To hell with the GDP; People care must be top priority in Governance

Some years back I had read an article in India Today magazine by Vedantha CEO, Anil Agarwal, arguing for mining bauxite in Niyamagiri hills in Orissa. Now it is quashed by determined fight by the tribals of the hills & empowered village panchayats there.

His argument was simple. Give me these hills for mining & I’ll give in return education for the tribal children and drinking water!! Education to those who know how to live in harmony with nature & nurture it for generations? Drinking water to those who have natural mineral water access all through the year? The most appealing thing for India, that he makes is that it generates GDP! And everyone is swayed by the GDP growth of the country. International rating agencies, monetary agencies like IMF, Worldbank push for GDP growth. They give favourable rating in return & encourage MNC s to invest in such a country where the GDP grows. The stock market gets bullish. Speculators reap a lot of money in the market. But will that all remove poverty? Or will it help rich become richer?

So what is this GDP? GDP is Gross Domestic Product & is an index to indicate the richness of the country. It indicates, how much commodity the nation produces in totality.

How it helps the nation? It helps the nation to advertise itself in international market. It helps to sell its national properties. Viz., Minerals, Agricultural produce, Animals, Meat, Labour, etc.,

How it helps people of the nation? It doesn’t help people of the nation. If the nation is rich by the index it doesn’t mean people are rich. It makes few people become over rich at the cost of larger population becoming poorer. Then the Government declares it will distribute the food, water, shelter. Several schemes will be launched to distribute the basic necessities through a very complex networks of government departments & private partnerships to reach thousands of villages and thousands of families. There will be heavy pilferage and it never reaches the intended. The scheme fail, one party loses election; another party comes to power and repeats all over again in another similar popular scheme. 

Government should not be providing food, water & shelter. Instead, it should let people organize to sustainably utilize resources around to provide themselves food, water & shelter. And government should provide security & protection to the people to utilize their resources.

Ronald Raegan, the former US president, very famously said “Government’s first duty is to protect the people, not run their lives”

But then he didn’t follow what he preached. So are the politicians all across the world TODAY.

Government should protect the people NOT run their lives

This concept of Government running the lives of the people came about during the British regime. Before that the Government (The Raja) was only protecting their lives & not running their lives.

Lets look at a simple example.

My mother says, her grandmother used to say some villages nearby used to be rich in gold in their earth. In fact, the village itself was called Honnammana Halla meaning – Mother Gold Goddess’s den. Even now these names exits like – Honnavalli, Honnammana kere, Bangarpet etc., These are around western Karnataka bordering Andhra along Ballari, Raichur, Chitradurga, Kolara, Tumkuru districts. During pre-british era the villagers in these Gold rich villages used to process the ore available in the soil to filter the gold. The local raja or palegara used to protect their rights to extract and process the gold from the earth. The villagers used to make guilds and set up their own rules and regulations about the usage & extraction of the earth. 

So everyone had the access rights to the resources. They had rules to extract it sustainably and not harm the very nature which gives them this economic independence. It was a cottage industry. Family business in which everyone from the young ones to the old were involved. Not heavy machines, no rapid extraction & processing involved. But large number of families spread across locations thinly & hard working throughout the year. This ensured no over extraction, no over consumption, no water guzzling, no river pollution etc.,

They had full rights to trade with whom they want. Some of the best ornaments, were purchased by the royals. If there is any exploitation by a king of their labour, then there used to be revolt to replace him with a more just ruler.

Then the British came. By their cunning pacts, barbaric wars, they captured entire India and stripped all the royals of any standing army, power & rights over their resources. They dismantled the village guilds, self-governing panchayats etc., They separated Private and Public properties. What is not private is public. All that is public belonged to the government. So the land, forest, hills, rivers, lakes belonged to the Government now. And the locals don’t have a say in it.

The British now looked at maximum output with minimum input. So they auctioned these rich resources to private individuals, companies. They came with heavy machinery to extract max with minimum labour.

