This month’s books review the power structures that govern the world’s resources and an experiment in India to awaken political awareness among untouchables.
Editor: Anuradha Vittachi
Illusions of scarcity
The Lean Years: Politics in the Age of Scarcity
by Richard J. Barnet
Abacus (pbk) £2.50
Are we really living in a world which is running out of resources, or do we merely fear that we are? In Richard Barnet’s view it is the key political question of our time. If resources are really running out, we are doomed to a deepening struggle over what is left. If scarcity is an illusion, it’s one most of us are under and its effects on the way power is exercised is almost as menacing as scarcity itself.
The most important question is, therefore, who makes the crucial decisions about resources — their accessibility, development, use and costs? Ultimately Barnet is groping after alternative power structures. But the first step is to interpret the existing structures: Barnet believes that the current state of mystification enjoyed by the average citizen denies him a proper role in the democratic process.
The critical resource systems Barnet reviews are energy, non-fuel minerals, food, water and the human skills used in what he calls the ‘Global Factory’. Resources are finite. But the theoretical cut-off date is debatable. Barnet, on balance, is not too inclined to believe the ‘Cassandras’, though his optimism is heavily qualified.
He quotes estimates of cultivable land (given positive readings on other variables such as energy and water) which dismiss the idea of inexorable famine within a generation. He cites estimates of known and unknown deposits of oil and minerals, and elaborates the potentialities of energy alternatives. But while the ‘age of scarcity’ may be something of an illusion, it is an illusion which serves powerful interests. As long as those interests can make a plausible political case for retaining their stranglehold of control, and keep competitors for power at bay by sheer economic might, the toss-up between the real and illusory is academic.
One of the most impressive qualities of The Lean Years is the panache with which Barnet handles the tremendous range of his subject. In places the effect is a little peremptory: the population debate, for example, and the mandatory repudiation of the neo-Malthusians, occupies about two pages. Most of the writing is electric, full of neat turns of phrase. There are gems of facts, quotes and observations that help one to retain some of the dense wealth of material.
For all its verbal elegance, the book is more satisfying in its parts than in its whole. The overall effect induces a sense of helplessness. Aware as most of us are how intricate, obscure, and monolithic are the forces that control our world, trying to wrap one’s mind round the even partially revealed machinery is enough to instil a sense of defeat.
Barnet’s quick romp through an alternative vision in the closing pages offers little comfort. His scenario shows that only sweeping changes can move power from its present axis, but the desultory way in which he suggests the changes are witness to his lack of conviction that they can come about.
Roots of a Peasant Movement
Roots of a Peasant Movement
by Denis Von Der Weid and Guy Poitevin
Shubbada- Saraswat Publications, Pune, India
India: Rs8O/UK: £5.00 approx.
The plaintive notes of an old Bengali village song came to mind as I read this book:
My poor soul! Why don’t you learn farming?
Look at the vast field of human being lying fallow.
Had it been tilled, it would have yielded gold!
Roots of a Peasant Movement describes making ‘fallow’ people yield a rich harvest of thoughts and actions.
The authors describe a five-year experiment in 'conscientisation’ among ’untouchables’ in 60 villages of Tamilnadu in South India by a voluntary organisation called the Rural Community Development Association (RCDA). By staging plays with the help of village recruits, depicting local problems like oppression by landlords, social discrimination against the poor and corruption among the top brass, the RCDA sought to arouse indignation among the peasants and help them articulate their protests.
Once aware of the ways open to them to solve their problems, the peasants organised themselves into an association, launching strikes for better wages, fighting lawsuits to regain possession of lands illegally occupied by landlords, and putting pressure on local government officials to build them schools and roads.
The authors point out some of the limitations of the experiment — its stress on the 'untouchables' to the exclusion of other poor peasants, the danger of encouraging local animators to expect permanent employment. But they seem to be confident that a ‘long-drawn non-violent march of socio-political education and organisation, reaching out to the millions of rural down-trodden’ is the only suitable way to transform Indian society. Rejecting immediate revolution along Chinese lines, they prefer the development of ’many centres of animation, mass education and agitations without party involvement’.
The need for the increased involvement of voluntary organisations in awakening the rural poor is evident. But the reality of armed confrontation cannot be ignored. Right now, it is happening in Andhra Pradesh and Bihar. Led by armed Communist groups, such confrontations also help the rural poor become aware of their potentialities. In some cases, they have set up parallel centres of power and implemented land reforms.
The success of the RCDA was possible because of several variables like the existence of educated animators with enough time and resources to fight lengthy lawsuits and the presence of a friendly officialdom. Usually the slow-moving legal system, heavily loaded in favour of the privileged, the obduracy of the landed gentry and the refusal of the administrators to implement reforms are the very factors that drive the peasantry to take arms to change their miserable lot.
Given the uneven state of affairs in such a vast country, the ‘non-violent march of socio-political education’ — however desirable it may be — cannot be a uniform prescription.
(Sumanta Banerjee works with India’s Alternative News and Features.)