ISSN 0970-5406 REGN NO. 43069/85

Edited by Smitu Kothari, published and printed by him for Lokayan13 Alipur Rd., Delhi 110054. Pagesetting and printing by Macro ~ A36Chittaranj~ Park, New Delhi 110 019

CONTENTS

GUEST EDITORIALColonisation and Counter-Culture

_Rajni Kotnar!

ISSUES FOR -DEBATEDevelopment and Repr.ession:A Feminist CritiqueFrederique App/el Marglin

Third World ~conomic Sovereignty at StakeMartin Khor Kok Peng

ON SURVIVAL

Brundtland's Non-Magical CosmosShiv YisvanamanSQCIAL SCIENCE FICTIONThe Bank in the BushMeta Yourstar

AWARDThe 1990 Right Livelihood Awards

DECLARATIONFrom Global Crisis Towards Ecological-AgricultureInternational Movement/or Ecological Agriculture

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LOKAYAN"

BULLBTIIT

Rajni KothariColonisation and Counter-Culture

Frederi"que MarglinDevelopment and Repression

Martin KhorThirct World Economic Sovereignity

.$hiv VisvanathahBrundtland'. Non-Magical Cosmos

January - February 1991

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...•0\0\...•...•0;·E•..~Q~.",.:91 GUEST EDITORIAL

Colonisation andCounter-Culture

One of the more tragic twists of contemporary history lies in the swift- 1ness with which "independent" states that came into being as a resultof anti-colonial struggles have become client states of metropolitanpowers and transnational corporations. We need to go into the reasonsfor this shift from anti-colonialism to neo-colonialism to integrationinto the world economic, strategic and cultural order - from indepen-dence to "interdependence" to "integration".

There are many reasons for this but the most basic reason lies in thevery conception of independence that dominated the various "move-ments" for independence. It was a conception that was narrowly"political" with a view of politics that was extremely limited and super-ficial. To think of independence as mere overthrow of an alien powerwithout challenging-as did Gandhi partially-the philosophical para-digm on which the historical thrust of world hegemony was based wasindeed a highly superficial conception of independence. What thenationalist elites sought was primarily independence of a land mass,neither its cultural and ecological contours nor its historical legacies as ,expressed in ethnic and regional diversities, nor indeed the vast heri-tage of pedagogies, knowledge systems and traditional wisdom. Therewere here and there some efforts at what was called "revivalism" butthis was soon subdued under the modernist onslaught of the maincontenders for national independence. And yet it was the underminingof these latter dimensions that made it easy for the colonial onslaught

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to make the kind of deep inroads that it made at so many levels of thesocial fabric - an onslaught that continues till our day.

In its fundamentals the colonial onslaught was not political or military(which were, of course, the necessary instrumentalities for the morebasic impact of European civilisation); it was normative and paradig-matic, in respect of norms of governance and the legal order, in termsof laying an economic structure to colonial relations, in redirecting thewhole framework of knowledge and, underlying it all, imposing a tech-nological worldview and an overarching philosophy of science. It isthese very onslaughts that have continued after Independence, if any-thing with redoubled vigour and ever growing confidence. And it isprecisely these deeper onslaughts that have shaken the confidence ofcolonised peoples, in particular the confidence and belief in their owntraditions and institutional frameworks - social, economic, philosophi-cal and epistemological.

The post-independence elites proved to be far more corrosive of therich diversity and historical legacies of Indigenous cultures than theleadership that had steered the movements for Independence. The lat-ter included learned men and women who were steeped in and hadhigh regard for indigenous traditions (both classical and folk). Thesewere pushed aside in the new "tryst with destiny" that those whoinherited power from the colonial masters took on as their historic mis-sion. It was a mission to push the "enemy" out but to adopt hisinstitutional framework (some of which he had already started giftingto the natives during the long period of imperial rule), as well as hiseconomic philosophy, ideological categories and techno-scientific para-digm (drawn from the European enlightenment and its Marxistextension). Indeed we were described as being backward preciselybecause they were foreward in all these - we must inevitably followsuit, bridge the gap, "catch up".

