"Poverty is a Threat to Peace"
Muhammad Yunus Accepts Nobel,
Says U.S. War on Terror "Derailed"
Global Pursuit of Poverty Reduction

Wednesday, December 13th, 2006

Bangladeshi economist Muhammad Yunus accepted the Nobel Peace Prize on Sunday for his pioneering program of giving microcredit loans to the poor. Yunus is the first Nobel winner from Bangladesh. The prize committee said the award also was intended to build bridges between the West and Islamic countries. We plan excerpt of his acceptance speech in Oslo.

Grameen Bank is an interest-charging, profit-making business that is almost entirely owned by the very women who borrow from it. Yunus is the first Nobel winner from Bangladesh. The prize committee said the award also was intended to build bridges between the West and Islamic countries.

In a few minutes, we are going to discuss the significance of naming Muhammad Yunus for the award and look at the concept of microcredit with the chair of the Grameeen Foundation, Susan Davis. But first, let's hear Muhammad Yunus in his own words. The co-called "Banker to the Poor" delivered his acceptance speech on Sunday in Oslo. In his address, Yunus spoke about poverty and peace.

• Muhammad Yunus, 2006 Nobel Peace Prize Winner, speaking December 3, 2006 in Oslo, Norway.

• Susan Davis, she helped to found and is now chairwoman of the Grameen Foundation. She is also chairwoman of the Ashoka Global Academy for Social Entrepreneurship and an adviser to the International Labor Organization. She just returned from Oslo where she attended the Nobel award ceremony for Muhammad Yunus. Last month she was in Halifax for the annual Microcredit Summit in Halifax.

AMY GOODMAN: In a few minutes, we'll discuss the significance of naming Muhammad Yunus for the award and look at the concept of microcredit with the chair of the Grameen Foundation, Susan Davis, as well as Vandana Shiva. But first, let's hear Muhammad Yunus in his own words. The "Banker of the Poor" delivered his acceptance speech on Sunday in Oslo. In his address, Yunus spoke about poverty and peace.

MUHAMMAD YUNUS: By giving us this prize, the Norwegian Nobel Committee has given important support to the proposition that peace is inextricably linked to poverty. Poverty is a threat to peace.

World's income distribution gives a very telling story. 94% of the world income goes to 40% of the world population, while 60% of people live only with 6% of the world income. Half of the world population lives on two dollars a day.

The millennium began with a great global dream. World leaders gathered at the United Nations in 2000 and adopted, among others, a historic goal to reduce poverty by half by 2015. Never in human history had such a bold goal been adopted by the entire world in one voice, one that specified time and size.

But then came September 11 and the Iraq war, and suddenly the world became derailed from the pursuit of this dream, with the attention of the world leaders shifting from the war on poverty to the war on terrorism. 'Til now, over $530 billion has been spent on the war in Iraq by the USA alone.

I believe terrorism cannot be won by the military action. Terrorism must be condemned in the strongest possible language. We must stand solidly against it and find all the means to end it. We must address the root cause of terrorism to end terrorism for all time to come. I believe that putting resources into improving the lives of the poor is a better strategy than spending it on guns.

Peace should be understood in a human way, in a broad social, political and economic way. Peace is threatened by unjust economic, social and political order, absence of democracy, environmental degradation and absence of human rights.

Poverty is the absence of all human rights. The frustrations, hostility and anger generated by abject poverty cannot sustain peace in any society. For building stable peace, we must find ways to provide opportunities for people to live decent lives. The creation of opportunities for the majority of the people -- the poor -- is at the heart of the work that we have dedicated ourselves during the past 30 years.

I became involved in the poverty issue, not as a policymaker or as a researcher. I became involved because poverty was all around me, and I could not turn away from it. In 1974, I found it difficult to teach elegant theories of economics in the university classroom, in the backdrop of a terrible famine that was raging in Bangladesh. Suddenly, I felt the emptiness of all those theories in the face of the crushing hunger and poverty.

I wanted to do something immediate to help people around me, even if it was just one human being, to get through another day with a little more ease. That brought me face to face with poor people's struggle to find the tiniest amounts of money to support their efforts to eke out a living.

I was shocked to discover a woman in the village, borrowing less than a dollar from the money lender, on the condition that he would have the exclusive right to buy all she produces at the price that he decides. This, to me, was a way of recruiting slave labor.

I decided to make a list of the victims of the money lending in the village next door to our campus. When my list was complete, I had names of 42 victims, who borrowed a total amount of $27. I was shocked. I offered this $27 from my own pocket to get these victims out of the clutches of the money lenders.

