Issue 67 Vol III, July 15, 2008

F E A T U R E S

'Neglect of farming led to rice crisis'

THE headlines screaming about a global food shortage have not aroused surprise in a leading non-governmental organisation (NGO) working with farming communities across Asia. Marwaan Macan-Markar of IPS writes from Bangkok that to its members, warnings of hunger on a biblical scale are hardly news. The Asia-Pacific arm of the Pesticide Action Network (PAN), a global environmental lobby, has been raising the alarm about an impending rice shortage for years. Among its more recent campaigns was one launched to coincide with ‘’The International Year of Rice,’’ which was marked globally in 2004.

But the alarm bells rung by PAN were ignored by governments in the region, home to nine of the world’s top 10 producers of the grain. They are China, India, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Vietnam, Thailand, Burma, the Philippines and Japan. The only non-Asian in this rice league is Brazil.

‘’Governments refused to listen to our concerns. In the last five years we have been saying that we are in rice crisis, that food security and food sovereignty were being undermined,’’ Clare Westwood, campaign coordinator for PAN’s ‘Save Our Rice Campaign, said during a telephone interview from Malaysia. ‘’It was only a matter of time before the warnings became real.’’

PAN’s primary concern was the push towards rice cultivation on an industrial scale that promoted monoculture, where a few high-yield rice varieties that needed large doses of chemicals were held up as the answer to growing demand. Marginalised, consequently, were the small farmers, who came from rural communities that had used local knowledge over centuries to generate new varieties of paddy seeds that blended with the local environment.

‘’The high-yielding seeds prompted in the monoculture style of farming are not as hardy as local varieties produced through the ecological style of farming,’’ adds Westwood. ‘’This hybrid rice can only perform well under certain circumstances and they need a lot of fertiliser and pesticides and they are water intensive. These are their inherent weaknesses.’’

A recent report by a regional U.N. body lends weight to PAN’s view about the high cost Asian governments are currently paying for neglecting the agricultural sector, where a bulk of the poor in Asia and the Pacific -- some 641 million people -- live. ‘’The rural poor account for 70 percent of the poor in the Asia-Pacific region, and agriculture is their main livelihood,’’ states a survey published by the Bangkok-based Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP).

‘’The agriculture sector has been neglected for a long time, nearly four decades, and the Asia-Pacific regions would have run into a food shortage problem and rising food prices sooner or later,’’ says Shamika Sirimanne, chief of the socioeconomic section in the poverty and development division of ESCAP. ‘’Governments used to provide much more public services to the agriculture sector earlier.’’

Assistance had ranged from public funds to help farmers improve their Yields, assistance with research and development and with marketing the grain. State funds had also been invested to improve roads and other infrastructure projects to improve the quality of life in rural areas.

‘’This shift has become marked since the 1980s,’’ Sirimanne explained in an interview. ‘’Everybody began to think of economic growth in that decade and what could be achieved through manufacturing, industry and services. The idea of growth through agriculture was sidelined.’’

World Bank figures help to explain why these new avenues for growth in the region were attractive. In China, the emerging Asian economic powerhouse, the gross domestic production (GDP) from agriculture during the 1981-1985 period was 28.7 percent, while industry accounted for 26 percent. But during the 2001-2006 period, agriculture’s contribution to China’s GDP had dropped to 8.7 percent, while industry rose to 49.1 percent.

In India, during the same period, agriculture went down from 18.4 percent of GDP to 6.2 percent, making way for industry and services. And in Indonesia, agriculture dropped from 18.4 percent of GDP to 11.8 percent, also making way for industry and services.

But what did not follow as a result of this shift away from agriculture was a drop in the number of poor in rural areas. ‘’Even today, 60 percent of the region’s labour force is in the agriculture sector, where a large number live in poverty,’’ says Sirimanne. ‘’The Asian agriculture sector is dominated by very poor people and it is the duty of governments to start re-investing in them to improve productivity.’’

And now, even the authors of a major international study on the future of global agriculture have made a strong case to resurrect the role of the small, neglected rural farming communities to improve cereal production, including rice. The final report of the U.N-backed International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD), which was authored by 400 experts from across the world, was approved in mid-April at a meeting of governments and scientists in Johannesburg.

‘’The report called for greater participation of small-scale farming and for governments to rethink their prevailing agriculture structures,’’ Lim Li Ching, the lead author for the Asia report to IAASTD, told IPS. ‘’This is because the traditional farming methods in this region were environmentally sustainable.’’

