A group of concerned students and youth from All India Students’ Association, Karnataka, planned a peaceful demonstration outside the Global Investors’ Meet (GIM), Bangalore in November to raise concerns regarding principles of sustainable development being violated by the global investors. The demands were: all emission data be made public, measures for achieving the net zero emissions target before 2050 be taken, compliance of local and international labour laws and environmental regulations by all direct and indirect contractors, and no land acquisition without local consent.
A research scholar from IISc named Shairik involved in organizing the demonstration was picked up by the Bangalore police from his lab to prevent it. His phone was seized, recently dialled numbers were tracked and his comrades were hunted down for detention. The police managed to pick me up as I was near the station at that time. Since a student was picked up from such a prestigious institute in broad daylight, it created a lot of commotion within the students in the campus leading to pressure being created on the police for our release. We were detained for almost nine hours merely for exercising our right to protest. This ordeal makes one wonder what scared the state so much!
GIM had the theme “Build for the World” this time. The objective of the event was to attract investments from foreign and domestic corporations. By the end of this 3 day event, MoUs worth Rs 9.82 lakh crore were signed. The Karnataka government, over the past year, has held international roadshows in Japan, South Korea, the US and Europe to attract foreign investments. As a result, corporations like Microsoft, Toyota, Thyssenkrupp, Lockheed-Martin etc. joined the meet. Each of these giants are involved in massive ecological damage directly or indirectly. A glance of it is given at the end.
Although we could not pull off the demonstration we planned, what we achieved is a strong realization of what Lenin said around 100 years back. “The state is a machine for the oppression of one class by another, a machine for holding in obedience to one class, other subordinated classes.” The state power whose “chief instruments” as Lenin said are “a standing army and police” is a machine in the hand of these big corporations to suppress any kind of dissent against them, to create a “peaceful” environment suitable for investment.
Starting from Karnataka in June, 2000 by the then Congress government, GIM was floated in various states by the World Economic Forum, Davos – a conclave composed of top businesses, politicians and
bureaucrats from the major countries of the world. This was one of the efforts of Imperialism in general and Globalization in particular to exercise direct influence on the state governments. “Globalization” or
“Neo-liberalism” introduced by Manmohan Singh’s economic reforms of 1991 as per World Bank-IMF diktat came as a crisis management programme to retrieve the imperialists from recurrent recessions
hitting them, specially the US depression of 1982. Since then, along with the aggressive push of the neo-liberal agenda, rise of Hindutva ideology is also seen which has blown out of proportion now with RSS-BJP in power.
After decades of globalization, since 1991 about 1.5 crore farmers moved out of agriculture and 6 crore people have been physically displaced by construction of dams, mining, expressways, ports, statues, and industries with mostly poor or no rehabilitation. In 2021, on an average 15 farmers died by suicide everyday! Nearly 0.5 crore people in India were internally displaced due to climate disasters only in 2021. Two major investors of GIM 2022, Sajjan Jindal’s JSW and Adani groups committed to invest Rs 1 lakh crores in Karnataka, are also party to this havoc. Recently, in the year 2022, JSW was met with opposition from the people of Dhinkia, Orissa against displacing them from their land and livelihood for the proposed steel plant. For similar reasons, protests against Adani’s Vizhinjam port have rocked coastal Kerala. The Indian State with one of its chief instruments, police are suppressing these stirs with iron hand.
But are these displacements generating enough jobs? The answer is NO. Even after around three decades of globalization, the unemployment rate was the highest in 45 years. In Karnataka unemployment rate was at its peak of 7.86% in the month of October ’22 despite the festive season. In the 2021 Global Hunger Index, India ranks 101st out of the 116 countries, while even Bangladesh is much ahead at 75. Women account for 60 percent of India’s hungry population. A 2020 study from the World Economic Forum estimated that 22 crore people in India sustained on an expenditure level of less than Rs 32 per day. While crores of people are losing their source of livelihood, the billionaire club of just 215
families controls the bulk of the wealth of our country in association with foreign corporates and the collusion of top politicians and bureaucrats. Between 2018-19, in just that single year, the share of ownership of the country’s assets by the top 1% population grew from 58% to 73%. Gautam Adani is the richest person in India and fourth richest in the world ahead of even Bill gates.
Globalization which had promised jobs and prosperity has only given joblessness, displacement, hunger and precarity to the people of our country. Inequality is starkly rising. What is the reason behind it? To understand this, we need to understand “Globalisation” and its socio-economic and political structure. Does Bommai’s “globalized” slogan of GIM – “Build for the World” indicate our capability and strength or is it a desperate call to foreign capital to come and exploit our natural resources and cheap labour to make their fortunes? We will explore all these aspects in the upcoming issues
