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June 23, 2005
But It Does Have "Snow" and Water Parks
Vidharbha: No rains and 116F
By P. SAINATH Nagpur Rural (Maharashtra)
E ven when it's 47 degrees Celsius in the rest of the region, it's cool here.
A little away from us is a patch which clocks in at minus 13 degrees.
This is "India's first Snowdome" — in burning Vidharbha.
Keeping its ice rink firm costs Rs. 4,000 a day in electricity charges alone.
Huge water crisis
Welcome to the Fun & Food Village Water & Amusement Park at Bazargaon in Nagpur (Rural) district.
A portrait of Mahatma Gandhi greets visitors in the office of the huge complex.
And you're assured daily disco, ice skating, ice sliding and 'a well stocked bar with cocktails.'
The 40-acre park itself offers 18 kinds of water slides and games.   Also services for events ranging from conferences to kitty parties.
The village of Bazargaon (pop 3,000) itself faces a huge water crisis.   "Having to make many daily trips for water, women walk up to 15 km in a day to fetch it," says sarpanch (village government head) Yamunabai Uikey:
This whole village has just one sarkari (government) well.
Sometimes, we have got water once in four or five days.
Sometimes, once in ten days.
Bazargaon falls in a region declared as scarcity-hit in 2004.
It had never faced that fate before.
The village also had its share of six hour — and worse — power cuts till about May.
These affected every aspect of daily life, including health, and devastated children appearing for exams.   The summer heat, touching 47, made things worse.
All these iron laws of rural life do not apply within Fun & Food Village.   This private oasis has more water than Bazargaon can dream of.   And never a moment's break in power supply.
"We pay on average," says Jasjeet Singh, General Manager of the Park, "about 400,000 rupees [about $9,500] a month in electricity bills."
The Park's monthly power bill alone almost equals the yearly revenue of Yamunabai's village government.
Ironically, the village's power crisis eased slightly because of the Park.
Both share the same sub-station.
The park's peak period begins with May.
And so things have been a little better since then.
The Park's contribution to the village government's revenue is Rs. 50,000 [$1,190] a year.
About half what Fun & Food Village collects at the gate in a day from its 700 daily visitors.
Barely a dozen of the Park's 110 workers are locals from Bazargaon.
Growing number of such water parks for those who can afford them
Water-starved Vidharbha has a growing number of such water parks and amusement centres.
In Shegaon, Buldhana, a religious trust runs a giant "Meditation Centre and Entertainment Park."
Efforts to maintain a 30-acre 'artificial lake' within it ran dry this summer.
But not before untold amounts of water were wasted in the attempt.
Here the entry tickets are called "donations."
In Yavatmal, a private company runs a public lake as a tourist joint.
Amravati has two or more such spots (dry just now).
And there are others in and around Nagpur — which lies in the centre of India.
Ongoing farm crisis
This, in a region where villages have sometimes got water once in 15 days.
And where an ongoing farm crisis has seen the largest numbers of farmers' suicides in the state of Maharashtra.
"No major project for either drinking water or irrigation has been completed in Vidharbha in decades," says Nagpur-based journalist Jaideep Hardikar.   He has covered the region for years.
Maintaining gardens
Mr. Singh insists the Fun & Food Village conserves water.
"We use sophisticated filter plants to reuse the same water."
But evaporation levels are very high in this heat.
And water is not just used for sports.
All the parks use vast amounts of it for maintaining their gardens, on sanitation and for their clientele.
"It is a huge waste of water and money," says Vinayak Gaikwad in Buldhana.
He is a farmer and a Kisan Sabha leader in the district.
That in the process, public resources are so often used to boost private profit, angers Mr. Gaikwad.
"They should instead be meeting people's basic water needs."
Back in Bazargaon, village government chief Yamunabai Uikey isn't impressed either.
Not by the Fun & Food Village.   Nor by other industries that have taken a lot but given very little.
"What is there in all this for us?" she wants to know.   To get a standard government water project for her village, we have to bear 10 per cent of its cost.   That's around Rs. 450,000 [c.$10,750].   "How can we afford the Rs. 45,000 [$1,075]? What is our condition?"
So it's simply been handed over to a contractor.   This could see the project built.   But it will mean more costs in the long run and less control for a village of so many poor and landless people.
In the Park, Gandhi's portrait still smiles out of the office as we leave.   Seemingly at the 'Snowdome' across the parking lot.
An odd fate for the man who said: "Live simply, that others might simply live."
P. Sainathis the rural affairs editor of The Hindu and the author of Everybody Loves a Good Drought.
MON 863 — Rats fed Monsanto GM corn due for sale in Britain developed abnormalities in blood and kidneys
Kite flown to protest cultivation of GM maize.
A kite is flown to protest against the cultivation of GM genetically modified maize.