The IAASTD report also called into question the Green Revolution, because the production of high yield rice during that period ‘’came with a huge environment cost,’’ she added. ‘’The social and environmental cost of the Green Revolution in the region cannot be ignored.’’

The Green Revolution was masterminded by the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), based in Los Banos, the Philippines. To ensure high yields in rice cultivation at a time when there was an escalating demand for the grain, IRRI introduced high-yield rice seeds to be grown on an industrial scale, changing dramatically the landscape of rice cultivation in Asia.

During the Green Revolution, from 1968-81, high-yield rice varieties resulted in rice output increasing by 42 percent. But now, in retrospect, IRRI admits that the monoculture rice production did come with some costs.

‘’We are aware of the environmental lessons learnt from the Green Revolution,’’ Duncan Macintosh, spokesman for IRRI, said in an IPS interview. ‘’The first Green Revolution occurred when there was no environmental movement. Back then, there was only one purpose: feeding people.’’

Consequently, IRRI welcomes the findings of the IAASTD. ‘’We have no disagreement with that report,’’ adds Macintosh. ‘’We need rice production systems that are environmentally safe and sound.’’ [Courtesy IPS]

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Corruption in India defies solutions
Vinod Anand

IN a mixed capitalist system the basic framework has to do with how the economy performs with a wide range of instruments at its disposal like taxation, public spending, state participation in production, direct controls, regulations, legislation, monetary and debt policy. The functions of the state are very much affected by the kind of ground rules under which the private economy operates. In turn, all of us are constantly affected by the economic and other decisions of the government. In its wide connotation, government or state has three important and mutually dependent components: voters, legislators and administrators. They have strong relationships with one another. Voters express their preferences with relation to public decisions, which may or may not be honoured by the legislators who take eventual decisions. The decisions are implemented by the administrators who may or may not be effective. The role of information and of interest groups is crucial to these inter-linkages. The functioning of the economy, and the roles of individuals in their capacity as voters, legislators, and administrators get distorted, amongst other things, by corrupt and immoral practices called ‘rent-seeking’ and ‘directly unproductive profit seeking’ activities in the terminology of the ‘New Political Economy’ implying, apart from other things, dishonest and improper use of one’s power or position for purposes of making illegal money or enhancing one’s power and influence

In economics there is enough proof to show that

a) there is a positive correlation between pervasive (widespread) and individual-level corruption basically due to upward and downward linkages amongst the stakeholders leading to trickle-up and trickle-down effects;

b) the actual level/degree of corruption is beyond any direct measurement, and hence one has to rely on:

i. proxy instruments based on written documents (like press reports, opinion polls, court proceedings and judgements, judicial records, records from anti-corruption agencies), and even television talk shows and inside stories and also on limited amount of scattered survey data, if any.

ii. certain indices like the Corruption Perception Index (CPI), as used and published by Transparency International. The Business International Index (BII) as used by Business International, a subsidiary of the Economist’s Intelligence Unit, and the Global Competitiveness Report Index (GCRI) as based on a survey of firm managers who were queried on the extent of corruption relating to various aspects of business.

The three indices as mentioned in ii) above, and others that can possibly be formulated in a similar way are in fact ‘robust’ indices in the sense of reliability, and also because they capture, by and large, several close and remote proxy variables directly or indirectly linked with various kinds of corrupt practices.

Based on these three indices sums up the levels of corruption in thirteen Asian countries including India in the following Table:

The CPI reflects the level at which corruption is perceived by people working for multi-national firms and institutions having a direct impact on economic, social, and commercial life. The BII takes into account business transactions involving corrupt practices and questionable payments. The GCRI is more comprehensive and is based on questions relating to import and export permits, business licences, exchange controls, tax assessments, police protection and loan applications. There are no indices, whatsoever, to measure the level of corruption emanating from the functioning of political systems and bureaucratic mechanisms.

For all the three indices lower score means less corruption, and higher score implies more corruption. In terms of these indices about a decade back, Singapore was the least corrupt country, but for other countries, the three indices, taken together, presented a mixed picture: the BII ranked Thailand and Indonesia, the CPI ranked Bangladesh and the GCRI identified Indonesia and Philippines as the most corrupt countries.

In this kind of situation, the best thing is to rely only on indices like GCRI that are relatively more comprehensive capturing corruption in different spheres, and in different shades.

