‘Unbridled economic globalization will unleash violence’

MUMBAI: As long as one out of four Indians go to bed hungry every night, human rights for all will remain a dream in India, an international human rights activist said.

 

"When 50, 000 people die every single day across the world due to poverty, the challenge is to use human rights as a means to expose injustice, discrimination and double standards," John Samuel, International Director of Action Aid, Bangkok, said.

 

"About 250 million Dalits, Adivasis, indigenous are at the receiving end of the growth driven economic globalization, perpetuating inequality, and poverty and consequent conflicts," asserted Samuel, who has been at the forefront of advocacy for human rights and social justice in India and internationally for more than two decades. 

 

"When only a minute section of society benefits from neo-liberal globalization and a large majority is pushed into further deprivation, perpetuating inequality and when such inequality is connected to identities of the excluded, it becomes a breeding ground for conflict, violence and armed insurgencies," he said.

 

Hence, the key challenge for policymakers, Samuel said, is whether the country should invest more for education, primary healthcare and livelihood protection of the majority or to increase the police force and army to contain unrest.

 

"These are hard choices the political leadership has to make today to nurture a peaceful and prosperous India," he said.

 

Speaking on the sidelines of the February 6-8 national conference, Human rights based approach to development, organised by Caritas India, a social wing of the Catholic Bishops Conference of India, he said that while three per cent of India was "shining' in metropolitan cities, a whopping 80 per cent of one billion plus people in rural deprivation and urban slums were 'whining".

 

Samuel, Visiting Fellow at the Institute of Development Studies at the Sussex University, said unless the country addressed this paradox of tremendous growth with unprecedented inequality, the promises of the Indian Constitution and Human Rights cannot be realized. "These are pressing challenges for real human rights, in the face of unbridled economic globalization, based on exploitative extraction of natural resources and livelihoods, driven by powerful corporate interests."

 

Samuel said today, more than ever, there is a greater challenge for human rights activists to work towards economic, social and ecological justice, and urged them to evolve a new mantra of human rights practice based on the historical struggle for inalienable dignity, socio-economic justice, freedom and equity.

 

"Hunan rights should be a means for a new transformative politics and ethics, where the poor and excluded can claim human rights and economic capabilities," he said.

 

It was a myth, Samuel observed that economic globalization is an inevitable roller-coaster ride to prosperity. Another world is possible, a world truly committed to human rights and social justice, a world without poverty and discrimination.

 

Pointing out the need to work as citizens to claim human rights and demand accountability and transparency from the state, Samuel said, "Citizens are the owners of the state and its shapers and it is not the other way round."

 

He said to ensure equitable social change and distributive justice from the state, citizens should define the boundaries of the state and the state should define the boundaries of the market. But unfortunately in the era of rapid economic globalization markets and MNCs are defining the boundaries of the state and the state begins to control and restrict the freedom of the citizens.

 

"Hence, human rights approach to development should be an effort to reclaim the state to the citizens and one of the biggest challenges is the lack of accountability, democracy, transparency within the political parties," he said. The paradox, he said, in Indian democracy, is promoted by undemocratic and non-transparent political practices. Hence, there is a crisis of democracy, governance and leadership in the country.

 

"Electoral politics is captured by the kith and kin of career politicians at the cost of ethical leadership. Hence, human rights cannot be seen only as a set of treaties, conventions and principles. Human rights should be a means to resist discriminative practices in all spheres and as a means to bring in ethical principles back to out politics and to ensure just, accountable and democratic governance."

 

Samuel said when the world is torn between violent and unilateral militaristic regimes and increasing reactionary religious fundamentalism, there is an increasing challenge for the realization of human rights across the world.

 

"Human rights are violated everyday in Iraq and elsewhere by the countries who preach the human rights discourse and at the same time, it is violated by the terror and violence unleashed by religious fundamentalists of all hues and colors," Samuel said. In many countries, the state has become the biggest violator of human rights, he added.

 

Hence, he said, there was a need to make the state accountable, there is a need to bring ordinary people to fight for human rights violations against Dalits, Adivasis, indigenous peoples, women, ordinary people, civil societies and excluded communities. There is a need to work towards the human rights to development and the fulfillment of economic and social rights.

 

He said a collective approach was needed for a pluralistic struggle for human rights not based on Western tradition but to be inspired by the struggle waged by great Indian social reformers like Kabir, Birsa Munda, Jyotibha Phule, Pandita Ramabai, Narayan Guru et al and the need to locate then within the historical struggle for human rights in the country.