Freedom from the Margins By Dr. Vandana Shiva

Throughout the coastal states of India - West Bengal, Orissa, Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Goa, Maharashtra - coastal communities celebrated 15th August differently from the official India with its empty rhetoric and the radical India with its negativity of Black Flag demonstrations against the failures of the last 50 years. Under the leadership of National Action Committee Against Coastal Industrial Aquaculture (NACACIA), coastal communities marched to shrimp farms which were banned by the historic order by the Supreme Court on 11th December 1996 but have continued to operate in total contempt of the court orders. They proudly carried the Indian tri-colour flag and sang the National Song "Vande Mataram". From the coast of India a new meaning is being given to freedom both for the people and the country. For the victims of the aquaculture industry, Independence Day was a day for celebrating and asserting their sovereignty over their natural resources and their freedom to engage in their livelihoods. It was a day for re-committing themselves to continue their struggle to free the coast of the destructive aquaculture industry. It was a day for condemning the attempts by the government, politicians and the industrialists to subvert the Supreme Court judgement which has defended their rights and their coast.

Freedom as the Right to Life.

Our national song begins with the words, Vande MataramSujalam, Suphalam referring to abundance water and the abundance fruits that this rich land has gifted her people. In the coastal areas today there is no drinking water, peasants cannot get the fruits of the earth, and fishworkers cannot get the fruits of the sea because of the ecological havoc caused by the shrimp industry. 1 ha. of an industrial shrimp farm requires 120,000 cubic metres of sea water annually. This 12 metres of saline water over and above the water in coastal ecosystems creates serious problems of ground water salinisation. Ground water salinisation is creating a major drinking water famine creating tremendous difficulties for women of coastal regions. Women are walking for 10 miles to collect water of paying Rs.5/- for a pot of water. Since people’s livelihoods are being destroyed as a result of the destruction of coastal ecosystems, this additional burden is becoming economically unsustainable and families are migrating out of coastal villages. The seepage from the aqua farms creates salinisation and water logging of neighbouring agricultural farms. Salinisation of land creates a forced displacement of peasants and farmers from coastal agriculture. Some of the coastal regions are the most fertile bread baskets of the country. Nellore is named after "Nellu" which means rice in Telugu. This rice bowl is now totally destroyed through the impact of shrimp farms. The Cauvery Delta is another fertile area in which agriculture land is being converted into shrimp farms. The destruction of the rice bowls in coastal districts will contribute to major food insecurity as well as to massive unemployment generating, economic insecurity and social conflict. Factory farming of shrimp requires 4-6 tons per hectare of artificial feed. Only 16.7% of this feed is converted into shrimp biomass. The rest is converted into pollution, which deteriorates water quality inside the pond and in the ecosystem. It is this build up of pollution that is responsible for collapse of shrimp production in a short period and for the destruction of the productivity of estuarine and coastal waters. Industrial shrimp (prawn) farming is by its very nature non-sustainable. Intensive farming collapses in 5 years, semi-intensive farming collapses in 15 years and extensive farming collapses in 25 years. On the other hand traditional polyculture systems which work with nature’s cycles are perennial. Marine fisheries is destroyed in three ways by industrial shrimp farms: a) Wild fry is the major source of seed in shrimp farms. For every single fry of commercially desirable P. Monodon caught, more than 1000 other marine species are wasted as "fry by catch" leading to species loss and extinction. b) Fish caught at sea is a major source of shrimp feed. Each ton of industrial shrimp requires 10 times its weight in marine fish for conversion to feed. c) The pollution from shrimp farms also kills fish life and destroys marine resources. The argument used to justify the large scale destruction by the shrimp industry is the dollar earning that it brings to the shrimp industry even though it is made to appear that the private profits of the industry are an increase in national wealth. However, behind every dollar of earnings by the shrimp industry, there is 200 dollar worth of damage of local ecology and local economy if the ecological footprint of industrially produced shrimp is taken into account. The ecological footprint of a productive system is the productive ecosystem required to supply inputs to the production and to assimilate waste outputs from the production cycle. Entry 1 M2 of an industrial shrimp farm can require upto 200 M2 of marine and coastal ecosystems for input supply of shrimp seed and water and for sinks for waste and pollution. The destruction of coastal ecosystems leads to the destruction of coastal livelihoods. It is in recognition of this fact that the Supreme Court ordered closure of the shrimp factories within the coastal zone in order to protect the fundamental right to life that is guaranteed under the Constitution. It is this freedom as the right to life of the people which is being denied by the shrimp industry’s right to profit and which was being defended by the coastal communities in their celebration of theirs and India's freedom.

Freedom from Corruption

The shrimp industry is a breeding ground for ecological as well as political pollution which is known as corruption. While Multinational Corporations are the driving force in the shrimp feed industry and in the shrimp trade, our politicians and bureaucrats are also involved. The shrimp scam -- the involvy Bill (AAB) was rushed through Rajya Sabha. Through the AAB, the politicians are using the structures of democratic India meant to protect the people as instruments for their own power and accumulation and as an assault on the fundamental rights and civil liberties of the coastal people. Chief Ministers of every coastal state have interests in it. MPs, MLAs, bureaucrats are involved. The Finance Minister himself is supposed to be involved in the shrimp industry. Meghna farm in Shrikali in Tamil Nadu is reported to be owned by his brother-in-law. It is also reported that the Finance Minister himself has a shrimp farm in Ramnathpuram to establish which he cut down 5,000 coconut trees. The Prime Minister had stated in his Quit India celebration speech, that those who hold high offices and are corrupt are anti-national and traitors. In his Independence Day speech from the Red Fort, he stated,

Anyone with any proof of corruption against any of my cabinet member can come to me and action will be taken without reservation.

During the Golden Jubilee year of India’s Independence we would like the Prime Minister to establish his commitment to wipe out corruption by taking action against the "traitors" involved in the shrimp scam. We would like the Prime Minister to not participate in the nurturing and protection of corruption by letting his cabinet undermine the Supreme Court judgement by bringing the AAB to Lok Sabha. Corruption is not just a matter of bribes. It is the institutionalised loot of the resources of the poor by those in power. Let the Prime Minister begin the cleaning up of corruption in his government by investigating the shrimp scam and by implementing the Supreme Court judgement. Attempts of subversion of the Supreme Court order through the AAB and the review petitions are a subversion of our justice system and our democratic fabric. Freedom is the defense of our democratic structures. The people are defending these structures while those in power are attempting to destroy them. Freedom from fear of Mafia rule Since the aqua industry has been established by violating every law of the land and by trampling on the rights of local communities, it continues to operate only through the rule of terror and violence. While each farm creates only employment for 2 people per hectare in the productive activity, there is a major "employment generation" through the need for private securities and private armies to defend the the shrimp factories from the people whose water, land and biodiversity is being destroyed and who are rising in revolt. An attempt is being made to contain the local agitations through money power and muscle power. Inspite of threats from the shrimp mafia, coastal people took out their freedom marches on 15th August even in the hot land of the mafia rule. People are showing that they are fearless because they are engaged in a just struggle to defend their lives. Fifty years after independence the challenge is to protect the freedoms we gained half a century ago, and to expand and deepen the meaning of freedom beyond our fifty years legacy so that it becomes a reality for the eighty per cent of India which has been marginalised by the five development decades and which is being rendered dispensable by the new economic policies of trade liberalisation and globalisation. The shrimp industry is a child of these "reforms" which are based on turning the "licence-permit raj" into the "licence to loot and the permit to plunder raj". Our Finance Minister, Shri Chidambaram is said to have said,

So, to those of you who wish to come to India, I say, come and stay there for a long time... the last time you came to India to take a look, you stayed 200 years. So, this time if you come, you must be prepared to stay for another 200 years. That is where the largest rewards are...

While the Finance Minister in whose hands the country has trusted its economic planning is inviting invaders to loot and recolonise us, he is also personally looting the resources of the poor coastal communities while maintaining the image of "Mr. Clean". Today, India seeks her freedom not just from the foreign powers who are attempting once again to colonise her. She seeks freedom from the political class which is dismembering her ecologically and socially. And this new freedom struggle for a free India is appropriately beginning in her social and environmental margins -- from the coasts, led by women, the traditional fishworkers and the landless or small peasants. The rebirth of a free India is taking place amidst the brutalisation and debasement of murders, abductions, caste and communal wars, political corruption and criminalisation of politics and the destruction of the natural and economic wealth of the people. In the margins, a new India is getting born-- an India built on the principles of sustainability and justice, of peace and harmony of democracy and diversity. The freedom from the margins, the freedom of the marginalised, will be India’s real search for freedom. This second freedom struggle has just begun.