The excitement that was created among the people by this action got me further involved in it. If I could make so many people so happy with such a tiny amount of money, why shouldn't I do more of it? That's what I have been trying to do ever since.

The first thing I did was try to persuade the bank located in the campus to lend money to the poor. But that didn't work. They didn't agree. The bank said that the poor are not creditworthy. After all my efforts for several months, when it failed, I offered to become a guarantor for the loans to the poor.

When I gave the loans, I was stunned by the result I got. The poor paid back their loans on time, every time. But still, I kept confronting difficulties in expanding the program through the existing banks. That was when I decided to create a separate bank for the poor. I finally succeeded in doing that in 1983. I named it Grameen Bank or Village Bank.

Today, Grameen Bank gives loans to nearly 7 million poor people -- 97% of them are women -- in 73,000 villages of Bangladesh. Grameen Bank gives collateral-free income-generating loans, housing loans, student loans and micro-enterprise loans to the poor families and offers them a host of attractive savings, pension funds and insurance products for its members.

Since it introduced them in 1984, housing loans have been used to construct 640,000 houses. The legal ownership of these houses belongs to the women themselves. We focused on women, because we found giving loans to women always brought more benefits to the family.

In a cumulative way, the bank has given out a loan totaling about $6 billion. Repayment rate, 99%. Grameen Bank routinely makes profit. Financially, it is self-reliant and has not taken donor money since 1995. Deposits and own resources of Grameen Bank today amount to 143% of all outstanding loans. According to Grameen Bank's internal survey, 58% of our borrowers have crossed the poverty line.

Grameen Bank was born as a tiny homegrown project run with the help of several of my students, all local girls and boys. Three of these students are still with me in Grameen Bank, after all these years, as its topmost executives. They are here today to receive this honor you gave us.

This idea, which began in Jobra, a small village in Bangladesh, has spread around the world. There are now Grameen-type programs in almost every country in the world.

AMY GOODMAN: Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus, an excerpt of his acceptance speech on Sunday in Oslo. We have to break. When we come back, we'll be joined by the chair of the Grameen Foundation, Susan Davis.

AMY GOODMAN: Muhammad Yunus and the Grameen Bank were awarded the prize for the pioneering program of giving microcredit loans to the poor. For a closer look at microcredit, we're joined by Susan Davis. She helped to found and is chairperson of the Grameen Foundation. She's also chair of the Ashoka Global Academy for Social Entrepreneurship and adviser to the International Labor Organization. She has just returned from Oslo, where she attended the Nobel award ceremony for Mohammad Yunus. Welcome to Democracy Now!

SUSAN DAVIS: Thank you so much, Amy.

AMY GOODMAN: We didn't get a lot of coverage of the events this weekend here in the United States, so why don't you just describe -- you blogged on your website the whole experience.

SUSAN DAVIS: Right. Sorry that people didn't get that much coverage of it. It was an incredible event, really exciting. And there was world media from all over at the press conferences and covering the event in Oslo. So I don't know why Americans were denied the opportunity. But I guess they can go online and see it.

It was a really moving moment, where Muhammad Yunus and Taslima Begum, on behalf of the Grameen Bank, accepted the Nobel Prize. I don't know if you realize, but Taslima Begum is one of the twelve members of the board of directors. She's also one of nine village women who are also borrowers. So Taslima is one of those people that we talk about: the poorest of the poor trying to use microcredit to lift themselves out of poverty. Well, she actually did that. And she, like many of the other board members, were victims of child marriage, married at nine, remarried at twelve, had a life of -- it was very hard. They've had to work for everything they've got. So when she spoke out at the Nobel Peace Prize, I just lost it.

It was one of those moments where you think, you know, we talk about empowerment, but this was it. It was the spirit of empowerment just ringing through her body. And for the first time, I think, the world heard a Nobel laureate who is from the poorest of the poor.

AMY GOODMAN: Now, explain exactly how it works, though Muhammad Yunus did go through it. How did she get the money in the very beginning? What is she given? What is a woman given?

SUSAN DAVIS: Microcredit is a poor woman's survival strategy that Yunus systematized and created a way to make it scalable and sustainable. So it's a little loan without collateral. She would form a group with four other peers. So, together as a group of five, they would work with eight other groups in a center of 40. They would then have a Grameen Bank worker come to them, to their village. They do a lot of the discussing of whether this is a good idea or not. Does she know how to make tasty sweets? Will they sell? Can she actually raise, you know, goats or cows or sell the eggs from chickens? Is it a good idea? So they do that screening.

