It is the poor one who saves: Middle-class rich boy that I was, I never would have thought that it would be the poor who would be my salvation. Owing to the upbringing I had received at my mother’s hands, as well as the attitude of the church I had been attending up until that time, I had always thought that it was we rich and well-to-do who would be the ones to rescue the poor. The latter depended on us, it seemed, and our generosity was their salvation. Without us they would have been destined to death. What blindness was ours and mine! The truth was just the contrary…It was the poor who would be my salvation, and not I theirs. It was they who would put me back on my feet.

— Francis of Assisi

The poverty of our century is unlike that of any other.  It is not, as poverty was before, the result of natural scarcity, but of a set of priorities imposed upon the rest of the world by the rich. Consequently, the modern poor are not pitied…but written off as trash. The twentieth-century consumer economy has produced the first culture for which a beggar is a reminder of nothing.

— John Berger

The essence of the statement of Francis of Assisi is very apt to the issue of “clinical trials and poor”, although he made it in a different context. John Berger’s statement provides the reason for using poor and vulnerable as “guinea pigs” for clinical trials.

Using poor and vulnerable for clinical trials is nothing new. This has been going on for a long time.

The US covert clinical trials on the poor and vulnerable in Guatemala came to light in 2010 after Wellesley College professor Susan Reverby stumbled upon archived documents outlining the experiment led by the US doctor John Cutler during 1946-1948. The Guatemalan study, which was never published, was interested in whether penicillin could be used not only as a cure of venereal diseases but also as a prophylaxis (to prevent the disease from spreading). Nearly 5500 people were subjected to diagnostic testing and more than 1300, including Guatemalan soldiers, prisoners, commercial sex workers and mental patients, were exposed to syphilis by human contact or inoculations.

Initially the researchers infected female Guatemalan commercial sex workers with gonorrhea or syphilis, and then encouraged them to have unprotected sex with soldiers or prison inmates. Neither were subjects told what the purpose of the research was nor were they warned of its potentially fatal consequences. When the researchers couldn’t create enough infection through commercial sex workers, they started to do inoculations.

Some of the experiments were shocking. For example, seven women with epilepsy, who were in Home for the Insane, were injected with syphilis below the back of the skull. Another female syphilis patient was infected with gonorrhea in her eyes and elsewhere, in order to see the impact of an additional infection. Six months later she died.

Within the group that was subjected to clinical trials there were 83 deaths, according to Stephen Hauser, a member of US presidential commission. “It was not an accident that this happened in Guatemala,” commission president Amy Gutmann said, “Some of the people involved (in the research) said we could not do this in our own country.” The US researchers “systematically failed to act in accordance with minimal respect for human rights and morality in conduct of research,” Gutmann said, citing “substantial evidence” of an attempted cover up.

The Guatemalan president Alvaro Colom has called these experiments conducted by the US National Institutes of Health “crimes against humanity”. The Guatemala Study nauseated ethicists on multiple levels. Beyond infecting subjects with terrible disease, it was clear that people in the study did not understand what was being done to them or were not able to give their consent. Scientists showed no interest in the rights of the subjects of research. Nuremberg Code says doing this kind of research on people who cannot give informed consent is immoral and a crime against humanity.

Many US medical researchers, however, considered people like prisoners, mental patients and poor African Americans (i.e. poor people of different ethnicity) not fully human. So they felt that it was legitimate to experiment on these sections of people who did not have full rights in society. So, for American scientists the question of violation of human rights did not arise. In a federally funded study in 1942 male patients at a state insane asylum in Ypsilanti, Michigan, were injected experimental flu vaccine and then exposed them to flu several months later. Some of the men were not able to describe their symptoms, raising questions about how well they understood what was being done to them. According to a report, the test subjects were “senile and debilitated”.

In another federally funded study in the 1940s, Dr. W. Paul Havens, a World Health Organisation expert on viral diseases, exposed men to hepatitis in a series of experiments, including one using mental patients from mental institutions in Middletown and Norwich, Connecticut.

From 1963 to 1966, researchers intentionally gave hepatitis to mentally retarded children housed at the Willowbrook State School in Staten Island, New York, in an attempt to track the development of the viral infection and to test gamma globulin against it. According to a report, parents were told that the only way their child could be admitted to Willowbrook was through the hepatitis unit.

For a study in 1957, when the Asian flu epidemic was spreading, US government researchers sprayed the virus in the noses of 23 inmates at Patuxent prison in Jessup, Maryland, to compare their reactions to those of 32 virus exposed inmates who had been given a new vaccine.

Conducting medical experiments on prisoners increased with the huge growth in the US pharmaceutical and health care industries in the late 1940s and 1950s. By the 1960s, at least half the states allowed prisoners to be used as medical “guinea pigs”. In the congressional hearings in 1973, pharmaceutical industry officials acknowledged they were using prisoners for testing because they were cheaper than chimpanzees.

As the supply of prisoners and mental patients dried up, and regulations in the industrially developed countries have been made more stringent due to public outcry, medical researchers of these countries looked to countries where clinical trials could be done more cheaply with fewer or virtually nonexistent regulations, easy availability of more number of poor and vulnerable people, and favourable epidemiological conditions. The weakness of local health care structures generates a docile patient pool, making the process easier.

As recently as 1990, according to the inspector general of the Department of Health and Human Services, US, a mere 271 trials were being conducted in foreign countries of drugs intended for American use. By 2008 the number had risen to 6485 – an increase of more than 2000%. A database being compiled by the National Institutes of Health has identified 58788 such trials in 173 countries outside the US since 2000. In 2008 alone, according to the inspector general’s report, 80% of the applications submitted to the FDA for new drugs contained data from foreign clinical trials. Increasingly, the pharmaceutical companies are doing 100% of their testing in other countries. The inspector general found that the 20 largest US based companies now conducted “one-third of their clinical trials exclusively at foreign sites.”

One of the favoured destinations for clinical trials is India, due to its appealing advantages such as its widely spoken English, skilled workforce, established medical infrastructure, favourable regulatory environment, minimum ethical oversight, shorter patient recruitment time and cost effectiveness. India has a vast pool of patients, and among them many are “treatment naïve” meaning they have never taken any medication for their illness. This is very important for clinical trials, because it lowers the risk of unforeseen drug interactions and avoids the troublesome process of weaning patients off one medication and onto another.

Enticed by a $30 billion lucrative business of clinical trials Indian government is aggressively scrambling to catch Big Pharma’s eye. By making favourable policy changes for clinical trials by foreign companies, India, the hub of outsourced labour, is positioning itself in a newly lucrative role: “guinea pig” to the world.

In 2005 the Indian government took a more controversial step, amending a long-standing law that limited the kind of trials that foreign pharmaceutical companies could conduct. That law allowed companies to test drugs on Indian patients only after the drugs had been proven safe in trials conducted in the country of origin. In January 2005 the government threw out that constraint. It started improving staff and infrastructure, and making regulatory changes to speed up processing of applications. Public hospitals are being promoted as clinical trial sites. Mostly it is the poor, who cannot afford to go to private hospitals, who make use of the services of public hospitals. This makes them vulnerable to the enticement of drug trials, as the doctor-patient relationship in India is unique. They may be easily influenced by the doctor’s advice. Patients may not question their doctor’s judgment. They may also believe that refusal to follow the doctor’s advice to enter a trial would affect their access to medical care. So there is scope for a direct conflict of interest, especially if physicians are paid recruitment fees and all-expenses paid conferences abroad trips as a reward for recruiting their patients into trials. At the same time, by conducting the clinical trials, the under-resourced public hospitals gain some equipment and money.

Dr. Samiran Nundy, former editor of the Indian Journal of Medical Ethics, expressed doubt about the effect of the Indian government’s decision to relax the laws governing drug trials by foreign companies. He said the decision will increase the number of large scale drug trials conducted in India and put more patients at risk of exploitation. “Too many researchers fail to declare conflicts of interest, and it is only too easy to buy up poor illiterate patients, who are unable to give truly informed consent, and recruit them to trials which are of little or no benefit to them and which fail to safeguard their interests,” he said.

The growth of the clinical-trial industry in India needs to be seen within the social and economic context of the country. According to the United Nations, 40 percent of people in India are illiterate. Illiteracy puts many at risk not knowing whether the treatment their doctor is prescribing is a regular treatment or a part of a clinical trial. Moreover, doctors are respected to the point of being revered. So the likelihood of a poor person questioning their doctor about a specific treatment is low.

With the onset of neoliberalism the gap between rich and poor in India is widening. About 830 million people live on less than 20 rupees a day. Poverty forces some to enroll in clinical trials as a way to make a living. Faced with the fewest options, poor patients are most likely to try or be forcibly volunteered for risky new treatments due to lack of basic, affordable health care. Dr. Kalantri bemoans what he sees as skewed clinical trial demographics. “Ninety percent of patients being recruited in India are poor,” he says, “That’s the reality. Trials enroll very few patients who are rich, literate and capable of asking awkward questions.” As a result the poor and illiterate bear the consequences of the experiments of new drugs.

In a way the policies of the Indian government are also contributing to the fate of the poor, and facilitating clinical trials in public hospitals. For more than a decade, government policy has been to reduce public support for health care services, and these services are under-resourced. Health economists have pointed out that only 15% of the 1500 billion rupees spent in the health sector in India comes from the government. 4% comes from social insurance and 1% from private insurance companies. The remaining 80% is spent by individuals using private services and without insurance. Two-thirds of health care users bear 100% of their health care expenses. 70% of these health care users are poor.

In August 2008, it was reported that 49 babies below the age of 12 months have died at India’s best known medical institute, the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS). The babies have died since January 2006, following the administration of new drugs and therapies under clinical trials. According to the information obtained under the Right to Information Act by Rahul Verma of an NGO called the Uday Foundation for Congenital Defects and Rare Blood Groups, 4142 babies were used for clinical trials conducted by the Department of Pediatrics since 1st January 2006, out of which 2728 babies were under one year of age. In an interview published in Delhi based newspaper MetroNow on 22 August 2008 Dr. Veena Kalra, former HOD-Pediatrics, AIIMS, stated that she did not rule out the possibility that the deaths of 49 babies in clinical trials and parents belonging to economically weaker sections could be true. She took voluntary retirement in 2008. That means the majority of these clinical trials happened when she was the HOD of the pediatric department.

Two of the trial drugs – olmesartan and valsartan, meant for reducing blood pressure – have never been tried on patients below the age of 18 years, according to Dr. Chandra Gulhati, editor of the Monthly Index of Medical Specialities.

In 2010 an investigation by a women’s health rights group, SAMA, exposed gross ethical violations of a study, where nearly 23,500 tribal girls between ages of 10-14 years in Andhra Pradesh and Gujarat were given the Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) vaccine that prevents cervical cancer. The clinical trials were carried out by an international NGO, the Program for Appropriate Technology and Health (PATH), in collaboration with the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) and the governments of Andhra Pradesh and Gujarat. Most of the tribal girls, who were used as “guinea pigs”, were staying in government hostels for tribal students. In Andhra Pradesh nearly 2800 consent forms were signed by either a hostel warden or a headmaster. The fact that teachers played a “primary role” in explaining and “obtaining consent” meant that the consent was obtained under coercion. The investigation by SAMA revealed some disturbing facts. Given their background of poverty and under-nourishment, the tribal girls were given vaccine. Moreover, the information brochure provided to them was in English. So neither they nor the health worker administering the vaccine to them could read and understand. This raises the ethical question of obtaining “informed consent” from these tribal girls or their parents. Doing this kind of research on people who cannot give informed consent is immoral and a crime against humanity.

The most important question is, what criteria did the researchers apply to select tribal girls for the study? Is it their poverty, illiteracy (of their parents) and vulnerability that drove the researchers, with an active complicity of the Indian government and the health officials, to conduct risky clinical trials on these poor tribal people? Because their poverty desist them from taking any legal action against the multinational companies and their collaborators such as the central and state governments and ICMR, if the clinical trials consume their life. This is what happened to the loved ones of the seven girls who died after receiving the vaccine. Their parents, knowing full well that their children died only after receiving the vaccine, could only grieve for their children and for their helplessness to demand justice. (Watch the documentary produced by Zeina Awad, a reporter for Al Jazeera’s “Fault Lines” programme. Her report, “Outsourced: Clinical Trials Overseas,” aired on Al Jazeera English).

When the very government, which is supposed to look after the welfare of its citizens and protect the weak and vulnerable from the vultures like pharmaceutical companies, colludes with profit-driven multinational companies, one can imagine the plight of marginalised sections like tribals in India.

SAMA’s exposure of the ethical violations of the clinical trials, followed by the public outcry, forced the Indian central government to set up an inquiry committee in order to pacify the public, but not to do anything that would hurt the lucrative clinical trials business or antagonise multinational pharmaceutical companies. For the government, pharmaceutical companies and researchers, money is more important than the lives of poor people. They don’t mind profiting at the expense of the health and life of poor tribal girls. The committee did not indict either the drug company or the organisation that conducted the study. The inquiry concluded that the seven deaths were “most probably unrelated to the vaccine” and “the cause of death in all the cases cannot be established with certainty.” It observed “several minor deficiencies in the planning and conduct of the study”. But the reality is these “minor deficiencies” caused the death of seven innocent tribal students. The “minor deficiencies” include no proper monitoring of the health of these girls for adverse effects of the drug.

According to Menaka Gandhi, a member of the Indian parliament, there is a growing number of clinical trial deaths – 137 deaths in 2007, 288 in 2008 and 637 in 2009. Imagine the uproar if so many clinical trial deaths happened in America or Europe. This can happen only elsewhere as a result of the drug trials conducted by the American and European pharmaceutical companies.

According to an investigation, pharmaceutical companies conducting clinical trials in India have not compensated for the clinical trial deaths. Of 671 deaths that were reported in 2010, there is evidence that compensation was paid in just three cases. The Indian health ministry has asked 44 pharmaceutical companies, including Eli Lilly, Novartis, Pfizer, Bayer, Merck, Johnson & Johnson and Sanofi-Aventis, to explain why they have not paid compensation. For example, data compiled by the ministry show there were 152 deaths reported during Sanofi trials and 138 in Bayer trials. What is interesting is the answer given by the companies or the researchers whenever clinical trial deaths happened. A Novartis spokesperson told that its clinical trial investigation found that deaths were not caused by the trial drug, but instead due to the progression of underlying diseases. So compensation was not paid in such cases. Other pharmaceutical companies also offered similar argument. For the deaths of 49 babies, AIIMS presented similar defense, saying that no death was “attributable to the study treatments used” and “the deaths were due to the natural history of the severe disease that the children suffered from.” This is the conclusion also of the inquiry committee set up by the Indian central government on the deaths of the vaccine for cervical cancer: “(The seven deaths were) most probably unrelated to the vaccine…(and) the cause of death in all the cases cannot be established with certainty.”

In this light, outsourcing drug trials to a country where decent medical care is scarce and cost of medicine is beyond the reach of the poor, is just the globalization and continuation of the same old equation – poor and vulnerable of different ethnicity are not fully human, and so can be used as “guinea pigs” for clinical trials to extend life of the rich, and to produce more profits for the pharmaceutical companies and the facilitators like government policy-makers and medical professionals at the expense of the health and life of the poor (the same attitude may be seen even in the past and present American and European imperial wars). India is able to provide significant cost savings of 50-60% for clinical trials. No wonder the clinical trials market in India has been expanding at an astounding 36% annually from 2006-07 to 2010-11, according to a study conducted by the Centre for Studies in Ethics and Rights, Mumbai. The study, however, shows that the increase in clinical trials has no correlation to the disease scenario in the country. Most trials are of relatively expensive drugs offering only marginal benefit over existing ones. 13.4% of drug trials is for cancer drugs, although cancer is not among the top ten killers in India. But it is among the top ten in industrially developed countries. According to the study, trials on perinatal conditions, a major cause for deaths in India, constitute just 2.9%. Only 16 out of 1078 drug trials were on lower respiratory tract infections, although they are among the biggest killers both in India and other developing countries, the study observes.

What the majority of Indians need is basic, affordable health care and nutrition. In India Article 21 of Fundamental Rights assures the right to live with dignity. The state is under a constitutional obligation to see that there is no violation of the fundamental right of any person, particularly when she/he belongs to weaker sections of the society, either by failing to provide the basic health care and nutrition, or by facilitating (or colluding with) vultures like pharmaceutical companies to exploit marginalised people in the society.

