Indian Bazaar VS Global Market: A view by an ordinary Indian

INDIAN BAZAAR, at primary level, brings a producer and consumer in direct contact; no third party is involved. With urbanization, broker comes in the picture, the price and distance between the two increases. Hence, the State department's work and rewards (!) increase, with more powers.

City is a symbol of centralized power. Larger a city larger an area its footprint covers, even across continents and oceans, and larger its powers to manipulate and control regions via Market: City is actually a proxy to the power monger/s. In earlier times it was a king, now a corporate body.

Bazaar is an ecological element in the agrarian society, then and now. Because of India's so-called 'mix economy, free market, open market, globalization..., the peasant now belongs to a new category of “Class”, or rather “Underclass”. They are the first and the worst casualty of 'Development and Progress', besides already existing oppressions of caste discrimination; gender oppressions apart.

Web of Caste and Class 

They are now caught in the “web” of "Vertical divisions of Caste and Horizontal divisions of Class". Which one of them is worst? They grew up for many thousand years with degenerated caste system. But, now they are imposed upon by the divisions of class that is already (globally) degenerated. 

The overview of the whole situation looks intriguing in the post-freedom era. The elite fascinated by industrialization, took over the reigns to run the affairs of the country. How did the peasant respond to the change, after centuries of feudal domination? What did freedom, democracy and leaders mean to them? 

"Now it is our Raj, and our leaders will take care of our wellbeing!" Hero-worship continued. What about the five years' rule of limited liability by elections? How does it change perceptions of leaders and peasants about self-rule?  

There are two distinct courses that India followed for decades: (1) the enthusiastic implementation of ‘pro-elite’ projects, and (2) failure to implement or materialize the ‘pro-poor’ Slogans / Promises / Programmes / Provisions. The fall-out of these two conditions now shows glaring or grim results.

Past sixty three years have witnessed rising numbers of riots, extremist and terror attacks; the deaths by hunger – malnutrition – starvation, and suicide by farmers; atrocities on women-children-minorities; atrocities by the security forces, to cite a few. Besides there are number of persons Bellow Poverty Line and the illiterate that don't reduce. 


Countless atrocities take place that are caused to the under privileged people by State Agencies in the name of law and order. There are scams, kickbacks, corruption, parallel economy, encounters, and shootings etc. which may be notable among many.

We take social – economic growth by the Development Projects too much for granted. Recent visit by the US President Obama to India means Market, even if by ancient system of 'barter', of trade, tech for jobs! Did India count how would the upcoming US Market and Nuke Deal affect The Third World India and The Fourth World India (of Adivasis)? Is this aspect social and economic fall-out counted in the Nuclear Safety Precautions? 

Mother Earth - Land - now a market commodity 
 
Yet there is another silent but sinister trend going on since 1950s and 1960s. Highly placed urbanites, executives, celebrities, real estate developers… have been buying large tracts of land – hills, plains, marshes – in rural areas at strategic places, by their money-power. What could poor farmers do? Yesterday they were masters; now landless labourers.

Large tracts of land are being converted to raise monoculture for industrial use, or in the name of afforestation, at the cost of biodiversity. There are many and many kinds of atrocities taking place on land and waters.

Would there be accelerated Migration from countryside, or Annihilation of the peasants – by Invisible Forces? As we Re-Search even a single aspect, Bazaar, it opens the hidden agenda of Indian Elite: how sly, hypocrite and ruthless they are! It is not merely Indian BAZAAR VS Global MARKET.

It is more sinister action by the insensitive leaders and experts, detrimental to a large and majority rural and forest dwellers. Government of India certainly strives to improve infrastructure, but only for the elite segment. It has failed to create appropriate infrastructure for 900 million peasants in 600,000 villages, some of them are rotting in the cities.

The basic and most urgent infrastructure for the rural people is RELEVANT EDUCATION: Literacy in vernacular, appropriate Education, Alternative Farming Technologies, Water Resources and Conservation, Legal Counselling for All Ages and Genders. These are not separate departments but must be treated and implemented as One Holistic Package.

The hold of the peasant and the consumer on the market, until then, remains a distant dream.

The displaced with their skills in the city 

The displaced and marginalized migrate to cities 

in search of work to sustain with dignity.