Then, they conduct all their business in public. Now, when's the last time you heard about banking being conducted completely in public? But transparency creates accountability. No one rips off anybody, because they all see all the loans given, they see all the loans being repaid right in front of themselves. They may not be literate or even numerate, but they know how to watch and count when it comes to their own money. So they take little loans. Now they can do it from as short as three months to as long as three years. Usually, right now, they're averaging about $120. They've made loans to seven million women in Bangladesh, and they're also shareholders.

AMY GOODMAN: And why is women the case?

SUSAN DAVIS: Well, they started off in the early days just trying to get to 50/50 between men and women. And there are still, you know, 300,000 or 400,000 male borrowers. But after they got to 50/50, Yunus realized that women were actually better fighters of poverty, because all of the disposable income that they earned went right into the mouths of their kids and family to improve their health and nutrition. They then wanted a better roof over their head, you know, to prevent the rain from coming in or the cold.

So, they've lent now, from 1984 ‘til now, over 640,000 housing loans at a very low interest. And these are houses for a maximum of like $300. Yunus told that story Monday night at the concert, in fact, of what it means for a poor woman to have a house of her own. And I thought it's just like Virginia Woolf, you know, talking about women needing a room of one's own.

AMY GOODMAN: Talk about what else happened over the weekend.

SUSAN DAVIS: It was the first time the king and queen came, and they had to turn up to the Nobel ceremony and the banquet, because Yunus had invited Queen Sofia of Spain to come. She has been a total champion. And this is one of the ways that celebrities and personalities and people in political office that do choose to use their power on behalf of the poorest have been able to support and champion the microcredit movement.

Now, from the 7 million borrowers in Grameen Bank, and if you look at the work of Grameen Foundation supporting the like-minded institutions around the world, there's probably a Grameen replication in almost every country in the world now. And we all just had celebrated the Global Microcredit Summit in Halifax a couple of weeks ago, where we've now reached 100 million of the world's poorest families with credit for self-employment and other services, the first time in ten years the world's been able to set a collective goal and achieve it, and, in large part, due to the leadership of Muhammad Yunus and the people he's been able to bring into this movement. And that's what people were talking about.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to read you a quote from an article by Alexander Cockburn, editor of Counterpunch, who cites the Indian journalist P. Sainath, who says the interest rates that micro-indebted women are paying in India are far higher than commercial bank lending rates. Cockburn writes, quote, "Today the World Bank and the IMF, along with state-owned and commercial banks are diving into microfinance. The microloan business is fast becoming a gigantic empire, bringing back into control the very banks and bureaucracies women have been trying to bypass. Microcredit is becoming a macro-racket." Can you respond to the issue of these high interest rates and how the global institutions like the World Bank and the IMF are beginning to use microcredit?

SUSAN DAVIS: Sure. In fact, Yunus talked about interest rates at the Nobel ceremony. The rate that Grameen charges is 20% simple interest. So that's not compounded. It's on a declining balance. It will average then in real terms about 12%. The key thing of whatever rate is charged, it is covering the cost of actually bringing credit to the borrower over and over and over again, sustainable for a lifetime. In the case of the rates where the women actually own the bank or they own the cooperative, then any profit earned is going right back to them. If you look at the extra cost to bring little loans to a lot of people, you actually have to have slightly higher rates. That's why credit cards will charge a higher rate than, in fact, making one $100 million loan to a big corporation. But you always need to ask what's the prime rate, what's inflation, and what's the cost of delivery?

What Grameen Foundation has been trying to do, and we're committed to doing, is bringing the cost of microfinance always down by improving efficiencies. So if you can use technology to automate or to be able to increase the cost effectiveness of delivering lots and lots of little loans, then you can pass that on to customers. It's not to say everybody in the microfinance field does it. But the majority do.

In India, the interest rates for really good microfinance institutions are not that high. You're really looking at between 15%, 18%, 20%. And the key evidence is, what's the alternative for women? Do they come back loan after loan after loan? Do they feel that it's actually helping them build assets in their lives, get their kids in school, put more meals on their table so that they eat at least two, if not three meals a day with protein at least once a week. That's what these interest rates or service charges, as some call them in the Muslim world, mean.

AMY GOODMAN: You lived in Bangladesh for years.

SUSAN DAVIS: Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: Why did you go there? What first drew you there, and know Muhammad Yunus for decades?