Prosperity, however, is not synonymous with wealth or income. Greater prosperity is not the same as economic growth or rise in income. “To prosper” (from Latin word prosperus) means “to flourish”, “to enjoy vigorous and healthy growth”. Prosperity means to flourish physically, psychologically, socially and spiritually. It does not mean to succeed in material terms or to be successful financially. Although wealth is an element in prosperity, material wealth does not necessarily indicate a happy and fulfilled life, and emotional and spiritual wellbeing. Most of the time the expensive material things we surround ourselves with convey a void in life and a craving for acceptance, recognition and identity − the basic human needs. One may have all the money, yet live with the nagging feeling of emptiness, restlessness and even boredom. A void that can not be filled with wealth and material things.

But in the present day highly unequal societies the importance of income and wealth in prosperity or wellbeing is played out through relative effects. Income disparities indicate status differences. So what matters is having more income and wealth than those around us. At times it gives power and authority. Income and wealth also give access to “status goods” that is very important in establishing one’s social standing. Because in unequal societies status competition is intense and we are sensitive to how we are perceived or judged by others. Robert Frank’s books Luxury Fever or Falling Behind show how consumption is about status competition. People spend thousands of rupees on accessories such as handbags and sunglasses with the right labels to make statements about themselves. It is not that they want to spend so much of money on mere “things.” Money is spent on the value attached to some of the consumer goods in society. Because we experience ourselves through each other’s eyes. That is the reason for right labels, designer clothes, latest model cars and branded accessories. Consumer goods are not mere stuff, but “language” in social relationships. Through things we convey with one another our identity, social status, social affiliation and feelings – through giving and receiving gifts − for one another. Consumer goods play a role in our lives that goes way beyond their material functionality. That is why they continue to captivate us even beyond the point of usefulness.

Consumerism is powerful. We continue to invent or reinvent our social identity and status through accumulation of latest “status goods” that have arrived in market. Novelty carries with it important information about status. Companies continue to stuff market with new “status goods” and promote them by hiring popular brand ambassadors to entice consumers to emulate these popular figures in order to reposition themselves on the social ladder. Thus, there is a direct correlation between restless desire for new consumer goods and their continual production by corporate companies. The relentless pursuit for novelty creates anxiety, which in turn affects physical, psychological and spiritual wellbeing.

Consumerism interferes with the workings of society by replacing the normal common sense desire for an adequate supply of life’s necessities, community life, a stable family and healthy relationships with an artificial ongoing and insatiable quest for things and the money to buy them, with little regard for the true utility of what is bought. An intended consequence of this, promoted by those who profit from consumerism, is to accelerate the discarding of the old, either because of lack of durability or a change in fashion. This makes people to work for long hours to have more income to place themselves in a conspicuous position in the social hierarchy through acquiring latest consumer appliances, accessories and fashions. This is a vicious cycle. People have less time because they work more. They work more because they want more to maintain a higher standard of living. That means, as a society we are choosing MONEY over TIME. It creates anxiety and stress, and undermines physical and mental health and family relationships. Spending time with spouse and children, and having rest and relaxation become secondary to the chasing of mirage called social status and identity in a consumer society. The moment we think we have got it, entrepreneur invents new consumer goods and with that the social identity and status will change. We will never arrive there in our life time, because it is a MIRAGE.

The wisdom of the old says, “I made great works; I built houses, and planted vineyards for myself; I made myself gardens and parks, and planted in them all kinds of fruit trees. I made myself pools from which to water the forest of growing trees. I bought male and female slaves, and had slaves who were born in my house; I also had great possessions of herds and flocks, more than any who had been before me in Jerusalem. I also gathered for myself silver and gold and the treasure of kings and of provinces; I got singers, both men and women, and delights of the flesh, and many concubines. So I became great…” (Ecclesiastes 2.4-9). He asks, “What do people gain from all the toil at which they toil under the sun?” and declares that it is like “a chasing after the wind” (Ecclesiastes 1.2; 2.11).

Consumerism numbs us and we live in delusion that it gives “fruits of life” − fruits that satisfy basic human needs and sustain human life. When common sense prevails we will realize what all important things we have lost in life like the joy of spending time with spouse, children and friends, and physical and mental health in rest and relaxation.

Surely material goods are essential to meet our basic needs: food, clothing and shelter. In order to buy food, clothing, housing and other basic needs money is required. However, once a person’s basic needs are met, money takes on a different meaning. Money brings happiness only insofar as it lifts people out of poverty. Once that level is crossed, the link between material wealth and wellbeing and happiness is very thin. Psychological studies show that more income and more consumer goods do not lead to lasting gains in our sense of wellbeing or satisfaction in our life. Psychologist Tim Kasser highlights what he calls the high price of materialism. According to him, materialistic values such as popularity, image and financial success are psychologically opposed to intrinsic values like – self-acceptance, affiliation and a sense of belonging to a community. He further says that people with higher intrinsic values are happier than those with materialistic values.

Take, for example, the people of the Scandinavian countries: Sweden and Denmark. The people of these countries have consistently been found to be among the happiest in the world. According to the same studies the people of Costa Rica are happier that the Scandinavians, although the per capita gross domestic product (GDP) of Costa Rica is only one-fourth that of Sweden and Denmark.

Similarly, Guatemalans are happier than those of the United States, despite its low income level than that of the latter. So there is hardly any correlation between levels of wealth and levels of happiness and wellbeing, once poverty level is crossed. Economic growth and higher incomes in the US are supposed to deliver prosperity − that, at least, is the conventional wisdom. But the ground reality does not support the conventional view. In the US, the economic super power, the rates of depression, obesity, heart attacks, divorces, and suicides have skyrocketed. Antidepressants are now the most commonly prescribed drugs. The nation consumes two-thirds of the global market for drugs prescribed to combat chronic sadness and hopelessness. One study found that today the average American child experiences higher levels of anxiety than did the average child under psychiatric care in the 1950s.

After analyzing more than 150 studies on wealth and happiness, Diener and Martin Seligman, two of the world’s top experts on the science of happiness, wrote: 
”Although economic output has risen steeply over the past decades, there has been no rise in life satisfaction… and there has been a substantial increase in depression and distrust.”
Inequality affects our ability to trust and our sense that we are part of a community. Thus, it affects social relations, and promotes individualism and self-centeredness. People become insensitive to the needs of others. “Inequality takes the form of dominance hierarchies, based on power and coercion and privileged access to resources…That’s why power, status and wealth all go together at the top and why powerlessness, hunger and poverty go together at the bottom.”

In egalitarian societies, where there is a strong community life, there is more trust, caring, sharing and people give higher priority to common good. They experience greater joy and satisfaction when they share and work together for common good. In such societies there is less importance to social status, and so less positional competition. That means, less importance for “status goods”. This reduces anxiety, and enhances the quality of life. This is what prosperity means. Tim Jackson, Economics Commissioner, Sustainable Development Commission, says, “Prosperity goes beyond material pleasures. It transcends material concerns. It resides in the quality of our lives and in the health and happiness of our families. It is present in the strength of our relationships and our trust in the community. It is evidenced by our satisfaction at work and our sense of shared meaning and purpose. It hangs on our potential to participate fully in the life of society. Prosperity consists in our ability to flourish as human beings – within the ecological limits of a finite planet.”¹

1. Tim Jackson, Prosperity without Growth: The Transition to a Sustainable Economy. The Sustainable Development Commission, March 2009.

It is true that wealthy people throughout the world are in some way involved in philanthropic activities. Gates foundation, the richest charity in the world with an annual income equal to that of a small country, has undoubtedly been helping a lot of people around the world. However, philanthropy on the scale we see now can only exist in a fundamentally unequal society where a small minority of businessmen owns or controls large parts of the productive forces entitling them to staggering profits. According to the 2011 annual report of the business magazine Forbes there are 1210 individuals with a net value of $1 billion dollars (or more). Their total net worth is $4.5 trillion dollars, greater than the combined worth of 4 billion people in the world. The three richest people in the world control more wealth than the combined wealth of the poorest 48 countries. The wealthiest 1% of the global population own 43% of global assets. The richest 10% of the world own 83% of global assets. The current concentration of wealth in a few hands exceeds any previous period in history.

The US has the most billionaires in the world (413). The net worth of Bill Gates is $56 billion and that of Warren Buffet $50 billion. In 1976 the top 1% of Americans held 20% of the total wealth of the US, whereas in 2011 they control 40% of total wealth. 80% of Americans own only 15% of the wealth. That means, 20% of Americans control 85% of total wealth.
India’s high economic growth over the past decade and the upsurge in billionaires upward to 55 by 2011 are linked to the neo-liberal policies of deregulation, privatisation and globalisation, which have concentrated wealth in the hands of a few, undermined small scale producers and dispossessed tens of millions of tribals, poor and small scale farmers. According to the Arjun Sengupta Committee, about 77% of Indians live on less than Rs. 20 a day.

The huge inequality reflects the stark differences in wealth between a handful of rich and the vast struggling masses. Does it mean that the accumulation of unimaginable amounts of wealth is intertwined with the appalling poverty of billions of people? At least this is what the annual budgets of many countries convey. Take, for example, the US budget proposal for 2012 that cuts more than $5.8 trillion in government spending over the next decade, meaning cuts on social spending which affects the poor and the old. The budget also calls for REDUCING the top corporate and individual tax rates to 25%. In his article of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1% Joseph Stiglitz, the Nobel-winning American economist, deplores, “…one big part of the reason we have so much inequality is that the top 1 percent want it that way. The most obvious example involves tax policy. Lowering tax rates on capital gains, which is how the rich receive a large portion of their income, has given the wealthiest Americans close to a free ride. Monopolies and near monopolies have always been a source of economic power—from John D. Rockefeller at the beginning of the last century to Bill Gates at the end. Lax enforcement of anti-trust laws… has been a godsend to the top 1 percent. Much of today’s inequality is due to manipulation of the financial system, enabled by changes in the rules that have been bought and paid for by the financial industry itself…The government lent money to financial institutions at close to 0 percent interest and provided generous bailouts on favourable terms when all else failed. Regulators turned a blind eye to a lack of transparency and to conflict of interests.”
What is striking about the fortune of billionaires in the US (and elsewhere) is how dependent their accumulation of wealth is based on pillage of state resources, on neo-liberal policies which led to the take over at bargain prices of privatised public enterprises, deregulation that allows for plunder of the environment to extract natural resources at the highest rate of return, tax-cuts, and elimination of social programmes and labour rights.

It is absolutely clear that the state plays an essential role in facilitating the concentration of wealth in the hands of a few, whether in facilitating the plundering of the state treasury (i.e. public money) and the environment or in heightening the direct or indirect exploitation of labour. It also promotes the interests of the wealthy in other countries. It facilitates the entry of the big corporations into their markets, at times through arm-twisting or wars. WikiLeaks cable revealed that the US sought to retaliate against Europe on Genetically Modified Crops (GM Crops). In the 2007 leaked cable, then US ambassador to France Craig Stapleton wrote, “Europe is moving backwards not forwards on this issue with France playing a leading role, along with Austria, Italy and even the (European) Commission… Moving to retaliation will make clear that the current path has real costs to EU interests and could help strengthen European pro-biotech voice.” Stapleton recommended retaliations that would cause “some pain” across EU. It is evident that the US policy on genetically modified organisms is being influenced by the multinational corporations that profit from genetic engineering and the export-oriented agribusiness. The government has virtually become an agency for promoting the private interests of the Monsanto Corporation.

Monsanto and other biotech corporations have been pushing to find new market footholds in collaboration with USAID, the US State Department and the Gates Foundation Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA). According to Netline: “The collusion of the Gates Foundation with Monsanto Corporation is no accident, as high level officials leading AGRA are former Monsanto executives. The recent purchase by AGRA of $500,000 worth in Monsanto stocks was vivid proof of that close relationship. Despite many words by Gates officials since the inception of the AGRA agenda denying that GMO seeds would be used as part of AGRA, their close relationship with Monsanto has now been revealed to be a key element in their agronomic ‘new green revolution’ strategy.”

Speaking at the Commission in World Farming annual lecture, Samuel Jutzi, director of the animal production and health division of the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) bemoaned that powerful, large agri-business and food producing companies are blocking reforms which would improve human health and environment.

US has been waging wars, covertly or overtly, to open countries to US corporate and banking interests. The US economic neoliberalism and the shock doctrine of deconstruction and chaos can be seen around the world. For example, the capacity to control natural resources in Africa is enhanced by spreading terror, uprooting people, destroying families, and sowing distrust and hatred. Armed conflicts are sustained, and at times instigated, through supply of weapons. The armed conflicts in countries cause political chaos, destroy infrastructure and make a huge dent on their economies, which make them vulnerable. This provides an easy access for the transnational companies to their markets and natural resources.
The neighbouring countries of the Democratic Republic of Congo, and transnational companies with the active support of their respective governments, have been deeply involved in the plundering of coltan, a critical raw material in high-tech manufacturing, in the Congo. As a consequence of the pillaging of the natural resources in this country, more than 60 lakh Congolese died since 1996. The United Nations characterised the “resource war” in the Congo as the worst humanitarian crisis since the World War II.

The interconnectedness between wars and control of natural resources and markets is expressed by the former US Marine Smedley Butler, who participated in many wars in the Central and the South America. He said, “I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high-class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light to Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927, I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.”

Evo Morales, president of Bolivia, rightly said, “Capitalism has twins, the market and war. The market converts life into commodities, it converts land into a commodity. And when capitalists cannot sustain this economic model based on looting, on exploitation, on marginalisation, on exclusion and, above all, on the accumulation of capital, they rely on war, the arms race.” Wealthiest class feels no pinch from higher taxes when the country goes to war. Common citizen bears the cost by paying higher taxes. So the state, as a representative of the wealthy, can undertake any number of military adventures to further the reach of corporations. Corporations and contractors stand only to gain.

The collusion between political and business classes in furthering their self interests at the cost of majority of people has been exposed by the recent scandals in India. The leaked telephone conversations of Niira Radia, a prominent business lobbyist, reveal some of the country’s most powerful tycoons scheming to manipulate government appointments and influence regulatory decisions. On 5 April 2010 writing in the Indian newspaper DNA, activist-artist Mallika Sarabhai lambasted the government for failing to crack down on corruption and collusion, asking the pointed question: “Who will fight the robber barons pillaging India?”

One of the main reasons for the poverty, disease, death and destruction in the Democratic Republic of Congo is the “resource war”. The Congo is a storehouse of important minerals for the functioning of modern society, particularly as it relates to the mining and technology sectors. The key natural resources are: diamonds, gold, coltan, copper, uranium, tin, silver, cobalt, timber, manganese and petroleum. The Congo has a history of being pillaged and the people being used as fodder in a rush for natural resources. During the rule of the Belgian king, Leopold II, from 1885-1908, more than one crore Congolese died as a result of plundering of natural resources. The resources at the root of suffering of the Congolese were ivory and rubber. Today it is coltan, diamonds, gold, copper and tin, to name a few. Bill Gates’ Microsoft Office needs some of these “conflict minerals” such as coltan.

On 7 January 2007 Los Angeles Times published an investigation report on the activities of Gates Foundation in Niger Delta in Africa. Its staff Charles Piller, Edmund Sanders and Robyn Dixon wrote: “The Gates Foundation has poured $218 million into polio and measles immunization and research worldwide, including in the Niger Delta. At the same time that it is paying for inoculations to protect health, it has invested $423 million in Eni, Royal Dutch Shell, Exxon Mobil, Chevron and Total France—the companies responsible for most of the flares blanketing the delta with pollution, beyond anything permitted in the United States or Europe. A sampling of the Gates Foundation’s largest investments between $100 million and $1 billion: Abbott Laboratories, Archer Daniels Midland, British Petroleum, Canadian national Railway, Exxon Mobil, Freddie Mac, French Government, Japanese Government, Merck, Schering Plough, Tyco International, Waste Management… Indeed, local leaders blame oil developments for fostering some of the very afflictions that the foundation combats.”