France is Europe's top agricultural producer.

In a cavern under a remote Arctic mountain, Norway will soon begin squirreling away the world's crop seeds in case of disaster.

Dynamited out of a mountainside on Spitsbergen island around 1,000 km (600 miles) from the North Pole, the store has been called a doomsday vault or a Noah's Ark of the plant kingdom. 

The European Space Agency said nearly 200 satellite photos this month taken together showed an ice-free passage along northern Canada, Alaska and Greenland, and ice retreating to its lowest level since such images were first taken in 1978.

Arctic ice has shrunk to the lowest level on record, new satellite images show, raising the possibility that the Northwest Passage that eluded famous explorers will become an open shipping lane.

The 16 September 2007 Arctic minimum ice extent falls below the minimum set on 20-21 September 2005 by an area roughly the size of Texas and California combined, or nearly five UKs.

The National Snow and Ice Data Center, NSIDC, judges the ice extent on a five-day mean.

Arctic sea ice shrank to the smallest area on record in 2007, US scientists have confirmed.

The National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) said the minimum extent of 4.13 million sq km (1.59 million sq miles) was reached on 16 September, 2007.

The figure shatters all previous satellite surveys, including the previous record low of 5.32 million sq km measured in 2005.

Earlier this month, it was reported that the Northwest Passage was open.

Image: DDP/Michael Kappeler

A kite is flown to protest against the cultivation of GM genetically modified maize.
France is Europe's top agricultural producer.
In a cavern under a remote Arctic mountain, Norway will soon begin squirreling away the world's crop seeds in case of disaster.
Dynamited out of a mountainside on Spitsbergen island around 1,000 km (600 miles) from the North Pole, the store has been called a doomsday vault or a Noah's Ark of the plant kingdom.
The European Space Agency said nearly 200 satellite photos this month taken together showed an ice-free passage along northern Canada, Alaska and Greenland, and ice retreating to its lowest level since such images were first taken in 1978.
Arctic ice has shrunk to the lowest level on record, new satellite images show, raising the possibility that the Northwest Passage that eluded famous explorers will become an open shipping lane.
The 16 September 2007 Arctic minimum ice extent falls below the minimum set on 20-21 September 2005 by an area roughly the size of Texas and California combined, or nearly five UKs.
The National Snow and Ice Data Center, NSIDC, judges the ice extent on a five-day mean.
Arctic sea ice shrank to the smallest area on record in 2007, US scientists have confirmed.
The National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) said the minimum extent of 4.13 million sq km (1.59 million sq miles) was reached on 16 September, 2007.
The figure shatters all previous satellite surveys, including the previous record low of 5.32 million sq km measured in 2005.
Earlier this month, it was reported that the Northwest Passage was open.
Photo: DDP/Michael Kappeler
Rats fed on a diet rich in genetically modified corn developed abnormalities to internal organs and changes to their blood, raising fears that human health could be affected by eating GM food.
The Independent on Sunday can today reveal details of secret research carried out by Monsanto, the GM food giant, which shows that rats fed the modified corn had smaller kidneys and variations in the composition of their blood.
According to the confidential 1,139-page report, these health problems were absent from another batch of rodents fed non-GM food as part of the research project.
The disclosures come as European countries, including Britain, prepare to vote on whether the GM-modified corn should go on sale to the public.
A vote last week by the European Union failed to secure agreement over whether the product should be sold here, after Britain and nine other countries voted in favor.
Forced into retirement
...That research, which was roundly denounced by ministers and the British scientific establishment, was halted and Dr Arpad Pusztai, the scientist behind the controversial findings, was forced into retirement amid a huge row over the claim.
Dr Pusztai reported a "huge list of significant differences" between rats fed GM and conventional corn, saying the results strongly indicate that eating significant amounts of it can damage health.
Freeze on commercial genetically modified crops not allowed under EU rules
French anti-globalization icon Jose Bove takes part in a demonstration against the Genetically modified crops in 2006.

A total freeze on commercial genetically modified crops is not allowed under EU rules, the European Commission said Friday, September 21, 2007.

France is Europe's top agricultural producer.

