Books
TOWARDS A FOOD SECURE INDIA: Issues and Policies edited by A. Mahendra Dev, K.P. Kannan and Nira Ramchandran. Institute for Human Development, New Delhi and Centre for Economic and Social Studies, Hyderabad, 2002.
FIVE decades after the inception of the Indian Republic, there is hardly any issue on which public policy and opinion has been riven by as many contradictions and been as perplexing as the issue of food security. Witness the confusion in the sphere of public policy. Should foodgrain production be encouraged or discouraged? Should support prices and public procurement be used to enhance food production, price stability and affordability? What is the role of food subsidy and how should it be targeted towards the needy? If one witnesses the gyrations of policy over the last decade and a half on these issues, it becomes quite clear that it is being driven by short term imperatives rather than by any long term objective or vision.
Food security relates to the availability and accessibility of adequate food of acceptable quality to all at the societal level, but even more below that level to all groups, households and individuals. True, the overall situation of food availability has registered improvement since 1951, as also with regard to the nutrition status of the population. But there is little room for complacency. While, on the one hand, the BJP’s India Shining campaign has focused on India’s achievements on the food front, Jean Dreze, in this volume, has called the existence of large food subsidies and the huge food stocks coexisting with large scale hunger and starvation deaths the biggest scam at this time in India!
Despite a ‘comfortable’ production situation and huge buffer stocks, there have been reports of sale of children for Rs 10 in Orissa and malnutrition and hunger related deaths from many parts of the country (Orissa, Rajasthan, Jharkhand, MP, Chhatisgarh). Bela Bhatia and Jean Dreze, in a report, have portrayed a picture of chronic hunger and malnutrition in Kusumatand village in Palamau district of Jharkhand, and a complete failure of the government machinery to deliver food, basic health and education through its schemes. The intrepid journalist, P. Sainath, has reported on the functioning of several hundred gruel centres in Mahboobnagar and Anantpur in Andhra Pradesh in 2003 in which people come for a gruel of broken rice and salt or jaggery. The Right to Food Campaign has recorded testimonies of people on starvation deaths and hunger through public hearings in Delhi, Orissa, Jharkhand, Rajasthan, Chhatisgarh and elsewhere.
By 2001, the Government of India had accumulated huge unwanted buffer stocks of nearly 70 million tonnes. This entailed a huge fiscal cost. As Jayati Ghosh has shown (Frontline, 11-24 October 2003), holding the food stocks costs about Rs 2 per kg and the total carrying cost was estimated at Rs 14,000 crore in 2002-03. However, by the beginning of September 2003, total food stocks had dipped to 22 million tonnes. Rice stocks fell to around 5 million tonnes, lower than even the buffer stock norm of 8 million tonnes for rice. In the 16 months from April 2002 to the end of July 2003, the total quantum of offtake of foodgrain has been the largest ever since food procurement and distribution was first put in place, at a total of 67 million tonnes. Where did this offtake go? Around 26 million tonnes (14 million tonnes of rice and 12 million tonnes of wheat) can be accounted for by offtake from the public distribution system (PDS). But a significant portion of these stocks was actually exported, at hugely subsidised rates, or sold in the open market. The export price was as low as the price paid by Below Poverty Line (BPL) households. So while millions remained hungry, the central government sold around 17 million tonnes of food at abysmally low rates out of the country and another six million tonnes to private traders, also at relatively low prices, while about three million tonnes of grain simply rotted. These stocks, or even the revenues earned from exports or sales, could have been used to augment rural livelihoods and purchasing power but was not.
Issues such as these, along with many other facets of the food security situation in India, merits close analysis and this is what the book under review attempts to do through 21 articles covering all dimensions (macro, regional, micro and policy) of the problem.
The total foodgrain production has increased from 50m tonnes in 1951 to 209m tonnes in 1999-00. Both the level of procurement of foodgrains and the distribution of grains under the PDS have been rising. Serious famines are a thing of the past. Problems relating to acute hunger and severe malnutrition are less acute than in the past. But even so, a large number of poor people suffer from chronic or seasonal hunger and distress migration touches endemic proportions in drought areas in the rainfed and predominantly tribal regions of Andhra, Chhatisgarh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Orissa and so on. Food insufficiency is manifested in low intake of cereals, proteins, nutrients and calories among a sizeable section of the population. Combined with poor sanitation, drinking water, public and basic health facilities, the result is persistently high levels of malnutrition, especially among women and children, and high rates of infant mortality. In 1998-00, more than half the children under five years suffered from underweight while 88% of pregnant women had anaemia.
