India, Any comments?

[Guest guest]

Namaste All,

Vandana Shiva on McDonald's, Exploitation

 

and the Global Economy

 

 

Transcript of the RealAudio Interview

 

 

 

 

Vandana Shiva is the Director of The

Research Foundation for

Science,

 

Technology and Natural Resource Policy, a

network of researchers

specialising in

 

sustainable agriculture and development.

 

ONS.....T.

She is also Ecology Adviser

to the Third World

 

Network, which aims to bring about a

greater voice for people in

the Third World, a fair

 

and ecologically sustainable distribution

of world resources.

 

 

 

Vandana Shiva was interviewed

in

 

1997 by One-Off Productions for their TV

documentary, McLibel: Two

Worlds Collide.

 

 

 

How did you become a

campaigner on environmental and animal welfare

issues?

 

Animal welfare has got more

threatened recently in India as a result

of free trade policies, which

are forcing many of us who

assumed that in India at

least that the cow was sacred and would be

saved - that we had a culture

of compassion and that was

one area we didn't have to

create new campaigns on because our

civilisation has ensured that

animals are respected and

protected.

 

That's come under new assault

because of the fast food chains, factory

farming and the entire

globalisation of a rotten food

culture - and a very

environmentally destructive and

culturally-destructive

agricultural system.

 

You are a leading opponent of

fast food chains' expansion into India.

What is the present situation?

 

Pepsi subsidiary Kentucky

Fried Chicken is supposed to by now have

opened 30 outlets. They have

only managed to have 2

running for a short while

because both - the one in Bangalore and the

one in Delhi - faced long-

term protests from people.

 

We had a very wide alliance

of farmers, consumers, doctors and

environmentalists - of people

concerned about Indian culture

and our cultural values,

people concerned about animals and cruelty to

animals getting together to

resist this onslaught.

 

The way Kentucky Fried

Chicken managed to get its outlets open despite

the protests, was through

changing standards, getting

the Government of India to

change those standards and the permissible

level on MSG - Mono-sodium

Glutamate - which is

now recognised worldwide to

be a health hazard and which has wrongly

been called a food additive

when it is really a drug -

which fools us by sending

signals to our brain that there is taste in

the food when there is none.

Besides, fooling us about food

has severe health hazards.

 

We are definitely going to

continue our campaign against KFC and

McDonald's. McDonald's has

yet to open any outlets. I

think they are waiting for

the feeling with KFC - the chicken is not

as sacred as the cow in India

so they thought that if

Kentucky Fried Chicken can

spread then they'll come in behind.

 

They have recently signed a

contract with the largest slaughterhouse

in India, which has been

facing protest because of the

slaughter of cattle, the

export of meat - the conversion of India from

a culture of sacred and

living cows to being an exporter of

cattle meat.

 

McDonalds, signing up this

contract, will face not just the old

protests against junk food

chains, but will also face the campaigns

against the slaughterhouse,

and we are basically planning to have very

major road blockades -

liberating the cattle on their way

to the slaughterhouse -

ensuring that we really articulate the

campaign around the freedom

of animals and the freedom of

people, and not just the

freedom for capital the way it is currently.

 

Will McDonald's be able,

through advertising, to sell the 'McDonald's

Experience' in India?

 

The McDonald's experience,

which is really the experience of eating

junk while thinking you are

in heaven, because of the

golden arches, which is

supposed I guess to suggest that you enter

heaven, and the clown Ronald

McDonald, are experiences

that the majority of the

Indian population would reject - I think that

our people are too earthy.

 

First of all it would be too

expensive for the ordinary Indian - for

the peasant, or the person in

the slums - it's an experience that

a very tiny elite would

engage in, and most of that elite - which

knows what good food is

about - would not fall for.

 

We do have one of the

largest, most diverse food cultures - a very

sophisticated food culture.

I've heard it said that the one

thing you can't make Indians

give up is their food culture - they come

to England and carry it with

them.

 

But there is a small middle

class and a tiny elite section that I

believe feels inferior about

what they are, that has been so

subjected to the pressures of

Westernisation that they feel

second-rate Westerners, and

people would go in for the experience

not because of what the

experience is, but for what it symbolises.

