Hello corporates, bye democracy

Hello corporates, bye democracy

In the last decade or so, India has had an economic reforms regime, whose key mantras are privatisation and liberalisation. Our policy-makers denounce the public sector as inefficient. But this is only a ruse for proffering the control of essential services to the private sector. Even water -- the basic necessity of life -- has not escaped the greed of private companies and government officials. On the legal premise that they are "persons" with rights, private corporations demand, and then siphon off, enormous quantities of limited fresh water for industrial or commercial purposes -- often at the cost of domestic requirements.

A recent example is from Chattisgarh, where rights over a 22-kilometre stretch of the Shivnath river has been given by the government to M/s Radius Water for a guarantee payment of Rs 1.8 crore, irrespective of the amount of water consumption. Consequent to this deal, farmers and fisherfolk living on the banks of the Shivnath are being denied their traditional rights to its waters.

The government's grand scheme of interlinking rivers will only hasten such private intervention. The country's Parliament did not even debate the Supreme Court order stating that national rivers must be interlinked within 10 years, while its executive moved with alacrity to create a task force to implement the order. Now the Confederation of Indian Industries and the Federation of Chambers of Commerce in India are encouraging the proposal energetically.

They do have good reasons for doing so. According to initial estimates, the river-linking project will cost Rs 5,60,000 crore. The sum will almost entirely be provided by private financial institutions, which will then retain control over the infrastructure created to link the rivers. Private corporations will thus gain de facto control over the rivers.

Only farmers downstream and downhill of irrigation canals can avail of the water. Placing rivers under corporate control will make access to scarce waters even more difficult. The poor farmers will not be able to afford the water. Moreover, corporates will make profit from water that is "not consumed" by farmers, by selling it for non-agricultural (industrial/commercial) purposes. This will ruin small and marginal farmers and increase distress land sales to corporates.

In the rush to interlink rivers, the government has turned a blind eye to all alternatives. Decentralised watershed management does not find favour with it because there is little corporate benefit. In keeping with structural adjustment ordained by the World Bank, statutory regulatory bodies, like electricity regulatory commissions, have been created, ostensibly to protect public interest. But here also money influences governance -- political parties and bureaucrats make sure that corporate interests are not hampered by rules. Regulations, which have been nominal in the electricity sector and unsuccessful in controlling pollution, will clearly not work in the water sector.

In the absence of good governance, civil society has been constrained to take up a case-by-case approach to the violation of laws by the corporate sector. This is a losing game because the system is heavily weighted in favour of corporates and the powerful. Public personalities, from the highest in the land to local politicians and bureaucrats, associate development with privatisation and liberalisation. The system cannot function in any other manner, so long as laws give corporations unfettered right to accumulate unlimited wealth. India's "democracy" is run by political parties, which are heavily influenced by corporate power and are accountable to people only on paper. Civil society organisations will gain little by agitating for corporate responsibility. They should rather focus on making corporate bodies subordinate to the democratic process through legal actions. They should also agitate to make our governments more accountable.

Sudhir Vombatkere retired from the army in 1996 as additional director general (discipline and vigilance). He is a member of Mysore Grahakara Parishat, National Alliance of People's Movements and People's Union for Civil Liberties