In a cavern under a remote Arctic mountain, Norway will soon begin squirreling away the world's crop seeds in case of disaster.

Dynamited out of a mountainside on Spitsbergen island around 1,000 km (600 miles) from the North Pole, the store has been called a doomsday vault or a Noah's Ark of the plant kingdom. 

The European Space Agency said nearly 200 satellite photos this month taken together showed an ice-free passage along northern Canada, Alaska and Greenland, and ice retreating to its lowest level since such images were first taken in 1978.

Arctic ice has shrunk to the lowest level on record, new satellite images show, raising the possibility that the Northwest Passage that eluded famous explorers will become an open shipping lane.

The 16 September 2007 Arctic minimum ice extent falls below the minimum set on 20-21 September 2005 by an area roughly the size of Texas and California combined, or nearly five UKs.

The National Snow and Ice Data Center, NSIDC, judges the ice extent on a five-day mean.

Arctic sea ice shrank to the smallest area on record in 2007, US scientists have confirmed.

The National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) said the minimum extent of 4.13 million sq km (1.59 million sq miles) was reached on 16 September, 2007.

The figure shatters all previous satellite surveys, including the previous record low of 5.32 million sq km measured in 2005.

Earlier this month, it was reported that the Northwest Passage was open.

Image: AFP/Olivier Laban-Mattei

French anti-globalization icon Jose Bove takes part in a demonstration against the Genetically modified crops in 2006.
A total freeze on commercial genetically modified crops is not allowed under EU rules, the European Commission said Friday, September 21, 2007.
France is Europe's top agricultural producer.
In a cavern under a remote Arctic mountain, Norway will soon begin squirreling away the world's crop seeds in case of disaster.
Dynamited out of a mountainside on Spitsbergen island around 1,000 km (600 miles) from the North Pole, the store has been called a doomsday vault or a Noah's Ark of the plant kingdom.
The European Space Agency said nearly 200 satellite photos this month taken together showed an ice-free passage along northern Canada, Alaska and Greenland, and ice retreating to its lowest level since such images were first taken in 1978.
Arctic ice has shrunk to the lowest level on record, new satellite images show, raising the possibility that the Northwest Passage that eluded famous explorers will become an open shipping lane.
The 16 September 2007 Arctic minimum ice extent falls below the minimum set on 20-21 September 2005 by an area roughly the size of Texas and California combined, or nearly five UKs.
The National Snow and Ice Data Center, NSIDC, judges the ice extent on a five-day mean.
Arctic sea ice shrank to the smallest area on record in 2007, US scientists have confirmed.
The National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) said the minimum extent of 4.13 million sq km (1.59 million sq miles) was reached on 16 September, 2007.
The figure shatters all previous satellite surveys, including the previous record low of 5.32 million sq km measured in 2005.
Earlier this month, it was reported that the Northwest Passage was open.
Photo: AFP/Olivier Laban-Mattei
The new study is into a corn, codenamed MON 863, which has been modified by Monsanto to protect itself against corn rootworm, which the company describes as "one of the most pernicious pests affecting maize crops around the world".
      Women who eat GM foods while pregnant risk endangering their unborn babies        
April 16 / 17, 2005
Message in a Bottle
How Coca-Cola Gave Back to Plachimada
By ALEXANDER COCKBURN
Plachimada, Kerala
W hizzing along the road in the little Tata Indica, driven prestissimo by Sudhi, we crossed the state line from Tamil Nadu into Kerala, branched off the main road and ended up in the settlement of Plachimada, mostly inhabited by extremely poor people.
There on one side of the street was the Coca-Cola plant, among the largest in Asia, and on the other a shack filled with locals eager to impart the news that they were now, as of April 2, in Day 1076 of their struggle against the plant.
Coca-Cola came to India in 1993, looking for water and markets in a country where one third of all villages are without anything approaching adequate water and shortages are growing every day.
Indeed India is facing a gigantic water crisis, even as Coca Cola and other companies haul free water to the cities from the countryside and water parks and golf courses metastasize around cities like Mumbai.
The bloom was on neoliberalism back then when Coca-Cola came in, with central and state authorities falling over themselves to lease, sell or simply hand over India's national assets in the name of economic "reform".
They still are, but the popular mood has changed.
The apex posterboy of neo-liberalism, Chandrababu Naidu of Andhra Pradesh, feted by Bill Clinton, John Wolfenson and Bill Gates and such nabobs of nonsense as Thomas Friedman of the New York Times, was tossed out in elections a year ago.
Naidu's fans in the west and indeed in India's elites, were thunderstruck.
The reason was simple.
Below the top tier, hundreds of millions of Indians went to the polls last year to register a furious No.
There are hundreds of parables to explain this.
Here's one, courtesy of Coca-Cola.
Predatory practices to eliminate competition
Across India's give-away decade Coca-Cola took over some 22 Indian bottling companies, capturing their marketing and distribution systems and easily beating back various legal assaults for predatory practices to eliminate competition.
Senior civil servants and politicians, some of them pocketing covert subventions, made tremulous speeches about the New India.
Meanwhile out in the real world of the Indian countryside, Coca-Cola's bottling plants were getting less enthusiastic reviews.
