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By Darryl D'Monte
The local doodh-wala is pitted against the milk powder factory. That's the challenge India has to tackle with the globlisation of the food trade, says Darryl D'Monte in his review of two new books
Patents: Myths and Reality:
Vandana Shiva; Penguin Books, 2001; Rs 200:
Hungry for trade: How the Poor Pay for Free Trade:
John Maddeley; Penguin, 2000; Rs 200:
 Whether by design or accident, these two Penguin books -- the first an original, the second a reprint from Zed Books, London -- complement each other. Indeed, Maddeley quotes Shiva profusely, which is not surprising, considering that she has carved out a niche as one of the foremost authorities in the world on issues relating to intellectual property rights (IPRs). She is one of the most-sought-after Indian speakers on the international circuit, including at universities.
If we define globalisation as a process where transnational companies straddle national markets and forge a worldwide system which they dominate, it becomes clear that barriers to trade have to be lowered for this to happen. This puts producers at a distinct advantage over buyers. The global South, which has a competitive advantage in producing primary goods, is forced to lower its import tariffs and expose its less-industrialised farming and dairying systems to the ruthless competition from big producers.
What is more, as Dr Utsa Patnaik pointed out at a seminar on globalisation in Mumbai last February, India's removal of quantitative restrictions (QRs) on agricultural and other produce -- inexplicably, ahead of the deadline, is all the more disastrous when one realises that Western farm producers already had a strong element of subsidy built into their prices before they froze them at their current levels. New entrants into the global food market will be compelled to reduce their subsidies and thus face a highly uneven playing field.
As Maddeley reminds us, and something which is not widely known, India is the biggest producer of milk in the world (along with fruit, probably), although per capita consumption levels are woefully inadequate within the country.
With the removal of QRs on skimmed milk powder, the EU, USA, Australia and New Zealand are preparing to export low-cost milk powder to the Indian market, threatening the livelihoods of small milk producers. This harks back to critics of Operation Flood in India like Claude Alvares who alleged that the EU gifted some Rs 100 crore worth of surplus milk powder to India in the late 1970s only to make it dependent on such supplies during scarce periods. While conspiracy theories abound in such issues, one has only to examine the inroads made by Western milk producers into neighbouring countries like Bangladesh to realise that "whoever controls food, controls the world".
A small dairy farmer in Jamaica -- not small by Indian standards, because she has 14 cows! -- describes in Maddeley's book how "European Union subsidies on milk are seriously undermining us, putting us out of the market; milk powder comes in at a cheaper rate than it used to…Over the past two years, I have thrown away about 200,000 litres." EU milk powder imports into Jamaica totalled $13 million in 1998, mainly from the same countries referred to above. In the EU, these producers received a subsidy of 900 Euro (at the time, probably the equivalent in dollars) for each tonne of milk exported. Totally, the EU was giving away 1.7 billion Euro on subsidies in dairy produce every year.
Just to complete the sordid story, the EU has been trying to raise a "non-tariff barrier" to imports of milk products from India. It has sought to impose sanitary standards under the WTO regime and refuse to import dairy products made out of milk from cows that have been manually milked. If this condition is accepted, just think what would happen to literally millions of milkmen in this country. Like other such barriers, such as the issue of child (or prison) labour, toxic dyes, and ecologically harmful fishing practices, there is more than enough reason to suspect that Western producers are trying to keep cheaper imports out through raising these barriers. In any case, it hardly lies in the mouth of the biggest polluter in the world, the USA, which has recently refused to sign the Kyoto protocol on climate change, to preach to poor countries about the protection of the environment.
Just to complete the sordid story, the EU has been trying to raise a "non-tariff barrier" to imports of milk products from India. It has sought to impose sanitary standards under the WTO regime and refuse to import dairy products made out of milk from cows that have been manually milked. If this condition is accepted, just think what would happen to literally millions of milkmen in this country. Like other such barriers, such as the issue of child (or prison) labour, toxic dyes, and ecologically harmful fishing practices, there is more than enough reason to suspect that Western producers are trying to keep cheaper imports out through raising these barriers. In any case, it hardly lies in the mouth of the biggest polluter in the world, the USA, which has recently refused to sign the Kyoto protocol on climate change, to preach to poor countries about the protection of the environment.
Shiva's book is more of a tract and reads like a polemic. She has brought together much of her writing on issues like biopiracy and the international seeds scandal. It lacks the references which Maddeley, as a professional writer, includes, and as a corollary there isn't an index. However, it will tell the reader all he wanted to know about IPR issues, but didn't know where to look. It is concisely and incisively written and will not put off the uninitiated. She has an unerring penchant for the telling statistic, the chilling fact.
Consider, for instance, that in 1996 the USA earned $30 billion from royalties and licenses. The previous year, the South paid $18 billion on buying technologies which were patented. What is more, as she points out, the North may even withhold certain know-how in order to maintain a monopoly. This is precisely what happened under the Montreal protocol of 1987, which seeks to protect the ozone layer: a US company (Du Pont?) refused to licence an alternative to CFCs to an Indian firm.
Today, when globalisation -- and its handmaidens, liberalisation and privatisation: a toxic trio abbreviated to "LPG"! -- is accepted as the only order the world accepts, it is sobering to be reminded of a UNDP study which shows that the South loses $300 million in unpaid royalties for farmers' seeds and over $5 billion on medicinal plants if a mere 2 per cent was charged by way of royalty. On the contrary, the US claims that the South owes $202 million for agrichemical royalties and $2.5 billion on pharmaceuticals -- once the South adopts US-type patent laws.
It is good that Penguin Books India is now publishing a greater amount of non-fiction. These books are easy on the pocket and make what is otherwise packed in scholarly tomes accessible to a much wider range of readers. The only complaint appears to be the binding, which make these books difficult to read.
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