(Images by Remigius de Souza)

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 We have heard, the kibbutz have turned desert in Israel into land 

where honey and milk flows, by community participation.
 

Panoramic photo (composite) of Sunflower fields at Kibbutz Barkai, Israel; 

Author: Rickjpelleg | Source: Wikipedia 

Related Posts
1. Hawkers' Fundamental Rights and Contemporary City Planning
2. Flower Bazaar at Mumbai during Ganesh Festival
3. How bamboo is neglected in India

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©Remigius de Souza, all rights reserved.

SAVE OUR TIGERS Campaign Corrected

‘Historically the study of evolution has concentrated almost exclusively upon the animals. If plants are mentioned it is only in passing and usually to reconstruct the environment in which to view the animal record.'(The opening sentence of the book, “The Evolution of Plants” by Willis, K.J. & McElwin, OUP, 2002.)

International Year of Biodiversity 2010 needs to implement DOWN TO EARTH action rather than sermons and slogans. It also needs to curb wild use of natural resources by the persons / organizations in power, and use peoples’ participation. 

 

To Save Our Tigers,

Save Plants to

Save Forest to

Save Water to

Save Land to

Save Livelihood to

Save All Living beings to

Save Human beings to

Save Our Sanity.

 

We give due credits to the AIRCELL for their noble intention to support ‘Save Our Tigers’ campaign while placing advertisement to promote their product that recently appeared in print media.

We sincerely and earnestly feel environmental and ecological balance between natural, rural and urban areas for sustainable living must be restored. It must be on equitable basis for all living beings – plants, animals (wildlife), aborigine communities (Scheduled Tribes), peasants in rural and forest areas, and the urbanite; not merely for – as is the buzzword goes – sustainable development.  

We make an effort to add few missing but most important elements, within same area, at the risk of being it called plagiarism.

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© Remigius de Souza, all rights reserved.

Water Liberation Declaration: Vandana Shiva and others

 Water Liberation Declaration

“Water is life. It’s a gift of nature. The access to water is a natural and fundamental right. It is not to be treated as a commodity and traded for profit. People shall have the right to freedom from thirst, and shall have adequate access to safe water for all of their living needs. 
 
  Experiences all over the world reveal quite convincingly that water which is “life” is being privatized and brought under corporate control. This will deprive the people of water lifeline for survival. All the water resources should be owned, controlled, managed and utilized by local communities in their natural setting.  
 
  We the people from all over the world will not allow our waters to be made commodity for profit. 
 
  We will work together to liberate water from corporate / private agencies, control and return it to the people for common good.
 
  We demand the governments all over the world should take immediate action to declare that they accept waters in their territories a public good and exact strong regulatory structure to protect them.
 
  We, the undersigned, will work in solidarity to achieve these goals.”
 
— Vandana Shiva and others  

(Source: JANATA, [English Weekly] Vol.56, No. 42, January 6, 2002, P.11. D-15, Ganesh Prasad, Naushir Bharucha Marg, Grant Road (W), Mumbai 400 007. Email: yumeher@mtnl.net.in ) 

COMMENT COMPLIMENTARY  

Issue of WATER does not stop at containing it in bottles, pipelines, and dammed reservoirs.

 Large tracts of regions in Bangladesh, East Bengal, and Bihar etc have highly toxic subsoil water. This has been known for sometime.

 Deforestation, besides drawing water mechanically in large quantity for industry and farms have depleted sub soil water. 

 Untreated industrial wastes have polluted water bodies, and coastal waters that have affected marine life too. 

 Water logging in lower lands in the vicinity of canals damages farms.

 The fallout of ambitious 'Interlinking Rivers Project' may prove eventually an utopia - the Tower of Babel.

 These five major points leave much to be desired than 'Bottling Water’.

Indeed subject “WATER” should be compulsory part curriculum from Primary to Higher Education, including Doctorate, in all streams of Education.

And it should be compulsory as "Continued Education" for all the personnel of Legislative – Executive – Judiciary bodies from Central as well as State Governments down to District, Taluka / Tahasil and Village levels. The ignorance of authorities in various fields specialization is overwhelming as the move in blinkered tracks of expertise.
 
 Please read “WATER PARKS IN WANTING” 

Remigius de Souza 


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© Remigius de Souza, all rights reserved.

