Editing, re-reporting, comment by Carolyn Bennett
Is it human to gorge on others’ poverty?
Children unseen on U.S. tour
Mean streets with gnawing horrors are their school. Survival is their lesson, life their teacher.
Children of India “exist in the crime ridden back alleys, in discarded card board boxes, in abandoned drain pipes and in deplorable shacks, work their backs off as child laborers, beg pitiably to sustain themselves.” They are exposed to “all kinds of exploitation: physical, sexual and emotional.”
Poverty is the “biggest nemesis of their childhood.” Only on a full belly can a family think of education or abiding by child labor laws. Children contribute an estimated 34 percent of the income in families living below the poverty line. Official figures for the number of child laborers under the age of fourteen put the figure in the region of 11 million. UNICEF cites Human Rights Watch figures ranging from 75 to 90 million child laborers.
Domestic services, agriculture, fishing, glass blowing, fireworks, plantation, mining, manufacturing and repairs are major areas in which child labor is rampant; these children, moreover, are used at substantially lower wages than adults doing the same work. Children are unabashedly exploited, their parents powerless to intercede. An estimated 300,000 children in India, conservatively estimated, are engaged in commercial sex. Babies as young as 18 months suffer STDs.
U.S. President pushes pain on India’s poor
The main theme of [U.S. President Barack] Obama’s recently concluded three-day visit to India was “to make business deals for U.S. corporations to create jobs in the United States,” writes last week’s blog entry of Navdanya, the India-based international movement for biosafety, against the dangers of Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) in agriculture.
During the president’s visit, the blog notes, participants finalized more than $10 billion trade deals — their focus defense, energy and agriculture.
This “change” president continues the work of his predecessor in “imposing Wal-Mart in India’s retail economy,” using the pretext of reducing waste and creating jobs; but “the Wal-Mart model of retail leads to destruction of 50 percent of U.S. food and India cannot afford such waste.”
Self-employment retail in India supports “400 million livelihoods. A few thousand Wal-Mart employees cannot replace the large-scale destruction of livelihoods in the retail sector — what President Obama brushed off as a ‘stereotype,’ while pushing for the entry of U.S. companies in the Indian market.
“Instead of exporting unemployment to India from the United States, President Obama should be importing innovative ideas of employment generation through learning from India’s small scale entrepreneurs.”
Regarding agriculture, the president “is merely carrying on the legacy of President George W. Bush with the Agriculture Knowledge Initiative (AKI) of 2008. … At a time when the world recognizes the productivity and the ecological sustainability of small farmers, the U.S.–India Agriculture Knowledge Initiative strongly pushes India to adopt hazardous technologies such as GMOs [Genetically Modified Organisms] and capital intensive, commercial agriculture at the [expense] of small farmers to the benefit only of U.S. agribusiness.…
“Monsanto’s monopoly in the Indian seed market has allowed this U.S.-based corporation to harvest huge royalties through IPRs [Intellectual Property Rights] while Indian farmers are pushed into debt and suicide. Mostly in the cotton belt, 200,000 farmers have committed suicide in India since 1997. The leading cause has been debt linked to crop failure of the Monsanto Bt cotton, the spread of monocultures and of highly expensive, capital intensive inputs that made cultivation economically unviable.”
Is it human let alone just
to feast while children anywhere suffer
want, hunger, abuse, exploitation, enslavement —
while anyone suffers hunger, thirst, impoverishment?
Sources and notes
“The truth about children (The Times of India), November 14, 2010, http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/The-truth-about-children/articleshow/6922587.cms#ixzz15HlkPZfg
“Obama Continues the Bush Agenda of Corporate Takeover of Agriculture,” November 12, 2010,
http://www.navdanya.org/blog/?p=466
Navdanya has helped set up 54 community seed banks across India, trained more than 500,000 farmers in seed sovereignty, food sovereignty and sustainable agriculture over the past two decades, and helped setup the largest direct marketing, fair trade organic network in the country. Navdanya is a network of seed keepers and organic producers spread across 16 states in India.
Navdanya has led the national and international movement for biosafety and against the dangers of Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) in agriculture. Working with citizens’ movements, grassroot organizations, NGOs and governments, Navdanya has made significant contributions to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and the Biosafety Protocol, http://www.navdanya.org/about-us
London (UK)-based Institute of Science in Society, ISIS Report February 23, 2009, “Monsanto’s Bt Cotton Kills the Soil as Well as Farmers” —
“The soil, its fertility, and the organisms which maintain the fertility of soil are a vital aspect of the environment, especially in the context of food and agricultural production.
“A scientific study carried out by Navdanya, the first that has looked at the long term impact of Bt cotton on soil organisms, is a wake up to regulators worldwide. It also shows that the claims of the Biotechnology industry about the safety of GM crops are false.”
The Navdanya study “compared the soil of fields where Bt [Bacillus thuringiensis ]-cotton had been planted for three years with adjoining fields with non GMO cotton or other crops. The region covered included Nagpur, Amravati and Wardha of Vidharbha, which accounts for highest GMO cotton planting in India, and the highest rate of farmers’ suicides (4000 per year).
“In three years, Bt-cotton has reduced the population of Actinomycetes by 17 percent. Actinomycetes are vital for breaking down cellulose and creating humus. Bacteria were reduced by 14 percent. The total microbial biomass was reduced by 8.9 percent. Vital soil beneficial enzymes which make nutrients available to plants have also been drastically reduced. Acid Phosphatase, which contributes to uptake of phosphates, was reduced by 26.6 percent. Nitrogenase enzymes, which help fix nitrogen, were reduced by 22.6 percent.
“At this rate, in a decade of planting with GM cotton, or any GM crop with Bt genes in it, could lead to total destruction of soil organisms, leaving dead soil unable to produce food.” The Institute of Science in Society, 29 Tytherton Road, London N19 4PZ, http://www.i-sis.org.uk/BtCottonKillsSoilandFarmers.php
Navdanya
A-60, Hauz Khas
New Delhi – 110 016
Phone : 91-11-26535422 / 26532124
Email : vandana@vandanashiva.com
Website : www.navdanya.org
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