Development’s creation of global crisis: India and beyond
From Colin Todhunter’s “…Development and the Globalization
of Servitude”
Edited excerpt by Carolyn Bennett
Masses’ Complicity
in Cruelty
“Consumerism’s conspicuous purchasing and consumption draws
on and manipulates the preexisting tendency to buy favor…. Now icons of
capitalism, whether renowned brand products, labels or product-endorsing
celebrities, have also taken their place in the pantheon of Indian deities to
be listened to, worshiped and acquiesced to. The corporations behind it all
achieve hegemony by altering mindsets via advertising, clever PR or by
sponsoring (hijacking) major events, by funding research in public institutes
and thus slanting findings and the knowledge paradigm in their favor or by
securing key positions in international trade negotiations in an attempt to
structurally readjust retail, food production and agriculture.…
“If you are looking for extremism and dogma… look toward
those whose unimaginable wealth feeds off and fuels a system of exploitation
and conflict designed to benefit the few. That is the nature of the [current] model
of development” being pushed on the world.
“If anyone perceives the type of ‘development’ being sold to
the masses as actually possible, they should note that ‘developing’ nations
account for more than 80 percent of world population but consume only about a
third of the world’s energy.
 |
| USA Way Starve them Rob them of independence Throw them Charity |
“Citizens of the United States constitute 5 percent of the
world’s population but consume 24 percent of the world’s energy.
“On average, a single (one) American consumes as much energy
as:
2 Japanese,
6 Mexicans,
13 Chinese,
31 Indians,
128 Bangladeshis,
307 Tanzanians and
370 Ethiopians
US Policy Complicity
in Cruelty
 |
| US killer drones |
 |
| US killer drones |
“In many respects, the subjugation of India by the US rests on the likes of Monsanto eventually controlling agriculture and hijacking food sovereignty and the nation’s food security. The sanctioning of open field trails of GM crops in the country is the thin end of a very broad wedge that would not only boost the profits of global seed and agritech companies but would also serve US geopolitical interests.…
“…. It is by agriculture and control of the food supply that
American diplomacy has been able to control most of the Third World. …‘The
World Bank’s geopolitical lending strategy has been to turn countries into food
deficit areas by convincing them to grow cash crops – plantation export crops –
not to feed themselves with their own food crops.’”
Focus India
 |
| Farmer India |
“Powerful corporations are shaping the ‘development’ agenda in
India and have signed secretive ‘Memorandums of Understanding’ with the
government. The full military backing of the state is on hand to forcibly evict
people from their land in order to hand over land to mineral-hungry extractive
and processing industries to fuel a wholly unsustainable model of development.
“Around
the world, this oil-dependent, urban-centric, high energy, high consumption
model is stripping the environment bare and negatively affecting the climate
and ecology.
“The links between the Monsanto/Syngenta/Walmart-backed
Knowledge Initiative on Agriculture and the US sanctioning and backing of opening
up India’s nuclear sector to foreign interests have already shown what the
models of ‘development’ being pushed onto people really entail – not least being
benefits to powerful corporate interests and losses to ordinary people.”
 |
| Farmer Africa |
“Global agritech companies have been granted license to
influence key aspects of agriculture by controlling seeds and chemical inputs
and by funding and thus distorting the biotech research agenda and aspects of
overall development policy. Monsanto already controls the cotton industry in
India and is increasingly shaping agri-policy and the knowledge paradigm by
funding agricultural research in public universities and institutes….”
“If unfair trade policies, the colonization of official
bodies … and other practices do not result in displacing farmers, it is achieved
by repression and violence …”
 |
| Forced Migration Displaced People |
Since 1997, nearly “300,000 Indian farmers have taken their
lives… and many more are experiencing economic distress or have left farming as
a result of debt, a shift to (GM) cash crops, and economic liberalization.”
Dire Global
Consequences
“The corporate-controlled type of agriculture that is being
imposed and/or envisaged only leads to bad food, bad soil and bad or no water,
bad health, poor or falling yields and an impending agrarian crisis. …
 |
| Forced Migration Displaced People |
 |
| Forced Migration Displaced People |
The prevailing agricultural model has created a “global crisis.”
Factoring into the dire image of global act and impact are “‘Repression and
displacement,’” often violence, foreign or domestic, against remaining rural
populations together with illness and falling local food production. “‘Indigenous
communities have been displaced and reduced to living on the capital’s rubbish
dumps’” – a set of crimes “‘rightly call(ed) genocide – the extinguishment of
entire Peoples, their culture, their way of life and their environment.’”
Sources and notes
“Menace on the Menu: Development and the Globalization of
Servitude,” Colin Todhunter, Global Research, November 27, 2014, http://www.globalresearch.ca/menace-on-the-menu-development-and-the-globalization-of-servitude/5416488
India and UK-based prolific writer Colin Todhunter originally
of the UK has spent many years in India; and has done social policy research,
his writing published in a wide range of newspapers, peer and non-peer reviewed
journals and books as well as on numerous websites (source London Progressive
Journal) http://londonprogressivejournal.com/user/view/860
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A lifelong American writer and writer/activist (former academic and staffer with the U.S. government in Washington), Dr. Carolyn LaDelle Bennett is credentialed in education and print journalism and public affairs (PhD, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan; MA, The American University, Washington, DC). Her work concerns itself with news and current affairs, historical contexts, and ideas particularly related to acts and consequences of U.S. foreign relations, geopolitics, human rights, war and peace, and violence and nonviolence. Dr. Bennett is an internationalist and nonpartisan progressive personally concerned with society and the common good. An educator at heart, her career began with the U.S. Peace Corps, teaching in Sierra Leone, West Africa. Since then, she has authored several books and numerous current-affairs articles; her latest book: UNCONSCIONABLE: How The World Sees Us: World News, Alternative Views, Commentary on U.S. Foreign Relations; most thoughts, articles, edited work are posted at Bennett’s Study: http://todaysinsightnews.blogspot.com/ and on her Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/carolynladelle.bennett. http://www.prweb.com/releases/2014/08UNCONSCIONABLE/prweb12131656.htm http://bookstore.xlibris.com/Products/SKU-000757788/UNCONSCIONABLE.aspx Her books are also available at independent bookstores in New York State: Lift Bridge in Brockport; Sundance in Geneseo; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center in Buffalo; Burlingham Books in Perry; The Bookworm in East Aurora
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Thanks for taking the time to post some of the salient points from the article and lay it out so well. In the internet age of diminishing attention spans, the fear is that few people would be inclined to read such a lengthy piece.
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