In terms of these indices, India was ranked quite high in the given Asian countries at number four both in terms of BII and CPI and at number three in terms of GCRI.  According to the CPI for the year 2000, India, once again, fell in the most corrupt countries of the world having 69th position among the 90 surveyed countries. In fact, the corruption scenario in India is highly dismal and is growing worse. There is another fact in terms of rent-seeking losses to India’s national income that substantiates this high level of corruption in the country. These losses amounted to between 30 percent and 40 percent in 1980 and 1981, and looking at what is happening in the country both in terms of commitment of political leadership and anti corruption measures, it can easily be maintained that, over the years, corruption levels with their pervasiveness and individual portraits have gone up.  Given the perceived high levels of corruption in India and also the fact that it has been in a way institutionalised, leading to unauthorised leakages of monetary and other resources, it is a pity that neither our political leaders nor our administrators ever talk of corruption, its levels and its minimization or reduction as an overall strategy of either the various plans, or the annual budgets or other such programmes. In the matrix of anti-corruption strategies, as based on the level of commitment of political leaders and the adequacy of anti-corruption measures, India perhaps falls in the ‘Hopeless’ strategy cell indicating weak political commitment and inadequate anti-corruption measures, whereas a country like Singapore falls in the ‘Effective’ strategy cell indicating strong political commitment and adequate anti-corruption measures.

Solutions

Corruption and its fallouts can be reduced only when an adequate anti-corruption strategy is made effective through strong political and bureaucratic will. And for this the root causes of corruption have first to be diagnosed, and then eliminated or minimized. The root causes of bureaucratic corruption in the case of India and a few other Asian countries (Indonesia and Hong Kong) basically originate from opportunities geared by the involvement of civil servants in the administration control, and final disposal of lucrative activities, disproportionate salaries, and weak and ineffective policing in terms of detection and the consequent punishments.  Apart from these causes the politician-criminal-bureaucrat nexus existing merely for individual gain and survival, and for expanding their tentacles all over and showing no sincerity and reverence towards values, is also a crucial debilitating factor.

Apart from learning from the experience of other countries (like Singapore, the least corrupt country in Asia), in terms of changing the public perception of corruption as ‘a low-risk, high-reward’ activity to ‘a high-risk, low-reward’ activity, and also basing the comprehensive anti-corruption strategy on the ‘logic of corruption control’ in terms of focusing on the removal or minimization of incentives and opportunities that make individual corrupt behaviour irresistible, India has just to make strong determination to combat corruption, given the various legislations and its legal structure. The only thing, which has to be ensured, is proper, impartial, and unbiased use of the various anti-corruption acts to take strong, deterrent prompt, and timely legal action against the offenders, irrespective of their political/bureaucratic connections, and money or muscle power. Beyond that, there is a widespread perception, and it is also widely seen in everyday life, that India is increasingly becoming a soft state in terms of postponing or ignoring, diplomatically, the use or application of the given legal sanctions or discretions, if any, in crucial matters. This attitude requires a paradigm change starting with a tough treatment  of anyone involved directly or indirectly in corrupt practices. The law enforcement authorities have also a crucial role to play in this context. Presently they are viewed with suspicion. They have to evoke faith not terror and have to change their mindset to be fully accountable to generate public confidence. Judiciary, which is presently under great strain, has to provide speedier and less expensive justice by enhancing its infrastructure and incorporating modern methods to activate the whole procedure.

These prescriptions combined with strong and undaunted political will and long-period macro anticorruption strategy, will no doubt make India, in time to come, a less corruption-free society, and once the beginning is made, the end result would be highly rewarding.

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Has the Post-American era started?
Sawraj Singh

AFTER the collapse of the Soviet Union, a bipolar world changed into a unipolar world led by America. The unipolar world order can also be called the “American Era.” Now, it seems that the unipolar world order has already changed to a multipolar world order. Therefore, the question is raised that has the post-American era already started?

There are several important happenings in the world that are showing that America and the West are no longer able to influence these events. The election of Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe is one example of the decreasing influence of the Western powers. They tried very hard to block Mugabe from being re-elected President of Zimbabwe. Whereas the Western powers are pressing hard to oust Mugabe, the African countries do not want to be seen as supporting their colonial masters.

The Western powers also failed to change the regimes in Burma and Sudan. They made a big issue of human rights violations in Burma and Darfur, but so far are unable to have the governments of their liking in those places. The Asian and African countries have not joined the Western powers to bring the change in Sudan and Burma.

