Another look at the displacement v. development debate

What is development?

I would interpret all development as a biological process, one that mimics natural processes. In this framework, development is the process through which each system attains maturity, a position of sufficiency and sustainability.

Maturity in whose interest? In the interests of the people? That is a secular definition that assumes everybody has all kinds of information required to make the decision. Therefore, development comes down to transparency that enables as well as reflects informed decision-making. I say secular because in such a definition of development, it becomes easy to exclude a world of foreign nations, which is not the case.

Consequently, a nation’s developmental trajectory is dictated significantly by foreign interests. In my opinion, thus, the developmental mechanism must work toward increasing the regional purchasing power so that our say in the international trade arena holds more weight.

The problem

Displacement versus development is a problem particularly difficult to explore because, beyond the initial recognition of the government’s role as being “villainous”, there is not much that has been said or done to establish a line beyond which displacement becomes simply necessary. The pursuit of developmental goals by the Indian government has resulted in over 21.3 million being displaced internally according to a 1998 report by the Indian Social Institute. Almost 5.8 per cent, or 1.25 million, of them have been displaced by the establishment of industrial estates1.

Development seems like a two-faced engine: (1) it works toward increasing our purchasing power regarding resources we may need in the future and (2) it consumes important resources required for its sustenance that the nation may not be in a position to provide. For instance, the proposed installation of two nuclear reactors at Kudankulam will generate 2,000 MW of power, which is over and above Tamil Nadu’s shortage (659 MW). Apart from this, another 11,540 MW is to be added between 2012 and 2016 with the installation of 17 power plants around the state, eight of them having already been sanctioned2.

Now, as environmentalists and others in the area protest against constructing a plant that poses significant risks to the livelihoods of residents, a question that goes under-attended is that of necessity: which are the quarters that require this 12,881 MW(the total 13,540 MW minus the deficit) of energy? What has been done, either by private parties or the government, to determine if such demands are legitimate? We must ask why Kudankulam and why not in Chennai, whose population actually stands to benefit from the operation of the reactors. What else is being done to whittle down unnecessary losses that have resulted in such huge power shortages?

In light of such seeming discrimination, the problem statements are two.

1. Why is the government intent on displacing those peoples who are poised to benefit the least from the projects that displace them?


2. Can development become necessary under any conditions and assume precedence over displacement?

The real villain, the real villainy

In India, I believe that the problem has never purely been one of displacement v. development, even though the conflict between those who champion either cause is what birthed it. According to Dr. Prabhat Patnaik, one of India’s leading economists, the central government’s adoption of a capitalist economic model will produce problems unique to the country because capitalism is being superimposed on an “old order” that hasn’t fully been dismantled. This is where the adivasi resides.

1. Developmental cap - When it comes to the displacement of adivasis, a symbolic cap is necessary to discourage the government from favouring one section of the population more than the other, in the process expanding a gap that it has been elected to work against! Since government accountability for state-instituted displacement, especially as a result of land acquisition, is virtually absent, there is nothing to prevent the problem from worsening except an undertaking on the state’s part.
   
   It must undertake to frame its growth rate according to a plebiscit decreed by the people in the absence of congressmen and patricians at the order of a magistrate or a tribune, and it must work with the plebiscit as a strict guideline. This is similar to what has already been mandated by the new Land Acquisition and Rehabilitation and Resettlement (LARR) Bill, 2011.


2. Consumption cap - If, at the policy level, a framework can be built that prioritizes the rights of the Dongria Kondh over the demand for bauxite mined from the Niyamgiri Hills in Orissa, what are the processes on the other side of the wall that will determine how much we reduce our consumption of aluminium by? Because we cannot plug a hole at one end of the pipe and expect the water levels at the other end to not rise up.

Conclusion

Yes, someone must suffer a loss of some kind for the sake of development, but instead of sustaining growth rates at precarious costs, why isn’t there any faith in the aspirations of the adivasis themselves? Why is it that adivasis are being targeted again and again instead of the state inculcating a program that will successfully reintegrate them into modern society, moderate growth rates to reasonable levels, and ensure that the notion of progress is no longer mired in controversy?

I hold that integration into modern society is more desirable than tribalizing the modern society because of the mechanisms we require to remain on a competitive note with our traders and strategic partners. At the same time, there is no doubt that we have lost control over our own internal homogenization. It is true that our first duty is toward ourselves, but what it has been lost to requires a look at India’s foreign relations and political history, which possesses its own special share of flaws. However, regression in the post-globalization age would be incredibly painful.