 

There will definitely be a

tiny, tiny fragment in our population, but

since we have a large

population it will be a large market

which is why McDonald's want

to enter it.

 

Do you think the McLibel case

in the UK has wide significance?

 

I think the case against

McDonald's - the McLibel case - is a very,

very significant case - not

just because of the

unaccountabiltiy of chains like McDonald's, that

misuse and exploit labour,

misuse and exploit the

environment, and misuse and exploit consumers.

 

I think it's also important

because there are new structures of

unaccountability being

created.

For instance I used the

McLibel case in evidence I was giving to our

Parliament on the

formulation of new trade-mark

laws, which actually had clauses -

because they were written

under the pressure of GATT

and free trade and the protection of

capital - that actually had

clauses that said that if

anyone was to use the name or the symbol of

any company that had a

protected trade-mark in ways

that could hurt the image and the product

of that company then it would

be treated as a

trademark infringement, and

under the new version of law would be

treated as a criminal act -

as an act allowing arrest without

warrant.

 

And I cited the case of the

McLibel suit to show that what is now an

opening that people have in

terms of challenging a

company would not be an

opening if these new laws were created. And

we

can't afford it, because in

democracy unless citizens

have the right to bring

systems of accountability into the

relationship of corporations

with people, democracy is a farce - it is

empty.

 

Is the information that is

coming out through the McLibel case useful

to your campaigning?

 

The information that has been

made available to the world by a handful

of activists, making

transparent the workings of a

globally-operating

corporation like McDonald's, is extremely important

because the advertising.

 

The global arches is

advertising that makes it look as if here is a

wonderful system coming to

your doorstep, superior to

anything you have had -

superior to your food, superior to your

production, superior to your

culture, your economy - and the

McLibel campaign has actually

brought out to the front the underside

of the workings of a fast-

food chain like McDonald's, the

working conditions under

which people operate, the hazards people face

- the health hazards.

 

I think it is a particularly

important case, in today's time where

with free trade there is a

lot of talk about how labour is exploited

in the Third World, about

child labour making carpets in India. I

think it is very important to

see that McDonald's is probably

the most important exploiter

of child labour in the world.

 

What do you see as the

connections between the use of resources by

multinationals and Third

World poverty?

 

The takeover of the global

economy by global corporations based on

wasteful production and based

on actually destruction of

livelihoods and jobs, is

definitely becoming a very very major threat

to the peoples of India.

 

If we just take the case of

the companies who will supply the meat to

McDonald's - just by buying

up cattle and leading to a

slaughter of the living

economy of cattle-based agriculture, where

cattle pull the ploughs,

provide the energy, provide the

organic manure - are

literally the support base of sustainable

agriculture.

 

Within a few years we've had

the destruction of 300,000 livelihoods,

with peasants losing their

only source of economic

survival. That's a very

direct attack on the survival of people.

 

But there's a second level of

attack on the survival of people, which

is the fact that food which

today goes towards feeding the

poor and the hungry in India

will get diverted to feed the animals

which will then go into fast

food chains to feed, in India

definitely, the elite.

 

There is a third component

related to it - that the land and water

that today meets the survival

needs of the people of India will

get diverted to factory

farms, will get diverted to producing the meat

base for these chains.

 

This is why for our current

campaigns - in the month of March we're

going to be doing a very

major rally with farmers - giving

notice to all election

candidates - because we're having our national

elections in April - saying

that anyone standing for

Parliament who does not

commit themselves to supporting local

communities in terms of

control over natural resources like

land, water, biodiversity and

is actually found to be supporting the

takeover of these natural

resources by transnational

corporations should not even

dare come to the villages for votes.

 

We are declaring that the

resources of India are for the sustenance of

the Indian people and not for

the profits of irresponsible

corporations.

 

At the Beijing Conference

last year there was an anti-McDonald's

demonstration. Can you tell

us about it?

 

If

someone was to ask me what was the

highlight of Beijing, I would

definitely not say it was

 

Hillary Clinton's speech.