Coca-Cola had sound reasons in zoning in on Plachimada.
A rain-shadow region in the heart of Kerala's water belt, it has large underground water deposits.
The site Coca-Cola picked was set between two large reservoirs and ten meters south of an irrigation canal.
The ground water reserves had apparently showed up on satellite surveys done by the company's prospectors.
The Coke site is surrounded by colonies where several hundred poor people live in crowded conditions, with an average holding of four-tenths of an acre.
Virtually the sole source of employment is wage labor, usually for no more than 100 to 120 days in the year.
Ushered in by Kerala's present "reform"-minded government, the plant duly got a license from the local council, known as the Perumatty Grama panchayat.
Under India's constitution the panchayats have total discretion in such matters.
Coca-Cola bought a property of some 40 acres held by a couple of large landowners, built a plant, sank six bore wells, and commenced operations.
Level of their water dropped sharply
Within six months the villagers saw the level of their water drop sharply, even run dry.
The water they did draw was awful.
It gave some people diarrhea and bouts of dizziness.
To wash in it was to get skin rashes,a burning feel on the skin.
It left their hair greasy and sticky.
The women found that rice and dal did not get cooked but became hard.
A thousand families have been directly affected, and well water affected up to a three or four kilometers from the plant.
True, earth-shaking reforms of Kerala's Communist government
The locals, mostly indigenous adivasis and dalits had never had much, after allocation of a bit of land from the true, earth-shaking reforms of Kerala's Communist government, democratically elected in 1956.
And they had had plenty of good water.
On April 22, 2002 the locals commenced peaceful agitation and shut the plant down.
Responding to popular pressure, the panchayat rescinded its license to Coca-Cola on August 7,2003.
Four days later the local Medical Officer ruled that water in wells near the plant was unfit for human use, a judgement reached by various testing labs months earlier.
All of this was amiably conveyed to us in brisk and vivid detail by the villagers.
Then Mylamma, an impressively eloquent woman, led us down a path to one of the local village wells nearby.
It was a soundly built square well, some 10 feet from side to side.
About five feet from the top we could see the old water line, but no water.
Peering twenty feet further down in the semi-darkness we could see a stagnant glint.
Walk a 4-kilometer round trip to get drinkable water
Today, in a region known as the rice bowl of Kerala, women in Plachimada have to walk a 4-kilometer round trip to get drinkable water, toting the big vessels on hip or their head.
Even better-off folk face ruin.
One man said he'd been farming eight acres of rice paddy, hiring 20 workers, but now, with no water for the paddy, he survives on the charity of his son-in-law.
The old village wells had formerly gone down to 150 to 200 feet.
The company's bore wells go down to 750 to 1000 feet.
All manner of toxic matter began to rise too
As the water table dropped, all manner of toxic matter began to rise too, leaching up to higher levels as the soil dried out.
The whole process would play well on The Simpsons.
It has a ghastly comicality to it.
When the plant was running at full tilt 85 truck loads rolled out of the plant gates, each load consisting of 550 to 600 cases, 24 bottles to the case, all containing Plachimada's prime asset, water, now enhanced in cash value by Cola's infusions of its syrups.
Also trundling through the gates came 36 lorries a day, each with six 50-gallon drums of sludge from the plant's filtering and bottle cleaning processes, said sludge resembling buff-colored puke in its visual aspect, a white-to-yellow granular sauce blended with a darker garnish of blended fabric, insulating material and other fibrous matter, plus a sulphuric acid smell very unpleasing to the nostrils.
Coca Cola was "giving back" to Plachimada, the give-back taking the form of the toxic sludge, along with profuse daily donations of foul wastewater.
Company told the locals the sludge was good for the land
The company told the locals the sludge was good for the land and dumped loads of it in the surrounding fields and on the banks of the irrigation canal, heralding it as free fertilizer.
Aside from stinking so badly it made old folk and children sick, people coming in contact with it got rashes and kindred infections and the crops which it was supposed to nourish died.
Lab analysis by the Kerala State Pollution Control Board has shown dangerous levels of cadmium in the sludge.
Another report done at Exeter University in England at the request of the BBC Radio 4 (whose reporter John Waite visited Plachimada and broadcast his report in July of 2003) found in water in a well near the plant not only impermissible amounts of cadmium but lead at levels that "could have devastating consequences", particularly for pregnant women.
Sunil Gupta swore the sludge was "absolutely safe"
The Exeter lab also found the sludge useless as fertiliser, a finding which did not faze Coca-Cola's Indian vice-president Sunil Gupta who swore the sludge was "absolutely safe" and "good for crops".
Plachimada is in a district, the Perumatti Panchayat, ruled by the Janata Dal (Secular).
M.P. Veerendrakumar is the President of the Kerala state unit of this party and represents the constituency of Kozhikode in the Indian Parliament.
Veerendrakumar is also chairman and managing director of Mathrubhumi, a newspaper which sells over a million copies a day in Malayalam, Kerala's language.
The producers of India's first high-budget animation movie
A zookeeper tends to Addwaita, a giant Aldabra tortoise, inside an enclosure at the Alipore Zoological Garden in Calcutta, India, in this 2005 photo.

