Green Up Newsletter 8: The Farmer Crisis, Fertilizer and China's Ecological Civilisation
The Opening Mantra
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Farmer Crisis, Policy Cocktails and the Uniqueness of a Leaf
It seems almost a given that a country of more than a billion people will be a large incoherent mass of policy, legislation, interpretation, and reality. Even a small attempt to rationalize, order, and bring comprehension to this giant mass the size of India would deflate the diversity. Three dimensions would lose a lot of depth to turn into two- if the swiftness of the pen in policy hands is given precedence over the complexity of life for millions of people in India.
Examples of swift policy failing the masses have emerged in recent changes of the currency formats, in the status of particularly conflicted regions, etc. A large bare-foot migration took place in recent times. Almost sucked in and out of the city’s vacuum due to failing agricultural economies, the farmer’s lot has been newsworthy and yet of little consequence to the wide plethora of concerns in India’s intellectual imagination.
This imagination or common-sense intellect often calls to the divide between rich and poor, the policy circles sitting in ac rooms and farmers tilling the land - contrast is considered a pure evil. But, perhaps the real divide between farmers and policymakers isn’t as wide as we think, perhaps it’s the divide between accepting our failures and realizing that contemporary moments are not created by resolving past wrongs.
Instead, new attempts to revive the economy, produce relevant policy, and resolve towards ideas that have been left on the wayside would be more appropriate. Perhaps then we can begin to even ask- how does the vastness and process of ordering the complexity even accommodate each individual, each patch of land, its gradient, the direction of sun and water in a tiny corner of this place and time that is called India. How can policy work for farmers?
Given the complexities of India’s vastness (geographical, political, economic, social, technological, historical, imaginary, religious, linguistic, and human), it is popularly considered a wonder that civilization survives in the motherland, if it is given the status of civilization at all. As if the diversity or difference is the root of all problems, the wonder emerges as a surprise- yes we all live together and we have even before any empire decided to claim our lives as a representation of their power.
The conversation about diversity usually wanders into the achievements of the nation post-partition and sadly- stories of nuance die a slow death in the tropes that survive the scrutiny of minds trained in the CBSE, ICSE, or a state education board coupled with foreign degrees or even the sacred UPSC.
Reductions to bring ease to the regular functioning of life in the ‘motherland,’ involve binaries of various computations. One such idea is rooted in the film ‘Mother India,’ where the mother is created to represent the land and therefore, granaries of the country become a source of policy debates in the name of ‘MOTHER INDIA!.’ Here, food must be grown self sufficiently, because the farmer’s duty is to his land and cattle, which has precedence over the nation’s respect for people of castes who till the lands.
How then can a Dalit woman interpret the reality of a ‘free market’ when her entire community is destabilized by every policy change? What do policy changes mean? Add in religious divisions that are merely additional binaries to compute a series of conflicts and tensions among the ingenuity and historic melange that they have always been a part of… and there sits a policy cocktail with little to comprehend, and much to interpret. Until binaries can accommodate gradients and scales to produce enough complexity, diversity, range, nuance, crevice, shading, variation, understanding, mixing, turning, churning, semantic turns, paradigm shifts, and more… perhaps there is something to learn from China.
Reflections on China’s Ecological Civilisation Policy Measures
Kavya presented China’s Ecological Civilisation, a surprising policy initiative by Xi Jinping’s government. She noted that although the country has more than 800 environment-related laws, only 1 percent of all cases are environment-related.
The Ecological Civilisation policy idea came about in 2007, while the government is a socialist one, China’s growth model remains growth-centric, and therefore a stark contrast to Xi’s development model. Despite this, China’s 5 part national plan is linked to Ecological Civilisation which is meant to incorporate economic, social, and political aspects.
The political commentary perspective would ask, how often is EC mentioned by politicians, and it is of note that the topic was mentioned in the 15th minute of a congress speech, it is therefore one of the top priorities for the CCP’s imagination. China’s party’s leadership changes every decade, and to maintain a sense of meritocracy, the change in leadership affects policy initiatives. Despite this, China has submitted that they will cut their emissions by 60-65% in the next few years (see the video for details) - this commitment is higher than the Paris agreement limits.
Christine Low- the undersecretary said that China has been showing leadership in terms of policy and data tracking. Energy and climate are seen as job-focused areas- the CCP has signaled this. The rhetoric of the CCP is that our home has to be clean for us to fit the role of the global superpower.
Ecological civilisation, a top down policy sham?
Contradictions pointing to the difference between the Chinese government’s rhetorical intention and actions within China are found in the displacement and exploitation of indigenous Tibetans, the forced migration of nomadic tribes to urban areas, massive and numerous hydroelectric dams that exploit resources and displace people, and in the work of vocal environmentalists. The Belt and Road initiative is one of the world’s largest infrastructure projects- and it raises several questions on the efficacy of the Ecological Civilisation policy.
China’s political-economic system is maximizing economic growth and development. It’s not clear if these aspects are being controlled or changed for the current environmentally positioned policy.
On the other hand, Ecological Civilisation is creating social values that breed and give a robust shape to further distrust within communities, inspectors are appointed to punish those dumping garbage outside their residential areas. Such actions take on a sinister tone of social control which is akin to a new form of eco-authoritarianism.
Bringing these ideas back to India- the question remains, could there be an Indian parallel for ecological civilisation? Would we need to embed socialism into the constitution for it to work?
What is a bottom up version of ecological civilisation in India? Eco-swaraj (another alternative vision)- is one idea on which ecological civilisation could be based, especially in the case of India. Gandhian ideas of swaraj, and self sustainability have paved the way for similar initiatives.
Kavya concludes that while China’s top down messaging is one thing, the ground reality is another.
Resources pointing to a similar model in India.
https://www.radicalecologicaldemocracy.org/
What can India learn from China, perhaps that youth-focused climate education is an effective way forward, further, China reports daily air quality levels accurately, leading to faith in the concerns around the environment.
What are the green jobs of India's future?