The report in the LA Times points out, “Oil bore holes fill with stagnant water, which is ideal for mosquitoes that spread malaria, one of the diseases the foundation is fighting. Investigators for Dr. Nonyenim Solomon Enyidah, heath commissioner for Rivers State… cite an oil spill clogging rivers as a cause of cholera, another scourge the foundation is battling. The bright, sooty gas flares—which contain toxic byproducts such as benzene, mercury and chromium—lower immunity, Enyidah said, and make children more susceptible to polio and measles—the diseases that the Gates Foundation has helped to inoculate against.”

The Gates Foundation endowment had major holdings in:

• Companies ranked among the worst US and Canadian polluters, including ConocoPhilips, Dow Chemicals Co., and Tyco International;
• Many of the other major polluters, including companies that own oil refinery that cause sickness in children while the foundation tries to save their parents from AIDS;
• Pharmaceutical companies that price drugs beyond the reach of AIDS patients the foundation is trying to treat;
• This is “the dirty secret” of many large philanthropists, said Paul Hawken, an expert on socially beneficial investing who directs the Natural Capital Institute, an investment research group. “Foundations donate to groups trying to heal the future,” Hawken said in an interview, “but with their investments, they steal from the future.”

This report on Gates Foundation reminds me of Janus, a two-face Roman god. Janus was characterised by the blending of maleficent and beneficent. His one face represents war and the other peace.

It is time to see the OTHER FACE of the headline grabbing initiatives of billionaire philanthropists.

If the wealthy really want to create a better world through philanthropic activities, first they should meet other commitments such as paying more taxes, not pressing on laws and regulations, giving better benefits, job protection and work conditions to their employees, and manufacturing goods using environmentally friendly products and processes.
The billionaire philanthropists should also acknowledge the ineffectiveness of charity. We know that majority of charities, while well intentioned, have not radically impacted world’s greatest challenges. The problems of the deprived masses can not be solved by charity and patronage. Their misery can not be dealt with an economic system that is responsible for the unequal world which makes a small percentage of the people staggeringly rich and throws an overwhelming majority into poverty and despair. Ironically, the wealthy modern day philanthropists are precisely the ones who define the laws of the present system pushing majority into poverty, disease and death.

The Home Ministry has been planning a major offensive, due to start in November 2009, against Naxals, particularly in two Indian states – Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand. A plan to deploy more than 70,000 paramilitary personnel has been chalked out. In order to combat Naxals, Chidambaram “favored the Indian Air Force firing on Naxals.” India has also “sought input from American security officials on how to best root out the leftist rebels.”¹ In September 2009 Chidambaram paid a four day visit to US that focused on India-US anti-terror cooperation, assistance in technology, assessment of security situation in South Asia and studying counter-terrorism institutions and structures.

Probably, US with its experience in “war on terror” after 9/11 is considered valuable, particularly its use of corporate media to create momentum for the occupation of Iraq by programming the public mind to go along with the state agenda, and highlight of the “evil of the other” not only to justify its genocidal violence, but also to conceal “real intentions” behind the occupation of Iraq.

Taking the fight against Naxals to a new level, the Home Ministry of India has sought to actively involve the mainstream media directly by issuing advertisements depicting “cold-blooded killings” of innocent citizens by Naxals. “Naxals are nothing but coldblooded murderers” the advertisement screamed across the corporate media. The visual showed a series of men, women and children brutally killed by Naxals. Upping the ante, media has been screaming all along that Naxals have been waging “a guerrilla war on the Indian state.”

The combined voice of the government and corporate media has heightened the threat posed by Naxals in order to rally public support with gripping fear about their own existence. It has drowned dissenting voices, and been trying to program the public mind to go along with the state agenda against Naxals. The corporate media is playing as the chief instrument of state propaganda. It is creating the momentum for the onslaught on Naxals. Josef Goebbels had this dictum: “If you say something often enough, the people will believe it.”²) Herman Goering, a Nazi, said, “People can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders…All you have to do is tell them they’re being attacked and denounce the pacifists for a lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.”³

Naxals’ portrayal as enemies of the state and democracy breaks social link between these enemies and the society. Their status as enemies of the society would not only unite people against them, but also legitimize the “good” violence that exterminates them.

However, the collective violence of “all against one” requires concealment of entire truth. Any act or even any thought of making a victim of another casts a veil over truth. The power of the “scapegoat mechanism” lies in its deception and concealment.

Who Are Naxals?

Naxals belong to varied milieu – disempowered Dalits, destitute Tribals, middle class intellectuals, and privileged rich. They do not believe in parliamentary democracy, as they see power being still concentrated in the hands of the rich, upper class. So the objective of their four decade old struggle is to liberate disempowered and destitute masses from the exploitative and oppressive political system through armed struggle. In their long struggle, Naxals have used brutal tactics to further their cause.⁴ In 2008 there were 1591 Naxal-related violent incidents in which 721 were killed. By August 2009, in 1405 incidents 580 persons have been killed. Recently, on October 8, 2009 they are alleged to have killed seventeen police men in Maharashtra.

Naxals’ struggle has, naturally, drawn mixed reactions from the government and elites, and the marginalized Indian masses. Because of their armed struggle and brutal tactics, they are considered to be security threat to the sovereignty of the state. On the other hand, Naxals enjoy wide support among the marginalized people, who have been ignored by the successive governments for the past sixty years. The October 2008 report of an expert committee, appointed by the Planning Commission, acknowledged that “the main support for the Naxalite movement comes from dalits and adivasi tribals.”⁵ The report identifies “structural violence implicit in our social and economic system” as the main reason for Naxalite violence. Dalits and Tribals comprise one fourth of India’s population.

Condition of the Tribals

In the huge region of mineral rich forest in eastern and central India spreading from West Bengal through the states of Jharkhand, Orissa and Chhattisgarh live indigenous people. These Tribals are the poorest of the poor in India. The mainstream media and the political pundits have not acknowledged that the cause of these people is not served in the largest democracy. The Tribals have no schools, no hospitals, no water, none of the amenities the state is supposed to provide. Successive governments have failed to address the basic needs of people in the poverty-stricken, but mineral rich, region. These places are epitome of neglect, deprivation and government corruption.

The Tribals are ruthlessly exploited by local landlords, traders, officials, mafia and contractors. Local police allegedly supports local mafia, landlords and traders. On January 8, 2009 seventeen Tribals were killed by the police in a fake “encounter”, according to Ramesh Varlyani, Chhattisgarh state Congress general secretary. In its scathing 118 page report “Broken System: Dysfunction, Abuse and Impunity in the Indian Police”, the Human Rights Watch pointed out “a range of human rights violations committed by police, including arbitrary arrest and detention, torture and extrajudicial killings.” It notes, “Several police officers admitted to Human Rights Watch that they routinely committed abuses. One officer said that he had been ordered to commit an “encounter killing,” as the practice of taking into custody and extra-judicially executing an individual commonly known. “I am looking for my target,” the officer said. “I will eliminate him…I fear being put in jail, but if I don’t do it, I’ll lose my position.””

The report also documents “the particular vulnerability to police abuse of traditionally marginalized groups in India. They include the poor, women, Dalits (so-called “untouchables”) and religious and sexual minorities. Police often fail to investigate crimes against them because of discrimination, the victims’ inability to pay bribes, or their lack of social status or political connections. Members of these groups are also more vulnerable to arbitrary arrest and torture, especially meted out by police as punishment for alleged crimes.”

Thus, the state has not only ignored to address basic concerns of tribal people, but also tried to destroy the voice and language of their victims by aligning with the exploiters. E.A.S. Sarma, former Commissioner of Tribal Welfare and former secretary, Expenditure and Economic Affairs, says, “Left extremism is a secondary issue. How many Tribals even know there is a government? Their only experience of the State is the police, contractors, and real estate goons. Besides, the Fifth Schedule of the Constitution grants Tribals complete rights over their traditional land and forests and prohibits private companies from mining on their land. This constitutional schedule was upheld by the Samatha judgement of the Supreme Court (1997). If successive governments lived by the spirit of the Constitution and this judgment, tribal discontent would automatically recede.”⁵

By violating their human dignity, value and rights, the state has committed violence against the Tribals. The tribal dissent, as Shoma Chaudhury says, “is a dissent out of desperation for human dignity, value and rights.”⁵ Among these poor, disempowered, and oppressed and exploited Tribals Naxals have wide support due to latter’s struggle for their cause. Prime minister Manmohan Singh acknowledged that “Left wing extremism requires a nuanced strategy, a holistic approach – it cannot be treated simply as a law and order problem. Despite its sanguinary nature, the movement manages to retain the support of a section of the tribal communities and the poorest of the poor in many affected areas. It has influence among certain sections of civil society, the intelligentsia and the youth.”

Criminalization of Politics

What has been missing in the dominant narrative of the government and corporate media is the necessity, in the light of Mumbai terrorist attacks, to have leaders with high level of personal integrity to provide effective leadership to India. It is well known that corruption and criminalization of politics in India are the two biggest hurdles for inclusive development. Shashi Tharoor in his book India: From Midnight to the Millennium sees “bureaucratic corruption and criminalization of politics as two of the most widespread problems facing India.” Bureaucratic corruption is largely a result of “the permit-license-quota Raj”. Tharoor cites as “the most dangerous phenomenon of independent India’s political life, the criminalization of politics, for many a lawbreaker has found it useful to become a lawmaker.”⁶

The controversy in 2004 over granting membership in the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to a top mafia don D.P. Yadav highlights the extent to which India’s political parties have become criminalized. According to police records D.P. Yadav is a “hardened professional criminal”. He was named in nine murder cases, three attempted murders, two dacoitees, and several cases of kidnapping for extortion. He has been charged under a number of acts, including the Excise Act, Gangsters’ Act, and Terrorist and Disruptive Activities Act. His economic and muscle power has been welcomed with open arms by political parties. He entered into politics and was elected in 1989. He even held a ministerial position in the Utter Pradesh state assembly.

In the previous Manmohan Singh government, the Union Coal minister Sibu Soren was forced to step down when he was convicted of murder (though he was later acquitted on appeal). Surprisingly, Singh, who could identify “criminals” among common people, needed a law to define “criminal” in the case of politicians. He suggested that “the country needed a law to define the meaning of “criminal”, and who should and who should not be a minister.”⁷

Criminals enter into politics with their money and muscle power in order to gain influence and political power. This, in turn, ensures that the criminal cases against them may either be dropped or not proceeded with. The Times of India points out, “Indeed, today, far from shrinking at the thought of harboring criminal elements, parties seek them out, judging the muscle and money combination they represent to be emotive value. Rough estimates suggest that in any state election 20 percent of candidates are drawn from criminal backgrounds. For the parties, it means overflowing coffers and unlimited funds to fight elections and for the criminals it means protection from the law and respectability in the eyes of society.” Asia Human Rights Commission also observes that the nexus between criminals and political party benefits both: “Criminals protect the illegitimate interests of politicians and in turn obtain protection from them and their parties.” It further says that this mutually beneficial relationship works against the establishment of the rule of law.

This promising nexus between criminal-political party prompted India’s parliamentarians across party lines to join hands to refrain from passing legislation that would rid politics of criminal and corrupt elements. However, under 2003 Supreme Court ruling, the Election Commission has made it mandatory for candidates to disclose at the time of filing their nominations for election details including their criminal background (if any), and assets. However, the Court order does not disqualify criminal elements.

The disclosure law seemed to have little impact. Asia Human Rights Commission deplores, “Criminalization of politics in India is a growing problem, despite legal attempts to address it.” According to the National Election Watch, in 2004, out of 535 elected members of parliament (MPs), 128 MPs were with criminal records and 55 with serious criminal records. Most experts’ opinion is that the situation is deteriorating. As Himanshu Jha of the National Social Watch Coalition says, “The general opinion is that the influence of criminals in politics is steadily increasing.” This is confirmed by 2009 elections: out of 535 elected MPs 153 MPs were with criminal records and 74 with serious criminal records. That means, there is an increase of 19.5% in MPs with criminal records, and 34.5% in MPs with serious criminal records.

The National Commission to Review the Working of the Constitution pointed out that criminalization has become a worrying characteristic of India’s politics and electoral system. This tears into the moral fabric of the country and has an impact on governance.

Politicians are aware of “the impunity that is built into the very edifice of Indian politics and law.” The 1984 anti-Sikh riots confirm the impunity enjoyed by law-makers-cum-law-breakers. On April 7, 2009 a Sikh reporter Jarnail Singh hurled a shoe at the home minister Chidambaram in protest against the clean chit given by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to the two Congress leaders Jagdish Tytler and Sajjan Kumar, prime accused of the riots. Even before they received clean chit, the Congress party gave them tickets to contest in 2009 elections. The gesture of the reporter was sparked by the deep, traumatic pain caused not only by the three day massacre of more than 3000 Sikhs (some were burned alive) during the anti-Sikh riots in Delhi after the assassination of Indira Gandhi, but also the impunity enjoyed by the politicians.

The massacre of Sikhs took place in the full public view. But there has been absolutely no accountability for those heinous crimes, because the system has collaborated with politicians to protect the guilty. Commenting on the involvement of the then Congress government in the riots, eminent journalist and writer Khushwant Singh said that probably the government of the day had a hand in it as it was organized violence.⁸ The violent mobs were provided with voters’ lists to identify the homes and business establishments of Sikhs.⁹

“The ’84 killings… were mercilessly planned and executed by the state, with a breathtaking disregard for governance and constitutional rights. After this bloodbath, the state and its partners-in-crime preferred to forget the bloody drama they had enacted.” Patwant Singh wonders, “Are the lives of innocent men, women and children of so little consequence to politicians and men in public office that they can be brutally murdered en masse in the country’s capital for over four days before an effort is made to stop the killings? Does it then have to take over 22 years and 10 inquiry commissions to book the guilty for the chilling inhumanity against the Sikhs.”

One may recall the speech of Rajiv Gandhi, who was immediately sworn in as the prime minister after his mother’s death, justifying the pogrom: “Some riots took place in the country following the murder of Indiraji. We know the people were very angry and for a few days it seemed that India had been shaken. But, when a mighty tree falls, it is only natural that the earth around it does shake a little.”¹⁰ A Sikh wondered, “That’s okay. But were there only Sikhs sitting under that big tree?”

“Development” in Tribal Region

There has been a proposal for “development” in the tribal areas. Recently Chidambaram talked about “development” in this region. But he wanted Maoist-controlled areas to be liberated before any development programs could be launched there. Critics argue that it is the lack of development in the tribal inhabited region for the past sixty years that is the cause for their dissent and wide support to Naxals. So there is growing concern about the intentions of the government in taking security-centric strategy without disclosing the development plan for the mineral rich, but poverty stricken region.

In an interview, Chidambaram said that minerals were not meant to be kept buried under Mother Earth, and they have to be put to use. The land inhabited by the Tribals is the mineral heart land. There are huge deposits of iron ore, tin, bauxite, corundum and limestone, which multinational companies want to get their hands on. Government officials and private companies want the Union government to acquire the tribal lands for private investors in order to expedite the development of the states. So, development means displacement of the owners of the land, and mining. “Industrialization is a must for the state’s development since agriculture alone cannot support Jharkhand’s economy. If we stop acquiring land for private investors in Naxal-hit areas, the state will head for a major disaster,” said a state official.

Therefore, security-centric strategy serves the above purpose where major offensive against Naxals not only decimates Naxal control in the tribal region, but also displaces the Tribals from their lands. If Tribals no longer live on that land, the inconvenient Fifth Schedule of the Constitution will not apply.

Conclusion

Weapons and violence will lead us nowhere. Violence begets violence. Therefore, all the forces concerned should give peace a chance and begin dialogue to sort out genuine problems prevailing in Tribal areas. Instead of running democracy only on the strength of weapons and violence against its own citizens, government should aim at inclusive democracy and development.

1. Siddharth Srivastava, “India Plans All-Out Attack on Maoists,” in Asia Times (September 29, 2009).
2. John Pilger, “Lies and More Lies,” ZNet Commentary (September 23, 2003
3. Arundhati Roy, “Instant-Mix Imperial Democracy: Buy One, Get One Free,” www.countercurrents.org (May 18, 2003).
4. Shoma Chaudhury, “Weapons of Mass Desperation,” in Tehelka Magazine 6:39, 3 October 2009.
5. Chaudhury, “Weapons of Mass Desperation,” Tehelka.
6. Shashi Tharoor, India: From Midnight to the Millennium (New York: Arcade Publishing, 1997), reviewed by C.J.S. Wallia, IndiaStar Review of Books.
7. Seema Chishti, “India’s Love Affair with ‘Tainted’ Politicians,” in BBC News (August 2, 2004).
8. Basharat Peer, “Anti-Sikh Riots a Pogrom: Khushwant.”
9. “1984 Anti-Sikh Riots” in Wikipedia.
10. In 1998 Sonia Gandhi, wife of Rajiv Gandhi, officially apologized for the insensitive remarks.

