Monsanto In India: Meet The New Boss – Same As The Old Boss? - TruePublica
Monsanto In India: Meet The New Boss – Same As The Old Boss?
In capitalism, the state’s primary role is to secure the interests of
private capital. The institutions of globalised capitalism – from the
World Bank, the IMF and the WTO right down to the compliant
bureaucracies of national states or supranational unions – facilitate
private wealth accumulation that results in the forms of structural
inequalities and violence (unemployment, poverty, population
displacement, bad food, poor health, environmental destruction, etc)
that have become ‘accepted’ as necessary (for ‘growth’) and taken for
granted within mainstream media and political narratives.
When referring to Western countries, those narratives like to use the
euphemism ‘austerity’ for deregulation, privatisation and gross
inequalities and hardship, while hiding being the mantra ‘there is no
alternative’. When referring to India, they use the euphemism ‘assisting
development’ for corporate imperialism, while hiding behind the term
‘investing in’.
Each year, in August, India commemorates the anniversary of
independence from Britain. In the 1990s, however, the IMF and World Bank
wanted India to shift hundreds of millions out of agriculture. In
return for up to £90 billion in loans,
India was instructed to dismantle its state-owned seed supply system,
reduce subsidies and run down public agriculture institutions and offer
incentives for the growing of cash crops to earn foreign exchange.