Outside the state system too a considerable intellectual and politicaleffort got animated. A great deal of cognitive churning against anincreasingly unequal and unjust world was under way. A mass of pro-tests were being mounted starting from the massive 1968 revolt of theyouth, and a growing upsurge of solidarity across hemispheres againstimperial wars and techno-capitalism (Vietnam, Iran, Brazil,Philippines) was being boldly asserted. There was both a critique and anew confidence, often heady and generally optimistic.

There was a large band of intellectuals and high level activists operat-ing across diverse public domains, in different parts of the world, usingbothIntematlonal and national forums of various kinds, meeting oftenaround the world, giving rise to not just bonds of fellowship and asense of common endeavour but also support to the dissenting andpersecuted leaders from the Third World. But this activity was not justpolitical and in pursuit of "human rights"; it focussed even more onthe emerging dissent on development, social policy, technology andstructures of privilege and power. A significant part of this dissentingactivity got organised from within various U.N. bodies, helped in thisby a large array of non-governmental organisations that emer~ed inboth the North and the South in this era of considerable conceptualrethinking on the nature of the human agenda.

Alongside, new areas of concern also began to evoke attention duringthis period and those that existed were involved with a new meaningand conceptual apparatus. Among these were the whole concern withthe future, the growing movements on the environment, women andhuman rights, particularly those focussing on the condition of diverseminorities, and the increasing attention given to the issues of ethnic-ity, decentralization, alternative technology, a new information orderand survival of lifestyles and living conditions. And interrelating withall these was the increasingly felt need to define the role of the Stateand the struggle against its degeneration from being an instrument ofliberation and equity to one of dominance and exclusion, and its hav-ing become a captive of the global corporate order and its militaryextension.

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In the early years after independence this deference to the Western par-adigm was contained by the very spirit and euphoria of having wonthe anti-colonial struggles-the rise of the East challenging the hege-mony of the West, the stirrings of Afro-Asia,a little later joined by theLatin Americans. There was excitement in the air-the creation of anew world, the possibilities of a new civilization. Bandung, Belgrade,the Group of 77, the struggles at UNCTADand UNESCO,the OPECchallenge creating panic in the industrialized North, the infusion ofthis into a widespread consciousness of Third Worldism, flexing itsmuscles through the Charter for the New International EconomicOrder that permeated into the United Nations which held a specialSession on it in 1974, the Cocoyoc Declaration, and so many otherResolutions and Announcements inspired by the new climate of a fastchanging thrust towards ordering human relations, both within andbetween nation states.

Pursuit of these concerns - often together, often in specialised compart-ments - gave rise to a series of programmatic and institutionalinitiatives that contributed to a more comprehensive movement foralternatives and the ensuing struggles against the status quo. The Clubof Rome, the International Foundation for Development Alternatives(IFDA),the Hammarskjold Foundation, the World Future StudiesFederation (WFSF),the Baraloche Foundation in Argentina, the ThirdWorld Forum in Cario, the Third World Network in Penang, Lokayanin Delhi, the Third World Center in Manila, ARENAin Hong Kong,UNITARunder Samir Amin in Dakar and Survival International inLondon are only a few of these initiatives that held aloft in this effort.

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It was an effort that in diverse ways represented the hitherto "unheardvoices", and provided catalytic inputs into the theoretical frameworksof "alternative development" and "another development" (the latterfollowing a major critical poser arising from discontent with the theoryof development, called "What Now"). In turn, this produced a newgenre of journals and bulletins like Alternatives, Development Dialogue,TheEcologist, Food First, Ideas and Action, Lokayan Bulletin (and morerecently, Third World Resurgence) in all of which radical thinking inboth the South and the North was advanced. (The World Order ModelsProject in its early years, with its series of books and conferences, hadalready heralded this thinking.) There was much at work, so much ofmainstream thinking and policy priorities were being challenged, somuch new energy from multiple arenas of struggle against prevailingeconomies, technologies and cultures was being generated.