SUSAN DAVIS: I've known Yunus for over 20 years now and was really privileged to get a chance from the Ford Foundation to go there and -- I've said it was like the Wall Street of development, because they had all the problems and all the solutions packed in there. And that's when I realized that if you can get behind a really great social entrepreneur like Muhammad Yunus who's built not only the Grameen Bank, but 24 other institutions, some for-profit some not-for-profit, but all of them either potentially owned by those poor villagers themselves or will be owned by them, as he converts the final pieces of the strategy.

It's a way to get behind and re-create another kind of capitalism. You know, it's one thing to critique it. It's another thing to construct the alternative. And that's what I witnessed in Bangladesh, and that's why I got behind their leadership. And if you look at this world now post-9/11 -- and I think the Nobel committee also underscored this -- this is recognition of a Muslim leader in this world, where usually you hear the word "Muslim" branded with "terrorist." Here, this is Muslim leadership that the world has been following on the path for peace.

AMY GOODMAN: We're talking to Susan Davis. In a minute, Vandana Shiva will also join in this discussion. But first, let's go back to Muhammad Yunus's Nobel acceptance speech on International Human Rights Day on Sunday.

MUHAMMAD YUNUS: It is 30 years now since we began. We keep looking at the children of our borrowers to see what has been the impact of our work on their lives. The women who are our borrowers always gave topmost priority to the children. One of the Sixteen Decisions developed and followed by them are to send children to school. Grameen Bank encouraged them, and before long all the children were going to school. Many of these children made it to the top of their classes. We wanted to celebrate that, so we introduced scholarships for talented students. Grameen Bank now gives 30,000 scholarships every year.

Many of these children went to the higher education to become doctors, engineers, college teachers and other professionals. We introduced student loans to make it easy for Grameen students to complete their higher education. Now, some of them have even PhDs. There are 13,000 students on the student loans. Over 7,000 students are added to this number annually.

AMY GOODMAN: Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus speaking in Oslo on Sunday.

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/12/13/1451222

Microcredit: Solution to Poverty,
or False 'Compassionate Capitalism?'

Wednesday, December 13th, 2006

While everyone praises Muhammad Yunus and his original intent of helping poor women in Bangladesh, some critics say microcredit is being misconstrued as a way of ending poverty. We host a debate with Susan Davis, founder and chair of the Grameen Foundation, and world-renowned environmental leader and thinker, Vandana Shiva.

• Vandana Shiva, world-renowned environmental leader and thinker. She is also a physicist and ecologist and the Director of the Research Foundation on Science, Technology, and Ecology. She is the founder of Navdanya -"nine seeds", a movement promoting diversity and use of native seeds. Dr. Shiva was the 1993 recipient of the Alternative Nobel Peace Prize -the Right Livelihood Award. And she is the author of many books, her latest is "Earth Democracy: Justice, Sustainability, and Peace."
• Susan Davis, she helped to found and is now chairwoman of the Grameen Foundation. She is also chairwoman of the Ashoka Global Academy for Social Entrepreneurship and an adviser to the International Labor Organization. She just returned from Oslo where she attended the Nobel award ceremony for Muhammad Yunus. Last month she was in Halifax for the annual Microcredit Summit in Halifax.

AMY GOODMAN: As we continue with the issue of microcredit, poverty and globalization, we're talking to Susan Davis and also Dr. Vandana Shiva, world-renowned environmental leader, physicist and ecologist joins us, founded Navdanya, "nine seeds," a movement promoting diversity and use of native seeds. Dr. Shiva was the 1993 recipient of the Alternative Nobel Peace Prize, the Right Livelihood Award. And she is author of many books. Her latest is called Earth Democracy: Justice, Sustainability, and Peace. And we welcome you, as well, to Democracy Now!, Vandana.

VANDANA SHIVA: Good to be back.

AMY GOODMAN: Your response to hear that Mohammed Yunus and the whole Grameen Bank had won the Nobel Peace Prize.

VANDANA SHIVA: I'm very happy that the Grameen Bank and Yunus got the Nobel Peace Prize. I would only say, let us not think this is a solution to every situation that creates poverty. It's a solution in a particular context. But it cannot be the solution when land is being grabbed from the peasants and leaving them in poverty. For example, in this whole land grab under the special economic zones that's taking place in India right now, and foreign direct investment in real estate is part of the driving force for this. That cannot be solved by microcredit. It needs a solution in terms of respecting the land rights of the peasants and not treating land of the poor as something that can be grabbed by the rich.