The natives protested.

Native: We can extract and sell it to you

British: We need it fast

Native: We can do it with hard work

British: We want to rubble this entire hill range & forest range

Native: You cannot do that. That’s our habitat

British: We shift you and give you water & shelter elsewhere

Native: We lived here for several generations. Our king always protected our rights here

British: Your king is gone. Now we are the king. You take what we give & work here as a daily wager

Thus came the concept of stripping the locals of their rights over their land, water, resources and in return run their lives.

So the Government runs the people’s lives snatching their habitat and livelihood. It is wrong.

Now the present situation continues. The dismantled village self-governance is never recouped. Some central or state Government owns all that is public. So it auctions it to rich or bold individuals, companies. They extract maximum with minimum input. The locals get displaced or have to suffer indignation.

When the locals revolt, the government says, it will provide them food, water & shelter. But no access rights to the forests, rivers around them. They don’t have to do anything. It is called the "Jobless growth". Large populist schemes are launched and given an eye wash to the people.

So the people have lost the art, science & social unity to access, utilize the resources around them. They have become complacent and dependent for basic needs on the Government. Government has to give them job, skill training to work in factories which are also closing down fast as it extracts unsustainably everything.

The Government is generating big GDP. But people are poor & clueless.

The Government says with its power of GDP, it distributes food through food bill passed recently to cover about 60% of India’s population. Lakes are dried up. Rivers are polluted. But Government says it will pump drinking water through pipes over 100s of kilometers to each village! How unsustainable!! Recently they have started the Yettinahole river water lifting project to provide drinking water to the entire Chikkaballapur & Kolar districts. Instead they should encourage the villagers to organize & sustain their own lakes, rivers & streams. It should discourage large nationwide PDS (Public Distribution System) to distribute food grains. Instead it should encourage full freedom to villages to grow and consume locally the basic necessities of food, water & shelter.

In short Government should protect the people’s lives, rights to produce & consume locally. It is the right thing.

Then people in turn will give back the best in organized manner back to the country to build it as a strong nation.  

Medieval and Ancient India had world’s highest GDP

Many of us believe the medieval times of India was mired in poverty, casteism, discrimination, extortion by the Rajas & local Palegars, upper caste brutalizing lower caste, numerous kingdoms always at war with each other etc., While these problems here & there existed, it was not the main feature.

By and large India widely had very high level of organized localized governing at village level. High level of freedom, access rights to their local resources was there. Protection by the Rajas to the local bodies was guaranteed. All castes were organized by their profession. Full freedom of profession they had along with full access to the resources & market. By and large, they performed their profession under no slavery, bonded labour. We don’t evidence any slave trade or indentured labour or any such inhuman things in pre-Isalmic, pre-British India.

Why then our school texts say otherwise? That is because the British weaved this narrow narrative of India thoroughly to demean India, develop a sense of prejudice against the Indian customs among the educated Indians. Even today, our educators are still in that colonial mindset. There is a need to question it and rationally look at the details.

Angus Madison the economist commissioned by the OECD produced a magnum opus research on how the nations, civilizations have progressed in terms of today’s economic index GDP. This is widely accepted by all nations as a thorough reference to economics of the past 2 millenials.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross_world_product

The graph he produced shows, India was the leader of the world for most part of the 2 millenia, from 1AD till almost 1500AD. Then the decline starts as we lose independence to foreign invaders. So what we have lost in the last 500 years has to be recovered. We ought to do that. We are capable of it. Our strong civilizational roots enable it. It will take time. May be a century more. But each of us have to do our bit towards it.

How was India the leading economic power of the world until 1500AD?

The answer is simple. The nation was free. The nation had organized itself organically from the ground up. From Family to Village to District to Kingdom to the entire Nation. Each unit was self-sustained, independent yet connected & interdependent. There is a necessity to thoroughly study without any prejudice, the sociology, at each level and how well it was organized.