My answer is that under some circumstances, displacement could become simply necessary. While, there can be no excuse for the government to snatch land from its citizens for any use, except those expediently required (such as national defence, etc.), that is a matter of enforcement: without rehabilitation and resettlement, it is just unconstitutional.

It would be more harmful for the Indian economy, and the important subsidies it provides that sustains large sections of the rural population, in the short- and long-terms to cease its current trade partnerships and other strategic commitments than to resist globalization and modernization and start on a path toward complete self-sufficiency. The only leeway on top of it is that we need an equitable distribution of development because only that promises the convergence of globalization with our social harmony to some extent.

Sources

1. http://www.fmreview.org/FMRpdfs/FMR08/fmr8.9.pdf


2. http://www.tn.gov.in/policynotes/pdf/energy.pdf

The forces that move

The following is my assimilation of Dr. Prabhat Patnaik's fairly straightforward lecture delivered at the Asian College of Journalism on the 5th day of August, 2011.

--

Before I start off, I'd like to make it clear that I didn't like the way Patnaik ended his lecture: "I'm Marxist." That just threw everything off-balance for me and I was forced to look at all the notes I'd taken in new light. Anyway, the lecture was, like I said, straightforward, filled with simple cause-effect relationships all over the place.

The rise of capitalism

The rise of capitalism as such was marred by three of its most significant consequences:

1. The rise in numbers of the poor in western Europe


2. Transitional problems in developing nations


3. Institutionalization of equality

In fact, as businesses shifted toward more efficient models, workers began to lose their jobs en masse and were forced to migrate to destinations that promised employment and/or any other such necessities for survival. As a result of this exodus, those labourers who chose to stay back home were in the company of fewer consumers, and so with the same wage could enjoy a slightly enhanced standard of living. In a way, this movement of manpower could be described as the invisible hand of Smith as work, gradually stabilizing a drastically changing system.

Because of the lack of precedence, there was no defence for the argument that capitalism was the sole cause of these debilitating circumstances, and therefore transient economies began to face some resistance from the people of the states. However, in such an evaluation, the loss of jobs featured as a parameter while migration did not, and therefore, the other effects of moving workforce were disregarded. These are:

1. Drop in unemployment - If the worker didn't have a job, he didn't stay unemployed in the that place. Instead, he moved to another place where he could be employed.


2. Raise in standard of living for domestic workers (already discussed)


3. Marketing of capitalist production - Countries slow to the awakening of capitalism suffered the "displacement" of the local markets because commercial proliferation of more-developed countries resulted in the encroachment of local markets

A cause-effect paradox

The first incongruence arises when capitalism, as the herald of modernity, gives rise to modern industrialist capitalist production that does not absorb labour (do artificial intelligence, the Large Hadron Collider, and space exploration seem like a consequence of the proliferation of Communism?).

The decrease in that absorptive power was mostly as a result of the introduction of labour market flexibility: in the words of economist Horst Siebert,

"Labour market institutions [can be] seen to inhibit the clearing functions of the market by weakening the demand for labor, making it less attractive to hire a worker by explicitly pushing up the wage costs or by introducing a negative shadow price for labor."

Furthermore, the high growth rate of industries ensures that divides are accentuated quickly: a man who continues to remain poor becomes too poor in the same time a man who is slightly rich becomes quickly rich. I don't condemn this; in fact, I stand by it.

Now, there's a certain vicious cycle that I've detailed here (with some exaggeration) that widens the gap between the rich and the poor in an economy driven by capitalistic initiatives. Capitalism could be said to add to such a cycle because it displaces the poor, keeps them from being reabsorbed into industries, and in the process renders migration moot. Therefore, while the poor increase in number, all the wealth is localized in smaller and smaller pockets even as redistribution becomes processually more difficult (which is the essence of the abrasive relationship between democracy and capitalism).

Helpless superheroes

To save the thus-displaced, the state intervenes, the position of its intervention resting on the discordant view that irrespective of regional or demographic disparities, the larger collective has its first duty toward the poor. Consequently, reservation was installed in order to safeguard, rather vouchsafe, opportunities for the marginalized and eventually kill marginalization itself. However, the onset of neo-liberalism saw a decline in state-support for the destitute.

(The plot between direct + indirect per capita food grain consumption on the Y-axis and per capita income on the X is logarithmic.)