The historical and political background of the right to food concerns the development of the notion of access to adequate food as a right. Lack of access to food can be due to two reasons: scarcity of food, or problem of access to available food. The issue of world hunger has been characterized as shortage of food. Guaranteeing the right to food has, therefore, been linked to food production to overcome shortage.

However, hunger and malnutrition persist even if food is abundant. For many years the website of the Indian Embassy in Washington, D.C. has described India’s agriculture and rural development as “a saga of success”. It boasts, “From a nation dependent on food imports to feed its population, India today is not only self-sufficient in grain production, but also has a substantial reserve.”¹ It is true that the country now produces enough food to feed its entire population. Despite agricultural successes, India still has a huge number of malnourished people, more than any other country.

The greater cause for hunger and malnutrition, therefore, is the problem of access to adequate food. Poor and marginalized segments of the population lack purchasing power to buy minimum amount of food they need to prevent hunger. Food insecurity exists even if there is food in abundance. Trading more food will not help the poor and the marginalized, if they are excluded from production and have no means to buy the food which arrives on the markets. Producing more food will not assist them in purchasing food, if their incomes remain too low. The problem is one of accessibility of food for the poor and the marginalized. So a focus solely on increasing the supply of food could lead to policy choices that make hunger worse.² Policy makers should address the problem of access to adequate food and make changes in income distribution and trade policies that are needed to ensure that the human right to adequate food is realized in practice.

Access to adequate food is fundamental for the right to adequate food. Accessed food must be adequate in terms of quality, quantity and cultural acceptability. Access to adequate food has been defined in terms of intake of nutrients, calories and proteins. Malnutrition need not be lack of quantity of food intake, but could also be due to lack of quality food. Both are often the results of poverty and discrimination.

Right to adequate food sets obligations on the state. It also helps empower those vulnerable to food insecurity and malnutrition to hold government accountable. Poor and marginalized are not mere passive beneficiaries of government programs or private charities, but participate in the democratic process of policy formation and implementation.

State Obligation to Right to Adequate Food

Given the crucial importance of access to adequate food in a world of plenty where massive hunger persists, it is not surprising that the right to adequate food has received attention in the community of states. More appropriately, it is a reminder to the states of their commitment to ensure that the fundamental right of everyone to be free from hunger and the right to adequate food is safeguarded.

For sixty years, the legal, political and cultural concept of the human right to food has been evolving as a set of universal norms for the United Nations community, its member states, and civil society. Paragraph 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) declares: “…everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for health and well-being of himself [sic] and his family, including food…” Article 11 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights adds: “State parties to the present Covenant recognize the fundamental right of everyone to be free from hunger…” and agree “to take steps to the maximum of available resources, with a view to achieving progressively the full realization of the rights recognized, including “adequate food.” Some two hundred additional UN instruments and declarations address the right to adequate food and nutrition within civil-political, economic-social-cultural, development, indigenous, women’s, and children’s rights constructions.

Under Article 11 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, “the right to adequate food is realized when every man, woman and child, alone or in community with others, has physical and economic access at all times to adequate food or means for its procurement.”³ The core content of the right to adequate food implies the availability of food in a quantity and quality sufficient to satisfy the dietary needs of individuals, free from adverse substances, and acceptable within a given culture. The right to adequate food is “indivisibly linked to the inherent dignity of the human person and is indispensable for the fulfillment of other human rights enshrined in the International Bill of Human Rights. It is also inseparable from social justice, requiring the adoption of appropriate economic, environmental and social policies, at both the national and international levels, oriented to the eradication of poverty and the fulfillment of all human rights for all.”³

The right to adequate food imposes threefold obligation on States: to respect, protect and fulfill the human right to adequate food. The State is obliged to refrain from taking any measures that result in preventing existing access to adequate food (respect); to ensure that private actors or individuals do not deprive individuals of their access to adequate food (protect); and pro-actively engage in activities intended to strengthen people’s access to and utilization of resources and means to ensure their livelihood, including food security (fulfill as facilitate). Finally, whenever an individual or group is unable, for reasons beyond their control, to enjoy the right to adequate food by the means at their disposal, States have the obligation to fulfill (as provide) that right directly. This obligation also applies for persons who are victims of natural or other disasters.³

States have committed themselves to implement policies aimed at eradicating poverty and hunger, and improving physical and economic access to sufficient, nutritionally adequate and safe food.⁴ In 1996 in their Rome Declaration on World Food Security, world leaders and their representatives stated: “We consider it intolerable that more than 800 million people throughout the world, and particularly in developing countries, do not have enough food to meet their basic nutritional needs. This situation is unacceptable.”⁴

Reality of Poverty and Malnutrition

In spite of growing recognition and solemn commitments made by world leaders, the stark reality is that there are more hungry people today. The number of hungry people has increased from approximately 840 million in 1996 to 967 million in 2008.⁴ More than 2 billion people worldwide suffer from “hidden hunger”, or micronutrient malnutrition. Majority of the hungry are in rural areas, as around 70% of the world’s poor people live in rural areas and are dependent on agriculture for their income, food supply and livelihoods. According to a UN-Hunger Task Force report, three out of five small farmers suffer from hunger.⁵

Action Aid International has identified the following groups as the most affected by hunger and malnutrition: agricultural laborers, landless, poor farmers, ethnic minorities, indigenous peoples, informal sector workers, unemployed people, street children, the homeless, people living in areas of conflict or at risk from conflict,⁶ refugees, migrant workers, settlers and the internally displaced. Within these groups, women, children, especially girls, disabled people, the elderly and female-headed households are the most vulnerable.⁷ 125 million people die each year from malnutrition related causes. Children and adults are left mentally and physically stunted, deformed or blind, condemning them to a marginal existence. Hunger repeats itself through the generations, as undernourished mothers give birth to children who will never fully develop.⁸

In India it is evident that, although the 1990s saw a period of sustained economic growth as the country moved towards a more market-oriented economy, this economic growth did not benefit all Indians equally. Middle and upper classes in urban areas have benefited under “India Shining”, but the poor have suffered a decline in living standards and rising food insecurity. Poverty⁹ and malnutrition, especially among women, children, and people who belong to scheduled castes and tribes, remain very high. About 2 million children die every year as a result of serious malnutrition and preventable diseases. Nearly half suffer from moderate or severe malnutrition. This is one of the highest levels of child malnutrition in the world. Nearly a third of children (30%) are born underweight, which means that their mothers are themselves underweight and undernourished.¹⁰

Hunger and malnourishment is predominant in rural areas of India. 70% of Indians still live in rural areas and depend on agriculture for their livelihoods (65%). Very low agricultural wages (minimum wages are not always enforced), landlessness, lack of work during the agricultural lean season, and the impacts of trade liberalization have contributed to food insecurity.

Right to Adequate Food and Agricultural Trade

As noted above, the majority of hungry and malnourished live in rural areas and are dependent on agriculture for their income, food supply and livelihoods. They are food producers, such as landless laborers or small farm holders. Among the factors that contribute to this paradox of hungry farmers is the agricultural trading system, according to Olivier De Schutter, UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food.

The dominant trend in market-oriented globalization is “to expand the global reach for investments and to broaden market for profit.”¹¹ Investments in agriculture, food processing and marketing are on the rise. International trade in food has increased due to reduced trade barriers. Relentless pressure for unrestricted international trade and investment has not only constrained the policy space of governments, but also resulted in national and local governments and economies ceding some sovereignty over their markets.

Today, agricultural trade is far from being free or fair. Many developed countries continue to protect agriculture as a question of national security and food security, while persuading developing countries into unilaterally liberalizing their agricultural sectors, often under the programs of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. In his address to the Future Farmers of America in Washington on July 27, 2001George W. Bush, then President, stated, “It’s important for our nation to build – to grow foodstuffs, to feed our people. Can you imagine a country that was unable to grow enough food to feed the people? It would be a nation subject to international pressure. It would be a nation at risk. And so when we’re talking about American agriculture, we’re really talking about a national security issue.”¹² In the same speech, Bush argued against “the trade barriers, the protectionist tendencies around the world that prevent our products from getting into markets.”¹²

Despite preaching the “benefits” of “free” trade in agriculture, US, EU, Japan and other industrialized countries continue to skew their farm subsidies so heavily in favor of their biggest agricultural producers. From 1995 to 2006 USDA provided $177 billion in subsidy to its farmers. Top 10% of the agricultural producers received 74% of the total amount. During this period US government provided nearly one billion dollar subsidy to just three American rice growers. Rice is staple food for nearly 3.7 billion Asians. Nobel Prize winner in economics Joseph Stiglitz described the United States Farm Bill as “the perfect illustration of the Bush administration’s hypocrisy on trade liberalization.”

In 2004 EU paid its biggest 2,460 farmers on average $667,000 each, or $1.7 billion in total. In Germany, 14% of the biggest farm producers got 65% of all payments; in France, 29% of the biggest farm producers got 72% of all payments; in UK, 31% of the biggest farm producers got 84% of all payments; and in Italy, 1.6% of the biggest farm producers got 34% of all payments.¹³ These figures make a mockery of claims that the US Farm Bill and EU’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) are geared toward small farmers and rural development. This huge subsidy allows food cartel to sell rice, wheat and other staple foods at very low price to dominate global food market. This displaces local production of basic foodstuffs and farming livelihoods in developing countries. “These subsidies continue to promote over-production and dumping, hurting poor farmers in developing countries,” said Luis Morago, Oxfam’s Make Trade Fair spokesperson. He further said, “Europe’s common agricultural policy and the US Farm Bill continue to ignore small farmers at home and cripple poorer farmers abroad.”¹³

While developed countries pay huge subsidies to their biggest food producers to dominate the production of staple foods like rice, corn/maize and wheat, and milk, developing countries are left at a severe disadvantage, as they cannot afford to subsidize their agriculture, but must reduce tariffs and open up to unfair competition from subsidized products of the developed countries. Measures to help smallholders such as farm subsidies and cheap credit policies has been opposed by international financial institutions and has fallen out of favor at the national level of many developing countries because it does not serve the interests of those who influence the government. In most developing countries small farm holders do not have the strength to either compete in or resist the pressures of market globalization.

Right to Adequate Food and Agribusiness Companies

The agricultural trade liberalization has benefited big farms and agribusiness companies of the developed countries. It benefited 1% of farms larger than 100 hectares, while harming 85% of farms with less than 2 hectares.² The globalization of agriculture has been accompanied by concentration of market power into the hands of a limited number of large-scale trade and retail agribusiness companies. International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD) notes,

One of the more striking features of industry changes…has been the convergence of ownership between agrochemical and seed/genomic firms. This strategy has worked well to sell proprietary bundled lines of chemicals, genetic technologies and seeds, which can be attractive to farmers as a purchased management tool. However, such bundles can increase reliance on expensive inputs, increase farmers’ costs, and reduce flexibility of on-farm management strategies for pests and weeds, as well as implementation of novel consumer-driven production systems.¹⁴

Transnational corporations have monopolized the food chain, from the production, trade, processing, to the marketing and retailing of food. Globally, the seed industry is increasingly driven by US and Europe based transnational agribusiness companies. Just 10 companies, which include Aventis, Monsanto, Pioneer and Syngenta, control one-third of the $23 billion commercial seed market and 80 per cent of the $28 billion global pesticide market. Monsanto alone controls 91 per cent of the global market for genetically modified seed. Another 10 companies, including Cargill, control 57 per cent of the total sales of the world’s leading 30 retailers.¹⁵

With the trade deal between India and the United States, known as the Knowledge Initiative on Agriculture (KIA), the Indian markets and agricultural policies are increasingly coming under the influence of transnational companies such as Monsanto, Archer Daniels Midland Company, a US grain purchaser and trader and is, with Cargill, one of the companies that maintains “oligopolistic control of the American food-manufacturing and food-processing markets”, and Wal-Mart, the world’s largest retailer.¹⁶ These three companies are members on the KIA Board, which implements the KIA. The Board has decided to focus initially on four core areas: agricultural education, food processing and marketing, biotechnology and water management.¹⁷ “The KIA is part of the US comprehensive strategy on revitalizing the bilateral relationship in agriculture with India,” said Susan Owens, director of the FAS Research and Scientific Exchanges Division. Owen stated: “We want to broaden the scope of the AKI (or KIA) beyond just research…We want to use the AKI (or KIA) to increase agricultural production in India….”¹⁸

Monsanto owns the patent on Bt cotton. In 2005 approximately 1.26 million hectares, and in 2006 nearly 3.28 million hectares of land in India was under Bt cotton cultivation. Farmers who buy GM seeds enter into a licensing agreement with Monsanto for the use of that particular gene and the company prescribed fertilizer. They are forbidden from saving seeds for the next season. They must buy new seed from the company each season. This denies farmers’ right to save seed. The implications of this are huge for poor farmers. Saved seed is the one resource that the poor farmers depend upon to carry them through the year. Denial of this right will greatly impact them economically. For they have to pay more each season to buy new seed. Monsanto is now charging 1850 Indian rupees per 450 gram pack of Bt cotton seeds as compared to 38 Indian rupees charged in China for the same quantity. In India, the price for non-Bt cotton variety is at 450 to 500 Indian rupees. India has recently allowed field trials of GM varieties of rice, brinjal and groundnut.

In many regions of the world, transnational corporations now have unprecedented control over food, and there is no coherent system of accountability to ensure that they do not abuse this power. Global food companies have become too powerful and are undermining the right to adequate food in developing countries.

Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs)

Introduction of the Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs) has become an increasingly important source of competitive advantage and accumulation in the production and trade of agricultural goods. This has resulted in the increasing concentration of control over seeds and other resources in a few transnational companies. The IPR owners, usually transnational companies, can prevent others from producing or selling the seeds or plant varieties over which they own the rights. They can set prices or royalties on the seeds, and terms and conditions for use of the seeds and inputs. This not only denies the right of farmers to save seeds for the next season, but also forces them to depend on transnational companies for seeds and inputs. With raising prices of seeds and inputs, coupled with prevention of saving seeds, small scale farmers become vulnerable whether there is bumper crop, or failure or low yield. In times of bumper crop, they get lower price for their produce, and in times of failure or low yield they incur loss. But the farming costs keep rising.

Because of their sheer size and assurance of huge financial returns due to IPRs, transnational companies are increasingly engaged in agro-biotechnology research. As the goal of companies is profit, their research and production efforts tend to focus on only a few crops, thus weakening biodiversity and sustainability caused by expanding monoculture in food production. The consequences are terrible on “minor crops”, which are commercially not profitable for the companies.

With the trends towards strengthening IPR systems worldwide (and in India), there is an increasing ability of agribusiness companies privatizing genetic resources and agricultural knowledge. The tendency will be to focus on research on lucrative developing country markets, rather than developing country needs. Therefore, IPRs are not designed to respond to socio-economic concerns such as food security of developing countries, or to protect the livelihoods of landless and small scale farmers, but to promote the greed of agribusiness companies at the expense of landless and small scale famers in these countries. Thus, IPRs can impede progress towards sustainability, food security and distributive justice.

Right to Adequate Food — the Guiding Framework for Policies and Action

The present liberalized agricultural trade system excludes millions of landless and small scale farmers, and undermines the ability of developing countries to protect their farmers. What is very clear is that in the long run hundreds of millions will die from hunger, while the markets expand.

Therefore, an approach to international trade based on human rights, particularly the right to adequate food, shifts the focus not only to the impacts of trade and its policies on the most vulnerable and food insecure, but also to enhance the welfare of the vulnerable people. The right to adequate food can only be fully realized by States within a multilateral trading system which enables them to pursue policies aimed at realizing the right to adequate food. Trading system should not only refrain from imposing obligations which directly infringe upon the right to adequate food, but also ensure that all States have the policy space they require to take measures which contribute to the progressive realization of the right to adequate food under their jurisdiction.¹⁹) State, as part of its obligation to protect people’s resource base for food, should take appropriate steps to ensure that activities of the private business companies are in conformity with the right to adequate food.

