of workers and the adivasi communities
to resist the onslaught launched by the corporate capital with connivance
and active support of the Government.
- • The moves are afoot to amend the Fifth Schedule of the Constitution of
India to facilitate unfettered operation of corporate capital in exploiting
the mineral and forest resources of the country, thus endangering further
the livelihood of the local adivasi and poor communities dependent on the
local land and forest resources. These moves will have to be exposed, resisted
and defeated. To this end, it will be essential to incorporate suitably within
the framework of development, the right of local communities to local resources
where their very survival depends on such resources. Equally, it will be necessary
to involve the local communities through consultation in the decision-making
about development projects and priorities. Absence of such an approach has
resulted in acute distress for the local communities and resort to repression
by Government in the Narmada, Koel-karo and Kashipur projects. The people
have responded valiantly by offering powerful resistance. Their cause and
struggles deserve our full support.
- • Enron (Dabhol Power Corporation or DPC) has provided another notorious
example of the blatant surrender of public interest to further private profits
of global capital. The Maharashtra Electricity Board (MSEB) is on the brink
of bankruptcy. The Maharashtra Government does not have resources to pull
MSEB out of its predicament. And Government of India’s counter- guarantee
to Enron is being fulfilled at the cost of development plans and projects
of Maharashtra State. This predicament is neither an accident nor an instance
of simple lack of foresight: it was predictable and indeed predicted by many
independent analysts and organisations. It was invited with open eyes by successive
Governments on the facile plea that additional generation of power was desirable,
indeed imperative, at any cost. How much of this “reasoning” was due to the
million –dollars- worth “education” effort that was launched by Enron is anybody’s
guess. The situation has now reached such a stage that there is only one solution
possible, which is consistent with public interest: Take-over of the Enron
Plant (DPC) by the Government of Maharashtra at a cost to be evaluated and
approved by the Central Electricity Authority (the statutory authority enjoined
to accord techno-economic approval to power projects), on the basis of capital
costs of comparable projects established by BHEL/NTPC (and not on the basis
of the capital cost claimed by Enron, nor the capital cost implied in the
Power Purchase Agreement signed between DPC and MSEB) . Advocacy of this solution
and obliging the Maharashtra Government and the Government of India to follow
this course of action will form an important part of the Struggle against
Globalization.
- • In the name of “Second Generation Economic Reforms” and providing “flexibility
to labour market”, a frontal assault has been mounted by the Government against
Labour in collusion with and at the instance of Global Capital and their indigenous
collaborators to deprive the Labour of their achievements of five decades
of collective bargaining and struggles to ameliorate the working conditions
and enhance security of employment. As it is, there is stagnation in the industrial
employment. Sudden exposure to import competition has led to industrial sickness,
the first casuality being the labour. The so-called pursuit of “effeciency”
and “global competitiveness” by the capital has resulted in closures and retrenchments
on large scale. Corporatization and privatization in the context of the “open”
economy are taking their inevitable toll in the form of VRS, layoffs and shrinking
employment opportunities. The condition of labour in the unorganized sector
is fast deteriorating in the general environment of industrial stagnation.
Casualization of employment is increasing. Women workers are worst hit, in
terms of remuneration, working conditions as well as opportunities. And the
only “solution” Government has thought is in terms of, on the one hand, pampering
the Capital through lower interest rates, abolition of surcharge on corporation
tax, withdrawal of the dividend tax and relaxing capital account controls,
and on the other, punishing the Labour through the proposed amendments of
the Industrial Disputes Act and the Contract Labour Act. Trade Unions have
consistently fought the onslaught of global capital through strikes, rallies
and other forms of direct action. It is now the duty of all those who are
opposed to Globalization to join hands with Labour and support them in their
struggle against the frontal assault launched by Government against it in
the name of the so-called “labour reforms”.
- • The role of Finance Capital is the distinguishing feature of the contemporary
phase of Globalization and it has been the main vehicle of the onslaught of
the Global Capital. It has made our economy most vulnerable. The experience
of the South Asian Economies of the recent past is too fresh and traumatic
to be ignored. But the entire gamut of financial and economic policies of
Government appears to be anchored to one consideration and objective: To propitiate
the foreign investor, particularly the short -term investor in financial and
portfolio sectors. There is no end to this kind of propitiation; nor is there
any guarantee that it will bring the desired result from the national economy
point of view. No developing country can play this game on its own terms.
And still the propitiation continues apace. The logical and effective antidote
to Globalization is to selectively delink from the Global Finance Capital.
Which would mean, at the minimum, reversal of the recent measures introduced
in this year’s budget to relax some capital account controls; to impose a
differential and appreciably higher capital gains tax on foreign portfolio
investors; and to prescribe a three year lock –in period for such investments.
This would have short- term effects on our reserves of foreign exchange and
exchange -rate management. This, in turn, would require introduction of strict
controls on imports; prohibition of import of all inessential and luxury items
of consumption; and greater reliance on indigenous production. But all that
will be desirable any way. Exposing the untenable, pro-rich and anti-people
nature of the economic and financial policies currently pursued; strengthening
the advocacy of selective delinking from the stranglehold of global finance
capital; and pressuring the Government to reverse these policies: these should
form some of the most important and direct action measures to fight Globalization.
- • Last, but not the least, is the right to work. A mass movement will require
to be launched to make the right to work a justiceable, fundamental right.
The appeal of this movement is bound to be far more electric in its effect
than the move to make right to education justiceable. Once securing the right
to work becomes the central goal of our economic policies and organisation,
the current process of “Globalization” with its heavy pro-rich bias and its
built – in tendency to increase vulnerability of the national economy, will
become irrelevant and unenforceable
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