The Myth Of Foreign Investment Benefits By Jayati Ghosh.

Governments with over-optimistic expectations from foreign direct investment should be aware that it does not necessarily increase employment and can have negative effects on a fragile economy.

ONE of the myths that appears to be indestructible, despite growing evidence to the contrary, is that of the generally positive and desirable nature of foreign direct investment (FDI). It is certainly seen as being preferable to other forms of foreign capital inflow, such as commercial borrowing and portfolio investment. Furthermore, it is considered to be eminently advantageous in its own terms, and something to be actively sought by governments of developing countries. In fact, access to more FDI is now touted as one of the major benefits of the recent economic globalisation, which is supposed to outweigh its many negative effects.

In India, this perception has, if anything, intensified in recent times. Witness the Budget speech of the Finance Minister, in which he announced a reduction on corporate tax paid by foreign companies from 48 per cent to 40 per cent, despite the shocking shortfalls in tax collection in the current year. This concession was explicitly declared to be a means of wooing more FDI into the economy.

Of course, one can quarrel with the Finance Minister's (false) notion that tax concessions will work to attract more FDI into a stagnating economy. But the more fundamental mistake is to assume that it is necessary to attract FDI in whatever form into the economy, and that this justifies tax and other concessions.

An important book by David Woodward (The next crisis? Direct and Equity Investment in Developing Countries; Zed Books, London and New York, 2001) shows just how problematic such an assumption can be. Woodward's book contains a penetrating and occasionally startling analysis that lays bare in a succinct way many of the current myths about FDI.

To start with, Woodward reveals how little we actually know about even the extent of FDI, and especially stocks of FDI, in different countries. It emerges that official data - including those produced by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank - almost certainly underestimate to a substantial extent, the true value of inward FDI stocks and their absolute rate of increase. Far from trying to improve this state of affairs, the Fund and the Bank have promoted the liberalisation of foreign investment regimes, which actually tends to reduce the availability of data and even the possibility of collecting it.

This matters not only because it is useful for a host country to know the exact stocks of inward FDI, but because inadequate assessment of their extent may lead to policy misjudgment and failure to anticipate potential crises. As Woodward points out, the lack of information on the extent of external liabilities contributed to the external debt crisis of the 1980s, and a similar process may be under way with respect to private investment today. Moreover, since FDI is not unambiguously positive, such lack of knowledge of the extent of inward FDI stocks can even be dangerous in other ways.

Consider, for example, the foreign exchange effects of FDI, which are often simplistically assumed to be positive. In actual fact, the foreign exchange effects are much more negative than what emerges from an idealised view of FDI. Woodward shows that positive effects arise only where new productive capacity is created in the export sector, or in very strongly import-substituting sectors. If FDI takes the form of purchase of existing capacity, even in the export sector it will have a negative foreign exchange effect even if export production goes up, unless the productivity of capital increases enough to offset the other increased foreign exchange costs. At lower levels of import substitution, the effects of "greenfield" FDI on new capacity are much more ambiguous, and may be negative.

Similarly, Woodward indicates how misleading it may be to assume that FDI necessarily contributes to increased employment. In fact, the employment effect will depend on a whole range of variables, including the balance between greenfield FDI and the purchase of existing assets; the labour intensity of new productive capacities or new organisational techniques; the extent to which FDI-based production substitutes for existing production and their relative labour intensities, and so on. In general, therefore, it is not the case that FDI creates much more net employment unless it is really very large in scale and heavily involved in greenfield activities, and even in such cases it need not be more employment-intensive.

Large-scale flows of FDI also have effects on other domestic economic policies. To begin with, reliance on such flows imposes severe constraints on domestic government policy because of the fear of withdrawal, and of course the potential impact of disinvestment increases as the FDI stock grows. Further, FDI is embodied in the presence of multinational corporations (MNCs) which tend to be large and powerful lobbies in the matter of domestic policies.

And then, of course, the very competition to attract more FDI by governments with over-optimistic expectations regarding such investment, means that all sorts of concessions are offered, which may turn out to be very expensive for the economy in the medium or long term. Woodward suggests that such FDI promotion tends to focus heavily on the demand side, in terms of requirements imposed on host countries which involve changing their own policies in order to make themselves more attractive. Such unilateral concessions are increasingly sought to be entrenched through international agreements.

Another interesting point that Woodward makes is that much of the over-optimism surrounding foreign investment stems from a tendency to look at the host country in isolation from the developing world as a whole. But in fact there are strong negative spillover effects on other developing countries, which may outweigh whatever limited gains actually do accrue to the host country.

Woodward analyses the 1990s boom in FDI to developing countries, to conclude that it has the elements of a temporary surge similar to those affecting the market for equity (or portfolio) investment. While deregulation of foreign investment across the developing world has played a role, this has probably been less significant than the large-scale privatisation programmes, which have been a major source of both FDI and portfolio investment, and the debt-equity conversions, which were especially common in Latin America. Further, some flight capital may re-enter the country as FDI - some estimates suggest that this has been significant, for example, in China.

All these are clearly short-lived, or temporary forces. Even the globalisation of production can be seen as a finite conversion process, albeit one which is more prolonged and complex. But it is important to note that all these features make FDI, along with portfolio investment, strongly pro-cyclical in nature.

Even worse, FDI can contribute to the underlying fragility of an economy and make it more susceptible to balance of payments crises. Woodward considers several ways in which this can happen. First, as rapidly growing stocks of inward FDI generate similarly growing profits that form part of the foreign exchange outflow. Secondly, when FDI fuels an increase in imports, such as capital goods for investment projects and other such payments. Thirdly, because current foreign exchange costs of MNCs typically exceed the foreign exchange they tend to earn through exports of import substitution. Fourthly, through the role played by foreign affiliates, including those involved in retailing, in changing patterns of consumption through advertising and brand promotion.

For these and other reasons, FDI can contribute to large current account deficits, which tend to precede financial crises. They can also add to both the economic shocks preceding crises and to the process of contagion. Woodward provides examples of a number of East Asian economies and of Mexico prior to their respective financial crises. He does not mention Argentina, whose major crisis broke after this book was published, but it provides an even more classic example of his argument.

The "fire-sale" of domestic productive assets to foreign companies, which often accompanies attempts to come out of such financial crisis, may initially limit the reduction of FDI to the affected countries, as indeed happened in South Korea. But this occurs at a high long-term cost, in terms of the build-up of more FDI stock and further adverse balance of payments effects.

Once again, the case of Argentina over the past two decades provides a stark, if telling, example - indeed, it is almost as if this script were written for Argentina, in terms of the pattern of sale of public assets to foreign multinational companies in the early 1990s, followed by very adverse balance of payments effects which contributed in turn to the external debt build-up, which then precipitated the most recent crisis.

This more pessimistic - and more realistic - view of the impact of FDI provides a very different angle on the substantial and rapidly increasing stocks of inward FDI in a number of developing countries. Far from being a source of celebration, it may in fact be, as Woodward describes it, "an accident waiting to happen". The latest round of crises in emerging markets has perversely operated to strengthen both the positive attitude to FDI and efforts to promote it. But in the new climate, in which developing country markets are seen as riskier and international investors are becoming more risk-averse, efforts to attract more FDI will involve even more concessions on the terms of such investment. "The result will be to accelerate the build-up of liabilities without a commensurate effect on the now seriously limited capacity of national economies to bear them" (page 207) .

In fact, such a crisis appears to be almost inevitable, since any serious efforts to prevent it would require both a change in attitudes to foreign capital and a change in political structures. As Woodward says, "Only when governments represent the interests of their populations and both their business communities, and have (international) political influence proportional to the populations they represent, can we realistically expect to achieve an international financial and economic system which will genuinely serve the interests of people, and not of transnational companies" (page 215).

Until then, it looks as if the world will have to brace itself for the next round of financial crises, this time probably emanating from the balance of payments problems caused by the current adulation of FDI. And we in India will have to bear with further concessions to multinational investment that may not be in our long-term interest, even if such investment does choose to come into the country

Is Wal-Mart what the Doctor Prescribes? By Mohan Guruswamy.

