The No-Nonsense guide to International Development [antikvár]

Foreword ON THE BANKS of India's river Narmada, wfiere I write this, a batde is raging between people and development. For the past 17 years, communities here have fought non-violently against the destruction that will be wrought to their homes and livelihoods by the construction of the massive Sardar Sarovar dam. This year, with the dam height newly raised and a torrential monsoon, we are almost certain to witness the tragedy we have feared for so long. Thousands of families will lose lands and livelihoods, homes and livestock, with negligible compensation. This battle in Narmada is part of a wider war against a perverted paradigm of development which is being imposed by means of an unprincipled, unscientific, and undemocratic process. The Narmada people's movement is one of several of its kind - the Zapatistas in Mexico, indigenous communities in the Amazon and in Canada, farmers in France, India and Philippines, and fishworkers in Japan. These movements do more than symbolize the profound resistance the prevailing development model provokes. They constitute a struggle on behalf of a different conception of what development ought to be. The injustices perpetrated in the name of 'international development' are the starting-point of this No-Nonsense Guide. I welcome this, for if more people understood the damage being done to people and natural systems, tragedies such as the one we face today in the Narmada Valley might be avoided. People who depend upon the natural resource base are finding that it has been unjustly acquired, stripped from them, and its natural wealth commodified to serve the interests of a consumerist élite. Lands, water and forests are harnessed for the profit and benefit of those with power to purchase and invest - nationally and globally. Local systems of government have been forced to 'adjust', in such a way as to intensify the pauperization !¦; » V' Kf Tii^iiiW "I i ¦ iv ;h;f - ;M',''f ; A ' !iS; I. -S-:;.! i : -.i J 1 ; t Vi ili 'Av