Iran so far remains defiant to the Western pressure to stop it from pursuing its nuclear goals. Iran has threatened the West with very serious consequences if its nuclear facilities are attacked by Israel. The outcome can be very different than 20 years ago when Iraq’s nuclear facilities were attacked by Israel. Iran has many more options to hit back. It can attack the oil tankers. It can incite the Shiite population in Iraq to attack the American soldiers there who can be virtual hostages in such an event. Iran can also encourage its allies in Lebanon to launch very serious attacks on Israel. A U.N. official has described the scenario in the Middle East as a “Fire ball” if Iran is attacked.

The situation in Afghanistan and Iraq has taken a turn for the worse. In Afghanistan, more NATO soldiers have died in this month than ever before and similarly in Iraq, the impression that the violence is subsiding, has proved wrong.  The Taliban have become a very powerful force in Afghanistan again. The Al Qaeda is punishing the Sunni tribes, which had joined America in Iraq, very heavily.

China continues to make progress both in the economic field as well as in advancing its political goals.  China has achieved a détente with Japan and has tremendously improved its relations with Taiwan. The Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd perhaps is the only World leader who is very fluent in Mandarin Chinese without being of Chinese descent.  This clearly shows that Australia is unlikely to be a part of an anti-Chinese quadrilateral alliance composed of the US, India, Japan and Australia.

Even in the area considered the backyard of America, things are changing. The South American countries are increasingly uniting and asserting their independence. Venezuela, Bolivia, Chile, Argentina, and Brazil; all these countries are leaning to the left. It is becoming increasingly clear that Cuba after Castro is not going to revert to a client state of America.  Cuba will continue to be the champion of the movement against capitalist globalization.

It is clear that different centers of power have already emerged in Asia, South America, and Europe. Russia has made a very impressive comeback and has once again become the leading and the most powerful country in that region. The European Union does not seem to be in a mood to confront Russia and wants to reach some sort of understanding with it. America has to accept the reality that it is no longer the only super power in the world.  Most of the world has already accepted the realities of the new era.

[Sawraj Singh M.D. F.I.C.S. is Chairman, Washington State Network for Human Rights]

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UPA-Left exchange of documents on N-deal

ON July 10 the Left parties released the exchange documents on the India-US nuclear deal by the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) and the Left. Here are excerpts:

Left (Sep 14, 2007): We can import reactors and uranium fuels so that we become dependent, but cannot access technology from the international market which will truly foster self-reliance. Not only would large parts of the existing technology sanctions stay, we are also proposing to put ourselves in a double bind. We will open our new reprocessing facility and the future breeder programme to IAEA inspections, without securing any relaxation of the technology sanctions regime for these facilities and plants. Has the government done any exercise to analyse the implications of this?

UPA (Sep 17, 2007): India has no intention to place fast breeder reactors under safeguards. The new reprocessing facility is not linked to India's breeder programme. The new facility is to reprocess foreign supplied spent fuel under safeguards and its products will be used in safeguarded reactors.

Left (Sep 19,2007): The UPA's note has not responded to the specific query made in the Left note as to whether the implications of building a new reprocessing plant under the present technology sanctions, and then putting it under IAEA Safeguards and Additional Protocols, have been examined.

UPA (Sep 24,2007): Where future reactors are concerned, the government retains the sole right to determine such reactors as civilian, obviously taking all factors into account. As conveyed in the earlier UPA note, we have no intention of placing current fast breeder reactors under safeguards. We will consider offering specific fast breeder reactors for safeguards only after technology has stabilised and we are ready to use plutonium recovered from spent fuel of foreign origin.

Left (Oct 5, 2007): A programme based on imported reactors and fuels doesn't seem to take into account that the nuclear suppliers' cartel, though technically of 45 countries, is in effect a very narrow one. Therefore, dependence on imported fuel would be a deviation from the original three-phased path of nuclear energy development, and would be detrimental for future energy security.

UPA (Oct 8,2007): (The) government will consider offering specific fast breeder reactors for safeguards only after technology has stabilised and we are ready to use plutonium recovered from spent fuel of foreign origin.

Left (Oct 20, 2007): There are a number of questions with regard to economics of nuclear energy that need to be answered.

Left (Oct 2, 2007): Growing military collaboration with the US would harm India's security interests.

UPA (Oct 5, 2007): Our international friends and partners recognise our commitment to pursue an independent foreign policy. If India could exercise autonomy in its decision making during the Cold War period, there is no reason to believe that today, when our strength as a global power is recognised, we can be coerced into following a foreign policy dictated by another country.