That the Prime Minister of India met Mr. John Menzer, President of Wal-Mart has once again kindled a frenzy of excitement in the pink papers and in the business pages of their white siblings. Not since Kenneth Lay and Rebecca Mark came calling to sell us Enron's plans to lead India out of darkness have we seen such excitement. Enron was a classic con job and what is worrying is that the same people who sold Enron so hard are hard at it selling Wal-Mart. We can be sure that Wal-Mart is no Enron leading us up the garden path. It is a much-respected company whose worldwide sales exceed US$ 255 billion. It is the corporation that has transformed how America shops by giving the average American value for money. Its contribution to the American way of life cannot be any less than that of GM or IBM.

But is Wal-Mart what the good doctor would prescribe for us given our present health condition? Very simply it is all about jobs. Unlike FDI in manufacturing or IT or financial services, all of which create jobs, FDI in retail would entail job losses on a massive scale. The profile of India's retail sector with its overwhelming preponderance of small and self employed retailers is a direct consequence of our inability to provide gainful employment to the millions who join the workforce each year. At last count these numbered about 45 million. These are not just "mom and pop" businesses such as the neighborhood Kirana shop. For every one of them there are dozens of handcart and pavement vendors with little more than a pile of vegetables or fruits as their investment for survival. Food produce accounts for over 14% of all retail trade and most of our small retailers are employed in this sub segment. It is important to remember that most of them are in this business out of necessity and not by choice.

Mr. Menzer himself gave India a fine demonstration of how Wal-Mart gave America value for its money at the lunch for journalists hosted by the US Embassy on May 12, shortly after his happy meeting with Dr.Manmohan Singh. He waved his little black wallet at everyone saying: "We sell this piece, sourced from India, at $17 a piece in the US. Our competitor sells it for $70." Now that is still value for money, considering that Wal-Mart in all probability would have bought that wallet for not more than the equivalent $3. No wonder its consistently big bottom-lines had made its founder Sam Walton the richest man in the world and Warren Buffet its most happy investor. In its quest to give India too value for its money, Wal-Mart will no doubt scour the manufacturing centres of the world and give the Indian consumer goods that are value for money. Right now this means lots of Chinese goods. One must wonder what this will do to our manufacturers of consumer goods?

Wal-Mart is the USA's largest corporation and one of its most profitable. It has been good for America. Wal-Mart is in the business of making profits and it seeks to enter India in search of profits. Unfortunately there are many in this country, and some of them holding high office, who believe that Wal-Mart is carrying a cure for our economic woes. In the last few days it has been argued as to how Wal-Mart, which has 45 stores in China, out sources US$ 20 billion of merchandise from China. By contrast Wal-Mart, they woefully state, only imports only US$ 1 billion of merchandise from India and all Wal-Mart has is a procurement office in Bangalore.

But it is not as if the quantum of Wal-Mart imports are related to the number of stores. Wouldn't Wal-Mart keep importing from China even if it didn't have a single store there? China's exports amount to almost US$ 450 billion whereas India's exports are in the vicinity of US$ 55 billion. This is so because Chinese goods are manufactured to be extremely competitive in terms of price and quality. It is because of this fact, even if China did not have a single Wal-Mart, Wal-Mart would keep importing what it presently does from China. Just as it does what it does from India.

So we must discard this notion that the presence of Wal-Mart stores in India will result in more exports to Wal-Mart in the USA. For that India will have to become a much better and more efficient manufacturer of goods. All kinds of goods. China today is the world's leading exporter of cellular phones, digital cameras, computers, toys and what have you. India leads in H1B visas to the USA. No wonder the Chinese Ambassador in India is able to pithily observe that while India is the office of the world, China is the factory of the world!

How one wishes that people like Dr.Manmohan Singh spent a little more time thinking about how to make India an efficient producer of high value added goods like China has become, rather than on meeting every businessman who wants to set up shop in India. And when was the last time that Dr. Manmohan Singh met representatives of Indian farmers or small retailers or small-scale industry or handloom weavers or construction workers or anybody apart from the representatives of big business like the CII or FICCI?

Now to many of our opinion leaders having the Wal-Mart marquee adorn our urban landscape might be very important. It might even make them feel more at home here? Others might argue that it is the way of the future, while some others can justifiably argue that it will bring better management practices and new technology to shape up our agri-commodity business. One cannot but be skeptical of the argument that Wal-Mart and the likes will give India a cold chain from farm to home, a modern and efficient transportation system that will haul the cauliflower from Betul in Central India to the dinner tables in the big cities.

Assuming that all this happens, and then what will we do about the tens of millions who will become redundant? But if having a handful Wal-Mart's or Tesco's is just another totem of globalization that we must install, like the golden arches of MacDonald's, lets have them. But lets also make sure that they just don't become a conduit for foreign goods. This is important for a company like Wal-Mart will facilitate the entry of foreign goods by eliminating the multiple tiers of the traditional distribution channels in India. This can be easily achieved by insisting that they be foreign exchange neutral, say, for the first ten years.

The Commerce Minister ought to know that we still post a huge trade deficit each year. The only reason we have a reasonable good current account situation is because of "invisibles", which is what we call the remittances sent home by the millions who have been forced overseas by the paucity of jobs in India. The term "Invisibles" is full of irony as it is most appropriate for the remittances of invisible people of India who made it good abroad. But what about the invisible people who are still stranded here?

FDI in Retailing: More Bad than Good By Mohan Guruswamy.

The retail industry in India is of late often being hailed as one of the sunrise sectors in the economy. AT Kearney, the well-known international management consultancy, recently identified India as the 'second most attractive retail destination' from among thirty emergent markets. It has made India the cause of a good deal of excitement and the cynosure of many foreign eyes. With a contribution of 14% to the national GDP and employing 7% of the total workforce or 42 million (only agriculture employs more) in the country, the retail industry is definitely one of the pillars of the Indian economy. Not only is it the largest component of the services sector it is also double the size of the next largest broad economic activity in the services sector.

The retail industry is divided into organized and unorganized sectors. Organized retailing refers to businesses employing more than ten persons and includes the corporate-backed hypermarkets and retail chains. The organized sector accounts for just 2% of the trade and employs just 5 lakh persons. Unorganized retailing refers to the traditional formats of low-cost retailing such as the local kirana shops, owner manned general stores, paan/beedi shops, convenience stores, handcart and pavement vendors, etc and employs over 4 crore persons. Obviously India's retail sector is highly fragmented, with about 11 million outlets operating in the country and only 4% of them being larger than 500 square feet in size. Its greatest contribution is that it is labour intensive. Compare this with an employment of just 0.9 million in the US, yet doing a business more than 13 times of the Indian retail market size.

Estimates vary widely about the true size of the retail business in India. AT Kearney estimated it to be Rs. 4,00,000 crores and poised to double in 2005. On the other hand, if one used the Government's figures the retail trade in 2002-03 amounted to Rs. 3,82,000 crores. One thing all consultants are agreed upon is that the total size of the corporate owned retail business was Rs. 15,000 crores in 1999 and poised to grow to Rs.35, 000 crores by 2005 and keep growing at a rate of 40% per annum.

A simple glance at the employment numbers is enough to paint a good picture of the relative sizes of these two forms of trade in India - organized trade employs roughly 5 lakh people, whereas the unorganized retail trade employs nearly 3.95 crores! According to a GoI study the number of workers in retail trade in 1998 was almost 175 lakhs. Given the recent numbers indicated by other studies, this is only indicative of the magnitude of expansion the retail trade is experiencing, both due to economic expansion as well as the 'jobless growth' that we have seen in the past decade. That about 4% of India's population is in the retail trade says a lot about how vital this business is to the socio-economic equilibrium in India.

Food sales estimated to be 60% of all retail is a very large segment of the total economic activity of our country and due to its vast employment potential, it deserves very special focused attention. Efficiency enhancements and increase in the food retail sales activity would have a cascading effect on employment and economic activity in the rural areas for the marginalized workers. Thus even without FDI driving it, the corporate owned sector is expanding at a furious rate. The question then that arises is that since there is obviously no dearth of indigenous capital, what is the need for FDI? It is not that retailing in India is in the need of any technology special to foreign chains.

But a report prepared by McKinsey & Company and the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) predicted that global retail giants such as Tesco, Kingfisher, Carrefour and Ahold were waiting in the wings to enter the retail arena. This report also states that the Indian retail market holds the potential of becoming a $300 billion per year market by 2010, provided the sector is opened up significantly. It does not talk about creating additional jobs however, which should be the prime concern of the policy maker.