The recent report of Helsinki actually gives worse figures than Muhammad Yunus gave: 1% of the world's wealthy are owning 80% of the world's wealth. And I would say, they are then turning that wealth into owning 80% of the world's resources, real material natural resources, the land, the water, the biodiversity, the forests, the minerals.

I think there's a second context in which microcredit could actually create a problem. And it's the kind of context in which we have been forced to work. As credit for unaffordable seeds moves nonrenewable seeds, genetically engineered seeds, hybrid seeds into rural areas in India, we are seeing a new kind of debt trap created.

Farmer suicides, of which there have been 150,000 in the last decade of market opening made possible because of credit, micro and macro. 150,000 is a large number of peasants being wiped out. I have called this a genocide. And it's being made possible by putting money available, credit available, so that they could get seeds of Monsanto. In fact, it's a debate, old debate, I've had with Yunus, because there was a time he was going to use microcredit to move GM seeds and Monsanto seeds to the Bangladeshi women. And we had to have a debate, and thank goodness he backed out of that agreement.

AMY GOODMAN: I remember this letter that you wrote many years ago. It was going to be called, what, Monsanto Grameen...?

VANDANA SHIVA: Partnership. And it was announced at the big microcredit summit. So the point is, credit is a vector. Where does that vector lead you to? Does it lead you to participation in a debt cycle that you can never get out of? I think one of the key issues about credit has to be, is it a debt trap sucking people in to permanent dependence on more and more and more borrowing? And the case of nonrenewable seeds replacing farmers' open-pollinated varieties, farm-saved seeds is an example where credit could actually create a new crisis. And I think we just have to see what is the credit for? What is it bringing?

The second thing, I think, that's very critical is, at least in India, we have witnessed how microcredit is being used to turn autonomous producers, sovereign producers into consumers. Levers has hijacked the entire microcredit system in Madhya Pradesh, this big giant agribusiness. And today, women who were producing their soaps and their potato chips are today sellers of Levers detergents. And they are called Shakti Ammas, when actually what microcredit has done is dis-empowered the women, in terms of robbing them of their productive capacity.

AMY GOODMAN: Susan Davis of the Grameen Foundation, your response?

SUSAN DAVIS: It's not microcredit that's robbing them of their livelihoods here. It's the -- microcredit is an instrument, it's a strategy, and it can be -- it's just like Bishop Tutu said about a knife. It can be both harmful and benign. You can use a knife to slice bread or you can use it to stab someone in the heart. Microcredit, in the hands of an institution that is trying to promote development and women's self-empowerment, is a very powerful and robust instrument. What it does, as Yunus talked about at the Nobel ceremony, is it creates a platform for wider development. He himself said that microcredit is not a panacea and was not trying to argue -- and it's always a false divide when people go down that road.

What he's talking about is the active construction of an alternative. He's talking about being able to have assets and being owned by these people themselves, that we're talking about always as being the victims of whatever injustice. It's a very unjust world, but he says ingenuity, intelligence, opportunity is not unevenly distributed, and all people need is a chance. And that's why credit should be a basic human right, because through that they can access many other of their other rights.

Now, it's also true that what he argues for is people organizing together, banding together, giving voice so that they exercise both their social and political rights. And that's why you've seen more women voting in the elections, more women and men now be elected to the local government councils.

He also spoke out about globalization at the Nobel Prize. I don't know if you heard that. Many Norwegians thought it was a very radical speech, because he talked about social business entrepreneurship and globalization that needs to be a fair globalization, so that you have room in this multi-lane highway not just for the big trucks, but also the rickshaws. So he's talking about fair rules of the game and ways for people to be able to participate unleashing the capacity that each person has inherent within them.

AMY GOODMAN: Vandana Shiva, your response?

VANDANA SHIVA: I agree that it's an instrument. And it's an instrument in certain context. We need other instruments, too. In Earth Democracy, that's what I've talked about: the instruments necessary to defend the rights to water as a common resource. Credit, loans, money circulation cannot solve the problems of alienation of participating in earth democracy. Privatization of water leading to a high cost of water could be financed by flows of credit, but the solution to access to water is rights to water. Rights cannot be substituted by credit. Rights need to be recognized as rights and collective rights to the common wealth of this planet -- the atmosphere, the water, the seeds, the biodiversity. That needs a rights solution. Credit can come after that rights solution has been offered.

AMY GOODMAN: Susan Davis?

SUSAN DAVIS: I think in this world, it's not rights deigned from on high. I think rights are only real when, in fact, people can exercise their rights. And so, what you see here is a very practical solution about people being able to organize for power and being able to also give voice to the various needs.

