re: Western Cow vs Third World Farmer

[Guest guest]

The posting by pattrice le-muire jones <pattrice

of the article, Western Cow vs Third World Farmer,THE CLASH

OF CIVILISATIONS, By Devinder Sharma, The Hindu Business Line,

Jan 31 2002, refers.

 

While that article was factual to the extent that it identified correctly

the huge crime committed by Western farming technologies via

food overproduction and dumping to maintain prices, coupled to the

various other food/farming/ " cultural " practices of the " West " ,

may I suggest that these are entirely the West's prerogative, and

by no means have these deprived anyone of their right to practice

these methods themselves? If my neighbour sits on his bare patch

of soil all day and does nothing while I work myself to a standstill

growing corn on mine, he hardly has the right to accuse me of

" depriving " him of something he can do for himself.

 

What is remarkable about articles like the one published on this

list, is the apparent lack of lateral thinking and analysis. For example,

no mention is made of the fact that in India, 300 000 000 Dalits,

or " untouchables " of India have lived in a never-ending cycle of bondage

and despair with no hope of escape for thousands of years.

For the Dalits of India, pain and suffering are all too familiar.

 

They are trapped in a caste system ( aka " apartheid " ) that determines

their fate in life, a fate that prescribes a life with no education, no safe

drinking water,

no paying job, frequent forced labour, no rights to own land or homes,

no access to worship at the local temple, no right to walk on certain

roads and segregated living to keep them far away from more

privileged " upper-caste " people. 67% are illiterate, 70% are denied

the right to worship at their local temples, most are not allowed to drink

the same water as the so-called " upper classes " of Indian society,

57% of their children are undernourished, and 60 million of them are

used as forced labourers.

 

As reported in Indian newspapers on January 25, 1999, 23 low-caste

agricultural workers were murdered by the private army of high-caste landlords.

The dead included five women and seven children, including a 10-month old baby.

Their crime? They had been listening to a local political party that the

landlords

viewed as a threat to their hold on the local Dalit people as a source of cheap

or free labour. Two weeks later, a similar attack occurred and 12 more Dalits

were slaughtered in another village. In these two instances, as is often the

case,

nobody was prosecuted. Although laws have been passed in India forbidding

caste discrimination, little has been done to prosecute offenders

and conditions have not improved.

 

The above is not confined to India, but can be found all over the world, from

the

" class " systems of England and Europe, to those of the USA and Japan where

the original inhabitants, the Ainu, are forced to live in isolation. It is

alleged that

95% of the world's wealth is owned by 4% of the people : the remaining 96% have

to exist on the 5% that is left. Solving the problems of hunger and

over-population

starts in our own backyards; pointing fingers and telling us what we know

already

doesn't offer a solution because handouts to the starving doesn't resolve their

localised problems so that they can live as free people and so determine their

own

destinies.

 

Yours respectfully

 

Roger