One of the principal reasons behind the explosion of retail and its fragmented nature in the country is the fact that retailing is probably the primary form of disguised unemployment/underemployment in the country. Given the already over-crowded agriculture sector, and the stagnating manufacturing sector, and the hard nature and relatively low wages of jobs in both, many million Indians are virtually forced into the services sector. Here, given the lack of opportunities, it is almost a natural decision for an individual to set up a small shop or store, depending on his or her means and capital. And thus, a retailer is born, seemingly out of circumstance rather than choice. This phenomenon quite aptly explains the millions of kirana shops and small stores. The explosion of retail outlets in the more busy streets of Indian villages and towns is a visible testimony of this. The presence of more than one retailer for every hundred persons is indicative of the lack of economic opportunities that is forcing people into this form of self-employment, even though much of it is marginal. Because of this fragmentation, the Indian retail sector typically suffers from limited access to capital, labour and real estate options.

As on January 1st of this year, there were 413.88 lakhs job seekers registered at the Employment Exchange. They register at the exchange, to enjoy the benefits and security that a job in the organized sector provides - lifetime employment, pension, and union membership etc. But over the period 1992-93 to 2001-02, only a total of 30,000 jobs have been added in the organized sector in the whole country.

Since jobs are so hard to come by retailing with low capital and infrastructure needs is by far the easiest business to enter, and as such performs a vital function in the economy as an alternative social security net for the unemployed. India, being a free and democratic country, provides its people with this cushion of being able to make a living for oneself through self-employment, as opposed to say China, where the society is highly regulated. In this light, one could brand this sector as one of "forced employment", where the retailer is pushed into it purely because of the paucity of opportunities in other sectors.

Last year the largest retailer in the world 'Wal-Mart' has a turnover of $ 256 bn. and is growing annually at an average of 12-13%. Its net profit was $9 bn. It had 4806 stores employing 1.4 mn persons. Of these 1355 were outside the USA. The average size of a Wal-mart is 85,000 sq.ft and the average turnover of a store was about $ 51 mn. The turnover per employee averaged $ 175,000. In 2004 Wal-Mart had a 9% return on assets and 21% return on equity. By contrast the average Indian retailer's turnover is just Rs. 186,000 and fewer than 4% have shops larger than 500 sq.ft.

Let alone the average Indian retailer in the unorganized sector, no Indian retailer in the organized sector will be able to meet the onslaught from a firm such as Wal-Mart - when it comes. With its incredibly deep pockets Wal-Mart will be able to sustain losses for many years till its immediate competition is wiped out. This is a normal predatory strategy used by large players to drive out small and dispersed competition. This entails job losses by the millions.

India has 35 towns each with a population over 1 million. If Wal-Mart were to open an average Wal-Mart store in each of these cities and they reached the average Wal-Mart performance per store - we are looking at a turnover of over Rs. 80,330 mn with only 935 employees. Extrapolating this with the average trend in India, it would mean displacing about 4,32,000 persons. If large FDI driven retailers were to take 20% of the retail trade, as the now somewhat hard-pressed Hindustan Lever Limited anxiously anticipates, this would mean a turnover of Rs.800 billion on today's basis. This would mean an employment of just 43,540 persons displacing nearly eight million persons employed in the unorganized retail sector.

With possible implications of this magnitude, a great deal of prudence should go into policymaking. Rather we seem to moving towards a policy steamrolled obviously by vested interests acting in concert with the CII & FICCI. In this context we must be concerned about the statement the Finance Minister, Mr. P. Chidambaram, made while making the mid year review for 2004-05. On retail, the review noted that creating an effective supply chain from the producer to the consumer is critical for development of many sectors, particularly processed and semi-processed agro-products. In this context, it says, the role that could be played by organized retail chains, including international ones merits careful attention. Indeed a hard look is called for, but not just through Mr. Chidambaram's eyes.

FDI in Retail: A Question of Jobs, Not Ownership By Kamal Sharma and Jeevan Prakash Mohanty.

AFTER farming, retailing is India's major occupation. It employs 40 million people. A sizeable majority of owner/employees are in the business because of lack of other opportunities. The decade of liberalisation has so far been one of jobless growth. It is no wonder that retail has become the refuge of these millions. Lopsided economic development is transforming India from an agrarian economy directly to a service oriented post-industrial society.

In the Indian perspective, any policy that creates jobs is good policy. Any industry, Indian- or foreign-owned, that generates employment is welcome. The question over foreign direct investment (FDI) in retail is not as much about ownership as about jobs.

The Indian retail industry is highly fragmented. According to AC Nielsen and KSA Technopak, India has the highest shop density in the world. In 2001, it was estimated that there were 11 outlets for every 1000 people. Since the agriculture sector is over-crowded and the manufacturing sector stagnant, millions of young Indians are virtually forced into the service sector. The presence of more than one retailer for every hundred persons is indicative of how many people are being forced into this form of self-employment, despite limitations of capital and space.

Trade/retailing is the single largest component of the services sector in terms of contribution to the gross domestic product. It accounts for 14 per cent of the service sector, i.e., twice that of the next largest economic activity in the sector — banking and insurance. The total number of retail outlets (both food and non-food) was 8.5 million in 1996 and 12 million in 2003, a 41 per cent rise.

The CSO's employment numbers give a comprehensive picture of the importance of this form of livelihood in India. Organised retail trade employs roughly 0.5 million people and unorganised 39.5 million. The fact that about 4 per cent of the population is employed in the unorganised retail trade speaks volumes about how vital this business is to the socio-economic equilibrium in India.

In 2004, Wal-Mart had a turnover of $256 billion and it recorded a net profit of $9 billion. Its 4,806 stores employs 1.4 million persons. The average size of a Wal-Mart outlet is 85,000 square feet and the average turnover about $53 million. The turnover per employee is $1,82,000.

By contrast, the Indian retailer had a turnover of Rs 1,86,075 ($4,100 approximately) and only 4 per cent of the 12 million retail outlets occupied space larger than 500 square feet. The total turnover of the unorganised retail sector, which employs 39.5 million persons, was Rs 735,000 crore. India has 35 towns each with a population of over one million. If Wal-Mart were to open, on an average, one store in each of these 35 cities and if each achieved the average Wal-Mart performance per store, the turnover would amount to over Rs 8,033 crore and number of employees to only 10,195.

Extrapolated to the rest of the country, it would mean displacing around 4,32,000 persons. In other words, every new Wal-Mart employee will render 40 retailers surplus. If FDI retailers with deep pockets were to take over 20 per cent of the retail trade, this would mean a turnover of Rs 1,47,000 crore. This represents an employment of about 43,000 persons, displacing nearly eight million persons in the unorganised retail sector.

The most important argument against modern retailing and supply chain integration is that it displaces labour in a labour-surplus society. Till such time that we are in a position to create jobs on a large scale in manufacturing and construction, it would make eminent sense to keep on hold any policy that results in the elimination of jobs in the unorganised retail sector.

The primary task of the government is still providing livelihoods and not create so-called efficiencies of scale by creating redundancies. If we assume 40 million adults in the retail sector, it would translate into around 160 million dependents. Opening the retailing to FDI means dislocating millions from their occupation and pushing vast number of families under the poverty line. The Western concept of efficiency is maximising output while minimising the number of workers involved. This will only increase social tensions in a developing country like India, where tens of millions are still seeking gainful employment. Companies such as Wal-Mart boast about how they give the consumer better value. Not surprisingly, Wal-Mart procured $20 billion worth of goods from China and just $1 billion worth of goods from India. This is simply because China is a better producer of manufactured goods and not because Wal-Mart has stores there.

Consider a chain such as Wal-Mart with a single point of procurement entering India. Since it already procures huge quantities from China, this make for a massive entry point of China's largely state-owned consumer goods industry into the insatiable market made up of the new consuming elite.

It is true that it is in the consumers' best interest to obtain quality goods and services at the lowest possible price. However, this vocal assertion by the chattering class cannot override the responsibility of any government to provide economic security for its vulnerable population. Countries such as China, Malaysia and Thailand, which have opened their retail sector to FDI in the recent past, have been forced to enact new laws to check the horrific expansion of the new foreign malls and hypermarkets.

In a recent Oxfam study, a decade ago coffee producers earned $10 billion from a global market worth $30 billion. Now they receive less than $6 billion in a global market over $60 billion. Large numbers of producers now interact with monopolistic marketing structures and these chains transfer a large and growing proportion of added value away from producers to companies in industrialised countries.

Neither scale nor efficiency has raised the incomes of the coffee producers. The lessons are clear, bulk procurement plays havoc with producer's margins. Enabling legislation and positive regulation is required to expand our industrial sector whose contribution to employment generation and GDP is much lower than that of the services sector.