Right now, Muslim women actually have title to land and own their homestead because of a simple formula, in being able to say, "We're not going to give you a housing loan unless the land is in the name of that woman." So, households had to get together and decide they were going to do that.

In order to respond to the horrible water problem that existed with arsenic in the water, you actually don't have the capacity if everybody is acting in an atomized, fragmented way. And I think you would agree that organizing people so that they can promote their own collective interest is the way to actually realize the rights that may be on the books, de jure, but are never going to be enforced, de facto, unless people have some means of power.

So first, they have to stabilize their own household. They have to be able to eat every day. They have to be able to imagine that they have a future. And then they are able to actually take action in a social and political and economic spheres, so that we're talking about full citizenship for every person.

We're not arguing that microcredit is the only solution, or that all credit, all forms of credit by any institution is inherently empowering. But, if you look at what Ela Bhatt has done in India, creating SEWA Bank, that's actually owned and governed by those women, or Grameen Bank, owned and governed by those women, themselves, you're talking about the ability to create assets. Now, with Grameen Phone it's the largest taxpaying company in Bangladesh. That company was a joint venture between Telenor and Grameen Telecom, which is actually holding the ownership of that company for the time when it goes public and those women, those villagers can actually own that company.

That's a new way to think about ownership and assets. And, you know, we're all playing in a global arena, where capitalism is the dominant form. It's like capital is oil to the engine, right? So that's why we're saying if poverty is a disease, then microfinance is a good vaccine.

VANDANA SHIVA: I think the assumption that the deepening capitalist order entering every sphere of our life, determining how water will flow on this planet, whether it will flow according to the law of gravity or against the law of gravity walking upwards to money, or biodiversity and seeds, whether they'll be seen as gifts of nature and a commonwealth to be shared and protected or treated as the property of giant corporations under the Trade-Related Intellectual Property Rights Agreement of the WTO, I think each of these issues needs something beyond capitalism. I think -- and it's not an issue of creating another future, it's an issue of defending the future that is in people's hands right now.

People in Rajasthan have made rivers come alive by working together to conserve water. And I think we need to recognize that there are those other means of organizing. I think we need to recognize that there are systems beyond capital and at least for maintaining the ecological processes of this planet and defending the commons on this planet. It is not capitalism, but countering the logic of capitalism that will make sure we have an atmosphere, that's now getting so degraded that climate change is wiping us all out, that the seeds being sold to peasants are renewable and not with terminator genes. I think accepting the logic of capital in these vital areas of life is something that makes life impossible. And we've seen that with climate change.

AMY GOODMAN: Susan, ten seconds before break.

SUSAN DAVIS: There's always a role for activism. I think the community organizing is one of the most empowered ways. And I think if people have access to a decent livelihood for work, then they're able to participate much more fully in all the kinds of campaigns that we need to save ourselves and save the planet.

AMY GOODMAN: Susan Davis, I want to thank you for joining us. She is with the Grameen Foundation, helped to found the Grameen Foundation, and chairwoman of Ashoka Global Academy for Social Entrepreneurship. Thank you. And Vandana Shiva will continue with us after break.

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/12/13/1451225

Vandana Shiva on Farmer Suicides,
the U.S.-India Nuclear Deal,
Wal-Mart in India and More

Wednesday, December 13th, 2006

We speak with world-renowned environmental leader and thinker, Vandana Shiva. A physicist and ecologist, Shiva is author of many books, her latest is "Earth Democracy: Justice, Sustainability, and Peace."

• Vandana Shiva, world-renowned environmental leader and thinker. She is also a physicist and ecologist and the Director of the Research Foundation on Science, Technology, and Ecology. She is the founder of Navdanya -"nine seeds", a movement promoting diversity and use of native seeds. Dr. Shiva was the 1993 recipient of the Alternative Nobel Peace Prize -the Right Livelihood Award. And she is the author of many books, her latest is "Earth Democracy: Justice, Sustainability, and Peace."

AMY GOODMAN: Vandana Shiva remains with us, physicist; ecologist; director of the Research Foundation on Science, Technology, and Ecology; in '93, awarded the Alternative Nobel Peace Prize, the Right Livelihood Award; her latest book, Earth Democracy: Justice, Sustainability, and Peace. There is an epidemic you write about in India of farmer suicides. Can you explain what's happening and where this is happening?

