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| Development
Destitution |
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Development
is the buzzword today. There is no dearth
of information on modern development paradigms,
policies and effects across the globe.
The materialistic age of development has
been converted into a market driven digital
age, where the humane component in terms
of feelings and external relationships
is being crystallised in digits, powered
with data and information. The fate of
mankind is being determined by information,
speed and a profit motive.
Ancient Indian visionaries, the Rishis,
perceived human development as that
wherein all were benefited, so they
could live without fear and pain. All
would earn for all, and the benefits
would be shared. Clearly, the emphasis
was on ‘all’ rather than
the ‘self’. Ironically,
modern day development is defined, executed
and benefited by a few who control the
powers of the State, wealth and sophisticated
knowledge. The blind race towards increased
economic growth, per capita income and
per capita energy consumption is resulting
in irreparable human and ecological
loss. As I said earlier, the ones who
posses power benefit the most, and who
are the losers? None other than the
children belonging to economically,
socially and sometimes politically excluded
communities in the Southern hemisphere
and in a few instances in the North
as well.Globally, there are certain accepted
parameters for assessing development,
and just to get a fair idea of where
we stand, I’d like to share the
following facts. Nearly 900 million
people go to bed hungry every day. 1
billion people have a per capita income
of less that $ 1, and half of the world’s
populations earn less than $2 a day.
There are nearly 1 billion illiterate
people in the world, and the same numbers
do not have access to safe drinking
water. There are around 40 million victims
of HIV/ AIDS in the world and 246 million
child labourers across the globe, two-third
of who are engaged under most intolerable
conditions similar to slavery. These
figures are not merely numbers but comment
on the so called ‘development’
that we have achieved so far, and provokes
us to take a critical look at ‘development’
as we understand it today.
The biggest critique of development
as it has progressed over the years,
has been the fact that development policies
and programmes have been and continue
to be planned and implemented in a completely
undemocratic and non participatory manner.
Development and it’s benefits
are meant for the country as a whole
and it’s citizens in particular,
but what is seen in most instances is
that while certain sections of society
benefit from these policies and programmes,
there are certain sections who are completely
left out. Development needs to be inclusive
of all, more so of those groups who
are of higher vulnerability. It is fairly
simple to understand, if the programmes
have failed to address the very basic
issues of hunger, curable diseases and
illiteracy, then they have not been
designed for all. The ruling elite with
whom the decision making powers lie,
use their positions to forward their
own cause leaving a gaping hole in between,
through which millions fall each year.
A participatory process of development
would mean to set in place a process
through which stakeholders influence
and share control over priority setting,
policy-making, resource allocations
and access to public goods and services.
Another problem has been that of short
sighted development programmes or goals,
which have obviously meant that any
progress made will not be sustainable.
To have visison, and anticipate development
needs 20 or even 50 years hence is what
makes a programme sustainable. What
has now happened is that a flurry of
‘quick fix’ programmes has
led to serious environmental damage
and ecological imbalance. In the haste
of growth which is economically oriented,
we have forgotten to conserve our very
limited reserve of natural resources.
We need to preserve our natural resources
and ecosystems on which we and our future
generations depend. Development should
include economic growth with environmental
protection and each should reinforce
the other. Other problems that arise due to short
sightedness are those of migration and
displacement of people. Largely, strengthening
industry or infrastructure is prioritised
in development programmes rather than
agriculture or small scale industries,
leading to inadequate economic opportunities
in places of origin. What happens in
the process has a two-fold effect. On
the one hand it is leading to a decline
in traditional forms of livelihood;
as these are not upgraded and made contemporary
to fit in with changing needs which
makes them redundant and therefore do
not present a viable option of livelihood
for people. The second is that of large
scale labour force migration. In the
process complex problems related to
migrant workers, urban slum settlements
with inadequate facilities for education,
health and employment arise, leading
to a whole new cycle of poverty.
Trafficking
also becomes a major issue in these
circumstances, as women and children
being vulnerable and worst affected
by problems of displacement, are easily
victimised. We need to understand that
an increase in the well being of the
poor will take place only with the protection
and enhancement of their environmental,
social and skill related assets, and
any development plans made need to be
futuristic and keeping these factors
in mind. Development today, has become largely
materialistic in nature, with the rich
focussing on getting richer, and countries
measuring their growth by their GDP.
Why is it, that indicators pertaining
to education and health for economically
and socially excluded segments of society
are not considered as important and
the governments do not see these areas
of human potential development as critical?
The fact that this growth might not
be, and in most cases is not a mirror
of the entire population in a country
is conveniently forgotten. A good example
is that of the State of Andhra Pradesh
in India. While a former Chief Minister
was being lauded as one of the most
forward thinking leaders of the nation,
a visionary who was taking his State
to new heights in terms of technology
and growth, thousands of farmers in
the same state were quietly putting
an end to their lives. In a country
like India, which is primarily an agrarian
economy, farmers ending their lives
in despair due to poverty shows nothing
but the apathy of the ruling class towards
them. And though I give this example,
the same is true of most of the developing
and developed economies across the world.
Unfortunately, the biggest victims
of such skewed development are invariably
children. The vicious cycle of poverty,
illiteracy and child labour is one that
millions of children are unable to break
free from. In India itself, there are
several cases of the presence of child
labour, whose benefits are accrued by
big companies at the cost of the health,
education, physical and mental development
of these children. Several cases of
child abuse and exploitation have been
brought to light through the efforts
of civil society organizations, human
rights groups and other social workers.
