Pl circulate this article to all African colleagues: pasted and attached as well.
Dear
All
This
is from today Hindustan Times [Delhi's leading daily] Edit Page: I couldn’t get rid of the underlining in the latter
part of the article. All reax welcome!
Darryl
http://www.hindustantimes.com/News-Feed/ColumnsOthers/Living-off-the-land/Article1-909371.aspx
Living
off the land
Darryl D’Monte
August 07, 2012
First Published: 00:04
IST(7/8/2012)
Last Updated: 00:12 IST(7/8/2012)
Although
some detailed exposés of India’s nefarious role in purchasing or leasing
agricultural land in other countries — notably in Africa — have been surfacing
in the last few years, the full picture of what some critics term a land grab
and new form of colonialism has only emerged during the
Rio+20 environmental meet in June. The Washington DC-based
think tank, the Worldwatch Institute, released a report based on data put out
by the Land Matrix project, a consortium of 45 NGOs, which has collated
difficult-to-obtain information from investing and recipient countries.
Astonishingly, India figures as
the country with the third most amount of such farm land acquired in other
countries: between 2000 and 2012, Indian firms “grabbed” 6.3 million hectares
(ha) in 121 separate deals. These tracts were acquired for agriculture
(including floriculture, Bangalore-based Karuturi Global Ltd claiming to be the
world’s largest exporter of roses), forestry for wood or fibre, industries and
mineral extraction, including petroleum. Indonesia tops the list over the same
period with eight million ha in just 10 deals, with Malaysia coming second. The
US figures fourth with just over 3 million ha, followed by Britain and Europe,
the UAE and China.
While Africa has been by far the
biggest recipient of such Indian investments, Ethiopia in particular has been
singled out. In May, a US-based Ethiopian activist wrote to our ambassador in
the US, Nirupama Rao: “The scale of penetration by Indian firms that earned
them the widely expressed name of ‘new farmland colonisers’ or as one local
newspaper reported last year, ‘the new invaders’, is unprecedented. The
Ethiopian Reporter confirmed last year that Bangalore-based Karuturi Global Ltd
acquired the equivalent of 3,000 sq km of land, a staggering 311,900 ha (the
size of Luxembourg bought at less than $1.0 per ha) in the Gambella Region. It
owns 50,000 ha in the southern region, making it the largest Indian commercial
farm owner in the country.”
The irony of a former British
colony turning into a neo-coloniser should not be missed. In 2010, Oxford University
and the UN Development Programme brought out a “multidimensional poverty index”
or MPI which replaced the Human Poverty Index. The researchers analysed data
from 104 countries with a combined population of 5.2 billion, constituting 78%
of the world’s total. It found that about 1.7 billion people in these countries
live in multidimensional poverty. If income alone is taken into account, at
less than $1.25 a day, a standard measure throughout the world, this amounts to
1.3 billion only.
The startling fact that emerges
from this analysis, which made headlines throughout the world, is that using
the MPI, just eight Indian states have more poor people than the 26 poorest
African countries combined. These sub-Saharan countries — like Ethiopia — are
considered the worst-off in the world, with pictures of starving children there
becoming symptomatic of a deep malaise. India, on the other hand, today enjoys
the status of an emerging economic power, with a booming IT industry, vast
industrial potential and a huge internal market. The averages have camouflaged
these indices of deprivation within the country, “the internal colony”, where
Madhya Pradesh figures at the bottom of the heap. And yet, the intrepid Indian
government itself has acquired one million ha of land in Ethiopia to grow
jatropha, which yields renewable energy.
The paradox deepens with the
revelation that India also happens to rank among the top 10 countries in which
farmland has also been bought or leased by other countries. What is more, this includes
Indian companies which have been active in converting such land at home to
non-farm uses. As of April this year, 4.6 million ha of agricultural land
within the country has been leased or bought and converted into
non-agricultural use in 113 deals. To cite just one example, Mission New Energy
Ltd from Australia/New Zealand has acquired 194,000 ha to grow jatropha, which
can be cultivated in arid land. This is no accident: the EU plans to switch
over to renewables for a tenth of its transport fuel by 2020, so the global
race is on to source such energy in developing countries. Incidentally, the
steep hike in world food prices in 2008 was largely attributable to the
insatiable hunger for biofuels.
Among Indian firms with the
biggest such acquisitions of land domestically is Reliance Industries with just
over 10,000 ha for industry (conceivably, for the ill-fated Maha Mumbai Special
Economic Zone). Surprise of surprises, the Indian government itself is the
worst offender, having converted two million ha, 180,000 ha and 150,000 ha to
jatropha in three instances. The government has also acquired 1.4 million ha
for industry (presumably another SEZ) in a single deal. Indian companies are
shown by Land Matrix as growing rapacious for land and increasingly insensitive
to the plight of small land holders — abroad or at home. Neo-liberals will
argue that Indian companies are making use of land in other
countries which is lying un- or underutilised and are employing local people in
the process. This would be doubly problematic because it is reminiscent, to
adapt Kipling, of ‘the brown man’s burden’, especially in black Africa.
Darryl D’Monte is
chairperson, Forum of Environmental Journalists of India. The views expressed
by the author are personal.
--
Darryl D'Monte
Chairperson, Forum of Environmental Journalists of India (FEJI)
International Federation of Environmental Journalists (IFEJ)
Kinara, 29-B Carter Road, Bandra West,
Mumbai 400 050, India
Tel 91 22 2642 7088, 2645 9286
Cell: 98203 68872
Fax c/o 91 22 2604 4409
E-mail:
darryl...@gmail.com
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