The editors of the volume make a distinction between ‘growth led’ and ‘support led’ policies for food security. The latter require a number of deliberate interventions to increase food security for the needy. A further distinction is between ‘long term’ and ‘short term’ measures. The large public distribution system which, to begin with, was a product of war time shortages and rationing, was adapted to meet the requirements of food shortages in urban and later, rural India. In the 1960s, instruments of food policy were adopted which sought to balance the interests of agricultural producers, who needed to be encouraged to grow more, and consumers, to whom food (grain) had to be made available at affordable prices. This gave rise to institutions such as the Agricultural Prices Commission (later the CACP), the Food Corporation of India and led to a further growth of the Public Distribution System (PDS). Maintaining a buffer stock of 17 to 25m tonnes was part of the policy of stabilizing prices and maintaining the PDS.
It is a moot point whether the interests of poor consumers and producers were effectively served by the measures taken. Certainly the PDS did not serve the food needs of most of the rural poor and remained restricted to the subsidized marketing of kerosene and sugar. But the steady increase in the production of foodgrains kept prices in check and also meant that the poor had greater access to foodgrains, either through the market or through other channels. These measures which were designed to increase macro and household food security were further supplemented by schemes such as the Integrated Child Development Scheme, or Food for Work (in the 1990s there has been an increase in the targeted schemes).
There is a perception that the food problem has been taken care of, by and large, by the growth of foodgrain production that has been occurring over the last few decades. The question of overall adequacy has to be carefully examined using demand and supply projections. Three of the articles in the book (by Praduman Kumar and Surabhi Mittal, P.C. Bansil and C.H. Hanumantha Rao) analyse this issue with estimates up to 2020.
Projections of the demand for foodgrains are based on projections of existing direct and indirect demand. The National Sample Survey estimates show that cereal and foodgrain consumption is declining among the top seven deciles and Hanumantha Rao in his article estimates that, with improvement in infrastructure and increased market integration, such a change could also occur for the poorest 30% of the population. In other words, the diversification to non-food expenditure occurring at very low levels of food intake and expenditure is considered to be a beneficial change by these authors. Based on these existing demand patterns, the future demand for foodgrains has been estimated. Kumar and Mittal argue that meeting this demand would require significant total factor productivity growth. Bansil’s estimates of foodgrain demand are lower and he argues that overestimating foodgrain requirement could lead to wrong policy conclusions. However, in all eventualities, overall adequacy of foodgrains depend on maintaining increase in output through productivity increase.
Greater debate and analysis is needed to examine the supposed ‘diversification’ to non-food expenditure of very poor households. M.H. Suryanarayana’s article discounts the thesis that the poor have been diversifying their consumption basket away from food items. He shows that at the all India level, the poorest 40% have only diversified to the extent required by the principle of complementarity among food items. Basing himself on the diverse experience of different states, especially Kerala, he argues that the state needs to follow policies to increase the nutritional status of the population as a whole by introducing programmes which improve physical and economic access of foodgrains and guide consumer choice.
There is now a sea change in the policy framework of agricultural production and trade reflecting the emergence of the World Trade Organisation and the paradigmatic shift towards liberalization of markets. The WTO regime’s implications for food security and the income of small farmers are examined by Mahendra Dev. At a general level, India is under no obligation to reduce subsidies or to change her policies relating to minimum support price, buffer stock and the PDS. Timely measures are required to restrict imports which could negatively affect the livelihood of small agricultural producers.
There are, of course, other reasons for policy change, arising out of the paradigmatic shift mentioned earlier. This shift is attempting to redefine both the concept of food security and ways of attaining it. V.S. Vyas’s article recognizes the considerable challenges that the new paradigm poses for food security. He argues that while there is a case for reducing subsidies and increasing minimum support prices (implying a smaller role of the state), there is simultaneous need to increase direct public intervention to enhance food security of vulnerable sections, enhancement of public investment, credit, marketing and technological support to small farm agriculture. Yoginder Alagh, on the other hand, argues for a more focused set of interventions based on an improved information system to track food insecurity.
Across and within regions, the problem of food security varies very significantly. Though many of the states are food surplus, some are food deficit. There are pockets of food deficit even in the food surplus states and almost all states have vulnerable groups which are food insecure. Even with increasing integration of markets, local food availability continues to matter since food production per capita continues to be positively and significantly related to per capita calorie intake. Given a certain pattern of agricultural production, food security is linked to livelihoods and economic access to food, which in turn depend upon the effectiveness of various interventions to increase employment, incomes, food and nutrition access.
The regional variations in the food security situation are captured in six articles which focus on the North East (Amaresh Dubey and O. Kahrpuri), Bihar (Jos Mooij), Uttar Pradesh (Nisha Srivastava), Andhra Pradesh (S. Indrakant and S. Harikishan), Rajasthan (Vidya Sagar) and Kerala (K.P. Kannan).