Addwaita, meaning the 'The One and Only,' was recently given his name after officials realised he had been nameless all through his chronicled age.

Believed to be as old as 255 and has been has been living at the zoo since its establishment in 1875, he is said  to brought from Aldabra and Seychelles islands in the Indian Ocean by the then British rulers of India during the rule of the British East India Company.

According to records, four tortoises were brought to Calcutta by British seafarers from Seychelles, known for its
giant tortoises, and presented to Lord Robert Clive.

While three of the tortoises died as the new environment did not suit them, Addwaita ruled the Latbagan estate of Clive in
North Calcutta till he was gifted to the zoo in 1875.

It is also possible that Adwaitya was owned by the Ezras, a wealthy Jewish trading family who lived in lived in Calcutta from the 18th century.   The Ezras were known for their philanthropy and interest in zoological matters.

As befits his size and age, Adwaitya treated his admirers with benign aloofness.    Most of the time they would see him sitting in front of his favourite platter of vegetables and wheat bran, chewing on a choice titbit in a meditative fashion.

Addwaita died of liver failure March 23, 2006

Picture: AP/Bikas Das

(left)
A potter paints an earthen pot used for offering holy water to the Hindu Goddess Durga in Alopibagh area of Allahabad, India, Saturday, April 1, 2006.
Hindus are observing the nine-day long Navratri festival, or festival of four nights, dedicated to the three main Hindu Goddesses Parvati, Lakshmi and Saraswati, that began March 30.
(right)
A zookeeper tends to Addwaita, a giant Aldabra tortoise, inside an enclosure at the Alipore Zoological Garden in Calcutta, India, in this 2005 photo.
Addwaita, meaning the 'The One and Only,' was recently given his name after officials realised he had been nameless all through his chronicled age.
Believed to be as old as 255 and has been has been living at the zoo since its establishment in 1875, he is said to brought from Aldabra and Seychelles islands in the Indian Ocean by the then British rulers of India during the rule of the British East India Company.
According to records, four tortoises were brought to Calcutta by British seafarers from Seychelles, known for its giant tortoises, and presented to Lord Robert Clive.
While three of the tortoises died as the new environment did not suit them, Addwaita ruled the Latbagan estate of Clive in North Calcutta till he was gifted to the zoo in 1875.
It is also possible that Adwaitya was owned by the Ezras, a wealthy Jewish trading family who lived in lived in Calcutta from the 18th century.   The Ezras were known for their philanthropy and interest in zoological matters.
As befits his size and age, Adwaitya treated his admirers with benign aloofness.   Most of the time they would see him sitting in front of his favourite platter of vegetables and wheat bran, chewing on a choice titbit in a meditative fashion.
Addwaita died of liver failure March 23, 2006
Photos: AFP/Percept Films, AP/Bikas Das
Refused to run any ads for Coca-Cola
Veerendrakumar, a forceful man in his late sixties and a former federal minister, tells me that for the past two years Mathrubhumi has refused to run any ads for Coca-Cola and the company's other brand names drinks such as Mirinda, 7 Up, Sprite, Fanta, Kinley Soda, Thums Up.
Veerendrakumar's group includes in its ban ads for Pepsi, which he says has a plant ten kilometers from Plachimada that has produced the same problems.
He says his company's net loss of advertising revenue amounts thus far to some 30 million rupees, more than $700,000, a very hefty sum in Kerala, though far, far less ­ as he told India's parliament in Delhi, than what farmers around Plachimada have collectively lost through crop failure consequent on the loss of water.
"The cruel fact", Veerendrakumar told the Indian parliament as he handed over a well-documented report on the toxic outputs of the plant, "is that water from our underground sources is pumped out free and sold to our people to make millions every day, at the same time destroying our environment and damaging the health of our people.
For us rivers, dams and water sources are the property of the nation and her people."
Hopes the courts will do the right thing and grease Coca-Cola's wheels
The locals won't let the plant reopen, to the fury of Kerala's present pro-Coke government, which has tried, unconstitutionally, to overrule the local council (it told the panchayat it could only spend $5 a day in public money on its case) and hopes the courts will do the right thing and grease Coca-Cola's wheels.
Kerala's High Court did just that last week, and the panchayat, helped by private donations, is now taking its cased to India's Supreme Court.
K. Krishnan, President of the Perumatti Panchayat, where the Coca-Cola plant is situated, has withstood all blandishments, which is more than can be said about many other individuals.