The percentage contribution of industry to GDP growth in 1992-96 and in 1997-03 was 30.9 per cent and 23.7 per cent respectively, while for China over roughly the same period it was 62.2 per cent and 58.5 per cent.

We need to address issues at home before we inviting problems from abroad. Vocal proponents of FDI need to ponder a bit more about India's true circumstances.

Listen to the Decentralised Voice By Somnath Mukherji

There are certainly reasons for celebrating the 59 years of India’s existence as a sovereign republic. During the period, the state has become for-development, for-growth, for-industrialisation the only attribute it needs to acquire is for-people, specifically the poor.

Getting a passport has become easier, getting in and out of the airports smoother, driving on the highways faster, setting up industries in special enclaves with tax-holidays easier only the existence of the small farmers seems to be getting harder.State repression in India is happening with such frequency that a new incident emerges before the anniversary of the previous one can be mourned. A pro-development State which is turning increasingly anti-people seems to have become an end in itself.In a period marked by the aggressive advent of neo-liberal marketisation, when economism has become the organising principle of society rather than a more diverse and complex core of human good, the states of the developing world have become foot-soldiers in clearing the way for the advent of the global capital and the accompanying homogenising forces.

In this post-modern role, somewhat reminiscent of the heads of princely states in pre-colonial India, the states at once appear invincible to the masses and vulnerable to the whims of the global capital.

In West Bengal’s recent experience in Singur and Nandigram, the State has vociferously guarded the interest of the Tatas and the Salim Group, while coming down heavily on the people. Sustainability is not built into the logic of the market. In fact, it is antithetical to it, for, sustainability and constant growth of wealth are irreconcilable. Hence, no weight is assigned by the market to the sustainable component of non-corporatised agriculture, let alone the socio-cultural moorings of the people to it. In its commodified state, land begets the highest return on investment from real-estate and development of industries. As the usher of the global market, the State incentivises (read subsidises) powerful corporate interests and sympathises with its compulsions.

Special Economic Zones (SEZs) are enclaves where the obligations of corporations as entities operating in a democratic set-up are diluted: tax holidays, breaks from labour laws, and subsidies on basic utilities such as water and electricity that the rest of the country craves for. How such iniquitous structures can bring about social and distributive justice remains an enigma.

Violence is a necessary component of the development paradigm that we seem to have embarked upon. Incongruous local fabrics have to be ripped up and reset, to be re-stitched into the grid of the global, homogenised mesh where controls are passed to far off centres.

Since the State monopolises on violence, it becomes the most suitable actor to uproot the existing structures. While the violence in Singur was unleashed directly by the police, Nandigram experienced the brunt from the strong bulwark of the State-party nexus. It is this collusion that bolsters the spirits of party leaders such as Benoy Konar to declare brazenly to resort to violence in “self-defence”. The police have always encountered the countryside in general and the marginalised in particular, as a breach of law rather than a citizenry to be protected.

From Nitahari and Muktsar, to Kherlanji and Nandigram, the apathy of the police verges on complicity. The rapidity of the Rapid Action Force (RAF) comes into question in light of the fact that it took them six lives before arriving on site at Nandigram. This is in sharp contrast to the alacrity with which the police arrested Medha Patkar on the morning of 10 January. Can one visualise the police coming to the aid of lungi-clad men in pockmarked vests and bare feet women with veils covering the vermillon in their hair?

By its action in Singur and its inaction in Nandigram the police have articulated its role as an enforcer of the State’s will and not the protector of the masses and the law. All available political space in Bengal has been taken up by the electoral interests in general and the Left Front in particular. In the cacophony of the disorganised Opposition and the well-rehearsed voice of the CPI-M, the diverse and ardent voices of the people and their movements are drowned.

Whether it is against the hanging of Saddam Hussein or the opposition to the land grab in Singur or the eviction of squatters in Dhakuria, opinions are monopolised by the parties and to the rest of the urban elite, it assumes a nuisance value of traffic snarls and lost revenue due to rallies and strikes. Tuning our perceptions to the party voices had deafened us to the voices from the grassroots.

Mapping peoples’ movements and resistance in a framework of party politics amounts to the cooptation and hijacking of their voices. The thunder of an organic people’s resistance like Singur was stolen by Mamata Banerjee’s fasting in Kolkata, while the fasting of several women in Singur went unnoticed. Though there might be tacit support from political parties, organic peoples’ movements will not exhibit any congenital adherence to the political ideologies of the Left-Right spectrum. Singur and Nandigram demonstrate a clear break of social movements from Left politics. In Nandigram, as in Singur, the State has repeatedly pointed fingers at the involvement of the “outsiders” in the form of extreme-Left and extreme-Right elements in fomenting trouble, with the aim of delegitimising and discrediting a genuine people’s resistance.

Even if there were some truth to the allegations, these rural communities are not centres of passivity bereft of inherent intelligence, waiting to be instigated and mobilised by external forces. The pre-dominance of women in both the resistance in Singur and Nandigram are indicators of the grounded and local nature of the movements. It is worth noting that, while the farmers’ voices opposing the land grab were expressed in the localities of Singur, their purported demand for rapid industrialisation was heard only at a rally in Brigade Parade Ground in Kolkata.

It is relatively easy to decipher the decentralised local voice of the people from that articulated by the party ~ only if we listened.The resistance in Singur and Nandigram are genuine articulation of the people’s voices ~ an expression of the extraordinary resilience of ordinary people; a rejection of the sub-ordinary solutions by the “extraordinary”elite in power; a subaltern vocalisation that refuses to be captured in the framework of Left-Right politics of power and hence does not register in the minds fed by the media. Such voices are not only legitimate but have historically tempered the totalitarian tendencies of the colonial and post-colonial State.

These vocalised aspirations are not anti-development, backward, stagnant or regressive. Instead, they aspire for change and progress that is contextually sensitive to the culture, society and ecology ~ a development which is not captured by the market calculus of the metropolitan elite. Built into the logic of these developmental aspirations are sustainability, eco-sensitivity, non-violence and a strong desire to maintain diversity, drawn from the bedrock of civilisational values, without the need for centralised institutions and heavy capital and technological inputs. These voices could thrive ~ if only we created space for them. Societies running on the guide-rails of free market and technology can barely be expected to come up with holistic, equitable and non-violent solutions, for, empirical reality spans a much wider spectrum.

Technological solutions for global warming coming out of industrialised nations are merely shifting costs from one sphere to the other ~ from air to land (carbon sequestration), from the “North” to “South” (off-shoring polluting industries), from the visible to invisible (burying toxic waste). Even the effects of these shifts are nullified by the economy of scales. A holistic view of the empirical reality is obscured by an overly specialised knowledge system and a homogenised mental landscape.

Perhaps, the secret to more humanistic models of development would emanate from making space for the articulation of these grassroots aspirations by holding the centralising and homogenising tendencies of the present development paradigm at bay.

Amongst other things, rural and non-consumerist societies maintain an organic link to their past which can at times prove to be a treasure trove for time-tested and evolved ideas. There is no dearth of these voices in India, unfortunately, they get trapped in constant reverberations in the chasms of the rural-urban and the have-have not divides. We could still hear them ~ if only we listened.

. The author is an electrical engineer based in Boston.

Neoliberalism And Primitive Accumulation In India By Pratyush Chandra & Dipankar Basu.

Recent events in Singur - a town which is less than 40 kms away from Kolkata (Calcutta), where the West Bengal government is struggling to acquire and sell 1000 acres of agricultural land to Tata Motors - indicate the extent to which capitalist-parliamentarianism can regiment a counter-hegemonic force once it agrees to play by the rules. At the least, it clearly shows that the Communist government, which boasts of being the longest-running democratically elected Marxist government in the world, is hopelessly caught in the neoliberal project. And Singur is not an isolated event. In the state of West Bengal alone, the process of state-led land grab and the resultant opposition is already gaining momentum in at least three different locations: (a) in Kharagpur, West Medinipur district, where vast tracts of multi-crop farmland is being taken over for yet another Tata vehicle factory; (b) in Nandigram, East Medinipur district, where a chemical industries hub is proposed to be set up by the Salim group on a 10,000-acre area; and (c) in North Bengal where a Videocon Special Economic Zone (SEZ) is proposed to come up in the near future.