The North-eastern situation, described by Dubey and Kahrpuri, is quite specific, since the (flawed) NSS estimates show an increase in poverty between 1993-94 and 1999-00, and in the author’s assessment, this poverty constrains access to food. While this is undoubtedly also true for other states, the case of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar shows that the fairly pervasive food insecurity among the vulnerable groups such as women, children, and the Scheduled Castes and Tribes is also a result of the failure of government interventions, particularly the PDS and the ICDS. Jos Mooij analyses the role of various stake holders in the PDS in Bihar to show how the interest of the poor and the food insecure receive a short shrift in the state.
At a trend level, Vidya Sagar, in his article shows that foodgrain production in Rajasthan has kept up with the high growth of population but not without adding considerably to environmental stress. Agriculture in Rajasthan, being basically rainfed, is subject to sharp fluctuations in output and trend increases are easily threatened by climatic reversals as in the case of the successive droughts between 1998-2001. At the individual and household levels, droughts entail large costs and high transitory food insecurity, necessitating different coping strategies. But the costs can be mitigated through public policy. In Rajasthan, drought relief works have been historically important and the PDS and other government programmes can add to food and nutrition security. Although the fair price shop network is very important in the state, only a small percentage of rural households avail of the PDS. On the other hand, the outreach of rural works and other anti-poverty programmes has been unduly restricted in the state by pegging the percentage of BPL households at a very low level, without taking into account the high transient poverty.
The case of Andhra Pradesh is somewhat similar to that of Uttar Pradesh. AP too is a food surplus state with high levels of malnutrition and food insecurity in certain regions and groups. Unlike UP, the provision of subsidized foodgrain (rice) to the poor has been a very significant element of state policy, with a heavy cost to the state exchequer. The scheme has probably accounted for the stability in rice consumption among the poor in the state as well as lower rural poverty levels, but the authors note that its coverage of the non-poor and low quantity of grain supplied makes it less effective than what would have been the case had the state chosen to supply a larger amount of grain at somewhat higher prices.
Kerala constitutes a special case study: the state is a food deficit one with a lower average consumption of foodgrains compared to the national average. Yet it has fared much better in terms of the outcome indicators (malnutrition, infant mortality and so on). Some of the principal reasons for this, according to Kannan, is the universal outreach of the PDS and the effectiveness of the other food and nutrition support schemes. Kannan argues that converting the scheme to a targeted one threatens to reduce its effectiveness while at the same time raising fiscal costs.
Below the state level, micro studies are useful in illuminating dimensions of food insecurity and approaches towards greater food security. These are brought together in four essays in the book analyzing experiences in the drought prone areas of Karnataka (V.M. Rao and R.S. Deshpande), tribal West Bengal (Amitava Mukherjee), mountain villages in Uttaranchal (Nira Ramchandran) and tribal Orissa (K. Sarap and M. Mahamallik).
Mukherjee’s article is based on an analysis of food calendars prepared in a tribal village in West Bengal over gaps of a few years. The tribal households face acute food shortages in lean periods and fall back on different coping mechanisms to survive. This includes collection of roots, leaves and wild fruits from the CPRs and water bodies. The production system in the hill villages of Uttaranchal is also able to cope with three to four months of foodgrain requirements. In the remaining months, the PDS (which functions relatively efficiently in these villages) is able to meet part of the food requirements but hunger and food shortages are endemic and women and children bear the burden of shortages both through over work and inadequate intake. Male migration is another important coping mechanism in the region.
The analysis of Kalahandi villages shows that the public distribution system has failed to provide poor households with access to grain due to inefficiency of the delivery system and constraints on the demand side (low income of the poor). The main focus, the authors argue, has to be on revitalizing the rural development programmes which can raise employment and incomes of the poor tribal households and build rural infrastructure.
The options to a targeted PDS are discussed in two articles (by Shikha Jha and P.V. Srinivasan, and Madhura Swaminathan). Jha and Srinivasan analyse the costs of targeting and the comparative costs of public storage and distribution with those of private agents. Among their suggestions is geographical targeting with universal coverage, improving administrative efficiency to reduce costs and restricting the role of the FCI to price stabilization and maintenance of buffer stocks. Swaminathan’s article on the other hand rejects the targeted distribution of foodgrains as being too costly and administratively difficult to implement and supports reverting back to a universal PDS.
Finally, Jean Dreze presents three articles on food security and the right to food. He argues that the huge food subsidies mainly helped the large agricultural producers and not the poor and, combined with political and administrative inertia, led to the coexistence of large food stocks with widespread hunger. In an essay based on field trips to Kalahandi in Orissa and Sarguja in Chhatisgarh, Dreze emphasizes the urgent need for social security arrangements of a permanent nature which could improve the entitlements of poor tribals. He also argues (like Jha and Srinivasan) that in such areas, a universal PDS was likely to be more effective. His last essay deals with the right to food and public accountability. These issues are now being dealt with by the national Right to Food campaign and the Supreme Court has given several interim directions for the implementation of programmes (such as the SGRY, the ICDS and the mid-day meal programme) which provide livelihood and food security.