Drive along almost any road in Kerala and you'll see cocoanut palms.
What Keralites term as tender cocoanut water really is good for you.
Ask any local rat.
A trio of biochemists at the University of Kerala recently put rats on it and their levels of cholesterol and triglycerides sank significantly, with anti-oxidant enzymes putting up a fine show.
For the rats dosed on Coca-Cola the tests readings weren't pretty, starting with "short, swollen, ulcerated and broken villi in the intestine and severe nuclear damage".
"What is the use of the Coca-Cola Company," cried Phulwanti Mhase of Kudus village, in Maharashtra state, where women wash clothes in dirty puddles after Hindustan Coca-Cola built a plant there.
"These are outsiders.
They take our water, filter it and then resell it to us at a price."
Phulwanti is cited (in a very useful pamphlet put out by the All India Democratic Women's Association) as issuing this brisk précis of Marx's Capital from the vantage point of her teashop from which can be descried the outlines of the plant, which churns out sodas including a mineral water called Kinley.
Phulwanti has one bottle of Kinley in her store for people passing through, remarking, "I get angry.
This is our water and they sell it to us for 12 rupees, which is what a tribal woman would make for eight hours' work."
Taking a leaf out of the self-realization catechism, Coca-Cola flaunts its slogan in Hindi, "Jo chahe ho jahe", meaning "Whatever you want, happens" , translated by the local women as "Jo Coke chahe ho jahe", "Whatever Coke wants, happens."
But not in Plachimada.
Saving the World’s Seeds
— Dr. Vandana Shiva
Thank you for joining us on Catalyst Radio.
Would you start by talking about some general issues surrounding globalization.
Dr. Vandana Shiva:   Well those of use who are concerned about the globalization that has been contrived and yet made to look as if it is a natural evolutionary step, we are concerned about the injustice and undemocratic system on which it is based.
And everything we said, fifteen years ago, when these rules were being put in place, very artificially, under GAT and then became the WTO rules, or on the financial side as the instrumentalities and conditionalities of the World Bank and IMF, what we said fifteen years ago turns out
not to have been an exaggeration but an underestimation of the devastation of both nature, society and economies.
I had talked about the WTO agreement on agriculture as the death knell for Indian farmers.
Every year 16,000 farmers are being killed.
They are taking their lives, but I don't think they are taking their lives.
It is that they are being pushed to the edge of survival — through the indebtedness that is an inevitable result of turning them into a market for Monsanto seed, and, on the other hand disposable items, when Cargill and ConAgra have to dump subsidized grain through a liberalized agreement.
When I started to fight intellectual property rights in the WTO, I was concerned about patents on life. And seed patents now we can see what they are doing.
American farmers are being harassed, fined for three million dollars, and the crime is seed saving?
What could be a worse situation for humanity? To turn something as valuable as saving seeds for the future into a criminal activity.
Similar laws have just been passed in India, two weeks ago.
I think anyone who doesn't resist this kind of globalization is not being fully human, is not exercising their duties.
Catalyst Radio:   You spoke about how this is being played out around water, around water globally.   I wonder if you could say more about that with water as an example.   Specifically the impact in your country, in India.
Dr. Vandana Shiva:   Well, three major issues around water co-modification that are creating new movements in India — a new generation of ecology movements, a new generation of social justice movements, a new generation of human rights movements — the first is the mining of very, very scarce and precious ground water.
In remaining pockets — that wasn't destroyed by 'Green Revolution,' which is the name given to industrial agriculture — this mining is now being done by Coke and Pepsi.
This culture in which they are bringing more soft drinks for sale, more bottled water for sale as Kinley's and Aquafina, they are mining for every plant that they have set up in the five years since they came back to India.
One point five to two million liters per day leaving a water famine.
People are resisting because woman are having to walk ten, twenty, thirty miles to find water. The Coke, Pepsi campaign I believe is going to intensify in the future.
Woman in Carela organized to shut a plant down. Coke has just manipulated the courts to undo an earlier court judgment. We are going to have to continue to resist.
The second, very, very major issue is World Bank driven privatization of water in urban areas.
Deli being a prime case where the urban supply is being handed over to Sways.