In the example of gold mining above, you can replace those villages with any other resources like – Horticultural products, Forestry products, Any other ore mining, Agricultural produce, Art produce, Silk produce etc., The story remains the same. In the ancient times, the local people organized themselves to produce it all by themselves using local resources. The local authority gave them full protection to their freedom to utilize the resources, produce, market etc.,

So the first priority for the local people was to produce their basic needs of Food, Water & Shelter. Any other exotic stuff they possessed in their region, they processed it and traded the finished products across the world. If a family produces rice for self-consumption, there is no way to include it in GDP. What gets traded out only gets counted in GDP. That means, people in India took care of their basic needs first and then produced things to top the world chart!!

The ancient world trade was dominated by India by both finished products & some of the exotic raw materials. The spices, gems, pearls, etc., were the most exotic raw materials traded. In the finished products, special clothing, jewelry, art, sculpture, artisans, architects went all over the world. Even the philosophy, science, mathematics, travelled across the world through trade routes.

This shows that free India at grass root level had organized itself even at Nation level. This is the reason the invaders recognized this Nation as Hindustan, India etc., - The nation after the Sindhu river. It was not the invaders who united India and built this nation as our text books say. It was an organized nation by its fundamental philosophical, sociological characteristics who ruled the world psychologically.

Now that we are a young nation of 70 years of Independence from foreign rule, the freedom of ruling at village level is yet to be realized. But for that, the grand past has to be rewritten first, then the reason behind the grand past & then how it was made possible. There is an immense need to build self-confidence of the nation by educating them rightly. The current education system, produces Guilty-Indians not Proud-Indians. A self-confident nation with harmonious social set up at grass root level can become the world economic leader again and show the world that highest GDP can be produced if Governance stick to people care & independence as its first priority. 

Siri Gandhada Naadu – The Story of Sandalwood

Sree Gandha or the sandal wood is a very special & unique species of Karnataka. Although it is grown elsewhere in India too, Karnataka takes the richest share of it. The western ghats is conducive home to it. In that also specially in our Shivamogga region, Madikeri and Mysore regions, it is grown naturally in the forests. It is the highest priced wood. So it is highly vulnerable for smuggling. The forest brigands are usually after it. The forest department has special watch on it if it is found anywhere. Every one of such tree is a National treasure; it doesn’t belong to you even if it is in your garden.It belongs to the state. It gives its unique fragrance only after it ages more than 75 years. Till then it is just a tree.

Once it used to be in abundance in our forests are now extremely rare to find. The story of Sandalwood traces the human behavior and the decline of humanity. Lets turn a few pages of our history. 

The Golden Age of India

During the Golden age of India, the Rajahs used to give lot of importance to art and craft. The sandal wood is one of the favorites for the craftsmen to produce some of their finest arts.

The crafts men had free access to the forests where these trees were naturally grown. Gudigars are one such community who carried out this artistry as family profession for hundreds (may be thousands) of years. They sculpted Krishna, Geethopadesha, Dashavatara, Ganesha and all Hindu deities. They produced the crafted idols for the temples, chariots, houses & for the palaces. The Rajah used to support by purchasing the best and costliest product. It used to be a symbol of the richness of the region.

Another important use of sandal wood was of sandal paste. Even today, in the temples and orthodox Brahmin houses, the sandal paste is produced manually by grinding the wood on a small granite slab (saane kallu in Kannada). This is then applied onto the temple deity as Alankara. After it is taken out from the idol, it is applied as Naama or Mudra on our body. It gives a cooling sensation & soothing fragrance through the day.

All ways of utilizing the Sandalwood was manual. Hence it was not getting overly chopped, hoarded or consumed madly. So the forest richness was managed locally by the local communities by forming guilds & some rules of self-governance. There was not much smuggling recorded in the history. 