As one would expect in a book with a number of contributors, the authors do not always concur in their conclusions and the reader has to find a way through the maze of good scholarship. But there are several conclusions on which one can infer a wide degree of consensus among the authors. The food situation may have improved at the aggregate level, but the trends in the ’90s and beyond are less comforting. Moreover, large sections of the population continue to be vulnerable and food insecure. Second, the political economy of food policy and social policy in the recent years shows the domination of well entrenched groups, although policies have often been made in the name of the poor. The policies of high support prices and targeted interventions have entailed huge costs for the poor and the food insecure and should give way to more universal policies based on norms of public accountability and the recognition of the right to food and the right to life.
Ravi S. Srivastava
LIBERALISATION AND LABOUR: Labour Flexibility in Indian Manufacturing by L.K. Deshpande, A.N. Sharma, A.K. Karan and S. Sarkar. Institute of Human Development, New Delhi, 2004.
THE current study draws on the philosophical, social and economic context of labour flexibility as articulated by Standing (1999). The failure of state socialism in East Europe and welfare state capitalism in Western Europe due to excessive security in one and lack of income security in an open economy context in the second was reason enough to argue for labour flexibility in the economy. The neoclassical theory blames policy-induced distortions in the product and factor markets for the failure of both systems. Governments and unions raise wages and real costs to the employer, reducing the level of employment. Most of these models favour employment and wage flexibility.
The book provides an interesting review of the Indian literature and argues that most earlier studies looked at the problem of flexibility using aggregate industry data. The authors argue that labour flexibility is best studied at the level of the enterprise and there are few such studies. Hence this book, studying labour market flexibility in Indian manufacturing through a large enterprise survey is a major contribution to the literature.
The main objectives of the study were to understand the following: To what extent did employers follow flexible labour practices? To verify the hypothesis that the extent to which the above is possible depends on the overall state of the labour market. The low level of employment is due to the labour legislation and unions, though labour markets were not fully de-regulated. What impact did the changes since economic reforms of 1991, have on employment and wages? To what extent did unions and collective bargaining deter employment? What impact does the ideological and administrative differences by states have on flexible labour practices? An overall objective was to elicit labour market policies for the future and examine whether the national statistical systems could incorporate similar frameworks in their regular agenda.
The study enquires into the types of labour employed by enterprises and highlights the variety of flexible labour practices followed in the sample. The second objective was to examine the extent to which this was possible due to the external labour market. Here the authors rely mainly on a review of literature and the National Sample Survey Organisation data on employment. Overall, they argue that the macro level evidence remains mixed, with the growth of employment in non-agriculture mainly concentrated in the informal sector, both slow and of poor quality. The macro analysis is, however, not sufficiently detailed to come up with a clear response to the question of macro-micro linkages or the impact of the macro employment scene on micro employment practices.
The sample enterprises showed positive growth in employment during the period of economic reforms, 1991 to 1998, achieved mainly through increasing the share of non-permanent employment and manual employment through a rise in the share of women workers. The validity and importance of this result for the macro situation is questionable, partly because of the sampling frame and design. The study relied on the sampling frame of the Annual Survey of Industries of 1994-95. First, these are factory sector or relatively large enterprises, theoretically excluding firms with less than ten employees. Second, when the survey was done in 1999 many of the enterprises had either closed down or could not be located and others had dropped to a size below ten workers. The authors point to this limitation in their study, since the omission of some of these enterprises and the fact that surviving enterprises are self selected leads to a selection bias and distortion of the results.
The lack of response of employers regarding wages implied that it was not possible to assess the impact of reforms on the increase in wages for different types of labour. The basic wage was mainly determined by the minimum wage legislations rather than collective bargaining.
Large firms were more likely to be unionized, though both unionized and non-unionized firms increased their capital-intensity. Union absence was more conducive to an increase in employment than the presence of a union. The positive impact of unionization was somewhat higher wages paid to skilled and unskilled workers, other factors being held constant.
State level difference in employment practices reveal that ideologically similar states of Kerala and West Bengal had different rates of growth of employment, with employment in Kerala growing faster. However, this result could be influenced by the overall economic environment rather than ideology and may also be affected by the sampling procedure. These states had a smaller presence of contract labour, but so did three other states – Uttar Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra. Hence, state level differences in ideology and administrative efficiency did not show any systematic differences in flexible labour practices.
The final objectives about labour market policies and the nature of statistical data to be incorporated into the statistical systems are not dealt with in any great detail in the book. This is somewhat unfortunate since the data and analysis in the book are detailed enough to have allowed for such a discussion.