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What was more, the new thinking and critique appeared to have slowImpact on strategic segments of the prevailing global framework Itself -through U.N. bodies (some of them like UNICEF,UNEP,UNITAR,UNRISDand UNU,clearly conceived around the concerns laid outabove while others like UNESCOgot transformed under their impact),through the rise of Green and Peace parties as projections of environ-ment and peace movements, and, in the field of development,through some of the donor agencies, Foundations and even individualsand sections within neo-colonial outfits like the World Bank. Thoughsome of the activist groups and intellectuals involved in the effort out-lined here have studiously kept their distance from these structures,the thinking emanating even from them have had an impact.

The main vehicle of interaction between the "grassroots" and theseapex structures that has played a role in changing perceptions andstrategies on development but which has also opened the gates ofcounter-penetration by the status quo into the movements for changehas been a new genre of international and national organisation: theNGO. The emergence of the NGO as the relationship between fundingsources and activist groups, based on the assumption that it repre-sented "grassroots" interests in the councils of governments andinternational agencies, was generally welcomed. It was seen to the pro-vide flexlbility, bypass governmental and inter-governmental rigiditiesand for the first time represent the interests of groups that had other-wise no access to official channels and power structures. Together, thenew intellectual critique of the dominant development model, theassertion of counter-cultures and plural structures of interest, and therise of the NGO as a new organisational form through which even gov-ernments and donor agencies were willing to channelize funds andprojects - and even restructure these in response to the emerging cri-tiques - held out a promise of a more participant and people-orientedapproach to development.

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Unfortunately, it is precisely this institutionalisation of the movementfor dissent and alternative modes of relating civil society to the Statethat has provided handy instruments to the international status quo to .contain the forces of change and at the same time weaken domesticpolitical structures with a more radical bent that had all along stoodfor national self-reliance and against external penetration. At the sametime it is strengthening technocratic and centralised structures thatwere becoming nervous before political stirrings from the grassrootsand from regional and local centres of the State. Increasingly, bureau-crats and technocrats operating from central governments are found touse foreign funding for pushing back pressures from regional anddecentralised units. And in this they are finding common cause withNGOs most of whom prefer to work with central ministries and inter-national agencies than with state governments and local bodies.

It is not as if the NGOs, because of compulsions of raising funds andeasy access to governing structures (national and international), havegradually declined as sources of dissent and alternative thinking andhave become easy prey to interests that were out to coopt them and inthe process subvert dissenting elements of a more political kind (politi-cal activists as against development NGOs). This has also happened.But there has been a more basic shift, again in thinking and ideologicalmoorings, that really accounts for the success with which the backlashfrom the global and national structures of influence and power againstthe forces of change has become possible. The role of the NGOs in thisis only a part - and not a very large part at that - of a much larger ideo-logical shift that has been under way for almost two decades now butwhich really acquired high potency only during the eighties.

This consists in the growing critique of the State and its gradual hijack-ing by techno-capitalism that have emanated from global centers andmade their way into both the thinking on and the running of theenterprise called governance within nation states. Interestirtgly, theattack on the State came from opposite ideological poles-from the

. Left and progressive liberal pole as well as from the Right and corporatecapitalist pole. The former was based on legitimate concern with theincreasingly repressive character that a nervous governing elite hadimparted to the State but it was the latter that had the real elements ofan ideological school of thought.

While the critique of the State had many elements, the one that caughtthe imagination of the middle classes, the mass media and all but asmall section of the intelligentsia - and indeed even large parts of themass citizenry - was that the State had become too bureaucratic, overlyregulative and dilatory and, in consequence, at once highly corruptand highly inert and inefficient. In this wave of discontent and revul-sion against the State, the ideology of liberalisation and privatisation

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has found fertile ground. No wonder that today it has become the rul-ing doctrine almost all over the world-capitalist, socialist and ThirdWorldish. It does not seem to matter to most that it is a doctrine thatis more rather than less repressive of human rights, more poverty-inducing rather than poverty-reducing, more rather than less destruc-tive of the environment.