On the one hand this means privatization the sacred Ganges.
On the other hand it means an increase in tariffs, ten times to fifteen times, excluding the poor, drawing the public access that was guaranteed to everyone.
The third very, very huge movement that's emerging is around two hundred billion dollar river linking project.
It is basically a river linking diversion project.   It is a privatization project.
Because you can't privatize rives as free flowing systems. You can only privatize them after you have locked them in dams and captured them in canals.
These three major privatization movements are also being countered by people's movements to keep water in the commons, keep it as a public good, defend it as a human right.
Catalyst Radio:   I just came back from Guatemala where we have been interviewing people about the so called trade agreement, the CAFTA trade agreement, which is almost an unknown factor here.
How much of a role does commercial media, does corporate media play in keeping people in the dark about these very important trade agreements, these economic policies that impact all of our lives.
Dr. Vandana Shiva:   I think it is the key, to push anti-people policies through.
It is the key to making slavery appear like freedom.
It is the key to not allowing the stories of resistance to reach others. Because for that people draw solidarity, people draw energy, people draw strength.
That's why it becomes absolutely necessary to create alternate means of communication between people because the dominant corporate media has become one big lie.
Catalyst Radio:   You mention the danger of people getting information about what is happening because it builds solidarity.
The World Social Forum happened again recently, what are some of the things you have seen happen as you have traveled around the world with regard to these issues, in terms of people networking, coalition building and the types of resistance that are taking place all around the globe?
Dr. Vandana Shiva:   Well I will give you just three very simple examples of movements that have spread very rapidly.
A few years as Monsanto started to push genetically modified crops and food around the world using all the instruments of corruption of governments, of WTO rules, we started to talk about declaring regions GM free.
Freedom zones just as we used to have nuclear free zones.
There are more than five thousand freedom zones in Europe now.   And even in the United States counties are starting to organize and have referendums.
It is a movement that is just multiplying.   People are learning from each other and saying we can do that too.
We don't have to wait until a WTO gives us freedom.   Freedom is ours to exercise and live.
The Coke, Pepsi campaigns as they have built up.   The issues of communities in the south loosing their water have got deeply connected to concerns of northern campuses.
With the entire mafia rule around Coca-Cola plants and the killing of trade unionists who are trying to organize, two ends of the Coke campaign are starting to join together to find new ways to reclaim freedom for communities.
And the third, very, very, big issue that has multiplied as people have talked to each other, I believe is the seed issue.
You know I started to work on seed patenting, seed conservation in 1987 onwards when I first came to the GAT agreement. There used to be four or five people one could pick up the phone and talk to.
Today there is not a country where there isn't a movement for farmers rights, where there isn't a movement to save native seeds, and where there isn't a movement to challenge patents on life and patents on seed.
So I think this communication outside the dominant media — and these are issues absolutely shut out and censored in the dominant media — but outside the dominant media people are communicating with each other and the realities are getting connected to deal with the handful of greedy giants.
When we start to exchange notes, it's five corporate seed companies, five water giants, five agribusiness giants, that's what we are up against across the worlds.   In the United States as much as India and Guatemala and Germany.
Catalyst Radio:   You talked about seed patenting and the dilemmas with that.
Could you say a little more about what the dangers of that are. About the biological dangers of having homogenous seed production.
And what that means to people, particularly people in indigenous populations around the world, which are the ones that hold this rich treasure of centuries of knowledge.
Dr. Vandana Shiva:   The first problem that starts with the patenting of seed is that corporations do not sell seed according to what is adapted to local climate, or what farmers need.
They sell seed according to where they have been able to do the quickest manipulation.
So that using that manipulation they can claim novelty.
Claiming novelty they can claim patents.
I've been of the view that genetic engineering was an excuse to enforce patents on seed.