Various chapters of the book refer to dualism in the labour market and the organised and unorganised sectors. The pessimistic view of liberalization was that it would increase segmentation of the labour market and expand the low-income informal sectors in the economy with increasing use of casual and contract labour, sub-contracting and home-working. It is also noted that only seven per cent of the total employment was in the organised sector, though this percentage would be a little higher for the manufacturing sector. Given this recognition, the study concentrates on a survey of the organised sector. The flexibility of labour practices in these firms is analysed in terms of the nature of informal workers they employ, such as non-permanent, casual and contract. However, the very large segment of the smaller manufacturing units and the sub-contracting units operating in the unorganised segment is not studied. Labour flexibility in Indian manufacturing is most starkly represented in this latter segment. This forms a major limitation of the study and many of the questions raised cannot be fully answered without a study of this segment of the manufacturing sector.
This is not to detract from the usefulness of the book nor the very detailed method employed in the study and analysis. The book is an excellent addition to the literature on labour market flexibility in India. It is an important and compulsory read for students of economics and labour welfare, both for course work and research.
Jeemol Unni
WATER: Perspectives, Issues, Concerns by Ramaswamy R. Iyer. Sage Publications, New Delhi, 2003.
IN the recent past, there has been a steady stream of monographs and specialist articles on water issues in India. However, thus far, there remains a much felt lacuna in broad macro-canvas views on hydraulic management and control in the subcontinent. Fortunately, Ramaswamy Iyer’s recent book can be considered timely and our best bet in providing an overview of the multifaceted dimensions of water related dilemmas in India. The book is made up of a collection of articles – some cursory, some with reasonable depth and many others framed just cautiously – that constitute a helpful sweep that is simultaneously introductory and engaging for those interested in water. Iyer, in particular, is most insightful in cogently introducing the oftentimes intractable debates on state water legislations, inter-state wrangles and on the drafting of national water policies, bringing both a useful balance on the subject alongside the facts of the case.
The contrast, for example, between the National Water Policy (1987) and the NWP 2002 is particularly stark. In the former, on paper at least (the drafting of which Iyer, incidentally, was an important player), the Government of India was inclined towards moving from an ‘excessive preoccupation’ with discrete water projects to recognizing the need for addressing water as a resource. By the NWP 2002, the Vajpayee government has dramatically shifted towards adopting an incoherent patchwork quilt attitude in place of the earlier focus on building some sort of comprehensive approaches to water. Similarly, Iyer provides reasoned opinions on the long and troubled issue on the ‘Cauvery dispute’. What is particularly interesting and refreshing, alongside the litany of claims and charges between Karnataka and Tamil Nadu, is Iyer’s care in pointing out the fact that rising demands on the Cauvery’s flows is the central issue.
The sections on large dams in India are not particularly original, but nevertheless provide an excellent summary of the many sides to the debate. More helpful, however, are his views on the Supreme Court judgement on the Narmada (Sardar Sarovar case) in 2002. Iyer is fairly scathing on the highest court of the land for giving both short shrift to the Narmada Bachao Andolan and to the idea of ecological sustainability. The court, in effect, appeared to deliver a rather short-sighted opinion that will perhaps damage the interests of people in the valley and the environment as well. Other articles in the book on issues such as ground water legislation, water laws, and so on are equally insightful and provide very helpful introductions. I will definitely endorse Iyer’s book as a required reference for those dealing with water related issues.
Rohan D’Souza
WORLD SOCIAL FORUM: Challenging Empires edited by Jai Sen, Anita Anand, Arturo Escobar and Peter Waterman. The Viveka Foundation, New Delhi, 2004.
GIVEN its ideological moorings, The Economist can perhaps be forgiven for prematurely hailing the paling of the anti-globalization movement. In an article in its recent issue, the economic weekly claims that the events of 9/11 and after, especially the ongoing war on Iraq, have overwhelmed the movement. It is a little silly, the article avers, to cry foul over the ills of neo-liberal globalization when the scourge of international terrorism, WMD and undemocratic rogue states looms large in the world.
Understandably, The Economist has underplayed the amoeba-like, all-inclusive qualities of the anti-globalization movement – the ‘movement of movements’ that can incorporate any cause within its fold in its demand for global justice. Last year, the opponents of neoliberal globalization quickly reoriented their focus to oppose the war on Iraq, cleverly linking militarization to neoliberal globalization.
One can’t help but be bewildered by the diversity of causes embraced by the anti-globalization movement, especially when one peruses the mind-boggling variety of groups attached to the movement’s piece de resistance, the World Social Forum (WSF). Women’s groups, peasants and farmers, dalits, refugees, anarchists, students, academics, trade unions, environmentalists, guardians of local traditions and cultures and other groups who have presumably been affected by neoliberal globalization, converge in an unwieldy transnational coalition called the WSF.