Ivan Illich and friends: Declaration on Soil

 Ivan Illich and friends: Declaration on Soil

Published by International Foundation for Development Alternatives in IFDA DOSSIER 81, April/June 1991, p. 57-58. Now this issue is available online, reproduced below. See previous post “Urban Renewal in the Regional Context”, where it is mentioned.

(Our friend Ivan Illich sends us the following Declaration on Soil drawn up by some of the participants in a meeting on agriculture in Oldenburg, Germany, held in honor of Robert Rodale.)

The ecological discourse about planet earth, global hunger, threats to life, urges us to look down at the soil, humbly, as philosophers. We stand on soil, not on earth. From soil we come, and to the soil we bequeath our excrements and remains. And yet soil - its cultivation and our bondage to it - is remarkably absent from those things clarified by philosophy in our western tradition.

As philosophers, we search below our feet because our generation has lost its grounding in both soil and virtue. By virtue, we mean that shape, order and direction of action informed by tradition, bounded by place, and qualified by choices made within the habitual reach of the actor; we mean practice mutually recognized as being good within a shared local culture which enhances the memories of a place.

We note that such virtue is traditionally found in labor, craft, dwelling and suffering supported, not by an abstract earth, environment or energy system, but by the particular soils these very actions have enriched with their traces. And yet, in spite of this ultimate bond between soil and being, soil and the good, philosophy has not brought forth the concepts which would allow us to relate virtue to common soil, something vastly different from managing behavior on a shared planet.

WC were torn from the bonds to soil - the connections which limited action, making practical virtue possible - when modernization insulated us from plain dirt, from toil, flesh, soil and grave. The economy into which we have been absorbed - some, willy-nilly, some at great cost -transforms people into interchangeable morsels o f population, ruled by the laws of scarcity.

Commons and homes are barely imaginable to persons hooked on public utilities and garaged in furnished cubicles. Bread is a mere foodstuff, if not calories or roughage. To speak of friendship, religion and joint suffering as a style of conviviality - after the soil has been poisoned and cemented over - appears like academic dreaming to people randomly scattered in vehicles, offices, prisons and hotels.

As philosophers, we emphasize the duty to speak about soil. For Plato, Aristotle and Galen it could be taken for granted; not so today. Soil on which culture can grow and corn be cultivated is lost from view when it is defined as a complex subsystem, sector, resource, problem or "farm" - as agricultural science tends to do.

As philosophers, we offer resistance to those ecological experts who preach respect for science, but foster neglect for historical tradition, local flair and the earthy virtue, self-limitation.

Sadly, but without nostalgia, we acknowledge the pastness of the past. With diffidence, then, we attempt to share what we see: some results of the earth's having lost its soil. And we are irked by the neglect for soil in the discourse carried on among boardroom ecologists. But we are also critical of many among well-meaning romantics, Luddites and mystics who exalt soil, making it the matrix, not of virtue, but of life. Therefore, we issue a call for a philosophy of soil: a clear, disciplined analysis of that experience and memory of soil without which neither virtue nor some new kind of subsistence can be.


Hebenshausen, 6 December 1990

Signar Grocneveld, Lee Hoinacki, Ivan Illich and friends

University of Kassel, Faculty of International Agriculture, GhK, POB 1252, 3430
Witzenhausen l, Germany


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© Remigius de Souza, all rights reserved.

Anahad Naad is Primal Sound or Supreme Silence

 (This is a revised article; I have deleted the previous post.)



“Anahad Naad” (in Indic languages),as far as I know and understand, means “Primal Sound” or “Supreme Silence” that is contained in “Srishti” – Nature. I suppose, all living beings are capable of hearing / listening the Primal sound. It seems to me that the potted plants on my terrace do hear / feel my compassionate or hostile thoughts.

One, however, particularly in modern urban habitat, may not hear the Primal Sound by the sense organs of ears. Even skins can feel the vibrations of sound. (I have tried to explore some of it “Senses and SenseAbility 5: Hearing” in my series of articles on Senses on this blog.)

I once read information about science that it has discovered ‘music in sand dunes’.
I am also informed that (traditional) Indian farmers say, "Water goes to sleep, and Water wakes up". Just information, such as this, does not help to listen or perceive "word" by land and water without being in tune with nature, though.