It was an unnecessary step in improving breeding.   We don't have a single improved crop through genetic engineering.
We got herbicide resistant crops and we have BT toxin crops.   Neither of which are improvements from nature's perspective, from farmer's perspective.
Now if you just look at the world.   Where is the highest rate of expansion of crop varieties?
It's in genetically engineered Soya, genetically engineered corn, genetically engineered canola, and genetically engineered cotton.
So you are getting the food base of the world, which should be something like ten thousand crops, being reduced to four genetically engineered crops.
None adapted to any ecosystem.
All of them in the hands of one company, Monsanto, controlling something like ninety-three, ninety-four percent of all GM seeds sold anywhere in the world.
So you have the problem of mono-cultures, of homogeneity, but you also have the problem of total control of the seed supply.
And that total control of the seed supply has many social and economic implications.
First implication is that farmers who used to save seed, and who used to be able to exchange seed, are now treated as thieves of intellectual property.
It also means that the cost of seed start to skyrocket because farmers must pay royalties, must pay technology fees, must buy seeds annually, and a zero cost input in farming has ended up being the highest cost input in farming.
In addition, corporations like Monsanto ensure that farmers alternative supplies are destroyed by other legal trips — seed laws, compulsory legislation like the Iraqi '81 order, like the Indian Seed Act, and through that they ensure that farmer's alternatives, genetic diversity, biodiversity, specially in the countries that are home to genetic diversity are wiped out.
Which is a threat not just to those communities.
It is a threat to humanity.
It is a threat to our food supply.
It is a threat to our security.
Catalyst Radio:   Quite often people who dismiss the concerns of people like yourself are sharing, they keep saying that all we have is a criticism.   That what we are is always against, not what we are for.
Can you say something about what this global movement is really asking for.   Asking for what we want to happen.
Dr. Vandana Shiva:   You know, before I started to fight against patents in seed, I started to first save seed.
Because you cannot afford to critic a system to which you cannot offer an alternative.
First of all, those who are destroying alternatives, will then treat the absence of alternatives as the reason for their existence.
Secondly, you really do not have the moral authority to demand a shift if you have not been able to show that there are other ways, and better ways to do things.
On seed saving, we firmly believe seed is a common resource.
Seed is a common heritage.
And so we actually do what we believe in.
We create community seed banks from which farmers can take the seeds they need according to their agriculture, according to their cropping systems.
Seeds in a free exchange of a common property.
In agriculture, when we critic globalization of trade, and we critic the control of agriculture in the hands of a few giants, and the technologies of non-sustainability, we do the farming and the trade that allows farmers to have alternatives.
Widow of suicide farmer
Navdanya organization that I founded has trained more that two hundred thousand farmers in India to go corporate free and chemical free.   And corporate seed free.
Our farmers have increased their income three-fold. They have reduced their expenditure by ninety percent.
The only place in India where farmers are not getting into debt is areas where they are practicing sustainable organic farming.
And are engaging in fair trade where they set the terms of the market, rather than the genocidal terms created by the ConAgra's and the Cargill's.
And in the case of water, we conserve water.
We conserve every drop.
We make our contribution to building up and rebuilding our common legacy and then we have the moral right and the authority to say you will not mess around with our water.
Because it is water that we share.
It is water that we conserve collectively.
And it is water to which access for all must be guaranteed.
Unspeakable grief and horror
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                        ...and the circus of deception killing continues...
Most recent 'Circus of Killing' click here
— 2009
He says, "You are quite mad, Kewe"
And of course I am.
Why, I don't believe any of it — not the bloody body, not the bloody mind, not even the bloody Universe, or is it bloody multiverse.
"It's all illusion," I say.   "Don't you know, my lad, my lassie.   The game!   The game, me girl, me boy!   Takes on interest, don't you know.   T'is me sport, till doest find a better!"
Pssssst — but all this stuff is happening down here
Let's change it!

 
 
 
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