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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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