VANDANA SHIVA: Indian farmers have never committed suicide on a large scale. It's something totally new. It's linked to the last decade of globalization, trade liberalization under a corporate-driven economy. The seed sector was liberalized to allow corporations like Cargill and Monsanto to sell unregulated, untested seed. They began with hybrids, which can't be saved, and moved on to genetically engineered Bt cotton. The cotton belt is where the suicides are taking place on a very, very large scale. It is the suicide belt of India.

And the high cost of seed is linked to high cost of chemicals, because these seeds need chemicals. In addition, these costly seeds need to be bought every year, because their very design is to make seeds nonrenewable, seed that isn't renewable by its very nature, but whether it's through patenting systems, intellectual property rights or technologically through hybridization, nonrenewable seed is being sold to farmers so they must buy every year.

There's a case going on in the Supreme Court of India right now on the monopoly practices of Monsanto. An antitrust court ruled against Monsanto, because the price is so high, farmers necessarily get into a debt trap, which is why I was talking about credit, for the wrong thing, could actually be a problem and not a solution.

In addition, the price of cotton is collapsing under the huge $4 billion subsidies given to agribusiness in the United States, which then dumps cotton on a world market with 50% reduction of price artificially. This is what led to the Cancun failure of WTO, but this is what is killing Indian farmers. Just three days ago, farmers were protesting against the low prices of cotton. They went to the government agency, which before globalization used to buy cotton at a fair price. One farmer was shot dead. So we're not just seeing suicides, we're also seeing farmers' protests treated as a new threat to the regime.

AMY GOODMAN: These descriptions of desperation, up to three farmers a day swallow pesticides, hang themselves from trees, drown themselves in rivers, set themselves on fire, or jump down wells, many of them plagued by debt, poor crops and hopelessness?

VANDANA SHIVA: 90% of the farmer suicides -- we've studied it. Every year we bring out a report called "Seeds of Suicide." We started the first report in '97, which was the first suicide in the district of Warangal in Andhra Pradesh. Andhra Pradesh --

AMY GOODMAN: Where is it in India?

VANDANA SHIVA: Andhra Pradesh is kind of southern India. But Andhra Pradesh had a government that responded, and that's the government that took Monsanto to court. Vidarbha in Maharashtra has emerged as the epicenter. This is where the Prime Minister visited, because the suicide issue had become so intense. Unfortunately, the Prime Minister offered exactly the same package, more of the same, as a solution. Included in this package is a 20 billion rupee seed replacement package, which means what seed farmers has gets further destroyed, so they have no renewable seed, no affordable seed. They must buy on the market every year. Farmer suicides in Vidarbha are now eight per day.

A few weeks ago, I was in Punjab. 2,800 widows of farmer suicides who have lost their land, are having to bring up children as landless workers on others' land. And yet, the system does not respond to it, because there's only one response: get Monsanto out of the seed sector -- they are part of this genocide -- and ensure WTO rules are not bringing down the prices of agricultural produce in the United States, in Canada, in India, and allow trade to be honest. I don't think we need to talk about free trade and fair trade. We need to talk about honest trade. Today's trade system, especially in agriculture, is dishonest, and dishonesty has become a war against farmers. It's become a genocide.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about the water tower protests?

VANDANA SHIVA: In the state of Rajasthan, which is the capital of the production of mustard -- and mustard in India is very symbolic. It's the color of our spring. When spring comes, we dress in the yellow of the mustard flower. It's our staple oil, and we love the pungency of it.

1998, Monsanto and Cargill managed to get a ban on indigenous oils in order to create a market for soya oil, something we've never eaten before. We led a movement of women to bring back the mustard. But today, 70% of the oil India is eating, edible oil -- and India was the capital of edible oil production -- mustard, sesame, linseed, coconut, wonderful healthy oils -- today, 70% of our edible oil market is soya oil dumped on us, palm oil dumped on us. And, as you know, today soya is being cultivated in cutting the Amazon, and palm oil is being cultivated cutting the rain forest of Borneo.

When the farmers can't sell their mustard -- nobody's buying it -- they've had protests. Twelve farmers were killed in Central India. And there was a farmer who climbed onto the water tower a few months ago, mimicking a Bollywood film, but basically saying he would jump to suicide if the farmer's mustard was not bought. This hijacking of the market for agriculture by a handful of agribusiness, which is what the rules of WTO are -- the Agreement on Agriculture is basically putting all of agriculture into the hands of ADM, ConAgra and Cargill, and all the seed sector into the hands of Monsanto -- it must necessarily destroy more and more farms, more and more farming, and push more farmers to suicide for a while, unless we get a change.