The report of The International Assessment of Agricultural Science, Knowledge and Technology for Development (IAASTD) provides valuable insights and recommendations recognizing the need for complementary and diversified approaches to sustainable agriculture, pointing out that agricultural models based on small farming can present alternatives appropriate for a human rights based food security. While the report was strongly welcomed by NGOs for its calls for immediate radical changes in international agriculture, there was a strong opposition from countries such as US, UK, Canada and Australia.²⁰ A few months before the launch of the report, major private sector stakeholders, such as Monsanto and Syngenta, resigned altogether from the IAASTD project in October 2007 as the conclusions were clearly against their interests.

Some of IAASTD’s observations and suggestions are²⁰ :

• modern agriculture has brought significant increases in food production. But the benefits have been spread unevenly and have come at an increasingly intolerable price, paid by small-scale farmers, workers, rural communities and the environment;
• the way the world grows its food will have to change radically to better serve the poor and hungry if the world is to cope with a growing population and climate change while avoiding social breakdown and environmental collapse;
• prioritize the promotion of small farmer agriculture and the livelihood of indigenous peoples, giving special attention to the role and situation of women in food production;
• take measures to promote and protect the security of land tenure, especially with respect to women and vulnerable groups, with special attention to equitable land distribution, with agrarian reform if necessary, as mentioned in Article 11(2) of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights in the Voluntary Guidelines for the progressive realization of the right to adequate food;
• take measures to strengthen local markets, shortening the chain from food production to food consumption;
• promote small scale agriculture as important source of employment and livelihood.
• All national and international policies should be guided by a human rights based approach, to guarantee that they respect, protect and fulfill the progressive realization of the right to adequate food;
• develop mechanisms to monitor private companies in order to ensure that they respect the right to adequate food, consistent with the obligation of States to protect this right.

The formulation and implementation of national strategies for the right to food requires full compliance with the principles of accountability, transparency, people’s participation, decentralization, legislative capacity and the independence of the judiciary. Good governance is essential to the realization of all human rights, including right to adequate food.³ When political elites recognize that promotion of human rights, including economic and social rights such as the right to adequate food, actually enhances sustainable economic growth, we can start to expect that freedom from hunger will become a matter of the past.

1. George Kent, Swaraj against Hunger, University of Hawaii, August 9, 2009.
2. “The Right to Food and the WTO,” (April 8, 2009).
3. The Right to Adequate Food (Art. 11): 12/05/99. E/C. 12/1999/5. (General Comments).
4. The Cordoba Declaration on the Right to Food, December 12, 2008.
5. Arun Shrivastava, “Poverty and Food Insecurity in the Developing World: For Us, Tolls the Bell,” in Global Research (May 7, 2009).
6. “U.S. weapons sales are likely to continue to fuel conflict and abet human rights abuses. During the two Bush terms, the majority of U.S. arms sales to the developing world went to countries that our own State Department defined as undemocratic regimes and/or major human rights abusers. And over two-thirds of the world’s active conflicts involved weapons that had been supplied by the United States.” Frida Berrigan, “Weapons: Our No#1 Export?” in Foreign Policy In Focus (July 1, 2009).
7. Annual Report 2005-Right to Food, Action Aid International.
8. ECONOMIC, SOCIAL AND CULTURAL RIGHTS: The Right to Food. Report submitted by the Special Rapporteur on the right to food, Jean Ziegler, in accordance with Commission on Human Rights resolution 2003/25, E/CN.4/2004/10, 9 February 2004.
9. According to the World Bank poverty line of $1.25 (Rs. 56.13) per day, the number of poor in India during 2004-2005 was 456 million, that is, 41.6% of the population.
10. ECONOMIC, SOCIAL AND CULTURAL RIGHTS: The right to food. Report of the Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, Jean Ziegler, Addendum MISSION TO INDIA (20 August-2 September 2005), E/CN.4/2006/44/Add.2, 20 March 2006.
11. Asbjorn Eide, “The Human Right to Food and Contemporary Globalization.”
12. See Whitehouse.
13. See Oxfam.
14. “Food Security in a Volatile World,” International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD).
15. “ECONOMIC, SOCIAL AND CULTURAL RIGHTS: The right to food,” Report submitted by the Special Rapporteur on the right to food, Jean Ziegler, in accordance with Commission on Human Rights resolution 2003/25. E/CN.4/2004/10, 9 February 2004.
16. Kamalakar Duvvuru, “Monsanto, a Contemporary East India Company, and Corporate Knowledge in India,” in Dissident Voice (July 25, 2009).
17. Dinesh C. Sharma, “Preparing for New Challenges,” in Span (March/April 2007).
18. Julia Debes, “U.S.-India Agricultural Cooperation: A New Beginning,” in FAS Worldwide (September 2006).
19. Background Document Prepared by the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, Mr. Olivier De Schutter, on His Mission to the World Trade Organization (WTO), presented to the Human Rights Council in March 2009 (background study to UN doc. A/HRC/10/005/Add.2
20. Wenche Barth Eide and Uwe Kracht, “Official Responses to the World Food Crisis in Light of the Human Right to Food,” (February 11, 2009).

Shah Rukh Khan was detained at the Newark airport on August 14, 2009 for about two hours, and released only after the Indian consulate intervened and vouched for him. Later he said that instead of doing a routine finger scan, the immigration authorities kept telling him that his name was “common”. He said: “They kept telling me your name is common…And I was too polite to ask ‘common to what’.”¹ Ironically, his new film “My Name is Khan” is on racial profiling, and revolves around a Muslim character, mistaken for a terrorist, and his experiences in a post 9/11 America.

What happened to Shah Rukh Khan is not an isolated incident. Since September 11, 2001 there has been a widely reported increase in racial profiling at US airports, particularly as it applies to passengers with darker complexion, “foreign sounding names,” and/or Middle Eastern or South Asian appearance. They are either forced to disembark or refused entry to a plane or detained. Their skin color, names, language and country of origin attract security personnel. Not because they are all criminals. Their “foreign marks” make them suspects. A 50-page report of the Amnesty International “Threat and Humiliation: Racial Profiling, Domestic Security, and Human Rights in the United States,” released on September 13, 2004, asserts that racial profiling in the US is pervasive and the law enforcement uses race, religion, country of origin, or ethnic and religious appearance as a proxy for criminal suspicion. “Prior to 9/11, racial profiling was frequently referred to as ‘driving while black,’” the report noted. “Now, the practice can be more accurately characterized as driving, flying, walking, worshipping, shopping or staying at home while Black, Brown, Red, Yellow, Muslim or of Middle-Eastern appearance.”

According to the newly released government data, more than 2000 immigrants from Muslim-majority nations were singled out as possible national security threats and questioned in the fall of 2004. After being questioned about their views on the United States and what was preached in their mosques, none of those interrogated were charged with national security offenses. Of course, security personnel should interrogate individuals who arouse suspicion, but to question only members of one religious or ethnic community is unethical, humiliating and ineffective. It is naïve to imagine that all terrorists are Muslim and Middle Eastern descent.

In 2007 the Los Angeles Police Department has launched an extensive mapping program to identify Muslim enclaves across the city. LAPD Deputy Chief Michael Downing told the Los Angeles Times: “We want to know where the Pakistanis, Iranians and Chechens are so we can reach out to those communities.”² But the mapping program has sparked outrage from some Islamic groups and civil libertarians. The American Civil Liberties Union said that the program was nothing short of racial profiling.

Racial profiling at the US airports has intensified after 9/11. On a flight air marshals and Airline crew can force a passenger to leave a plane, or even arrest him/her merely because a fellow passenger or airline personnel feels uncomfortable with his/her presence in the plane. Inevitably, the passengers affected are those with darker skin, and/or Middle Eastern and South Asian appearance. In November 2006 six Muslim imams were led away in handcuffs from a US Airways flight after passengers complained that they were praying in the terminal before boarding the plane. After their release, it is alleged, the airline denied them passage in any of its other flights and also refused to help them get tickets for other airlines. In another incident, in August 2007 at the San Diego airport an American airlines flight to Chicago was delayed because a passenger was scared of several Arabic speaking men on board. They were, in fact, Iraqi-Americans, who went to San Diego to train US Marines at Camp Pendleton. The men were detained and questioned before being released. Later the flight was cancelled!

Azhar Usman, a burly American-born Muslim with a heavy black beard, says that he elicits an almost universal reaction when he boards an airplane at any United States airport: conversations stop in midsentence and the look in the eyes of his fellow passengers says, “We’re all going to die!”³ Ahmed Ahmed, a comedian who was hauled through the Las Vegas airport in handcuffs, says: “It’s a bad time to be named Ahmed now,” as his name is a “common” name and could match a member of a terrorist group.

Racial profiling affected those with “foreign marks” at the cross-border also. Zakariya Muhammad Reed, who served for 20 years in the National Guard, and eleven years as a firefighter, was detained four times in six months in 2007 at the Canada-US boarder after he and his family visited his wife’s family in Ontario, Canada, and were returning to the US. In the first encounter, he says, the guards engaged in some nasty banter. “You know, we’re really too good to these detainees,” one of the guards said, according to Reed. “We should treat them like we do in the desert. We should put a bag over their heads and zip tie their hands together.” After about three hours, Reed says, they took his photo and fingerprints, and made him wait a half hour longer before giving him his passport back and telling he could go. “Our car was completely trashed,” he says. “My son’s portable DVD player was broken, and I have a decorative Koran on the dashboard that was thrown on the floor.” Later he was told by Dan Foote, aide to Representative Marcy Kaptur, that the trouble was “no doubt because you probably changed your name to a Muslim name.”⁴

Reed’s letter to the Interagency Border Inspection System, sent on February 2, 2007, expresses his agonizing ordeal. “Nobody will give me any information as to why I am being detained,” he wrote. “I would like to know exactly what I am being accused of and why is it that I am having so much trouble reentering the home of my birth…My entire life has revolved around the service of American citizens and suddenly I am being treated like a criminal because there ‘is a problem with my name,’ to quote one of the border officers…What do I have to do to get my name from this list?…I have been treated like a criminal and my wife and children have been mistreated and disrespected in the name of Homeland Security. All we want is to go on with our lives as before. I have never taken part in any subversive activity to cause harm to this land or its people. I have never done anything criminal in my life.”⁴

US has been caught up with Islamophobia. This is fuelled by several self-interests groups. Media played its role in stoking up Islamophobia. Radio host Mike Gallagher suggested “Muslim-only” line for the airports. On November 14, 2006 CNN host Glenn Beck asked the first-ever Muslim congressman Keith Ellison: “I have been nervous about this interview with you, because what I feel like saying is, ‘Sir, prove to me that you are not working with our enemies.’ I am not accusing you of being an enemy, but that’s the way I feel, and I think a lot of Americans will feel that way.” Some politicians played their part in supporting racial profiling. After terrorist attacks in London, a New York Assemblyman Dov Hikind, a Brooklyn Democrat, said that he would introduce legislation to allow police to zero in on Middle Easterners when they conduct terrorism prevention searches in subways or other local transport systems.⁵ In 2008 during US presidential elections, 28 million copies of a DVD titled Obsession: Radical Islam’s War against the West have been distributed within a few weeks in key battleground states. This film features graphic, violent images and makes comparisons of Islam to Nazism.⁶

Islamophobia in the US is clearly reflected by the question of John McCain’s supporter: “I got to ask you a question. I donot believe in…I can’t trust Obama. I have read about him, and he’s not…he’s not…he is an Arab. He is not….”⁶

Not only is racial profiling unfair and unequal, but it also implements a system of racial moral superiority. While it is true that some members of Muslim community and Middle Eastern descent were responsible for terrorist attacks in the US, so have “white” men like Timothy McVeigh of the Oklahoma City bombings, and Richard Reid, the British shoe bomber. Adam Gadahn, an al-Qaida spokesperson, is a “white” American from a mixed Jewish and Christian heritage and hails from California. John Walker Lindh, the so-called “American Taliban”, is a Roman Catholic. These individuals do not fit the profile used by programs like the National Security Entry Exit Registration System (NSEERS) and US-VISIT that target Arabs, Muslims, and South Asians. Terrorists are multinational, multiethnic and multireligious. Focusing solely upon a particular race, ethnicity, national origin and religion in deciding who to investigate and detain deflects attention from the actual terrorists.

In March 2008, the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) issued a strongly worded critique of the United States’ record on racial discrimination and urged the government to make sweeping reforms to policies affecting racial and ethnic minorities, women, immigrants and indigenous populations in the US. Among its recommendations, the Committee called on the US to pass the federal End Racial Profiling Act or similar legislation and combat widespread ethnic and racial profiling practices by law enforcement, especially against Arabs, Muslims and South Asians in the wake of the 9/11 attacks.

Racial Profiling and the Global War on Terror

Racial profiling in the US has been not only to stoke hatred towards Muslims, but also to fuel the already rampant ethnic and religious scapegoating. The power of “scapegoat mechanism” lies in its deception and concealment. On the one hand, it deceives by depicting those who established “scapegoat mechanism” as righteous and innocent, and the “other” as cause of violence. Thus, it legitimizes all forms of violence (violence as violation of one’s human dignity, value and rights) against the “other”, and portrays this violence as a “sacred” act. On the other hand, it conceals the innocence and plight of the “other,” and the violence of those who scapegoated the “other.” It transforms the violence against the “other” as “good violence.” Thus, the cycle of scapegoating the weak and vulnerable continues.

Racial profiling has, in a way, secured support of majority of Americans for the US’ global war on terror. Moreover, Muslims are perceived by many in the US as “the other”, a perception that allows them to be treated inhumanely without mass protest. It is similar to what US did during World War II to Japanese, leaving out those of German or Italian heritage.
With the overwhelming public support US, along with its allies, launched global war on terror, disguising its real economic and political agenda. Racial profiling, with its skewed up morality, perverted the integrity of human conscience, head and heart. It has helped to deflect not only sympathy from the victims of US’ genocidal violence in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere, but also public focus from “normalized” US’ human rights violations in those countries. American public is benumbed to the US’ atrocities and plunder, incarceration of hundreds of Muslims, destruction of life and property in Iraq and Afghanistan, torture in Guantanamo Bay, Iraq, Afghanistan and other secret prisons, and extraordinary renditions.

Robert Fisk said:

Do we in fact really understand the extent of injustice in the Middle East? When I finished writing my new book, I realized how amazed I was that after the past 90 years of injustice, betrayal, slaughter, terror, torture, secret policemen and dictators, how restrained Muslims had been, I realized, towards the West, because I don’t think we Westerners care about Muslims. I don’t think we care about Muslim Arabs. You only have to look at the reporting of Iraq. Every time an American or British soldier is killed, we know his name, his age, whether he was married, the names of his children. But 500,000-600,000 Iraqis, how many of their names have found their way onto our television programs, our radio shows, our newspapers? They are just numbers, and we don’t even know the statistic.⁷

Moreover, the American public has failed to acknowledge that US’ unlawful use of force against people and property in Iraq and Afghanistan to achieve its political and economic objectives is nothing but terrorism. According to the US Joint Chiefs of Staff publication, terrorism is defined as “the unlawful use or threatened use of force or violence against people or property to coerce or intimidate governments or societies, often to achieve political, religious, or ideological objectives.”⁸

Americans have also ignored US’ past terrorism history. Pointing out the US behavior, in July 2006 Edward Peck, former US Ambassador to Iraq and Deputy Director of Reagan’s Task Force on Terrorism, said:

In 1985, when I was the Deputy Director of the Reagan White House Task Force on Terrorism, they asked us – this is a Cabinet Task Force on Terrorism; I was the Deputy Director of the working group – they asked us to come up with a definition of terrorism that could be used throughout the government. We produced about six, and each and every case, they were rejected, because careful reading would indicate that our own country had been involved in some of those activities.⁹

Again in July 2006 Peck said:

U.S. Code Title 18, Section 2331[1], and read the U.S. definition of terrorism. And one of them in here says • one of the terms, “international terrorism,” means “activities that,” I quote, “appear to be intended to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination or kidnapping”…Yes, well, certainly, you can think of a number of countries that have been involved in such activities. Ours is one of them.¹⁰

A concerned Peck in an interview on CNN Crossfire on October 8, 2001 retorted, “Why it is that all of these people hate us. It’s not because of freedom…They hate us because of things they see us doing to their part of the world that they definitely do not like.”¹¹

Very rightly Shah Rukh Khan said that America needed to understand that “it’s not an isolated parallel universe existence for this country…There is a whole world which makes all the good and bad that is happening. So if you are scared of violence, terrorism, all of us are responsible for it. It is not that the rest of the world is and America is not.”¹²

1. “America Needs to offer More ‘Warmth’: Shah Rukh,” Outlook India (August 19, 2009).
2. “LAPD Starts Mapping Muslim Enclaves across Los Angeles,” on DemocracyNow.org (November 12, 2007).
3. “Terror Fears Hamper U.S. Muslims Travel,” New York Times (June 1, 2006).
4. Matthew Rothschild, “Muslim American Grilled at Border over Religion, Letter to the Editor,” The Progressive (May 10, 2007).
5. Edward Epstein, “Calls for Racial, Ethnic Profiling Renewed after Transit Attacks,” ADC.org (August 10, 2005).
6. “Smearcasting: How Islamophobes Spread Fear, Bigotry and Misinformation,” Democracy Now! (October 17, 2008).
7. Robert Fisk, “I Don’t Think We Westerners Care about Muslims,” Keynote Address delivered at MPAC Convention.
8. Ghali Hassan, “Iraq’s Occupation: A Form of Terrorism,” Countercurrents (May 29, 2008).
9. “NATIONAL EXCLUSIVE: Hezbollah Leader Hassan Nasrallah Talks with Former US Diplomats on Israel, Prisoners and Hezbollah’s Founding,” Democracy Now! (July 28, 2006).
10. “NATIONAL EXCLUSIVE: Hezbollah Leader Hassan Nasrallah Talks with Former US Diplomats on Israel, Prisoners and Hezbollah’s Founding,” Democracy Now! (July 28, 2006).
11. “CNN CROSSFIRE: America Strikes Back: Should the U.S. Target Iraq?” Aired at 19.30 ET on October 8, 2001.
12. “America Needs to offer More ‘Warmth’: Shah Rukh.”