Now, the idea of a government as such rests on the strength of communities, the oneness that people are capable of establishing as a consequences of concentric and concurrent goals. The notion of community, with the advent of capitalism, was split up neatly into a pre-capitalistic form and a post-capitalist form (although I prefer to call the latter the pro-capitalist form).

Before I continue to rant about the (good) mess that capitalism's landed us in, it'd be appropriate to discuss the one thing that the coming of modernism (as an accompaniment of capitalism) achieved: the penetration of education into the social strata. Education raised the expectations of the people and made them aware of the lack of resources in satiating those expectations. Education awakened the people to the real problems irking them without their knowledge. Education mobilized social frustration.

Soon, individuals began to break away from the pre-cap. community and "enrolled" with the proletariat (and I use the word only because social integration would've taken time). An alternate group of communities were also formed in the name of trade unions, rather as trade unions. Further, the breakup of the pro-cap. communities was exacerbated by the introduction of commodity production, and with it, competition, rivalry, and money.

Interlude: Rise of the Second Serfdom

Unfortunately, a Second Serfdom awaited the poor: just like the failure of the industries to reabsorb the unemployed spelled destitution, the failure of the proletariat to absorb the "countryside" individual gave cause for the pre-cap. communities to persist. When the proletariat shut its gates, the peasantry stayed on with the pre-cap. community it'd come from, and cut into its subsistence.

Again, as a result: persistence of institutionalized inequality (an axiomatic conclusion).

Forces at war and forces at work

The capitalist market is not an equalizing phenomenon, especially when it's known that the profits reaped thereof are directly proportional to the strength of the economic and social powers that engage within its ambit. Because of this tendency to counter any stabilizing agents, inequalities inherited from other bases also become susceptible to accentuation. These are the forces at war.

The interaction between the persistent pre-cap. communities and the rapidly growing pro-cap communities resulted in the engendering of identity politics, structured within the framework of negotiations between the two. Within the capitalist order of things, individuals were being coerced into particular roles that best suited their new lifestyle. Due to the consequent limitation of identity, it's not surprising that it became a battleground for political causes. One way or another, these were the forces at work.

*

Notes:

1. Superimposition - In those countries that developed capitalism later than the rest, the destruction of the old communities and the formation of the new ones were parallel processes, which was not the case with the early developers. So? So the pre-cap. communities were not fully broken down during the onset of capitalism, leading to a superimposition of the two. The early developers didn't have this problem.


2. Fail-safe - Capitalism, when faced with challenges by the new and supposedly "pro-capitalist" community, makes compromises with the pre-cap. communities


3. The difference between affirmative actions toward efficiency and affirmative actions toward equity, and why the former is mandated while the latter is not


4. Poverty as a social construct

The forces that move

The following is my assimilation of Dr. Prabhat Patnaik's fairly straightforward lecture delivered at the Asian College of Journalism on the 5th day of August, 2011.

--

Before I start off, I'd like to make it clear that I didn't like the way Patnaik ended his lecture: "I'm Marxist." That just threw everything off-balance for me and I was forced to look at all the notes I'd taken in new light. Anyway, the lecture was, like I said, straightforward, filled with simple cause-effect relationships all over the place.

The rise of capitalism

The rise of capitalism as such was marred by three of its most significant consequences:

1. The rise in numbers of the poor in western Europe


2. Transitional problems in developing nations


3. Institutionalization of equality

In fact, as businesses shifted toward more efficient models, workers began to lose their jobs en masse and were forced to migrate to destinations that promised employment and/or any other such necessities for survival. As a result of this exodus, those labourers who chose to stay back home were in the company of fewer consumers, and so with the same wage could enjoy a slightly enhanced standard of living. In a way, this movement of manpower could be described as the invisible hand of Smith as work, gradually stabilizing a drastically changing system.

Because of the lack of precedence, there was no defence for the argument that capitalism was the sole cause of these debilitating circumstances, and therefore transient economies began to face some resistance from the people of the states. However, in such an evaluation, the loss of jobs featured as a parameter while migration did not, and therefore, the other effects of moving workforce were disregarded. These are:

1. Drop in unemployment - If the worker didn't have a job, he didn't stay unemployed in the that place. Instead, he moved to another place where he could be employed.


2. Raise in standard of living for domestic workers (already discussed)


3. Marketing of capitalist production - Countries slow to the awakening of capitalism suffered the "displacement" of the local markets because commercial proliferation of more-developed countries resulted in the encroachment of local markets

A cause-effect paradox

The first incongruence arises when capitalism, as the herald of modernity, gives rise to modern industrialist capitalist production that does not absorb labour (do artificial intelligence, the Large Hadron Collider, and space exploration seem like a consequence of the proliferation of Communism?).