We work for the change, and our work in Navdanya shows that farmers can double their incomes by using their own seeds, doing organic farming. All they need is a joining of hands with urban consumers and definitely a change in the rules of trade, which have treated the rights of Cargill as fundamental rights.

And something Americans don't know much about, the nuclear deal with India has a twin agreement, and that twin agreement is on agriculture. It's called the Knowledge Initiative on Agriculture, and on the board of this agreement are Monsanto, ADM and Wal-Mart. So a grab of the seed sector by Monsanto, of the trade sector by the giant agribusiness, and the retail sector, which is 400 million people in India, by Wal-Mart. These are issues that are preoccupying us for about democracy in India right now.

AMY GOODMAN: Vandana Shiva, I want to go back to that deal that just was announced this weekend, surprised some. The US will send nuclear fuel shipments for civilian use, critics saying it will allow India to use its existing nuclear fuel to build up to 50 nuclear weapons. And then I want to ask you to expand on this corollary that we definitely didn't know about.

VANDANA SHIVA: You know, the nuclear deal with India, in fact, shows the double standards of US nuclear policy, because for the same things that Iran does -- Iran is axis of evil -- but India here, through this nuclear agreement, is being told, we will separate civilian use and military use. Military use will be India's sovereign decision. I don't think it will be India's sovereign decision, because I think in this deal is a strategic use of India for Asia, for a containment for China. But in addition to that, there is turning India into a nuclear market: a sale of nuclear technologies, of nuclear fuel.

And I think we need to contextualize this in the context of the climate debates. Climate change has made us recognize that we can't keep messing up the atmosphere and pumping more carbon dioxide. But nuclear doesn't become clean automatically just because carbon dioxide has destabilized the climate. Nuclear is being offered as a clean development mechanism. And not only will it spread nuclear risks and hazards in India, it will also allow corporations, like General Electric and others who pollute with carbon dioxide, as well as them, get quotas through emissions trading and markets for nuclear technology.

You know, I was a nuclear physicist. I left my career in 1972. I was training to be a nuclear physicist in India's atomic energy program in the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, and I left because I realized very clearly nuclear power, as much as nuclear war, are systems where you cannot have democracy. They're inconsistent with democracy. And I love democracy too much. So I went on to do theoretical physics.

AMY GOODMAN: So explain further this corollary that involves these other large multinational corporations. And why is it part of the nuclear deal?

VANDANA SHIVA: Well, two days ago the US representative -- I think it's Mr. Burns who announced that the nuclear deal is the cutting edge, but what the United States is really seeking is agricultural markets and real estate markets, the land of the poor in India. And if you look at cities like Bombay, you look at cities like Delhi, you look at cities like Bangalore, they're exploding because there's this global hungry finance moving in to take over the land of people, not through a market mechanism, but using the state and an old colonial law of land acquisition to grab the land by force everywhere where this is happening. There is a war going on, outside Delhi in Dadri, outside Calcutta in Singur, everywhere. Peasants are being shot and killed in order to take away the last resort and the last asset of the poor.

The agreements, nuclear and agricultural agreements, came out of a July visit of our prime minister in 2005, were then moved forward in the March visit of President Bush to India, which saw huge protests, by the way -- I'm sure it wasn't covered -- but huge protests, where these deals, as well as the Iraq war, were the issue in India. And the two are twin programs. They are twin programs about a market grab and a security alignment.

AMY GOODMAN: You mentioned Wal-Mart. They have just announced they're going to be opening 500 stores in India, the first to open in August of 2007.

VANDANA SHIVA: We've been organizing the unorganized retail sector of India. The retail sector of India, to me, is the ultimate practice of democracy. When you go into a tiny vegetable market, the women put out their mats, they've brought the tomatoes they've grown outside the city, put it down, maybe five kilos of tomatoes, sell it for the day, go back home, feed their children. It's a community market. 400 people dependent on retail, 14 million people dependent on little hawking, you know, a tiny moveable cart, which goes door-to-door. 90% of our vegetables come to our doorstep. We don't have to go anywhere.

Wal-Mart's entry into India, 500 stores, cannot go hand-in-hand with the giant retail economy of India, which is giant not by being one big store, but by having millions of small sellers. And that is what has created the vibrance of India's markets, the democracy in India's markets.

AMY GOODMAN: We're going to have to leave it there. I want to thank you very much, Vandana Shiva, for joining us. Her new book is Earth Democracy: Justice, Sustainability, and Peace.

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/12/13/1451229