The British loot

The British famously destroyed the Indian independence by killing its indigenous industries. All our industries were cottage industries and family based. Each family working in a profession had 3 main things:

-          Easy and free access to the raw material

-          Full freedom to produce artistic, family/ community/ region specific unique products

-          Encouraging friendly local markets; Travelling merchants to take the ‘excess produce’ across oceans and continents through their established silk route

The British when they took over governing India, systematically killed all industries by attacking these 3 main points of freedom.

For example, in the case of textile industries -

  

-          They denied access to the finest cotton & Indigo grown here to the local weavers by exporting them

-          They levied heavy taxes on the weavers to make their produce costly & uncompetitive

-          They denied market access by dumping in foreign cheap clothes manufactured in the mechanized factories.

The steel industry was also a cottage industry with each family running kilns producing finest quality steel ingots. Hundreds of villages & thousands of houses in the Chirtradurga, Bellary, Raichur region had family run kilns. Richard Buchanan during his survey in 1800s has recorded the finest quality of Iron & steel produced in this region in large quantity utilized for Swords, spears & other war materials, and also agricultural tools.  This was also systematically destroyed by the British following similar means:

-          They denied access to the forests and hills to the nearby villagers; While they looted mining it indiscriminately

-          They levied heavy taxes on each family kilns making their produce uncompetitive

-          They denied market access by dumping in the foreign steel manufactured in their mechanized factories.

British eyed on the sandal wood along with other richness of the western ghats. They found its unique fragrance very appealing. They put their science of destruction to innovate oil extraction from the sandal wood. The oil thus extracted was used in making scent and was used in the beauty industry.

But for producing a small 100ml bottle of scent almost a full grown tree has to be sacrificed. Thus the massive loot started.

Indian Forest Department

Most of us know Indian forest department is for managing and protecting the Indian forests. But do you know, it started as a department by the British to plunder the Indian forests systematically? The government being the custodian of the nation’s natural resources created this department. Its primary purpose was to extract the forest produce, measure it & transport it.

For that it measured the forest area, marked it out and kept the public out of it. The tribals were driven out. Their uprising was quelled without mercy.

Lets come back to our Sandalwood story. Essentially our craftsmen, families, communities who were wholly dependent on this important forest produce were denied rights. They were denied access to it. So again the 3 principles applied

-          No access to the raw materials

-          Heavy taxation on their produce

-          No Market. The Rajahs were dethroned. Silk route and all trades, trade routes were cut off; locals were impoverished. Temples were denuded.

So where would these communities go? Rajah is the Praja Palaka. So they went to the British Raj. The Brits essentially in the forest department had 3 types of jobs –

1.       Wood cutter

2.       Wood transporter

3.       Accountant

These craftsmen had reverence to these wood as their GOD only. They couldn’t think of indiscriminately cutting and transporting their gods!! And counting the loot was even worse. So they left their family profession & joined the destitute population of the British Raj.   

Today’s situation

Today the situation is not entirely different.

The forest is still in Government hands. Government is not exactly looting but is not preventing the loot by miners, brigands etc.,

Hardly any raw material for the craftsmen available.

The main market being temples and Rajah. Both are Government only. And Government still is looting temples & not giving anything back;

There are few artisans surviving still on this. They have to work for Government emporiums only if they have to produce anything from Sandalwood. Individual buyers have to buy through controlled emporiums run by the Government.

We cannot expect the glorious past. If we leave the forests so open as it used to be, nothing will remain.  

One simple thing is at least to put the uniqueness of the Indian flora and fauna in primary education. So that some patriotism and pride in children about our nation can be developed. This is my sincere hope.

Recently my 5^th standard son was mugging up the flora & fauna of Democratic Republic of Congo with much difficulty. I don’t know what to do. He has to score marks. So I left him & told him this story outside it.

So the whatsapp, facebook and blogs are more educative these days. Formal education is crass. That’s a pity.

Swami Vivekananda had told way back – The British education is but a lump of information. Not any bit useful for Man Making Mission.

Today we still follow the same. Nothing nation building in today’s CBSE, ICSE or State board syllabus. Pity us.