From Marx To Climate Change
By M. Rajkumar
22 April, 2009
Countercurrents.org
Leaders of the globe meet at summits – G8, G20 & G5. The context is the ‘global recession’. This is the softy label they have given for the impact of the capitalist economy. The more they meet the greater the drain of public money towards buttressing the crisis ridden globalized corporate economy. Everyone starts believing in the theory of TINA (there is no alternative). That is the sign of success for the decaying capitalism amidst its crises. Can there be any solution? Definitely yes!. And significantly India can withstand it and manage successfully without any further damage. How?
Before answering the question let us look at the way India synchs with the global capitalism. Indian agriculture system is widely dependent on and designed in tune with the natural rhythm of seasons and monsoons. Its irrigation system further depended on the natural hydrogeology and not on the deep aquifers. This may be observed through the chain system of irrigation tanks in most part of the peninsular and other wonderful surface flow harvest structures in the country. This non-manipulative and positive dependency on nature worked well for generations. The non-disruptive mode of agriculture production system formed a good base not only for the localized economy but also nurtured the resource base such as common lands, ground water and forest cover. The only blunder in this system is the caste based discrimination that denied the equitable rights for some sections of the society.
It is in this eco-cohesive agro-production atmosphere, explosion of technology arrived in which was taken for granted by the ruling elite of the country as it had the potential of serving their vested interests. Corporate or farming sector, women or men, human being or natural resource and west or south science is science. However, the application of technology in a given context in a given region should not be or may not be so standardized. As I have pointed out earlier Indian agriculture system has worked well in tune with the agro-ecological zone thus formed the well knit geo-culture. This geo-culture does not need any hi-tech to sustain itself but it was based on the traditional wisdom and knowledge base. When this sustainable system got synchronized with the western, modern and more technology based system it resulted in negative asymmetry not only in terms of environment and ecology but in the livelihoods of millions. Now it has emerged into food crisis situation that challenges the very food sovereignty. While the synchronization benefits the giant MNCs dealing with seeds and petro-chemicals it pushed nearly 200,000 farmers into suicidal trap so far. While the synchronization produced surplus grains and boomed the futures trade, farmers and communities are being pushed to the verge of absolute poverty. The corporate investments have negatively impacted most of the river basins. World Bank just carries on its loan-spree projects in the name of IWRM (Integrated water resource management) that subtly alters most of the Indian river basins so that the traditional agriculture system is modified in such a way to get easily synchronized with corporate driven farming system. This design encouraged not only the farmers but literally every one to depend on the ground water aquifers.
We need to look at this trend in the context of climate change. We have not put our thought and investigation on the link between high level of groundwater withdrawal and climate change. The fossil aquifers have a typical function of keeping the terrestrial climate in tact. It acts like a coolant mechanism so that the terrestrial climate is kept at optimal state. When it is kept at optimal state the dynamic aquifers could help the upper crust retain the capillary capacity of the soil. When the capillary capacity is retained then the earth’s outer surface (environment and ecosystem) could retain its resilience capacity. Once the resilience capacity of the earth is lost then naturally desertification process starts. This trend spearheads the climate change process.
All these intrinsic networking of nature needs to be understood from the age old agriculture practices of India. Unfortunately before that happens, the so called scientists’ think-tank of India designed ‘synchronization projects’ one after another that resulted in this disaster. The bottom-line premise of understanding is that recession and climate change are not some separate phenomena but they are the two faces of the same coin..the coin that has been tossed by the imperialist capitalism. These are the impact of the damaging or destructive economy. We can not either fight or mitigate the impact but we could eliminate the system that usher in the perilous process. This demands some sort of precursor myth breaking exercise among our policy makers and scientific community. They need to stop second fiddling to the advanced industrialized countries in terms of stereotyping some of their floated concepts and theories. They blame our cattle for GHG (green house gases) and thus negate to look at the livelihood aspect of it. They say that it is anthropogenic pressure for the degradation of soil and hide that fact that the hydrogeologies of the upper catchment of the river basins are fully damaged because of their loot of our forest. They have co-opted our universities to chant the mantra of food security through GM crop thus underestimating our potentiality of sustainable farming system.
Still there is ample time to act. Let the scientists of this country collectively work together to design a programme to study the ancient agriculture practice of the indigenous communities and validate those into scientific theory. Sure we could dig out the treasure that could help us fight not only climate change but also the imperialist capitalism which has managed to imperil our sustainable systems. Marx explained, “Capitalist production only develops the techniques and the degree of combination of the social process of production by simultaneously undermining the original sources of all wealth — the soil and the worker”. Let us take this view into serious consideration.
M.Rajkumar ha been in NGO sector for the past 20 years. He has worked as a Team Leader in Karnataka governments’ World Bank aided watershed development project and came out of the project with a critical understanding of its negative impacts. Right now he is working a Programme Officer in a national level NGO called Svaraj in natural resource management projects. He can be reached at [email protected]