In Mumbai, Hillary Clinton first had a meeting with a selective group of Indian business executives. Later she stayed at Taj Mahal Palace & Tower, one of the two hotels that had been attacked by terrorists in November 2008. At a news conference she subtly brought India’s 11/26 and US’ 9/11 together: “Just as India supported America on 9/11, these events are seared in our memory….”² The reason for this, probably, was to direct Indian public’s attention to the common perpetrator: Islamic extremism. In her op-ed in The Times of India, Clinton clearly made her point. She mentioned about security: “Our countries have experienced searing terrorist attacks. We both seek a more secure world for our citizens,” and therefore, “We should intensify our defense and law enforcement cooperation to that end.” In the same breath she identified the common enemy as the extremism that Pakistan is confronting.¹

The two events – Clinton’s meeting with Indian business executives and her stay at Taj hotel – are steeped in a powerful, but unfortunate, symbolism, as 11/26 is linked with 9/11.

US’ 9/11 and Weapons’ Trade

On September 11, 2001 there was a significant shift in security trend. For the first time since the British burned down Washington in 1814, US experienced death and destruction on its land through an enemy attack.³ Till then death and destruction have always been suffered on foreign lands. George W. Bush, then President of the US, in his State of the Union address on January 28, 2003 recognized this: “In two years, America has gone from a sense of invulnerability to an awareness of peril.” This challenge to its hegemony and attack on its land, instead of leading to introspection of its foreign policy and actions on foreign lands, resulted in the US’ “war on terror.” US failed to acknowledge that the terrorist attack on its land was a blowback. In an interview on the Mike Malloy radio show, former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds said that the US maintained “intimate relations” with Osama Bin Laden and Taliban “all the way until that day of September 11.”⁴ The goals of American “statesmen” using these “intimate relations” with al-Qaida included control of Central Asia’s vast energy supplies and new markets for US military-industrial complex.⁴

Recently in a very rare acknowledgement by Hillary Clinton, she confessed that the US’ present enemy in Afghanistan and Pakistan was once its friend. To a question of the Congressman Adam Shciff in a Subcommittee of the House of Appropriations Committee on April 23, 2009, Clinton explained how the militancy was linked to the US-backed proxy war against the Soviets in Afghanistan:

Let’s remember here…the people we are fighting today we funded them twenty years ago…and we did it because we were locked in a struggle with the Soviet Union. They invaded Afghanistan…and we did not want to see them control Central Asia and we went to work…and it was President Reagan in partnership with Congress led by Democrats who said you know what it sounds like a pretty good idea…let’s deal with the ISI and the Pakistan military and let’s go recruit these mujahedeen…let them come from Saudi Arabia and other countries, importing their Wahabi brand of Islam so that we can go beat the Soviet Union…they (the Soviets) retreated…they lost billions of dollars and it led to the collapse of the Soviet Union. So there is a very strong argument which is…it wasn’t a bad investment in terms of Soviet Union but let’s be careful with what we sow…because we will harvest.⁵

Therefore, the early foundations of al-Qaida were built, mainly, on relationships and weaponry that came from the billions of dollars in US support for the Afghan mujahedeen during the war to expel Soviet forces from that country. The US has long relied on weapons supplies and sales to prop up allies or enhance collective defense arrangements. According to the report titled “Conventional Arms Transfers to Developing Nations,”: “For decades, during the height of the Cold War, providing conventional weapons to friendly states was an instrument of foreign policy utilized by the United States and its allies.”⁶

The US Cold War foreign policy of supplying weapons to maintain strategic relationship continued even after 9/11. In fact, the US’ response to the terror attacks was that it was more willing than ever to sell or supply high technology weapons to countries that have pledged assistance in the global war on terror, regardless of their past behavior or current status. Under the guise of the global war on terror, George W. Bush fast-tracked weapon sales, released countries from arms embargoes, and pumped more money into foreign military aid. US sanctions were lifted on Armenia, Azerbaijan, India, Pakistan, Tajikistan, and Yugoslavia. These countries have been identified as key allies in the global war on terror.⁷

US-India Relationship

After initial confidence building measures, on January 12, 2004 US and India signed an agreement called the “Next Steps in Strategic Partnership” (NSSP) with the aim of implementing a shared vision to expand cooperation, deepening the ties of commerce and friendship between the two nations, and increasing stability in Asia and beyond. This “strategic partnership” has grown into “global partnership” with the ratification of the US-India Agreement for Cooperation on Peaceful Uses of Nuclear Energy in July 2005. Bush signed the Henry J. Hyde United States-India Peaceful Atomic Energy Cooperation Act of 2006 (or “Hyde Act”) into law in December 2006 (P.L. 109-401).⁸ Commenting on the nuclear deal Nicholas Burns, then Under Secretary of State, said that it was “positive for United States national security interest because it will help us cement our strategic partnership with India, which is very important for our global interests.”⁸

In October 10, 2008 Condoleezza Rice, then US Secretary of State, and Pranab Mukherjee, then External Affairs Minister of India, signed the nuclear deal after three years of negotiations. Called the 123 Agreement after a section in the U.S. Atomic Energy Act, the pact allowed India to buy vital nuclear fuel and technology from American companies.

Right from the beginning corporate interests led by the nuclear industry and arms makers in the US lobbied for the nuclear deal. They saw the possibilities for nuclear trade, weapons sales, and selling spare parts and other services to India.⁹ According to the Washington Post, American companies saw a vast market in India for nuclear reactors and conventional weapons, after having been largely frozen out of that market for decades.¹⁰ The US-India Business Council hired the high-powered firm of Patton Boggs to work on Congress, and the Indian government a powerful US lobbying firm, Barbour Griffith & Rogers LLC, for which Robert Blackwill — US ambassador to India from 2001 to 2003 — is president, as well as the law firm of Venable LLP. The Confederation of Indian Industry and the India-American Friendship Council were also involved.

US politicians, both Democrats and Republicans, overwhelmingly supported the US-India nuclear deal. Because they either have investments in or received financial contributions from the arms industry.

US’ Interests in the Deal

US has acknowledged India’s growing global economic, political, and geo-strategic clout. So it wanted to court India through US-India nuclear deal to further its global interests.

1. To Contain China

US perceives China to be the larger threat to its hegemony. According to the 2008 annual report to Congress from the Office of the Secretary of Defense on the Military Power of the People’s Republic of China, “China’s expanding and improving military capabilities are changing East Asian military balances; improvements in China’s strategic capabilities have implications beyond the Asia-Pacific region.”¹¹ US sees India as a new emerging power of the 21st century, one that can be an ally of the United States and help it balance and contain the rise of China. India also directly faces the Chinese military along a four thousand kilometer northern border.

There has been some speculation regarding US’ intention to create an Asian NATO. During the Cold War era, US forged the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO) comprising of pro-western countries such as Pakistan, Philippines, Thailand, Australia and New Zealand as well as France and UK. However, this organization was dissolved in 1977.¹² The speculation about US’ intention to forge Asian NATO has been substantiated with the proposals of some American politicians such as Rudolph Giuliani and John McCain. Giuliani proposed that India, Japan, Singapore, Israel and Australia should be included in NATO. Whereas McCain suggested the establishment of US-led League of Democracies. Trabanco opines that McCain’s proposal was a euphemism for the inclusion of nonEuropean US allies in a global military coalition.¹² The reason for this seems to be the rise of China as an economic power. The US National Intelligence Council called it “the unprecedented transfer of wealth from west to east.”¹²

In order to contain China’s power and to preserve its control over strategic sea routes, US strategists have acknowledged the strategically significant geographic location of India. This could be the reason why US has forged an alliance with India in maritime cooperation.

Therefore, the US’ willingness to make nuclear deal with India is perceived, by some, to gain latter’s strategic and geopolitical loyalty.¹² “(It) would buttress (India’s) potential utility as a hedge against a rising China, encourage it to pursue economic and strategic policies aligned with U.S. interests, and shape its choices in regard to global energy stability….” said Tellis.¹³

   1. To Involve India in the “Reconstruction” of Afghanistan

There is also a talk about US’ intention to involve India in Afghan “reconstruction” and ask for Indian troops.¹¹ India, in the past, refused to send its troops to Iraq. However, the US-India “global partnership” might give the US leverage over India. As the relationship deepens, it would be difficult for India to reject US’ request for its partnership in the “reconstruction” of Afghanistan, which includes alignment of Indian troops with the NATO troops under the leadership of US.

During her three day visit to India, Hillary Clinton, US Secretary of State, mentioned about security cooperation: “Our countries have experienced searing terrorist attacks. We both seek a more secure world for our citizens,” and therefore, “We should intensify our defense and law enforcement cooperation to that end.” And this cooperation is against the extremism that Pakistan is tackling at present.

The US strategy seems to be to draw India (as a “partner”) into “Afghan trap”, as it did Russia (its enemy). Admitting that an American operation to infiltrate Afghanistan was launched long before Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, Zbigniew Brzezenski boasted, “We actually did provide some support to the Mijahedeen before (Soviet) invasion.”¹⁴ “We did not push the Russians into invading, but we knowingly increased the probability that they would,” Brzezenski bragged. “That secret operation was an excellent idea. The effect was to draw the Russians into the Afghan trap.”¹⁵

   2. Market for US Military-Industrial Complex

The US-India nuclear deal not only links India more closely to US and its global interests, but also boosts US trade in a profitable sector, nuclear industry. It also creates market for US conventional weapons. Till now Russia is the largest supplier of weapons to India (second is Israel). US expects that the nuclear deal will change this scenario.

India is a huge market for weapons sales. In 2005 it was the largest buyer of arms in the developing world with purchases of $5.4 billion. US’ intention to profit from this market is evidenced by recent visits to India by US officials, including Robert Gates, the Defence Secretary, in February 2008 to strengthen military ties and promote weapons sales. Lt. Gen. V.K. Kapoor, a defence analyst, said, “Other than obvious commercial interests, the US is keen to invest militarily in India….”¹⁶ At DefExpo 2008 in New Delhi in February 2008 at which major US weapons companies were well represented, William Cohen, former US Defence Secretary under Bill Clinton, declared, “The promise of deeper US-India defence co-operation is now a reality, with collaborations and joint ventures between US and India firms already under way.”¹⁶ India is projected to spend more than $30 billion by 2012 as the country seeks to modernize its military. By 2022 spending is expected to reach $80 billion.

The US-India nuclear deal has opened a huge market for the US weapons industry. For US weapons companies foreign sales mean the biggest bucks. Also, sales are often accompanied by lucrative deals for accessories, spare parts, and eventual upgrades. There is growing evidence that weapons sales are more about money for the US military-industrial complex and other major military economies. According to the congressional report “Conventional Arms Transfers to Developing Nations,”: “Where before the principal motivation for arms sales by foreign suppliers might have been to support a foreign policy objective, today that motivation may be based as much on economic considerations as those of foreign policy or national security policy.”⁶

Weapons Deals during Hillary Clinton’s Visit to India

The burgeoning “global partnership” between US and India is gradually laying bare its contents. India has dramatically increased its defence budget up over 34% alone this year. Hillary Clinton’s visit to India in July 2009 resulted in defence, space and nuclear power agreements. It is the payoff resulting from the US-India nuclear deal.

On July 20, 2009 an accord, known as an end use monitoring agreement, between India and US has been reached in New Delhi to clear the way for the sale of US weapons to India. “We have agreed on the end-use monitoring arrangement which would refer to…Indian procurement of US defence technology and equipment,” said S.M. Krishna, Indian External Affairs Minister, in a joint news conference with Clinton. India is now holding a tender for the order of 126 multi-purpose lightweight fighters for the Air Force. US company Lockheed Martin stands as the front runner to sell F-16. The other three bidders are companies from Russia, France and Sweden. According to the tender terms, a winner should launch licensed production of its aircraft in India. The Indian-assembled F-16 would be a lot cheaper than its equivalent put together in the US or Europe. There is qualified labor in India, and labor costs are low. For the first time in history the US is making such an offer to a country that is neither a NATO member state nor has it Americans troops deployed on its territory.

Hillary Clinton said that India has also approved two sites for the construction of two US nuclear reactors. She said, “I am also pleased that Prime Minister Singh told me that sites for two nuclear parks for US companies have been approved by the government.” That means, it provides about $10 billion business for the US nuclear reactor builders such as General Electric Company and Westinghouse Electric Company, a subsidiary of Japan’s Toshiba Corporation. However, what is not clear is whether India has agreed to the US’ demand for legal immunity to its companies, if there is an accident.

India has already bought $2.1 billion worth of anti-submarine planes from Boeing earlier this year, the largest US arms transfer to India to date.¹⁷ Arms deals between India and US will pull the military of the two countries together and foster interoperability.¹¹

At a May 2009 Defense Writers Group convened by the Center for Media and Security, to the question “whether the Obama administration will follow the general policy of supporting (weapons) exports?” and “do you anticipate any change in terms of where US arms will be sold?” Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Michele Flournoy responded, “We don’t have a sort of arms sale policy as much as more a sense of commitment to building partner capacity.”⁷ Vice Admiral Jeffrey Wieringa, the head of the Pentagon agency that administers weapons exports, was more candid: “We sell stuff to build relationships.”⁷

Not surprisingly, Loren Thompson of the Lexington Institute, a consultant to Lockheed Martin, said, “Weapons could be the single biggest U.S. export item over the next 10 years.”¹⁷ Increased weapons sales will certainly help the US Military-Industrial Complex weather the current economic crisis.

Conclusion

Not surprisingly, in the “global partnership” between US and India, the people who are missing are the poor of both the countries. In the op-ed in The Times of India Hillary Clinton, former Wal-Mart Board Director, made no mention of India’s poor. According to the World Bank poverty line of $1.25 (Rs. 56.13) per day, the number of poor in India during 2004-2005 was 456 million, that is, 41.6% of the population. The official figure of number of poor in the US in 2007 was 37.3 millions.¹⁸ However, Katherine Newman, professor of Sociology and Public Affairs at Princeton University, says that apart from 37.3 million poor, there are over 50 million Americans, who belong to what she calls “the missing class”. In her book The Missing Class: Portraits of the Near Poor in America, co-authored with Victor Tan Chen, she says that the Americans who belong to “the missing class” are those who are living on the edge — one sudden illness, one pink slip (i.e., loss of job), one divorce away from free fall.¹⁹

The impact of arms trade between US and India has on the lack of economic development among the poor in both the countries, as more and more resources are directed into production and acquisition of new deadly weapons. “We’ve put this money down a black hole of so-called security,” says David Krieger, President of the California-based Nuclear Age Peace Foundation. “In a more just and humane society, that money would be spent on health care, housing and the alleviation of poverty.”²⁰

Therefore, the single most pressing “security” issue of the 21st century will be assuring the essentials of a healthy, dignified life for the millions of people in India and US, who are left out of the global economy. Poverty continues to be the main human rights issue in both the countries.