Attempting a study of the WSF, therefore, is an enormous task. Is the WSF an initiative, a platform, an organization, a movement or a space? Or is it all of these, all at once? The easiest approach, thus, is the ‘reader’ – a collection of essays, speeches and articles written by a cross-section of people involved with the issue at hand. Readers are great general introductions, but they are frustrating because they are inconclusive. Challenging Empires is a reader on the WSF, and by extension, on the anti-globalization movement. While the editors – academics and researchers with distinguished careers in globalization and civil society-related fields – implicitly believe that the ‘reader’ format is justified given the diversity of the WSF (which they identify as its strength), this reviewer believes that too much diversity and too many causes can only lead to diffusion and dissipation of energy for the anti-globalization movement. However, as with everything in the arena of the WSF, this too is subject to endless debate.
Challenging Empires offers little that is new or revealing in terms of content, but what makes this effort important is that this is the first comprehensive book on the WSF to come out of India. The idea to do such a book out of India is a good one, given that India is quite the target of neoliberal globalization’s bouquets and brickbats, yet there is very little sustained academic critique or contribution on globalization.
One wishes the selection of readings was more judicious and the book a little slimmer, because there are overlaps in many of the articles. It is a bit surprising, though, to note that many of the big names associated with the anti-globalization movement – Naomi Klein, Mary Kaldor, Ann Pettifor, Joseph Stiglitz, Susan George, Nancy Birdsall, among others – are missing from the list of contributors.
Also, rather than have the editors rush to release the book in time for WSF India (January 2004), it might have been more valuable to include experiences and analyses of the Indian event rather than speculation, and in what ways WSF India takes the global movement forward. This becomes especially important because the success of the India event is crucial for the WSF to shake off its tag as an avenue for rich white northerners, and become a truly global movement, inclusive of both North and South.
The book is divided into five thick sections, each devoted to essays and articles relating to one aspect of the WSF. The first section sets out the ideological underpinnings of the WSF, or more appropriately, the anti-globalization movement. The Marxist and dependency theories that form the basis of much of the movement’s ideological thrust are duly touched upon in an interview with noted Marxist economist Samir Amin. Essays on feminism, anarchism and the labour movement, which have influenced the movement follow. But shockingly, there is little on the global movement for environmental protection and ecological sustainability, which perhaps was the first movement to directly link corporate-driven neoliberal policies to a diminishing quality of life.
The second section carries excerpts from diaries of attendees of WSF meetings in Porto Alegre, Brazil. In Section 3 – clearly the most extensive – academics and activists engage critically with the WSF. It also includes a few reflective pieces on the nature of problems inherent in the WSF, as evidenced at Porto Alegre, 2003. Section 4 contains articles on the growth of the anti-globalization movement in India and the reach of the WSF. The final section is freewheeling, with very different perspectives on what lies ahead for the WSF, and more generally for transnational social networks and global civil society.
But ultimately, the WSF is presented as a site for both ‘convergence and contradiction’, as Nikhil Anand writes in his paper on the identity and purpose of the WSF. It is celebrated for its lack of coherence, its diversity and ability to resist definition. One is immediately tempted to ask what lies at the end of this feel-good messiness, this grand idea of the WSF as an open space for debates and disagreements. What is the long-term purpose of the WSF? As some of the essays hint, the ever-widening arena of the WSF has meant more logistical and organizational problems, which may eventually defeat the very idea of the ‘open space’. For instance, there has been a growing attempt by the WSF to exclude anarchist groups and conservative and protectionist anti-globalization activists because they vie with the generally internationalist, egalitarian and peaceful thrust of the WSF.
The WSF is also hailed as a new, people-centred and counter-hegemonic politics that breathes life into the forum’s slogan that ‘another world is possible’. Yet – and my point of contention with the WSF remains this – nowhere in the book can one spot the vision of this other world, except in very general terms. Much of the existing literature on this ‘other world’ suffers from a similar fate. Concepts such as Leslie Sklair’s socialist globalization (2002), Richard Falk’s ‘cosmopolitan democracy’ (1999) or Brecher et al’s ‘globalization from below’ (2000) are introduced in some detail. Yet there is no clear strategy and no roadmap on how to breathe this other world into life. Arundhati Roy says another world ‘is on her way’ and she can ‘hear her breathing’ in her essay on empire, but how will she be born? Will the maddening rasp of public opinion, accumulated at events such as WSF, suffice to create and sustain globalization from below?
Challenging Empires does not set out to answer such questions, but perhaps it is time that the movement stepped down from the euphoria of intercontinental bonhomie and started looking for actionable solutions.
Anupreeta Das
THE SCIENTIFIC TEMPER: An Anthology of Stories on Matters of Science by Anthony R. Michaelis. Universitätsverlag C. Winter, Heidelberg, 2001.