Artists, folk and classical artists, particularly musicians – vocalist and instrumentalists – who follow “Naad-Yoga” by riyaz – regular, rigorous practice – may have ability to listen / perceive Supreme Silence. And of course, the aborigine tribal, too, who live in the close proximity with the elements. The aborigine tribes (and animals) of Andaman Islands ran to safer higher grounds before the last tsunami reached the land; it is already a known “story”.
 

 Hearing by ears 

In today’s context: We, who are accustomed to hear by ears but sometimes fail to listen, become aware of Supreme Silence when volcanoes erupt and the earth tremors, by thunder storms and lightning, hurricanes and tsunami, when mountains rise and land is submerged. 
We become aware only when the weak, meek and silent people’s uprising in revolt causes mighty civilizations and powers vanish. Silence does not mean weakness.
I have heard that the complex letter or word “OM” has power of “Big Bang”, whoever may have had real experience; we don't question.

God may be a concept for some. However, Srisihti - Nature - is not a concept. All that one need to perceive Srishti - Nature is to follow “Srishtiyoga – Way of Nature” or the Communion with Nature.  

The photograph shows a Warli tribal sings while playing his string instrument. All tribal – men and women – dance and sing collectively and individually.

QUOTES:

I add following quotes from “KATHA UPANISAD with Commentary of Sankaracarya”, Translated by Swami Gambhiranand (Publishers: Advaita Ashram, Mayavati, Himalayas).

Note 1: The word or letter or symbol - "OM"

“This letter (Om), indeed, is (the inferior) Brahman (Hiranyagarbha). And this … letter is (Om) the supreme Brahman. Anybody, who, (while) meditating on this letter, wants any of the two, to him comes that.” — Sloka: I.ii.16, p. 53. 

Sankaracarya comments “...For, of them both this letter (Om) is the symbol...” (p. 54).

Note 2: Five Elements and the Senses

Translator’s Note 1, which elaborates Five Elements, in reference to Sankaracarya’s Commentary, “...How is the thing to be known very subtle? That is being said: Now, then, this earth is gross, developed as it is by (the principle of) sound, touch, colour, taste, and smell; and it is an object of perception to all the senses. So also is the body...” (Sloka: I.iii.14, P.79-80).

“Earth is possessed of five qualities ? smell, taste, colour, touch, and sound; water consists four qualities beginning from taste; fire of the next three; air of the next two; and space of the last one. It is difficult to translate the word akasa. Vedantasutra defines it as the element that provides space and sound as its quality” (Note 1, p.80).

(I am neither a scholar of Sanskrit, nor an authority on Scriptures of any religion including Christianity, nor on Spirituality. My series on “Senses and Sense-Ability” refers to a living on gross level. However, where does the Element "akash" (usually called space) dwell in the body? How do we attend the sense of hearing, besides other senses? How do we hear the so-called "Inner Voice", if we ever hear?)

Please do write if anyone knows or feels otherwise about “Anahad Naad”.

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© Remigius de Souza, all rights reserved.

Kolis of Mumbai at “THE LAND’S END”

Worship of Boat by Koli Family

It is Narali Punam festival day today.

Kolis – fisher folks – worship their boats on Coconut Day, which falls on August 5, 2009, send their boats to sea, and start fishing.

Sending the boats to sea

During the monsoon, the Kolis are busy mending their nets, making new ones, repairing and painting their country crafts. They moor their boats on sandy shores, covered with leaves of coconut palms, and cultivate vegetables on monsoon rains.

They are one of the original residents of the islands of Mumbai.

The Land's End

The British, and the following governments, bulldozed the pristine creeks, hills, and the sea, with increasing pressures of development economics.

These pressures pushed the Koli communities Mumbai, also, to “THE LAND’S END”

Island City of Mumbai

As if economics and development (of building walls) matter most to the planners and policymakers, instead of life of the People.
Decades after decades in the revised development plans of Mumbai, the Koli Community and their vocation of fishing and boating did not find appropriate colours on
the Mumbai's land-use-plan!
There are millions of Kolis - fisher folks across the country along seashores, riverbanks, lake and resrvoirs: None of them the reach Olympics Events.

Is it because the planners know not any water-use-plan?
Is it as if Kolis live on no-man’s land?

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© Remigius de Souza, all rights reserved.

Desert soil (Poem)

By Remigius de Souza


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© Remigius de Souza, all rights reserved.