What needs to be done is, try and reduce the drive for production and acquisition of more and more weapons systems, so that resources may be used for education, healthcare, and to fight against poverty.

1. Hillary Rodham Clinton, “Encourage Pakistan as It Confronts Extremism,” in The Times of India (July 17, 2009).
2. Mark Landler, “Seeking Business Allies, Clinton Connects with India’s Billionaires,” in New York Times (July 18, 2009).
   
3. Chomsky, Noam, “September 11th and Its Aftermath: Where is the World Heading?” Public Lecture at the Music Academy, Chennai (Madras), India (November 10, 2001).
4. Lukery, “Bombshell: Bin Laden Worked for US until 9/11: Sibel Edmonds on the Mike Malloy Radio Show,” in Global Research (August 1, 2009).
5. Anwar Iqbal, “US Created Taliban and Abandoned Pakistan: Clinton,” in Dawn.Com (April 25, 2009) and see Youtube.
6. Bryan Bender, “US Is Top Purveyor on Weapons Sales List Shipments Grow to Unstable Areas,” in worldproutassembly.org (November 13, 2006).
7. Frida Berrigan, “Weapons: Our No#1 Export?” in Foreign Policy In Focus (July 1, 2009).
8. Michael F. Martin and K. Alan Kronstadt, CRS Report for Congress: India-U.S. Economic and Trade Relations, August 31, 2007.
9. Andrew Lichterman and M.V. Ramana, “Rushing into the Wrong Future: The U.S.-India Nuclear Deal, Energy and Security,” in Dissident Voice.org (September 20, 2008).
10. Steven Mufson, “New Energy on India: Companies and Lobbyists Throw Support behind U.S. Participation in the Countries Nuclear Sector,” in Washington Post (July 18, 2006).
11. William R. Hawkins, “Bush’s Legacy in India,” in FrontPageMagazine.com (November 24, 2008).
12. Jose Miguel Alonso Trabanco, “Is an ‘Asian NATO’ Really on the US Agenda?” in Global Research (January 28, 2009).
13. Siddharth Varadarajan, “The Truth behind the Indo-U.S. Nuclear Deal,” in Global Research (July 29, 2005).
14. Noor Ali, “US-UN Conspiracy against the People of Afghanistan,” in Online Center for Afghan Studies (February 21, 1998).
15. J.W. Smith, “Simultaneously Suppressing the World’s Break for Freedom,” in Economic Democracy: The Political Struggle for the 21st Century, ed. by M.E. Sharpe (New York: Armonk, 2000). Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed, “Afghanistan, the Taliban and the United States: The Role of Human Rights in Western Foreign Policy.”
16. “India and US Defence Ties Grow Stronger,” in india-defence.com (June 25, 2008).
17. “Weapons Makers Look Overseas as DoD Cuts Back,” in USAToday (June 13, 2009).
18. “Poverty in the United States, 2007.”
19. Katherine S. Newman and Victor Tan Chen, The Missing Class: Portraits of the Near Poor in America (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 2007).
20. Craig Kielburger and Marc Kielburger, “Invest in People, Not Weapons,” in Toronto Star (March 24, 2008).

The Indian Biotechnology sector is gaining global visibility and is being picked for emerging investment opportunities. India has 40 state agriculture universities, five deemed universities, one central agricultural university and more than 200 agricultural colleges. These institutions produce about 14,000 graduates and 7,800 postgraduate and Ph.D. scholars every year.

With Monsanto’s progress in European markets frozen, growing economies like India and their markets took on greater significance. The company urgently needed to expand the market for its GM crops internationally. Monsanto’s agriculture division had already begun to focus on Asian, African and Latin American markets in the early 1990s, towards the goal of “transforming agriculture” in a number of countries, a target that became known as the “developing country goal”. Monsanto’s commercial vision has been projected as a benevolent vision for the world. When Robert Shapiro was appointed as Monsanto’s new Chief Executive Officer (CEO) in 1995, he engaged in a program to reorient the company’s business around “sustainability”. He linked the urgent need to grow enough food to feed a growing population with “inadequate” existing technologies and agricultural practices. So Monsanto’s “sustainability” vision, it is claimed, could be realized through GM technology.

Monsanto India (MI), which began its operations in 1949 as a trader of industrial chemicals and later an agrochemical company in 1975 with the launch of the herbicide, Machete (butachlor), has evolved into an agribusiness giant of GM seeds. The Monsanto research centre established at Indian Institute of Sciences (IISc), Bangalore in 1998 is the only R&D centre established outside the US.

The foundation for Monsanto to tap into the research potential of students as well as the research facilities available in Indian universities was laid by a trade agreement between India and the United States, known as the Knowledge Initiative on Agriculture (KIA) or Agricultural Knowledge Initiative (AKI). This trade deal was influenced by Monsanto, Archer Daniels Midland Company and Wal-Mart.

Knowledge Initiative on Agriculture (KIA)

The India-US Agreement on Agriculture and Science and Technology emerged from a joint statement by Dr. Manmohan Singh, Prime Minister of India, and George W. Bush, then US President, on July 18, 2005. This far-reaching bilateral pronouncement was the genesis of the Knowledge Initiative on Agriculture (KIA). Later, in March 2006 Singh and Bush signed a joint declaration on enhanced cooperation in agricultural education and research. This cooperation is based on the KIA.

The KIA is implemented through KIA Board, which consists of US and Indian members from government, universities, and the private sector. Dr. Norman Borlaug and Dr. M.S. Swaminathan are honorary advisors for the KIA. The US private sector members are: Monsanto, the largest seller of GM seeds in the world; Archer Daniels Midland, a US grain purchaser and trader and is, with Cargill, one of the companies that maintains “oligopolistic control of the American food-manufacturing and food-processing markets”; and Wal-Mart, the world’s largest retailer.

The Board has decided to focus initially on four core areas: agricultural education, food processing and marketing, biotechnology and water management.¹ “The KIA is part of the US comprehensive strategy on revitalizing the bilateral relationship in agriculture with India,” said Susan Owens, director of the FAS Research and Scientific Exchanges Division. A key feature of KIA is university-business partnership. Owen stated: “We want to broaden the scope of the AKI beyond just research…We want to use the AKI to increase agricultural production in India….”² That means, industry helps in not only reshaping the universities’ curricula, but also identifying research areas that have the potential for rapid commercialization.¹ This new Knowledge Initiative required development of “effective policy, regulatory, and institutional frameworks.”¹ As Owen said, “The AKI aims to promote science and technology to create a sound regulatory environment that promotes investment and trade.”²

The KIA Board discussed rights (Intellectual Property Rights) to products that the research in public-funded universities will develop. US land-grant universities and industry representatives are asked to help reshape the curricula of Agricultural education. Some of suggested new courses were in entrepreneurship development, agribusiness, biotechnology, international trade, patent regimes and environmental science in various disciplines. Under KIA endowment of industry-sponsored chairs in Indian universities are allowed.

However, there is fear that India’s Protection of Plant Varieties and Farmers Rights Act could face threats under US pressure. Along with multinationals such as Monsanto, the US has been lobbying for a change in India’s intellectual property laws, to introduce patents on seeds and genes and dilute the provisions protecting farmers’ rights. Vandana Shiva, a physicist and environmentalist, said,

The Science and Technology Cooperation Agreement between the US and India establishes intellectual property protocols of research, bypassing consultation with Indian scientists and the Indian public which has been resisting IPR regimes that force countries to patent life, and create monopolies on seeds, medicine and software…For us, these agreements are instruments of corporate dictatorship; they are not instruments of democracy. And as dictatorship, they will fuel more anger, more discontent, more frustration.³

The Protection and Utilization of Public Funded Intellectual Property Bill 2008

Yielding to the pressures of both the US government and the MNCs such as Monsanto, Indian government introduced in the Parliament a controversial legislation titled “The Protection and Utilization of Public Funded Intellectual Property Bill 2008”. The Bill is modeled on the US’ 1980 Bayh-Dole Act. It provides for the protection and utilization of intellectual property originating from public-funded research. It would alter the existing IP rules to allow government funded universities and autonomous research institutions, rather than the government, to patent their innovations and research outcomes, and to reward institutions and inventors with a share of the royalties and licensing fees generated from the commercial products that result.⁴ It also recommends universities to have a committee, called an intellectual property management committee, to “identify, assess, document and protect public funded intellectual property having commercial potential.” The objective of the IP Bill, it is claimed, is to create an environment in which wealth can be generated from the university system, stimulate national competitiveness, and forge closer academia-industry partnerships.

The IP Bill has attracted considerable debate due to its perceived and potential adverse impact on the R&D, innovation and public interest.⁵ Pushpa Bhargava, who resigned in 2007 as vice-chairman of National Knowledge Commission, an Indian government advisory body that recommended the Bill, says that there was no major open discussion at the commission and he was “taken aback” by the recommendation. The IP Bill also goes against the National Knowledge Commission’s policy objectives of promoting, sharing and using new knowledge to maximize public good.

Supporters of the Bill, mostly government officials and some section of industry argued that “protection of IP creates incentive for more knowledge and technology generation as innovators are recognized and rewarded.”⁶ Officials from India’s Department of Biotechnology, which helped draft the bill, say that the Bill will promote innovation in Indian universities and research institutes by generating funds through patents. According to Somenath Ghosh, managing director of India’s National Research Development Corporation, it has brought “much-needed change,” as “there was no mechanism or incentive to protect knowledge and their research networks have limited interaction with industry.”

IP Legislation and Corporate Knowledge

Since “The Protection and Utilization of Public Funded Intellectual Property Bill 2008” is modeled on the 1980 US’ Bayh-Dole Act, the latter’s impact on US universities imparts some important lessons to Indian academia.

Jim Patrico gives three reasons for bringing US public universities and private companies closer⁷ :

1. Stagnant levels of public research funding by the Federal Government for agriculture research since 1980s. In 2008 National Budget under George Bush, surprisingly there was nearly one third cut in the public funding for agriculture research at the land grant institutions. This seems to be the government’s strategy to gradually eliminate regular public research funding. Giving the rationale for the massive reduction in grants, a USDA deputy secretary said, “We feel like our agricultural research should not be earmarked; it should be competitively awarded, and that’s how you’re going to get the most bang for the buck.”

Due to increase in cost of research, universities had to find their own ways to raise the extra amount of money from outside sources such as big companies. Because of its partnership with Monsanto, University of Missouri was nicknamed “University of Monsanto.”

2. The 1980’s US Bayh-Dole Act, which gave US universities, for the first time, ownership of patents arising from government funded research.

3. The 1980 US Supreme Court verdict that life forms could be patented. This made agriculture a prime target for patents. Private industry and universities mainly focused on the promising field of biotechnology. Patrico notes, “Within months of that Supreme Court decision, faculty members of UC-Davis created Calgene, a private company and one of the first biotech companies of the chute.”

Although the university-corporate relationship existed even before 1980, Boyh-Dole Act gave public institutions a kick towards the market by encouraging them to patent their public funded research. A shift in universities’ research focus towards creation of marketable products has dawned. The habit of patenting their research has developed a taste for private business deals. This put the public funded institutions in a conundrum, because they no longer existed as “public” institutions. Paul Gepts, professor of agronomy and plant genetics at UC Davis, says, “Public universities are a contradiction.”⁷

Patenting of research and university-industry alliance raise troublesome questions about academic freedom, the purity of research, and research agendas. Patenting of research necessitates confidentiality. Agricultural universities and research centers become no longer places of open academic sharing and collaboration. William Folk, a plant geneticist at the University of Missouri says, “When I started in the 70s, meetings were filled with people criticizing each other and sharing ideas…(But today) if you have an idea that has any potential commercial value, you are reluctant to share.”⁷ Thus, colleagues are seen as potential competitors.

Moreover, scientists who perform industry-sponsored research routinely sign agreements requiring them to keep both the methods and the results of their work confidential for a certain period of time. As biotech and pharmaceutical companies involve more in funding research, confidentiality becomes very important for the funding company. From a company’s point of view, confidentiality may be necessary to prevent potential competitors from pilfering ideas. However, one of the basic tenets of science is open sharing of ideas and information. That is why Steven Rosenberg, cancer researcher of the National Cancer Institute, says, “The ethics of business and the ethics of science do not mix well.”

There is also genuine fear that university-corporate relationship might lead to tampering the research manuscripts to serve corporate commercial interests. In 1996 four researchers working on a study of calcium channel blockers accused their sponsor Sandoz that passages highlighting the drug’s potential dangers were removed from a draft manuscript. They wrote in a letter to the Journal of the American Medical Association: “We believed that the sponsor…was attempting to wield undue influence on the nature of the final paper. This effort was so oppressive that we felt it inhibited academic freedom.”⁷

As the research in the public institutions is market-driven, there is a potential danger that the research focus or agenda of universities converge with corporate agendas and interests. The one possibly negative impact of research collaboration with industry is the impact on public sector research priorities. Major victim will be the “minor crops”, which are commercially not profitable for the companies. Market-driven research also suppresses ideas that may not have immediate commercial value. Organic farming will get affected for lack of not only public funds, but also enthusiasm among agricultural researchers. Students, who wish to pursue their research in organic farming, will face a bleak future.

University-Corporation relationship gives legitimacy to the company and its products. The company can use this legitimacy to promote its products. In 2007, Monsanto gave royalty-free license of its GM papaya seeds to the Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, India. License will be valid for ten years and royalty will be decided thereafter. “This is the first product delivery from Monsanto to the university, and Monsanto has been working on this for the past year,” said Bhagirath Choudhary, National Coordinator, International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-Biotech Applications that assists universities acquire technology from private companies.⁸ The reason for the collaboration between the university and Monsanto was that famers buy papaya seeds from the university.

Therefore, IP law makes public funded universities and research centers excessively focus on income generation and sharing of royalties. This may derail public funded academic institutions from their mission of unqualified pursuit and public dissemination of truth and knowledge. The university serves the broad public interest, to the extent that it treasures informed analysis, critical inquiry and uncompromising standards of intellectual integrity. However, university-industry alliance converts these public centers of knowledge into centers to serve the greed of private companies. However, Rob Hersch, Monsanto’s vice president of product and technology cooperation, disagrees. He says, “The No.1 issue for us with universities and with science is to get good information…unbiased, believable, reproducible information.”⁷ Ignacio Chapela, a UC-Berkeley professor of microbial ecology, admits that a deal between university and company “institutionalizes the university’s relationship with one company, whose interest is profit. Our role should be to serve the public good.”⁹ Therefore, there is a real danger of “business of the universities” becoming business. Consequentially, the knowledge of universities will help widen the gap between the rich and the poor by providing knowledge that helps rich to become richer, rather than bridging the gap between the rich and the poor. So, research will be geared towards making profit for the big corporations.

Thus, university education system is converted to essentially profit making commercial enterprise. It is structured like any other commercial enterprise that looks primarily at its bottom line. A deeper analysis of nature, which has no immediate commercial market, is now being downgraded in favor of what the industry considers as “lucrative” research. It shifts research priorities away from what society needs as a whole to the greed of the corporations. Science is no longer for advancing knowledge and the well-being of society but almost entirely for generating profits for the educational enterprise, and consequently to the funding corporations. Professor Steve Rose of UK’s Open University, succinctly puts it,

Well I think there is a very real problem from the point of view of university research in the way that private companies have entered the university, both with direct companies in the universities and with contracts to university researchers. So that in fact the whole climate of what might be open and independent scientific research has disappeared, the old idea that universities were a place of independence has gone. Instead of which one’s got secrecy, one’s got patents, one’s got contracts and one’s got shareholders.

Stifling downstream R&D, hindering free scientific exchange of scientific information, data and materials and increasing opportunities for conflict of interest and other unethical practices not consistent with the best interests of science is not the way to go.