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There is no space to go into all the ramifications of the new ideologicaljuggernaut. What is clear is that, through this one powerful theoreticalonslaught, the various forces that had been at work against the estab-lished paradigm of development and social change have beensystematically constrained, marginalised and (as with a majority of thedevelopment NGOs) coopted. The preference for voluntary organisa-tions as against government departments for carrying out developmentschemes is only an extension of the preference for the private sector asagainst the public sector. It is all part of putting an end to the auton-omy of the State from vested interests, an end to the conception of theState as an instrument of social transformation. The old paradigm isback, technology is once again the reigning God (in fact more thanbefore), massive depoliticisation is at work, "socialism" has been dis-credited, the institutions of the State have been at once eroded andaccountability of the traditional bureaucracy has been replaced by thearrogance of the ultra-modern and hi-flight technocracy. But, aboveall, the old belief in trickle down and growth first, employment later ornational gradeur first, mass welfare later has been restored, now withless humility and more hawkishness. And, of course, with this alsorides the strong current of ultra-nationalism, hard State, regional hege-monies, anti-minority psychosis and a contempt for pluralism andpluralist democracy. It is a total - and totalitarian - putsch. Political,economic, cultural and paradigmatic.

We need to take stock of the full import of this renewed paradigmaticsurrender. And not just for the peoples of the Third World. For peopleseverywhere. They are being denied access to diverse ways of orderinglife and its political, cultural, aesthetic and economic parameters-asindeed the parameters of the age, gender, lifestyle and ecology, the lastof these being the most pervasive parameter of all. And all this is beingordered by a "world order" that is increasingly ordered from one majorcultural epicenter in both techno-economic and political terms, espe-cially following the abject surrender of the Soviet Union and thesocialist world, the bulldozing of the whole of the Arab world, the inte-gration of Europe in 1992 under France-Germanic hegemony and theservicing of this order by Japanese technological prowess.

Realization of this totalistic sway of the new colonial onslaught whichcontinues apace has been growing in part due to the deep sensitivity ofa few creative minds but in the main due to the upsurge of conscious-ness from the grassroots and peripheries of this social terrain that has

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emerged during the very time when the homogenising juggernaut hasbeen holding sway. Following the gradual seeping down of the demo-cratic process - and of struggles growing there from -there has takenplace a re-awakening of awareness and indentitles along a diversity ofspaces: ethnic, linguistic and regional, cultural, ecological and comrnu-nitarian. A lot of this is still muted and dispersed, inchoate and highlyfragmentary, also facing a determined backlash from entrenched inter-ests. These interests pervade the nation state (and its global

. penetration), the development process and the corporate sector, alsopenetrated by the global capitalist system, and the military and its hire-lings among the hawkish intelligentsia. Part of this backlash alsoconsists of cooptation of all but a very few national governments, thevoluntary sector, a large part of the academic and professional elites,and the bulk of the global middle classes, particularly in the ThirdWorld and in the "Socialist" world. Right now, the stranglehold seemscomplete with the steam rolling of Eastern Europe, the "grand victory"in the Gulf War and the consequent colonisation of the Middle East,and the growing tentacles of the World Bank and the IMF reducingonce proud nations into economic and technological colonies.

And yet, despite all these politico-economic and technological subjuga-tions, the upsurge from the bottoms and peripheries of plural societies,currently under attack from global structures of homogenisation and"integration", will not be easily put down. But it is an upsurge thatcalls for a major intellectual and ideological articulation which thenhas to permeate into mainstream political, economic, cultural andinformational spaces. It is also an effort that needs to cut across thetypical "movements" based on the mere demand for equality with theother-women against men, tribals against non-tribals, Third Worldagainst the First World-and instead move towards a search forauthenticity, self-determination democracy and dignity. The strugglefor mounting this counterforce is going to be long and will call for sus-tained and combined effort on the part of diverse movements-thereare no shortcuts to it and there are bound to be many setbacks. But thepoint is that neither the national state nor economic development normodern technology are able to "deliver the goods" and create a justand democratic social order which is what people everywhere are crav-ing for. There never was a greater need for doing things differently.And from different thresholds of the human enterprise. Building upon"voices" that are crying to be heard but are as yet drowned in thecacophony of mass media and ad agencies. They cannot be ignored ormarginalised for long. Doing so only means more violence and terror-ism, more civil wars, more wars. Do we want this in this alreadybeleaguered and unstable world? Surely not.

l Raini Kothari

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