Nor is this story limited to West Bengal. Throughout India, resources are being acquired for Special Economic Zones and numerous other industrial schemes meant to facilitate corporate capital expansion. Since laws permitting this acquisitions were passed an year ago, state governments have notified 267 SEZs, which will require more than a half million hectares of land. Of this, the state has already acquired 137,000 hectares for 67 SEZs while another 80 have `in principle’ been approved.(1) The Government has converted the erstwhile Export Processing Zones located at Kandla and Surat (Gujarat), Cochin (Kerala), Santa Cruz (Mumbai-Maharashtra), Falta (West Bengal), Madras (Tamil Nadu), Visakhapatnam (Andhra Pradesh) and Noida (Uttar Pradesh) into SEZs. In addition, 3 new Special Economic Zones that had been approved for establishment at Indore (Madhya Pradesh), Manikanchan (Salt Lake, Kolkata) and Jaipur have since commenced operations.

In this backdrop, the West Bengal government’s adamant attitude towards land acquisition, despite the popular unrest, shows that the Indian State and its agencies, irrespective of their ideological masks, are working relentlessly to provide the private sector with “an internationally competitive and hassle free environment”. In this note, we wish to conceptualise this political economic process, identifying its different facets and understanding their interlinkages. It is our contention that using the recently re-interpreted Marxist concept of “primitive accumulation” can provide crucial insights in this regard. We wish to demonstrate that current developments in India can be fruitfully understood by employing the notion of primitive accumulation, understood as a constitutive primitive of capitalism, the process which continuously creates and consolidates the capital-relation. Adopting this new perspective might also help in redefining the agenda of struggles and counter-hegemonic politics in the neoliberal context.

Primitive Accumulation: Two Interpretations

As is well known, Marx had brought up the concept of primitive accumulation to try to understand the historical origins of capitalism. It is generally accepted by economic historians that in pre-capitalist modes of production the primary producers (majority of whom were peasants) had ownership of the means of production, most crucial among them being land. If we agree that capitalism is distinguished from these other modes of production by the relationship of a class of propertyless labourers (who have nothing to sell but their labour power) and a class of propertied capitalists (the owners of the means of production) mediated through the market (2), then the following question naturally arises: how did we arrive at the class of propertyless labourers from a class of producers who had the ownership (or at least the right of usage) of the means of production? It is this historical question that Marx sought to answer with the concept of “primitive accumulation”.

In a sense, the answer is already contained in the question. Primitive accumulation is the process by which the producer is divorced from her/his means of production. Since, moreover, land is the primary means of production in pre-capitalist societies, the main focus of primitive accumulation was to separate peasants from the land. While the gradual penetration of market relations had a role to play in this, outright use of force was far more important, and in a sense the key. Only by evicting peasants from their lands and disrupting their livelihood could the development of markets in free labour and land be ensured; and only this could provide the firm basis for the emergence and consolidation of the capital-relation:

“The capital-relation presupposes a complete separation between the workers and the ownership of the conditions for the realization of their labor. As soon as capitalist production stands on its own feet, it not only maintains this separation, but reproduces it on a constantly extending scale. The process, therefore, which creates the capital-relation, can be nothing other than the process which divorces the worker from the ownership of the conditions of his own labor; it is a process which operates two transformations, whereby the social means of subsistence and production are turned into capital, and the immediate producers are turned into wage-laborers. So-called primitive accumulation, therefore, is nothing else than the historical process of divorcing the producer from the means of production. It appears as ‘primitive’ because it forms the pre-history of capital, and of the mode of production corresponding to capital.”(3)

It is worth recalling that Marx studied the “enclosure movement” in Britain within this overall perspective. One crucial aspect of primitive accumulation should be noted immediately: it effects a redistribution and transfer of claims to already existing assets and resources, rather than creating any new assets. In this sense, it is an accumulation of intangible rights and not the accumulation of tangible assets or goods. This aspect of primitive accumulation is important for our purposes because the current frenzy of state-assisted acquisition of land and other resources in India is precisely a process whereby rights of access and usage of already existing resources are being redistributed and transferred.

The last decade has witnessed a resurgence of debate around attempts to re-interpret the concept of primitive accumulation.(4) This debate has indicated that there are two distinct but related interpretations of primitive accumulation, one which stresses the temporal aspect and the other which stresses the constitutive or originary aspect. For the first, more traditional, interpretation the primitiveness of primitive accumulation is understood in a purely temporal sense. Primitive accumulation is seen as the historical phase which created the preconditions for the development of capitalism by forcing the separation of workers and means of production. The second interpretation notes that there is both a temporal and a continuity argument in Marx’s account of primitive accumulation. For this interpretation, therefore, the primitiveness of “primitive accumulation” does not arise simply from its location in historical time, relevant only as the initial stage of capitalism; rather, it is the constitutive primitive of the capitalist system, a process that is essential for perpetuating its fundamental class structure - the separation between producers and means of production.

If primitive accumulation is constitutive, then it must arise as a continuous process within capitalism viewed as a global system. Expanded reproduction of the system requires reproduction of the capital-relation at every moment; separation of workers and means of production must be maintained continuously. In its day-to-day functioning, a mature capitalist economy enforces this separation through the market, i.e., by economic means; but at the boundaries (both internal and external), where capitalism encounters other modes of production, property and social relations attuned to those modes and also to the earlier stages of capitalism, other ways of subsistence, primitive accumulation comes into play. More often than not, direct use of force is necessary to effect the separation at the boundaries. And since capitalism, as a global system, continuously encounters other modes of production along with the simultaneity of diverse stages of capitalism in various localities, the constitutive role of primitive accumulation is always in demand. One can probably go so far as to assert that capital accumulation is the extension of primitive accumulation, enforced through the market. In fact, in Volume 3 of Capital, Marx himself calls the concentration and centralisation of capital, which occur during the course of market-induced capital accumulation, as “simply the divorce of the conditions of labour from the producers [which occurs through primitive accumulation] raised to a higher power”(5).

But this does not mean that the two are identical. In fact two differences are especially important to grasp for the development of our overall argument:

(a) “[W]hile accumulation relies primarily on “the silent compulsion of economic relations [which] sets the seal on the domination of the capitalist over the worker,” in the case of primitive accumulation the separation is imposed primarily through “[d]irect extra-economic force” (Marx 1867: 899-900), such as the state (Marx 1867: 900), particular sections of social classes (Marx 1867: 879), etc. We can say therefore that primitive accumulation for Marx is a social process instigated by some social actor (the state, particular social classes, etc.) aimed at the people who have some form of direct access to the means of production. This social process often takes the form of a strategy that aims to separate them from the means of production.”(6)

(b) “As opposed to accumulation proper, what may be called primitive accumulation… is the historical basis, instead of the historical result, of specifically capitalist production’ (Marx 1867: 775). While sharing the same principle - separation - the two concepts point at two different conditions of existence. The latter implies the ex novo production of the separation, while the former implies the reproduction - on a greater scale - of the same separation.”(7)

Keeping these differences are important because one comes to the rescue of the other when market processes falter. Since capital accumulation operates through the market, the services of primitive accumulation are required almost by definition when the market is in crisis. During crucial phases of capitalist crisis, primitive accumulation emerges to help transcend barriers to accumulation in two ways: (a) by facilitating the transition from the critically fated regime to a new regime of accumulation, and (b) by continuously negotiating the spatial expansion (both internal and external) of capitalism. During periods of transition and expansion, “new enclosures” are required for putting the normal course of capitalist reproduction back on track. Securing these enclosures through force and other “direct extra-economic means” is the function of primitive accumulation. This re-definition allows us to grasp the function of the State and its continuous politico-legal activism in every stage of capitalism.