In India Monsanto has started country-wide campaign to attract research talent into the development of hybrid rice and wheat. For this, it has linked with some of the country’s premier universities and research institutes. In 2009 Monsanto announced $10 million grant to establish Monsanto’s Beachell-Borlaug International Scholars Program (MBBISP) to improve research on breeding techniques for rice and wheat. The program will be administered by Texas AgriLife Research, and agency of the Texas A&M University system, for the next five years. What is alarming is not that agribusiness giant Monsanto is seeking answers from the Indian public funded universities and research institutions. It is that Monsanto is the one asking the questions at Indian public funded institutions. As Andrew Neighbour, former administrator at Washington University in St. Louis, who managed the university’s multiyear and multimillion dollar relationship with Monsanto, admits, “There’s no question that industry money comes with strings. It limits what you can do, when you can do it, who it has to be approved by.”⁷ This raises the question: if Agribusiness giant Monsanto is funding the research, will Indian agricultural researchers pursue such lines of scientific inquiry as “How will this new rice or wheat variety impact the Indian farmer, or health of Indian public?” The reality is, Monsanto is funding the research not for the benefit of either Indian farmer or public, but for its profit. It is paying researchers to ask questions that it is most interested in having answered.

Now, the basic role of the public funded agricultural institutions and research centers in a democratic society is at risk. The new developments in India are vehicles to empower food giants such as Monsanto, destroy small farmers, and harm the public health. In 1970 Henry Kissinger said: “Control oil and you control nations; control food and you control people.”¹⁰ What we are witnessing in India today are developments towards that end, under the disguise of “food security.” Concentrating control in the hands of the US Agbusiness company Monsanto (and few others) places Indian public at risk, and leads to its control of India, as the British East India Company did.

1. Dinesh C. Sharma, “Preparing for New Challenges,” Span, March/April 2007.
2. Julia Debes, “U.S.-India Agricultural Cooperation: A New Beginning,” FAS Worldwide, September 2006.
3. Rahul Goswami, “A Bargain-Basement Knowledge ‘Mandi’,” InfoChange News &Features, August 2006.
4. Rahul Vartak and Manish Saurashtri, “The Indian Version of Bayh-Dole Act,” Intellectual Asset Management, March/April 2009.
5. “The Indian Public Funded IP Bill: Are We Ready?” Indian J Med Res, 128, December 2008, 682-685.
6. Sharad Pawar, India’s Union Minister for Agriculture, at Conference of Vice-Chancellors of Agricultural Universities, New Delhi, February 16-17, 2009.
7. Jim Patrico, “Universities for Sale?” Progressive Farmer, November 2001.
8. Padmaparna Ghosh, “Monsanto’s Gift to Tamil Nadu University: GM Papaya Licence,” livemint.com,india, October 24, 2007.
9. Eyal Press and Jennifer Washburn, “The Kept University,” The Atlantic Monthly, 285/3, March 2000, 39-54.
10. Stephen Lendman, “Destroying America’s Family Farm: HR 2749. A Stealth Agribusiness Empowering Act,” Global Research, June 12, 2009.

Monsanto established “Monsanto Fund” in 1964 as the charitable arm of the company. It states that “our philanthropic goal has been to bridge the gap between people’s needs and their available resources. We want to help people realize their dreams, and hopefully inspire them to enroll others in their vision.”

Monsanto has also Monsanto Fund Matching Gifts Program. This program “gives permanent Monsanto employees and active members of the Monsanto Board of Directors an opportunity to join Monsanto Fund’s support of not-for-profit institutions.” Monsanto makes it candid that the request for support of an NGO is honored “if the recipient organization adheres to the guidelines of the Matching Gifts Program.” “Eligible organizations include, but are not limited to: Colleges and universities, private and public elementary and secondary schools, organizations that serve youth, museums, libraries, health and human service agencies, environmental, community and cultural organizations.” World Vision is one of the recipients of the “matching gifts”.

Monsanto’s philanthropic activities are meant to not only improve its image, but also provide key relationships. It understands better than anyone that relationships, partnerships and network are the key for success of the company.

On November 1, 2006, in his 2006 IBM lecture at Westminster College, Fulton, Missouri, on “Sabina Xhosa and the New Shoes: Introducing Technologies into Developing Countries”, Hugh Grant, Chairman, President, and CEO of Monsanto, focused on agriculture in Sub-Saharan Africa. He took Malawi as a model. Agriculture is the primary industry in Malawi. According to him, “seventy-two percent of the people’s caloric intake depends on maize, or corn.”¹ Maize or corn is the staple food in most Sub-Sahara African countries.

Monsanto was seeking a foothold in the Sub-Sahara Africa. Grant said:

We haven’t broken through in Africa in any of the Sub-Sahara African countries. So what do we need? We need one African country to say yes. One African country to start field trials. We need to start the field trials and start testing this in African soil, and at Monsanto we’re ready to work with an array of partners to make happen.¹

The opportune time for Monsanto arrived with the arrival of severe drought in Malawi in 2004. Any predator looks for a vulnerable prey. Malawi, after the drought, was just the kind of prey predator companies like Monsanto look for. According to Grant, Monsanto held “a discussion with relief organizations, non-government organizations, the Malawi government, and some of the relief agencies, particularly an agency called World Vision. We got together and said this is going to keep on happening unless we take a different approach. And that’s what we did.”¹ On December 20, 2005 Monsanto announced its intention to donate 700 metric tons of “quality hybrid maize seeds” to farmers in Malawi. This “high quality seed” was “donated” to the farmers through “some of the NGOs and government and relief agencies working on delivery and distribution systems.”¹

U.S. Ambassador to Malawi Alan Eastham praised Monsanto for its donation. He said, “The donation of hybrid seed to local farmers will potentially have a significant impact on the quality of next year’s harvest and represents the best tradition of socially responsible giving by the U.S. private sector.”² A representative of World Vision Malawi, one of seven members of the NGO consortium, said, “This donation is addressing both the short-term and the long-term needs of the people in Malawi, and fits very well with our programs in this country.”² The nexus between the US government and Monsanto is evident by not only the statement of the US Ambassador to Malawi, but also a highly positive report given by Charles Corey, Washington File Staff Writer. The Washington File is a product of the Bureau of International Information Programs, US Department of State (Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov).³

Therefore, Monsanto’s “donation” of seeds to Malawi farmers through its partners like the World Vision was to get a foothold in the Sub-Sahara Africa. What are its interests?

Monsanto pledges “Growth for a Better World”: “We want to make the world a better place for future generations.” Increased yields are the core of this agenda. To achieve this Monsanto provides “the products and systems” to farmers. Its main product is Roundup herbicide. Monsanto also produces GM seeds. The GM crop is resistant to the herbicide, Roundup, offering farmers a convenient way to spray fields with weed killer without affecting crops. These are known as Roundup Ready Crops. The genes contained in the GM seeds are patented.

Patenting means that farmers who buy GM seeds enter into a licensing agreement with Monsanto for the use of that particular gene. They are forbidden from saving seeds for the next season. They must buy new seed from the company each season. This denies farmers’ right to save seed. The implications of this are huge for poor farmers. Saved seed is the one resource that the poor farmers depend upon to carry them through the year. Denial of this right will greatly impact them economically. For they have to pay more each season to buy new seed. Although Monsanto purports to help farmers “improve their lives” through the supply of GM seed, the reality is that it places unbearable economic burden on the poor farmers. Teresa Anderson says, “Social and economic risks from GM crops are equally weighty. They will increase dependence on outside technologies, marginalize farmers from R&D, and consequently exacerbate the social and economic difficulties….”⁴

The implications of patenting of the gene in the GM seed go further than forbidding seed saving. If a GM crop cross-pollinates with a neighboring crop through the movement of wind, insects, birds, or accidental seed mixing, the neighboring harvest would be likely to carry the patented gene also. Monsanto could then claim that the neighboring farm has infringed their patent. The farmer, who was unintentionally contaminated by somebody else’s GM crop, would be breaking the law if he saved his seed and planted it. Monsanto goes after farmers, farmers’ co-ops, seed dealers or anyone it suspects may have infringed its patents of genetically modified seeds. Ever since commercial introduction of its GM seeds, in 1996, Monsanto has launched thousands of investigations and filed lawsuits against hundreds of farmers and seed dealers.

All this boils down to the dreadful result, that is, Monsanto controlling much of the world’s food supply. Control of food supply leads to control of people.

Genesis of Monsanto

Hugh Grant says, “As an agricultural and technology company committed to human rights, we have a unique opportunity to protect and advance human rights. We have a responsibility to consider not only how our business can benefit consumers, farmers, and food processors, but how it can protect the human rights of both Monsanto’s employees and our business partners’ employees.” However, this statement needs to be verified with the “gene” of Monsanto.

Monsanto was founded in 1901 by John Francis Queeny as a saccharin producing company. Giving his wife’s maiden name Monsanto to the company, he called it the Monsanto Chemical Works. His steady customer was a new company in Georgia named Coca-Cola.

Later Monsanto extended its list of products to vanillin, caffeine, drugs used as sedatives and laxatives, plastics, resins, rubber goods, fuel additives, artificial caffeine, industrial fluids, vinyl siding, dishwasher detergent, anti-freeze, fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides. From 1929 to 1971, Monsanto produced PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls) as industrial coolants and insulating fluids for transformers and other electrical equipment.

In the 1960s, Monsanto manufactured Agent Orange, a poisonous chemical toxin. Agent Orange is the code name for a powerful herbicide and defoliant. This is “a chemical that strips trees and plants of their leaves and is sometimes used in warfare to deny cover to enemy forces.” The US military used this toxin in Vietnam War. It sprayed an estimated 21,136,000 gallons of Agent Orange across South Vietnam to defoliate jungles.⁵ This chemical has been reported to cause serious skin diseases as well as a vast variety of cancers in the lungs, larynx, and prostate. Children in the areas where Agent Orange was used have been affected and have multiple health problems including cleft palate, mental retardation, hernias, and extra fingers and toes. According to Vietnamese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 4.8 million Vietnamese people were exposed to Agent Orange, resulting in 400,000 deaths and disabilities, and 500,000 children born with birth defects.⁶

In February 2004, the Vietnamese Association of Victims of Agent Orange (VAVA) filed a class action law suit against Monsanto in a New York court. On March 10, 2005, Judge Jack B. Weinstein, who defended the U.S. veterans affected by Agent Orange, dismissed the suit, ruling that there was no legal basis for the plaintiffs’ claims.

During the 1970s, Monsanto shifted more resources into biotechnology. In the 1980s it decided to become one of the key players in the worldwide agricultural biotechnology market. In 1981 the company created a molecular-biology group for research in plant genetics. The next year, Monsanto became the first to genetically modify a plant cell. Over the next few years, it developed genetically modified seeds of cotton, soybeans, corn and canola.

In the late 1990s after restructuring the company, Monsanto was rebranded as a “life sciences” company. A new company Solutia was named for the chemical and fibers operations. Then after additional reorganization in 2002 Monsanto officially declared itself an “agricultural company”, dedicated to making the world “a better place for future generations”.

Reality Check

GTM (Gaming The Market) gives a short list of grievances against Monsanto⁵ :

1. 1917 US government suit against Monsanto over the safety of saccharin;
2. 1965-1972 UK landfill illegal toxic waste dumping;
3. Agent Orange chemical warfare;
4. 1979 dioxin chemical spill Kemner v. Monsanto longest civil jury trial in U.S. history;
5. Responsible for 56 contaminated Superfund sites;
6. Anniston, Alabama mercury and PCB-laden waste discharged into local creeks over 40 years;
7. Terminator seeds that lead to world food shortages, poverty, and death;
8. Recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone Posilac (rBST) (rBGH);
9. Using coercive tactics to monopolize world markets;
10. Pursuing 500 cases annually against customers for “seed fraud”;
11. Andhra Pradesh Government vs. Monsanto on India seed price fixing;
12. US Department of Justice and US Securities and Exchange Commission criminal and civil charges for international bribing;
13. False advertising for “biodegradable” Roundup weed killer;
14. India child labor abuse in the manufacture of cotton-seeds;
15. Farmers suicides in India;⁷
16. Corporate tax evasion at Sauget, Illinois facility;
17. Campaign against dairies which do not inject bovine growth hormone from advertising.

On March 11, 2008 a documentary was aired on French television (ARTE – French-German Cultural TV channel) by French journalist and film maker Marie-Monique Robin, entitled The World According to Monsanto (Le Monde selon Monsanto). Over a period of three years Robin has collected material for her documentary, through numerous interviews with people of different backgrounds. She traveled widely, from Latin America, to Asia, through Europe and the United States, to personally interview farmers and people in influential positions. This documentary dealt a severe blow to the credibility of Monsanto.

The destructive effects of genetically engineered crops are worldwide, but the extensive damage done in India has been widely documented by Vandana Shiva, a physicist and environmentalist. She is an activist and author of many books concerning the nefarious consequences of GM farming as opposed to the wisdom of traditional family and biological farming. Commenting on the consequences on farms and human life in India due to the use of hybrid seeds, she said,

Recently I was visiting Bhatinda in Punjab because of an epidemic of farmers’ suicides. Punjab used to be the most prosperous agricultural region in India. Today every farmer is in debt and despair. Vast stretches of land have become waterlogged desert. And, as an old farmer pointed out, even the trees have stopped bearing fruit because heavy use of pesticides has killed the pollinators — the bees and butterflies…And Punjab is not alone in experiencing this ecological and social disaster. Last year I was in Warangal, Andhra Pradesh, where farmers have also been committing suicide. Farmers who traditionally grew pulses and millets and paddy have been lured by seed companies to buy hybrid cotton seeds referred to as “white gold”, which were supposed to make them millionaires. Instead they became paupers.

In India and China it has been proved that the promises of Monsanto that BT cotton (genetically engineered cotton) would produce a far higher yield and prove less costly in terms of herbicide and fertilizer required has been proved devious.

Monsanto (and its partners like World Vision) is not held back by any considerations of ethics. Monsanto does its business exclusively with the intent of increasing its own profit at the cost of farmers worldwide. If left to its own devices it will most certainly destroy not only the livelihood of millions of farmers, but also their very life.

Conclusion

Monsanto’s genetically modified seeds have transformed the company and are radically altering global agriculture. The company has produced GM seeds for soybeans, corn, canola and cotton. More products have been developed or are in the pipeline, including seeds for sugar beets and alfalfa. The company is also seeking to extend its reach into milk production by marketing an artificial growth hormone for cows that increases their output.

On April 25, 2009 Monsanto announced in India a special fellowship program for research on rice and wheat plant breeding. Under the program, the company will allocate $10 million to encourage young Ph.D. scholars to pursue their research in rice and wheat breeding. Edward Runge, Director of Monsanto’s Beachell-Borlaug International Scholars Program, told that the company was looking at attracting students from India and China, two of the fastest growing economies and the largest populated countries. Also rice and wheat are staple food in these countries.

1. Hugh Grant, “Sabina Xhosa and the New Shoes: Introducing Technologies into Developing Countries,” 2006 IBM Lecture at Westminster College, Fulton, Missouri, on November 1, 2006.
2. Charles W. Corey, “U.S. Company Donates Maize Seed to Farmers in Malawi: Monsanto’s Contribution Expected to Feed More Than 1 Million People.”
3. In order to understand the nexus among the US government, Corporations and NGOs one may read about US Global Leadership Campaign (USGLC). USGLC is an influential network of over 400 organizations and thousands of individuals. Corporations and NGOs such as Monsanto, Lockheed Martin, Mercy Corps, CARE, World Vision, Caterpiller, AIPAC, Motorola “joined together in a coalition with a common message and a common mission.”
4. Teresa Anderson, “Patented GM Crops: Making Seed Saving Illegal?”
5. “Monsanto: Profiting without Conscience.”
6. Watch the documentary on the effects of Agent Orange in Vietnam.
7. “Vandana Shiva on Farmer Suicides, the U.S.-India Nuclear Deal, Wal-Mart in India and More,” www.democracynow.org, 13.12.2006.

   According to the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) data record, there have been 166,304 farmers’ suicides in a decade since 1997 in India. Of these, 78,737 occurred in five years between 1997 and 2001. The next five years – from 2002 to 2006 – proved worse, seeing 87,567 take their lives. This means that on an average, there has been one farmer’s suicide every 30 minutes since 2002. www.hindu.com, 31.1.2008.