The March Against Land and Lives

In the past few months, the government of Kerala has been doing everything under its capacity, to maintain its record as a structure that plays fiddle to private capital. In the earlier posts ( http://punctuationsbymathew.blogspot.in/2015/12/shameless-and-uninhibited-2.html; http://punctuationsbymathew.blogspot.in/2015/12/shameless-and-uninhibited.html ) the moves to regularize conversion of paddy fields as well as the synchronized moves with an even more vicious central structure was pointed at. The latter is best exemplified in the case of red carpeting given to Adanis at Vizhinjam.

There was yet another move, paralleling the central plans to do away with Social Impact assessments, in allowing licenses to quarries. These quarries, if anyone cares to travel across the foothills and Ghat terrains in Kerala, have already altered the geo-ecological equilibrium formed through thousands of years. Now with the aforesaid move the government with arbitrary fixtures of dates (2012) and cut off limits on area (small medium large quarries…) sought to do away with environmental clearances. The nexus with private capital has always been justified in terms of development (‘vikasanam’ alias ‘expansion through congestion’) and labour (even if this does not take into account the impact on millions and future).

The Kerala High Court division bench’s setting aside of the aforesaid dangerous amendment (to provisions of the Kerala Minor Mineral Concession Rules, 2015) is a small breather. Relief also comes after the Thrissur district administration, by the use of Google images proved beyond doubt that 19 acres of land in Puzhakkal, Thrissur was filled up by one of the biggest anti-people corporate in Kerala, the Shobha group. This was very much in violation of the Kerala Conservation of Paddy land and Wetland Act, 2008; an act the present government is hell bent on destroying. Clearly the system works much more for the Lulus and the Shobhas than for the populations of voters.

Earlier the Kerala government, moved to regularise the reclamation and conversion of paddy fields taken before 2008, with a proclamation to collect additional Rs 200-crore revenue. They either do not care or are ignorant of the millions of crores (even though there is no need to bring in a monetary logic to such gross social impacts) worth of impact the cascading environmental destruction will produce.

On the other hand the central government, as represented in the prime ministers burgeoning foreign trips, is moving ahead with compromising the security and well being of millions. This is well exemplified in the commitments given with respect to stricter compliance to global Intellectual Property Rights rules under the TRIPS Agreement of the World Trade Organization (WTO). Events like these happen almost on an everyday basis under the embedded media fanfare. The upcoming Nairobi meeting of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) for negotiations towards an agreement to open up global trade has to be closely followed up.  There are plans afoot to address ‘issues’ like labour and environment. After all good governance and transparency is about creation of global value chains, competition and provisions for investment.

There are many…many more instances like that of the Forest Rights, Privatisation of Commons, or the Land clauses.

Recently the Bharatiya Janata Party, under the mandatory disclosures of donations that political parties has to make to the Election Commission of India, declared that it had received Rs. 437 crore between 2014-15 ( http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/bharti-aditya-birla-top-funders-of-bjp/article7960630.ece ). One can forget such statistical figures that this is twice the combined total declared by the five other national parties or that only the details of those donations over rupees 20,000 need to be declared. One cannot forget the mind boggling figures, thanks to the preceding regime. So a tradition is on! And now with the add-ons like fatwas on food habits! What is more important are the questions that one must ask: What do you expect to logically follow when a Birla, an Ambani, or a Bharti funds the biggest parties that then goes on to establish a government.

Do we need to expect anything more than the present spectacles to cover up the slavish commitment to private capital, whether at a national or global scale (the national and global criss-cross)? Add this on to what happens closer to view in Kerala. Do we expect anything more than the filling of lakes and wetlands for the Lulus and the Shobhas or the destruction of the Ghats for the real estate barons, from this state government?