The present neoliberal phase can probably be understood fruitfully from this perspective. Despite the talk of separating the political from the economic, which is a staple rhetoric of the current phase, it is the state as the instrument of politico-legal repression that facilitates neoliberal expansion. Firstly, the state intervenes with all its might to secure control over resources - both natural and human (”new enclosures”) - and secondly, to ensure the non-transgression of the political into the economic, which essentially signifies discounting the politics of labour and the dispossessed from affecting the political economy. David Harvey notes that, “The main substantive achievement of neoliberalization… has been to redistribute, rather than to generate, wealth and income”; the main mechanisms for achieving this is referred to by Harvey as “accumulation by dispossession”, by which he means,

“… the continuation and proliferation of accumulation practices which Marx had treated of as ‘primitive’ or ‘original’ during the rise of capitalism. These include the commodification and privatisation of land and the forceful expulsion of peasant populations…; conversion of various forms of property rights (common, collective, state, etc.) into exclusive private property rights…; suppression of rights to the commons; commodification of labour power and the suppression of alternative (indigenous) forms of production and consumption; colonial, neo-colonial, and imperial processes of appropriation of assets (including natural resources); monetization of exchange and taxation, particularly of land; the slave trade (which continues particularly in the sex industry); and usury, the national debt and, most devastating of all, the use of the credit system as a radical means of accumulation by dispossession. The state, with its monopoly of violence and definitions of legality, plays a crucial role in both backing and promoting these processes.”(8)

Harvey identifies four main features of “accumulation by dispossession”: privatisation, commodification, financialization and the management-manipulation of assets, each feeding on the other, supported by the other and gaining strength from the other. The neoliberal resurgence since the mid-1970s can be understood as capital’s counter-revolutionary response to the crisis that enwrapped “embedded liberalism” internationally in the late-1960s, with “signs of a serious crisis of capital accumulation…everywhere apparent. Unemployment and inflation were both surging everywhere, ushering in a global phase of ’stagflation’ that lasted throughout much of the 1970s.”(9)

The Politics of Primitive Accumulation in India

What is going on in India today can be understood by employing the concept of primitive accumulation (as understood in the second interpretation) in almost all of the above senses: separating primary producers from land; privatisation of the “public”, conversion of common property resources into marketable commodities, destroying non-market ways of living, etc. To our mind, each of the instances of “displacement” or state-led “land grab” are willy-nilly feeding into the overall process of primitive accumulation in India by divorcing primary producers from the land or restricting direct access to other common property resources like forest, lakes, river, etc. A question crops up immediately. Being a labour-surplus economy, does India need to generate additional labourers, which is an obvious result of primitive accumulation, before absorbing what is already available? Certainly not, if we think from the perspective of labour. But the answer changes if we see the whole process from the perspective of capital. Fresh entrants into the already burgeoning ranks of the proletariat will increase the relative surplus population - floating, latent and stagnant - depressing real wages and thereby increasing the rates of profits on each unit of invested capital. Moreover, one of the major features of the neoliberal regime of accumulation has been the incessant `informalisation’ of the labour process, and further growth of the relative surplus population makes late-capitalist countries like India finely attuned to this. As Jan Breman notes:

“Mobilization of casual labour, hired and fired according to the needs of the moment, and transported for the duration of the job to destinations far distant from the home village, is characteristic of the capitalist regime presently dominating in South Asia.”(10)

Separation of producers from their means of production and subsistence, especially land and other natural resources, also creates markets for these resources; and thus comes into being the various agencies that thrive through hucksterage in these markets. These intermediaries play the crucial role of facilitating and normalising the process of primitive accumulation. Examples abound: Trinamool Congress goons, grassroots-level CPI(M) leadership, local middle classes like school teachers, lawyers, and other similar forces in the Singur case; state-traders, local elites-supported Salwa Judum in Chhatisgarh.

The major target of land acquisition in India today is in areas where either peasant movements have achieved some partial success in dealing with capitalist exploitation and expropriation or areas largely inhabited by the indigenous population whose expropriation could not be increasingly intensified because of the welfarist tenor of the pre-liberalisation regime. West Bengal is the prime example of the former, where Left Front rule congealed due to its constituents’ involvement in the popular movements. Now, the movements’ institutionalisation and incorporation of the leadership into the state apparatus is facilitating the present-day resurgence of primitive accumulation. Examples of the second kind of area could be parts of Chhatisgrah, Orissa, Andhra Pradesh or Madhya Pradesh, which the corporate sector is eyeing for mining activities and for setting up steel plants.

As an instructive example, if nothing else, let us see how displacement in Singur will affect the various class forces on the ground. While the state apparatuses are trying to secure resources for corporate capital, sections of the local elite, including the well-off farmers led by the mainstream non-left political parties - like the Congress and Trinamool (TMC) - have joined the movement against land acquisition essentially to obtain various kinds of concessions, a higher price for giving up the land to the State and perhaps also for increasing the land price for their future real estate speculation around the upcoming industrial belt. For example, “a TMC leader and ex-pradhan of one of the gram panchayats was initially with the movement, but finally gave away his land. Many of the landed gentry, some of them absentee, who own bigger portions of land, depend on ‘kishans’ (i e, hired labours, bargadars, etc) for cultivation of their lands. They principally depend on business or service and have come forward to part with their land in lieu of cash.”(11) In case the government talks to the protesters and gives larger concessions, it is these sections that will benefit the most.

The people who are really the backbone of the movement in Singur are the landless working class and poor peasantry. According to a recent report, “many agricultural workers and marginal peasants will lose their land and livelihoods. Though the State Government has decided to compensate the landowners, no policy has been taken for the landless agricultural workers, unrecorded bargadars and other rural households who are indirectly dependent for their livelihood on land and agricultural activities.”(12) The region is also inhabited by the poor who “frequent the nearby town, being employed in factories, shops and small businesses. Some of the youth have migrated to cities like Mumbai, Delhi and Bangalore, working there principally as goldsmiths or construction workers. There were several cases of reverse migration when people came back to their village after the closing down of the industries where they were working or finding it more profitable to work on the land than to work in petty industries or businesses, drawing a paltry sum in lieu of hard labour.”(13) For this population as also for the landless workers and marginal peasants, the Singur struggles are existential ones.

As an example of the second kind of land acquisition, we can turn our attention to Chhatisgarh. A report on recent developments in Chhatisgarh notes that, in India,

“tribal lands are the most sought after resources now. Whether it is in Orissa or Chhattisgarh or Andhra Pradesh, if there is a patch of tribal land there is an attempt to acquire it. It is no geographical coincidence that tribal lands are forested, rich with mineral resources (80 per cent of India’s minerals and 70 per cent of forests are within tribal areas) and also the site of a sizeable slice of industrial growth. The tribal districts of Chhattisgarh, Orissa, Jharkhand, Karnataka and Maharashtra are the destination of us $85 billion of promised investments, mostly in steel and iron plants, and mining projects. Ironically, these lucrative resources are of no benefit to the local people: an estimate of 10 Naxal-affected states shows that they contribute 51.6 per cent of India’s GDP and have 58 per cent of the population. As with Chhatisgarh, all these states have a strong Naxal presence and are witness to movements against land acquisition. The state governments say these protests are Naxal-inspired. Local people say, however, that all they are trying to do is protect their land, forests and livelihood.”(14)

Here the State’s mode of facilitating primitive accumulation is by raising mercenaries, the Salwa Judum. This extra-legal use of force is supported by the traditional exploiters of the indigenous population - traders, usurers, civil servants and tribal neo-elites, who have functioned as intermediaries in the regime of commerce-based surplus extraction. On the one hand, absence of any recognised land rights of tribal communities, has allowed the State to use principles of terra nullius and eminent domain to expropriate them. On the other, these communities have continued to exist in defiance of all these legalities. However, with the recent intensification of efforts to secure resources for corporate profiteering, along with the continued presence of primitive extractive modes of exploitation, these communities have been left with no real choices but to arm themselves for securing their unrecognised rights. Hence,

“Most tribal people living in forests are officially ‘encroachers’. They live under the constant threat of being alienated from their land and livelihood. While the government completely failed to reach out to them, the Naxals succeeded in connecting to sections of the people. They spread to the state’s 11 districts (200 districts in the country). Unable to contain them, government supported the creation of a civilian militia - Salwa Judum”.(15)

Besides these widely discussed cases of recent land acquisition and displacement, there have been numerous conflicts around the rights over water resources over the years. In almost all such cases, the state has come forth as being hell bent upon the construction of big dams and other hydroelectric projects despite all evidence of the net negative marginal costs of these projects. During the past two decades, Narmada Bachao Andolan has been a prominent force constantly exposing the anti-people, anti-environment character of these projects. Even in the Himalayan region of Uttaranchal (site of the legendary Chipko Andolan), riverbeds and surrounding lands have been ‘enclosed’ for private capital to be used for power generation and lucrative tourism projects. In fact, recent politics in this region cannot be fully understood without understanding the conflicts around these enclosures. Closer to urban India has been the neoliberal systematisation of commercial and financial centres, the `clearing’ of slums, in cities like Delhi and Mumbai, which have naturally been the hotbed of the politics of and against “new enclosures”.