The decrease in that absorptive power was mostly as a result of the introduction of labour market flexibility: in the words of economist Horst Siebert,

"Labour market institutions [can be] seen to inhibit the clearing functions of the market by weakening the demand for labor, making it less attractive to hire a worker by explicitly pushing up the wage costs or by introducing a negative shadow price for labor."

Furthermore, the high growth rate of industries ensures that divides are accentuated quickly: a man who continues to remain poor becomes too poor in the same time a man who is slightly rich becomes quickly rich. I don't condemn this; in fact, I stand by it.

Now, there's a certain vicious cycle that I've detailed here (with some exaggeration) that widens the gap between the rich and the poor in an economy driven by capitalistic initiatives. Capitalism could be said to add to such a cycle because it displaces the poor, keeps them from being reabsorbed into industries, and in the process renders migration moot. Therefore, while the poor increase in number, all the wealth is localized in smaller and smaller pockets even as redistribution becomes processually more difficult (which is the essence of the abrasive relationship between democracy and capitalism).

Helpless superheroes

To save the thus-displaced, the state intervenes, the position of its intervention resting on the discordant view that irrespective of regional or demographic disparities, the larger collective has its first duty toward the poor. Consequently, reservation was installed in order to safeguard, rather vouchsafe, opportunities for the marginalized and eventually kill marginalization itself. However, the onset of neo-liberalism saw a decline in state-support for the destitute.

(The plot between direct + indirect per capita food grain consumption on the Y-axis and per capita income on the X is logarithmic.)

Now, the idea of a government as such rests on the strength of communities, the oneness that people are capable of establishing as a consequences of concentric and concurrent goals. The notion of community, with the advent of capitalism, was split up neatly into a pre-capitalistic form and a post-capitalist form (although I prefer to call the latter the pro-capitalist form).

Before I continue to rant about the (good) mess that capitalism's landed us in, it'd be appropriate to discuss the one thing that the coming of modernism (as an accompaniment of capitalism) achieved: the penetration of education into the social strata. Education raised the expectations of the people and made them aware of the lack of resources in satiating those expectations. Education awakened the people to the real problems irking them without their knowledge. Education mobilized social frustration.

Soon, individuals began to break away from the pre-cap. community and "enrolled" with the proletariat (and I use the word only because social integration would've taken time). An alternate group of communities were also formed in the name of trade unions, rather as trade unions. Further, the breakup of the pro-cap. communities was exacerbated by the introduction of commodity production, and with it, competition, rivalry, and money.

Interlude: Rise of the Second Serfdom

Unfortunately, a Second Serfdom awaited the poor: just like the failure of the industries to reabsorb the unemployed spelled destitution, the failure of the proletariat to absorb the "countryside" individual gave cause for the pre-cap. communities to persist. When the proletariat shut its gates, the peasantry stayed on with the pre-cap. community it'd come from, and cut into its subsistence.

Again, as a result: persistence of institutionalized inequality (an axiomatic conclusion).

Forces at war and forces at work

The capitalist market is not an equalizing phenomenon, especially when it's known that the profits reaped thereof are directly proportional to the strength of the economic and social powers that engage within its ambit. Because of this tendency to counter any stabilizing agents, inequalities inherited from other bases also become susceptible to accentuation. These are the forces at war.

The interaction between the persistent pre-cap. communities and the rapidly growing pro-cap communities resulted in the engendering of identity politics, structured within the framework of negotiations between the two. Within the capitalist order of things, individuals were being coerced into particular roles that best suited their new lifestyle. Due to the consequent limitation of identity, it's not surprising that it became a battleground for political causes. One way or another, these were the forces at work.

*

Notes:

1. Superimposition - In those countries that developed capitalism later than the rest, the destruction of the old communities and the formation of the new ones were parallel processes, which was not the case with the early developers. So? So the pre-cap. communities were not fully broken down during the onset of capitalism, leading to a superimposition of the two. The early developers didn't have this problem.


2. Fail-safe - Capitalism, when faced with challenges by the new and supposedly "pro-capitalist" community, makes compromises with the pre-cap. communities


3. The difference between affirmative actions toward efficiency and affirmative actions toward equity, and why the former is mandated while the latter is not


4. Poverty as a social construct