 

I

would say it was the demonstration of the

women against the McDonald's

outlet at the NGO

 

Forum, and the protest really was an

initiative of the younger

women at a lecture I was giving

on

food security, intellectual property rights

and biodiversity, and was

basically just talking

about

how the control over the food system is

shifting, through various

mechanisms, into the

hands

of a few corporations.

 

And one of the young women

stood up and said: 'Did you know that

Ronald McDonald is here

without a visa? Do you think he

should be here?' I said well

if they can make such a fuss about the

Tibetans not getting visas I

think we should make a lot of

fuss about Ronald McDonald

here without the permission of the NGO

Forum - after all McDonald's

is not an NGO! What's it

doing in the NGO Forum?

 

The younger women started the

march and asked if I would join and I

was only too happy to join.

We basically took the

Ronald McDonald image, which

I find gross and obscene, and grows in

size all over the world - I

really have the urge after

Beijing to pull it down

wherever I go and sit on it.

 

And we really had discussion

with the women from different countries,

expressing what it means to

them - expressing how it's a

symbol of cultural

imperialism, it's a symbol of ecological

colonisation, and its a

symbol of the pretence of food that is really

a

health hazard.

 

What do you mean when you say

that McDonald's is the most important

exploiter of child labour in

the world?

 

There's so much fuss in the

world about the exploitation of child

labour and I think it would

be helpful if Western countries

focused as much on the

exploitation of child labour by McDonald's as

they do on the carpet

industry of India - where of course

there should be no child

labour and we are absolutely determined that

it should end - that child

labour should also end in

McDonald's outlets.

 

I have met with people who

started their community organising in

different parts of the world,

around the way McDonald's hires

schoolchildren at below wage

levels - they start doing badly in

school, they of course don't

make enough money - and has

introduced a culture of

displacing adult workers - getting away from

labour laws - while

destroying children's educational

opportunities.

 

And at every level - the way

they work without minimum wages, without

labour standards, shows how

unaccountable the

corporate world is becoming.

 

I don't think we should worry

as much about applying labour standards

to governments of the world -

we need to be thinking

about how to apply labour

standards to the corporations of the world.

 

What strategies might

McDonald's use in India to suppress criticism of

themselves?

 

I think the way new

intellectual property rights regimes - like the

trade-mark laws - are

evolving, where they are widening

beyond infringement in terms

of competitive production - using names

and symbols in a deceptive

way - into an encroachment

into criminalisation of civil

liberties, are some of the new

mechanisms that corporations

like McDonalds could actually use to

suppress criticism.

 

And I think that

corporations, like McDonald's, who are on the one

hand destroying entire food

cultures of the world and on

the other hand not giving

safe and healthy food to people, there is

going to be an inevitable

outcry against their operations and

they know it.

 

Therefore to maintain

business in the face of deception they have to

control dissent in all kinds

of ways. As long as operations

like this exist - coercive

measures, authoritarian measures, using the

legal system, against people

will be inevitable.

 

The way McDonald's works

sounds so much like pre-perestroika Soviet

Union to me, except that the

whole world was

outraged by the centralised

control of communist regimes - we don't

get so outraged with the

authoritarianism of corporations

which have no accountability.

 

I really think that citizens

have started to recognise that the

freedom of citizens is

inconsistent with the freedom of corporations

like McDonald's have of using

legal means in irresponsible ways.

 

Do you think McDonald's

expansion into India will have an adverse

effect on people's diet and

health?

 

I think across the world the

evidence is so strong that any society

that shifted its eating

patterns to meat-based fast-food chains

has had problems - Singapore

is having to set up new obesity clinics,

Japan has had a 70% increase

in food-related illnesses

because of the kind of

problems fast food chains like McDonald's are

bringing.

 

I was recently reading a 'New

Scientist' article which says the

biggest source of epidemics

and disease is now the hamburger,

including all the backward

chains into Mad Cow Disease, beef and the

rest - how factory farming

and the processing jointly

combine such a potent health

hazard for people.

 

I think that the evidence is

clear across cultures and across races -

McDonald's is doing no good

to people's health, and in a

country like India where

first of all we are not a meat culture, and

therefore our systems are ill-

adapted to meat in the first

place, and where people are

poorer - shifting to a diet like this will

have enormous impact.