Chris Cook attended the conference in Hyderabad, convened by the International Association for the Study of the Commons (IASC) and the Foundation for Ecological Security, and which seeks to “sustain the future of the commons” amid the rising tide of climate change and deepening economic divides. The physical commons are on the retreat, was one of the main messages, including and especially in the host country of the gathering, as he reported for Shareable.
Christopher D. Cook:
“As the IASC convenes its 13th biennial gathering — its first in a southern hemisphere nation — evidence of this private-gain-at-any-cost mentality is as overabundant as the teeming dusty poverty on Hyderabad’s ferociously fast streets.
In the nearby state of Orissa, to Hyderabad’s northeast, ‘land grabs’ are proliferating — private, for-profit interests snapping up and tearing down forests to mine for coal and steel production. POSCO India, a top global steel firm, is constructing a massive manufacturing plant in a 3000-acre forest area, allegedly violating India’s 2006 Forest Rights Act.
Farther north, in the Himalayan region, residents hungry for modern convenience and technology “are all ready to sell out everything,” says a disillusioned conference attendee who works to protect common resources there. “I can count you 40 dams in Himalayas. I can describe them all to you. All built for these things, for this new lifestyle” defined by the ubiquitous cars and television sets which most Americans take for granted.
Meanwhile numerous conference attendees voiced concern over rising inequality and corporate political power in India.
“Land is no longer considered a resource for livelihood in communities,” said Action Aid’s Amar Jyoti, “but is a commodity for profit and speculation.” Government and private firms in India, he says, are taking lands from resource-dependent tribal areas to churn up biofuel production.
When I ask an Indian delegate over lunch whether the commons are growing or shrinking, he replies, “they are less and less all the time,” as private firms own more and more. The Indian government, adds Raju, “is more for private interests now than public.”
In a stirring keynote speech launching the global commons meet-up, India’s Minister of the Environment and Forests, Shri Jairam Ramesh acknowledged, “We are world leaders in talking about international inequality, but we are a bit shy talking about domestic inequality.”
While India posted a stratospheric growth rate of nearly 9 percent in 2010 — 42 percent of its residents survive on a meager $1.25 a day; 230 million of India’s billion-plus people suffer from malnutrition, and the United Nations World Food Programme ranked India 94th among 119 nations in its Global Hunger Index.
Even the commons conference itself cannot escape India’s dramatic contrasts. The gathering is being held on a lush, immaculate campus in the relatively tony Jubilee Hills neighborhood removed from most of Hyderabad’s scuffling throngs — its curling boulevards swept clean by groups of women with straw brushes.
As an American journalist visiting India for the first time (courtesy of a travel scholarship from FES), it’s impossible for me to ignore the contrast of being served banquets of sumptuous Indian food at a commons conference in a city and country haunted by mass under-nourishment.
We travel to the lavish inaugural event in large tour buses slicing through Hyderabad’s furious clog of mopeds and auto rickshaws, its emaciated elders and children clawing and pleading for a few rupees. Beyond this dusty maelstrom we enter the inaugural by passing through a metal detector to enter the finely hewn lawns for tea and pastries while awaiting the arrival of dignitaries.”