Left (Oct 22, 2007): It is clear that the Indo-US nuclear cooperation agreement poses the real danger of locking India into a 'strategic partnership' with the US. By the very nature of the relationship, India can only end up as a subordinate ally in the US geo-strategy, aiding and abetting its military misadventures.

UPA (Nov 16, 2007): In an international situation marked by simultaneous competition and cooperation among the major powers, and of unprecedented interdependence created by globalisation, representing both a threat and an opportunity for developing countries, the government has steadily improved India's relations with all major powers.

NEW DELHI: July 10 A day after the four Left parties formally withdrew their support to the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government, they sharpened their offensive and vowed to make it “politically impossible” for the Manmohan Singh government to go ahead and clinch the Indo-U.S. civilian nuclear deal.

Attacking the government for approaching the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) for the safeguards agreement in the nuclear deal before securing a trust vote in Parliament, the Left parties described the move as a “shocking betrayal of a moral commitment” made to the country and the people.

“We know how to fight against the deal and we will make it politically impossible for the government to go ahead with the agreement,” CPI(M) general secretary Prakash Karat told a press conference at the party headquarters here on Thursday.

CPI general secretary A.B. Bardhan, Forward Bloc general secretary Debabrata Biswas and other senior Left leaders were present.

He said External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee had announced on Tuesday that the government would send India’s safeguards agreement to the IAEA Board for approval only if it won the trust vote in Parliament. Mr. Mukherjee also stated that he had consulted the Prime Minister who was in Japan.

“Coming hours after the announcement that the Left parties had decided to withdraw support to the government, this was a solemn commitment to the country that the government would not proceed to the Board of Governors of the IAEA till it proved its majority in Parliament,” Mr. Karat said.

“It is shocking that less than 24 hours of such a statement, the IAEA has announced that at the request of the Government of India, the text has been submitted to the Board for its consideration.

Draft Safeguards Agreement with IAEA made public

It recognises India’s right to take corrective measures if foreign supplies are disrupted. The draft put on MEA website does not contain the list of facilities being offered for safeguards

The government on Thursday made public the draft Safeguards Agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) that has been forwarded to its Board of Governors for consideration. The Board is scheduled to meet on July 28 on an unrelated matter and could take up India’s draft for approval.

25-page document

The 25-page document is divided into 11 sections, besides a preamble, which notes that the Safeguards Agreement is an “essential basis” for India to gain “uninterrupted” access to the international nuclear fuel market, including uninterrupted access, and support its effort to develop a strategic fuel reserve to guard against any disruption of supply.

The preamble recognises India’s right to take corrective measures to ensure uninterrupted operation of its civilian nuclear reactors if foreign supplies are disrupted. It takes note of the India-U.S. joint statement of July 18 in which New Delhi expressed its willingness to separate its civilian and military nuclear facilities in a phased manner.

The key operational sections of the draft revolve around the circumstances under which safeguards will be required.

Apart from imported nuclear facilities and fuel, other civilian facilities will only be safeguarded once India determines that “all conditions conducive to the accomplishment of the objective of this Agreement are in place.”

This, say officials, is a reference to the conclusion of fuel supply agreements for reactors as a prior condition to their being safeguarded.

In line with all IAEA safeguards agreements, India will not be allowed to use safeguarded items for manufacturing nuclear explosive devices. But the text says safeguards would be implemented in a manner so as not to obstruct Indian efforts to use technology, equipment and nuclear material acquired or developed by India independent of the agreement “for its own purposes.”

The agreement will come into force only after India notifies the IAEA that all its statutory and constitutional requirements for entry into force have been met.

Technical obligations

Apart from the India-specific provisions relating primarily to the preambular declarations and the circumstances requiring safeguards, the draft text draws heavily upon the IAEA’s standard INFCIRC/66 type agreement for site-specific safeguards when it comes to the detailing of India’s technical obligations.

The draft, put up on the Ministry of External Affairs website on Thursday morning, does not contain a list of the facilities being offered for safeguards.

Under the procedure specified in the agreement, only facilities listed in the Annex will be safeguarded, pursuant to India filing a Declaration and a subsequent Notification, presumably once it is satisfied that it has tied up adequate fuel for its reactors.

India will be subject to routine and special inspections of its safeguarded facilities and the IAEA Secretariat estimates the Agency will need an additional budgetary allocation of 1.2 million euros in the first year of applying safeguards to a new facility.

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