Anthony Michaelis is well-known in the world of science for his pioneering and untiring efforts to foster interdisciplinary science. The President of the Heidelberg Academy, Prof Gisbert Freiherr zu Putlitz releasing this remarkable book on 16 October 2001, mentioned that, ‘without doubt, Anthony Michaelis’s greatest merit arises from his founding and subsequent editorship for 20 years of the journal, Interdisciplinary Science Reviews.’ Previously, Dr Michaelis had edited the monthly journal Discovery and had also served for 10 years as the science correspondent of the London Daily Telegraph. Apart from providing through ISR, an effective medium of communication between the natural and social sciences and between technology and the arts, Michaelis worked hard after World War II to rehabilitate German science and re-establish the position of Germany as a ‘Land of Science’.
Having had the privilege of serving on the Editorial Board of ISR for over 15 years and having developed a personal friendship with this innovative and far-sighted thinker, I can say without hesitation that he is one of the greatest scientific humanists of our time. He fostered through ISR both humanistic science and scientific humanism. His interest was not only in inter-disciplinary science, but also in inter-cultural science. He is not only a great science editor and writer, but also one endowed with a passion for collecting antique scientific instruments like telescopes, microscopes, sextants and antique weights. He has collected in a systematic manner scientific medals and bank notes which feature portraits and achievements of great scientists and engineers. For the benefit of posterity, this invaluable collection is preserved in the Deutsche Museum, Munich (medals) and the Deutsche Technik Museum, Berlin (scientific bank-notes). Michaelis has often stressed that these collections represent the fusion of arts and science and thereby symbolise the power of interdisciplinary science.
The creativity of Michaelis expresses itself in the structure adopted for this book. The structure involves a new event on each page; there are in all 440 events called ‘Titles’ providing a glimpse of the rich and varied life Dr Michaelis has led and remarkable in their relevance to contemporary challenges. When I was reading the titles, I said to myself that it would be wonderful if someone were to write using the ‘title’ format a brief account of all significant anniversaries commemorated during 2003, like the centenaries of the invention or development of aeroplanes, Harley Davidson, Buick and Ford, and the fiftieth anniversaries of the discovery of DNA structure by Watson, Crick, Franklin and Wilkins and the conquest of Mount Everest by Hillary and Tenzing. All these are interdisciplinary efforts and represent the creative outcome of the scientific temper and Michaelis has shown how to present them in a gripping manner.
Title 1 of the book starts with the following quotation from Rudyard Kipling: ‘I kept six honest serving men (they taught me all I know). Their names are What and Why and When and How and Where and Who.’ Michaelis starts with narrating his adventures with science and scientists during most of the 20th century with the help of the above ‘six honest serving men’. The first 24 titles deal with Michaelis’s early life and education – the conditions of Jews in Hitler’s Germany, his life in England up to his internment on 10 May 1940 as an ‘enemy alien’ and his marriage to Ann in 1946 and subsequent departure to Australia and New Zealand.
Michaelis’s first job (Title 26) was in the area of developing suitable aviation fuels through catalytic cracking. Three years of work at a pilot plant in Manchester did not yield positive results and he moved back to London and got a temporary job in a paint factory. There again his stay was short lived but his description of the social conditions during the war period is both moving and awesome. His next job was as Director of Research of a new chemical laboratory set up by Mr Edgware, Managing Director, Milton Antiseptic. Within three years he had to leave this job since the company was incurring losses.
From 1947 onwards, Michaelis’s career took him to pursuits in the area of scientific documentation, including the preparation of a subject index of scientists. He also contributed to the Scientific Film Association and wrote a book on ‘Research Films’ which was published by the Academic Press of New York.
The descriptions of Anthony Michaelis’s wedding with Ann Aikman on 12 November 1946, and of an Australian honeymoon which nearly ended in a plane disaster are fascinating. Finally, both Ann and Anthony found jobs in the University of Sydney, Ann in the Department of Psychology and Anthony in the Department of Aeronautical Engineering. Making research films alone could not provide a living wage and hence he took to writing books. Michaelis describes the criteria which leads to success in book writing – ‘an all transcending desire to write the great work, to sacrifice friends and even family, in order to preserve from interference the all too precious time of writing.’ A beautiful reproduction is given of the first book by Michaelis titled, ‘Research Films in Biology, Anthropology, Psychology and Medicine’, published in 1956.
In July 1954, Michaelis decided to return to London. He found great pleasure in being in London again. He developed a close friendship with Sir David Martin, Secretary of the Royal Society of London. Since my election to the Royal Society in 1973, I also had the privilege of getting to know David Martin and I share the great admiration which Michaelis developed for him over a period of 40 years. In whatever job or assignment Michaelis took, we can see the imprint of his genius and commitment to excellence. Thus, he made the programmes of the International Geophysical Year (1956-1959) come alive in the pages of Discovery.
