‘Development’ at uncommon cost

Some years ago, during an argument on the nature of 'development', a friend and fine Marxist academic asked:  "Surely, other things being equal, one would prefer a high growth rate over a low rate of economic growth?" I have for years now veered towards the latter. In fact I would   argue for 'zero growth' as some do except that I am not sure zero growth is possible under capitalism. But in retrospect, it is the assumption itself in his question is flawed:  that "other things" can be 'equal' between these two growth trajectories. A high growth trajectory – as India has experienced over the last 15 years – implies:  a high degree of inequality; a more reckless and wasteful consumption of scarce resources and a greater rate of displacement of the poor from their lands and livelihoods. It entails production choices that are driven by and pander to the tastes of elite urban consumers and the forced takeover of common resources forest lands, water, grazing lands, coastal land and fisheries, etc that are used by local communities, especially the poor- by corporate entities or by the central/state governments. You cannot de-link a high growth trajectory from this. As Communities, Commons & Corporations, the book under review, makes explicit, "The link between environmental destruction, loss of people's rights over the commons and economic growth is not often realized".

Communities, Commons and Corporations is the third major work by Perspectives, a non-funded organization of students and teachers at Delhi University whose task, they state, is "to document the lives and struggles of people on the margins of law and society". Perspectives first published Abandoned: Development and Displacement (2007), which argued that the different kinds of displacement in India are an inevitable part of the model of development being pursued. Their second major work, Harvesting Despair: Agrarian Crisis in India (2009), analysed how the widening agrarian crisis is a conscious and inevitable result of state policy. The book currently under review (2012) shows empirically and conceptually how the dominant growth pattern in India has meant a forced alienation from their commons for a section of the poor. Each work is marked by a wealth of detail based on fact-finding trips to different regions of the country, on relevant secondary literature, and by argument that is both nuanced yet accessible. Taken together, these three works constitute a devastating critique of the current model of development in India.

Commons taken from common man

The current book under review, in brief. Based on field visits to Harda district (Madhya Pradesh) and Kutch (coastal Gujarat), the book begins by describing how the dependence of the local poor on the commons is getting undermined, by the state in MP, and by the entry of large private industry in coastal Gujarat. In Harda, the Perspectives team found an inherent contradiction in the way the Forest Department views the forests – as a source of revenue, and the adivasis and other traditional forest dwellers as 'encroachers', (a view widely held by Forest Departments in most parts of the country) – and how local people see forests – as a source of life, of water, of major and minor forest produce and a part of their religious beliefs. The regular harassment and repression by the state government that is a consequence of these clashing worldviews has been reduced only to a degree by the locals organizing themselves under the Shramik Adivasi Sangathan, an organization of indigenous people and workers active in parts of Madhya Pradesh, whose activists have themselves faced considerable brutality. Perspectives also critiques the Joint Forest Management Programme, and the implementation of the Forest Rights Act in Harda district, the former for fragmenting the community and the latter for its capacity to exclude those deemed to be ineligible under the Act.

In the case of Kutch, the takeover of the commons – fisheries, inland water systems, etc – is of more recent vintage, a direct consequence of the neo-liberal industrialization of the last twenty years. Fisher people and pastoralists have suffered a loss of grazing lands, decline in fish catch due to oceanic pollution and other industrial causes, loss of access to creeks that have been artificially dried up, the destruction of mangroves as a consequence of the setting up of Special Economic Zones, thermal power projects and ports by corporate entities such as the Adani Group. It bears adding here that this violent process of corporate takeover is unfolding in coastal areas all over India. One reason this book is significant is in its foregrounding the importance of the commons for the well-being of millions in this country. To some this might seem a commonplace, a stating of the obvious. But at a time when everything – water, roads, health care, crop seeds, electricity, rivers, the atmosphere, knowledge and much else – is being privatized and sold, and many people, particularly we who live in urban metropolises, have lost our sense of the commons, this bears reiterating. It also reminds us how central it is to our own lives, in our dependence on groundwater, a river, our right to clean air, forest produce, etc. One would have preferred an elaboration of the social structure in Harda. Two, it's surprising that the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act is not discussed in the report at all, given its significance. Three, their linking the Forest Rights Act to exclusion and enclosure, and the selling of carbon credits under the carbon offset scheme REDD+ is interesting, but remains to be seen empirically.

Colonial roots of iniquity

The book locates the current process of takeover of the commons in our colonized past, in British reconfiguration of Indian agriculture, artisanal occupations and the nature of forest cover, all of which was driven by the need for taxation revenue, propping up industry in England and the demand for timber, particularly for the expanding rail network. Current land acquisition derives from colonial law, in particular from the notion of 'eminent domain' – which gave the state the power to take over private and commons land, with the limited caveat that it was for 'public use' – and from the idea that private property was for the larger good, a notion antithetical to people's collective control over and access to the commons.