Understanding all these diverse processes in the framework of primitive accumulation has several strategic implications. Perhaps, most urgently, this can provide a unified framework to locate the numerous struggles going on in the country right from the `new’ social movements, like landless workers movements, Narmada Bachao Andolan and other local mobilisations of ‘development-victims’, to anti-privatisation movements of public sector workers, all the way to the revolutionary movements led by the Maoists. This unified framework can then possibly facilitate dialogue among these movements, something that is more than essential at this juncture if the movement of labour against capital is to be strengthened.

A Future Beyond Capital

Using this framework will also mean re-evaluating many of the theoretical positions that are currently in use. For example, it will be necessary to rethink the classical communist position that characterises the Indian state as semi-feudal and semi-colonial, and thereby sees the struggle of the peasantry as being directed primarily against feudal oppression. It is possible that the inherent limitations of this ideological framework disallow revolutionaries and other radicals to formulate effective strategies against the whole system, a system that preserves various vestigial forms to facilitate accumulation but is not defined by them. Thus, movements struggling against different forms of these vestiges are easily localised, regionalised, marginalized, dispersed, and even utilised in the intra-ruling class competition and conflicts. The state of the official Indian left is illustrative in this regard. It, too, stresses on the presence of “vestiges” and the insufficiency of development, but then turns around and justifies its accommodation in the neoliberal capitalist project as a fight against these vestiges!

Despite the apparent popularity of the new movements of Latin America among the official Left in India, their attachment to a schematic notion of national capitalist development retains all its strength. The devastating consequence, of course, is the deferral of the revolutionary moment till that development is attained; in reality, this amounts to postponing the revolutionary moment beyond the horizon of all concrete possibilities. Surely, this is not simply an ideological problem coming from a faulty understanding of the dynamics of capitalism or socialism. It is a consequence of the official left leadership’s accommodation in the capitalist-parliamentary framework, an accommodation moreover that forces them to participate in the competitive race for representation. In the pursuit of presenting itself as the legitimate representative of the “plurality of opinions”, which parliamentary politics poses against the notion of class struggle, the left reproduces this plurality within itself, along with its built-in hierarchy. With partial successes in this exercise, representatives of the opinions that count, i.e., the hegemonic class interests, solidify themselves within the party structures. And it is this congealment within the Left Front in West Bengal that leads the “communists” to vocalise neoliberal myths of neutral industrial development, dubbing every protest against its policies as anti-developmental, backward and manipulative. Parallels with the neoliberal demonisation of the transgression of the political into the economic can hardly be missed. Echoing well-heeled mandarins in Delhi, the Left Front government regularly uses the classic threat of capital flight to regiment all protesting voices.

Without comprehending the function of vestiges of earlier modes of production within capitalism or the role of earlier stages of the capitalist mode of production in sustaining capital accumulation, any fundamental challenge to the hegemonic forces in a late capitalist society like India cannot be formulated. It can hardly be denied that, “we suffer not only from the development of capitalist production, but also the incompleteness of that development. Alongside the modern evils, we are oppressed by a whole series of inherited evils, arising from the passive survival of archaic and outmoded modes of production, with their accompanying train of anachronistic social and political relations. We suffer not only from the living, but from the dead. Le mort saisit le vif [The dead man clutches onto the living]!”(16)

We will have to recognise the fact that during the stage of imperialism, and more so in the present postcolonial situation, “a high level of capitalist development no longer require[s] the elimination of the traditional class of ’small producers’” and other pre-capitalist ‘remnants’.(17) Even in a country like Japan, “in which capitalist society developed only at the so-called finance-capitalist stage of world capitalism, a high level of capitalist development has not been incompatible… with the survival of the traditional class of ’small producers’.”(18)

Indian capitalism, like Japanese, came into being in the stage of imperialism, when finance capital and inter-imperialist rivalries were already subjugating the whole world. Moreover, development under direct colonialism foisted some unique features on to the general characteristics of “late capitalism”. During the colonial period, “self”-expansion of Indian capital beyond the physical horizons of India was implausible because this would have required an Indian State committed to these interests. Colonialism ruled this out almost axiomatically. However, there were other channels available. The simultaneous existence of various socio-economic formations at diverse levels of Indian society allowed some possibility of ‘internal’ colonialism and “enclosures”, thus, providing the basis for capitalist expansion. Even after Independence, Indian capital relies heavily on the ‘diversity’ (or unevenness) of Indian economy and society for primitive accumulation and expansion. Additionally, ’semi-feudal’ conditions at various locations within the country provide a vast reserve army of labour. The important characteristic of this insecure and docile population is that they can be pulled out of their original locations and thrown into the growing labour market without disturbing the essential fabric of society. In other words, pre-capitalist forms of exploitation provide vast and near permanent pools of cheap labour, which competes with the urban proletariat, thereby bringing the latter under political and economic control. Moreover, this seems (19) to resolve the “agrarian problem” of Indian capitalism, by ‘externalising’ rural and underdeveloped India from the “core” industrial islands. Concentrating capitalist agricultural development in particular locations of India (for example in West and North-west India), Indian capitalism could afford to under-develop other locations so that they could serve as “external markets” and as reserves of “footloose labour”.

Because unevenness is the essential feature of capitalist development, any mode of regulation, including neoliberal globalisation, has to negotiate with diverse stages of societal development. Hence local reactions against this new wave of capitalist consolidation and accumulation are bound to be diverse. The revolutionary vision consists in coordinating these diverse forces for building a formidable challenge to capitalism. Even the struggles against vestigial forms, if they have to be decisive, need to be recognised as contesting capitalist relations that sustain them and are articulated through them. In the Indian context, they are all struggles against a stuttering capitalism, against the inherent brutalities of primitive accumulation. We will have to realize that the movements are not about “saving” tribals/indigenous populations or their way of lives; the movement is a movement of labour against capital. Tribals, poor peasants, marginal peasants, landless labourers, informal sector workers, all these sub-classes are fighting against the tyranny of capital, against being fed - with their labour and resources - into the capitalist machinery. Obviously, in this fight against capital, we cannot cling on to any nostalgia for a pristine past, rather our vision must be directed towards the future, a future built on the transcendence of capital, a socialist future rooted in a participatory economy and polity. Only then can the vast majority suffering in the margins of capitalism and toiling under vestigial relations, can make a concerted, decisive effort to end the tyranny of capital.

Notes & References :

(1) Prem Shankar Jha, “Compensation not enough”, Daily News & Analysis (October 2, 2006), http://www.dnaindia.com/report.asp?NewsID=1056324&CatID=19
(2) Marx refers to this as the capital-relation.
(3) Karl Marx, Capital Vol. 1, Penguin Books (1976 [1867]), pp. 874-75
(4) See the contributions in The Commoner No 2. (September, 2001), http://www.commoner.org.uk/
(5) Karl Marx, Capital Vol. 3, Penguin Books (1981 [1894]), pp. 354
(6) Massimo De Angelis, “Marx and primitive accumulation: The continuous character of capital’s “enclosures”, The Commoner No 2 (September, 2001)
(7) Ibid. (Note: ex novo is used in the sense of `original’ or `from the scratch’).
(8) David Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism, Oxford (2005), pp. 159
(9) Ibid, pp. 12
(10) Jan Breman, Footloose Labour: Working in India’s Informal Economy, Cambridge University Press (1996), pp. 23
(11) Parthasarthi Banerjee, “Land Acquisition and Peasant Resistance at Singur”, Economic & Political Weekly (November 18, 2006)
(12) Paschim Banga Khet Majoor Samity, “Terror Cannot Suppress Them: People’s Resistance to Forced Land Acquisition In Singur”, (December 6, 2006)
(13) Parthasarthi Banerjee, op cit
(14) “Anti-Naxal operations a cover for exploiting tribal people”, Down to Earth Vol 15 No 11 (October 18, 2006)
(15) Ibid.
(16) Karl Marx, “Preface to the First Edition”, Capital Vol 1, Penguin (1976 [1867]), pp.91
(17) Kozo Uno, Principles of Political Economy, Harvester Press (1980 [1964]), p.xxvii.
(18) Ibid, pp. 125
(19) Japanese Marxist Kozo Uno stressed that capitalism is incapable of solving the agrarian question. “We can say that it became clear on a world scale that the ability to solve the agrarian question would entail the ability to construct a new society to replace capitalism, and we may regard the League of Nations as having been one such attempt. The solution to this problem, of course, means no more than the external expression of the internal contradictions of capitalism, and cannot occur unless the issue of class relations is solved. In this sense, the failure of the League of Nations was only to be expected.” (Quoted in Andrew E Barshay, The Social Sciences in Modern Japan: The Marxian and Modernist Traditions, University of California Press (2004), pp.128)