Some of these children have been released
from bondage with the support of the
National Human Rights Commission. But
several cases still exist, where children
are working in stone quarries in brick
kilns, cottage industries and even in
other hazardous occupations. Domestic
child labour, one of the worst forms
of child slavery, is on the rise in
cities and is mostly invisible. Most
of such children belong to families
who are displaced or have migrated,
underemployed or underpaid, are landless
or have lost their traditional source
of livelihood, development destitutes
or are surviving on the fringes of development.
These are problems that exists the world
over.
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A group of
BBA activists and other supporters
were informed by social activists
that many labourers from Chattisgarh
were being kept in captivity
as bonded labourers for building
a hotel in Connought Place.
Their children were also being
forced to work along with their
parents. While looking into
this incident, we came across
a woman in dire need of treatment
and medication. She had been
working at the construction
site, carrying bricks on her
head up 10 or 11 stories in
an advanced stage of pregnancy.
She had an accident at the site
while working which resulted
in an immediate miscarriage
of the baby. She was seriously
ill but nobody, including the
contractor was attending to
her.
The
same women had earlier lost her
husband while working at the same
construction site in another accident.
The child she lost had been his.
This case was examined by our
organization and some support
was provided to her.
After
many years we met her near the
same place where now a hotel stood
in place of the construction.
She had along with her, her elder
son, and had come to show him
the place of his father’s
death. This time she was working
for other contractor. The guard
at the hotel pushed her away and
she had lost her way. She was
weeping and said “I sacrificed
my husband and child for building
this hotel and now that I wanted
to show my son the place where
his father was killed, I was not
even allowed to do that. This
is the price of construction of
this hotel for me”. We published
this story in JANSATA, a leading
local daily, that time as an example
of the cost of so called development.
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It
is often seen, that in those areas where
land reforms have not been implemented,
child labour has increased. This is primarily
due to the inequal land holdings that
exist, and it is the children whose parents
do not own land that are forced into child
labour. Similarly, in those areas, where
minimum wages are not guaranteed, the
incidence of child labour is high. Looking
at some of the fall outs of developments,
there are many areas which have suffered
serious ecological damages, such as deforestation
in the name of construction of highways
or dams. Here too, children are the worst
affected by the displacement that is caused.
The adults, having to give up their traditional
source of livelihood, send the children
out to work, who are forced to give up
their education and support the families.
Bihar for instance, has been seeing terrible
floods for the last couple of years, and
hundreds of families are displaced due
to this and many children are orphaned,
leaving them in an extremely vulnerable
position susceptible to exploitation.
Sometimes, these so called natural disasters
like drought and floods are actually man
made, brought about by anti people, or
anti nature ‘development’
oriented construction.
Tribals
and Dalits, are perhaps the most vulnerable
groups, especially the children and
women from these communities. Forest
policies in an effort to keep up with
global trends; end up destroying their
natural habitat and means of livelihood.
Women and children, especially girls
are worst affected, because the responsibility
for domestic chores rests with them
and they are forced to travel long distances
and endure many hardships to fetch water
and wood for fuel as well as graze their
cattle, which becomes a big obstacle
in their schooling.
Any
adverse effect of development, we see
affects children and puts a halt to
them accessing their basic rights. Development
does not just mean physical development,
but holistic development of the child,
which must ensure that they able to
access all their rights. The perspective
of development should be far-sighted
and child- centred and the aim should
be preservation of ecology, culture,
physical environment and equity in sharing
the fruits of development. If development
policies are framed keeping children
in mind, they automatically move away
from being short term objectives and
gains to being long term visions and
goals. Development policies must prioritise
children’s education, investment
on their health, and investment on social
security. It is the responsibility of
the state to provide these investments.
Let
us take the example of agricultural
trade as a case in point of structural
deficit. Agriculture is often the economic
driving force in developing countries.
However, significant agricultural subsidies
provided by developed countries, makes
it impossible for farmers of developing
countries to offer competitive pricing
of their products thereby forcing them
to remain in conditions of poverty.
We need to ensure that globalisation
allows for developing countries to enhance
their skills and capacity to participate
in the global marketplace on an equal
footing, so that they can maximize their
opportunities in the global agricultural
marketplace. Issues related to land
ownership and it’s inequitable
distribution, minimum wages and the
inability of people to have access to
even their basic minimum due, legal
structures, and the fact that it is
only the rich who are able to fight
for their rights, all reflect the structural
deficits that globalisation perpetuates.
Globalisation
is furthering a world integrated into
a single capitalist mode which is trans-national,
rather than national and international
in character. It includes the trans-nationalisation
of classes and the accelerated division
of all humanity into just two classes
– global capitalists and global
labour. Globalisation therefore has
profound consequences for each nation
of the world system. Productive structures
in each nation are reorganised keeping
in mind the new international division
of labour, characterised by the concentration
or polarisation of finances, services,
technology and knowledge in the North,
and the labour-intensive phases of globalised
production in the South. The result
is a very distinct polarisation of the
world. Politically too, power is seen
to be concentrated in one, or maybe
a group of countries, which basically
is a manifestation of their economic
powers, and the results are clearly
visible in the invasion of Iraq by America.
The
homogenisation of culture which is taking
place is destroying the diversity of
culture, traditional values and systems.
It affects lifestyles, livelihood patterns,
agriculture and even food habits. Globalisation
has entered and affected almost all
aspects of our lives, and we need to
find a way to ensure that it’s
benefits accrue to all sections of society.
The time has come for all well meaning
and educated people to come together
in a unified force and demystify knowledge
and take it among the masses. At present,
no synergised efforts are being made
in the direction of development. To
fulfil our objectives, we have to form
coalitions and develop alliance building
processes to promote the cause of children
and marginalised groups in a systematic
manner. Their problems have to be addressed
in totality and cannot be resolved in
isolation.
Thank
you.
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