I wish to deal with two sections of this remarkable book in greater detail. These are ‘Science in India’ and ‘Antiscience’. Before doing so, I should refer to the concluding title (Title 440) on the theme ‘Art – I create alone; for science – we work together’. Memorable contributions in art, literature and music are made by individuals. In contrast, working together in interdisciplinary teams has led to some of the greatest achievements in science. For example, the eradication of smallpox in 1977 was the result of the worldwide collaboration between science and medicine set in motion by the World Health Organisation.
In my own work in agricultural research, I have observed that seemingly impossible tasks can be achieved if we generate the power of partnership and team work. For example, in wheat for far too long I concentrated on selecting the ‘winner’ by segregating populations on the basis of the excellence of the characteristics of individual plants. This resulted in an yield gain of 10 to 20 per cent. However, when I shifted to selecting plants on the basis of population performance, the yield gain went up by 200 to 300 per cent. Hence, I applaud Michaelis for choosing ‘working together’ as the topic for the last title of the book, since this quality forms the core of scientific temper.
Let me now revert to the portion dealing with science in India (Titles 116-127) and to anti-science (Titles 202-204). The anti-science section deals with the mood which prevailed at the 136th meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) held at Boston in 1969. Some of the points made at this meeting have even greater relevance today. For example, the students objected most fiercely to arms research at their own university, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where a novel rocket was then being designed. Although only a single missile, it had the capacity to carry four nuclear bombs and each one of these could be targeted independently to a different site. The students asked, ‘How can arms makers discuss arms control?’ The same can be said today of the UN Security Council whose five permanent members have the largest number of nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction. Rabelais once said, ‘Science is but the conscience of the soul’. We should not allow this conscience to be extinguished. This is why Bertrand Russell and Albert Einstein who launched the Pugwash movement in their famous manifesto of 1955 appealed: ‘Remember your humanity, and forget the rest. If you can do so, the way lies open to a new Paradise; if you cannot, there lies before you the risk of universal death.’
Another interesting event relating to the 1969 AAAS meeting was the lecture of Margaret Mead on pollution and hunger in the midst of great affluence. Mead said at that meeting, ‘If America wants to play the political part in the world she wanted to assume, we cannot isolate ourselves from the rest of the world and we have to show that there is no longer any hunger and malnutrition in the USA.’ This is as true today when the Bush administration has refused to ratify most global conventions relating to climate, biodiversity, oceans and so on. In particular, the refusal to adopt the guidelines provided in the Kyoto Protocol of the Climate Convention has serious implications for the poor countries and poor in all nations, since they have limited coping capability against adverse changes in precipitation and sea level. The world needs more Margaret Meads who can keep the voices of sanity and humanism alive.
Let me conclude with a reference to Michaelis’s tryst with India. The very title of this book, ‘The Scientific Temper’ is a quote from Jawaharlal Nehru. His admiration for Indian scientists is evident from the following statement related to his visit to the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, Trombay. ‘I could only marvel at the ingenuity of the Indian scientists and engineers who had designed and constructed this high technology example of chemical engineering without any European or American engineering help.’ Michaelis has also described his visits to the Thumba Equatorial Rocket Launching Station and to several other scientific establishments in equally ecstatic terms. Referring to India’s progress in nuclear science and technology, Michaelis remarks, ‘It was all part of the atomic master plan, due to the genius of a physicist, Homi Bhabha, to produce electric power and a bomb, if the need arose.’
Michaelis’s close friends in India not only included nuclear and space scientists, but also great scholars and thinkers like Romila Thapar and the late Sarvapalli Gopal. Tributes to Jawaharlal Nehru’s concept of ‘Science for a free India’ and the all-embracing ‘Scientific Temper’ occur at many places in this book. The following quotation from a lecture by Nehru helps to understand Nehru’s fascination with science and scientists. ‘If modern life depends on science and technology, then we must seize hold of them, understand them and apply them.’
This is what is happening in India today. Fortunately, all subsequent prime ministers of India have continued this faith in science as a major instrument for removing illiteracy and superstition and poverty and disease. The present Prime Minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee added, ‘Jai Vigyan’ (i.e., glory to science) to Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri’s slogan, ‘Jai Jawan, Jai Kisan’ (glory to soldiers and farmers).
All in all, this book will remain for ever a tribute to both scientific temper and inter-disciplinary science. It will be appropriate to conclude with the following poem of Ranier Maria Rilke:
Again and again in history
Some special people wake up
They have no ground in the crowd
They move to broader laws
They carry strange customs with them
and demand room for bold audacious actions
The future speaks ruthlessly through them
They change the world.
Michaelis has certainly helped to change the world of science through his demonstration of the power of inter-disciplinary science.
M.S. Swaminathan F.R.S.
