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Cotton: The fibre of freedom
(A Diverse Women for Diversity Campaign trade and tear)
Cotton is the fibre that has clothed humanity through most regions of the world and through most of our history.
Yet cotton is also the fibre that led to colonization and slavery and is now leading to recolonisation and ecological disaster.
The first industrial revolution was based on the mechanization of spinning and weaving. Three continents were colonized to transform cotton from a fibre of freedom to a thread of colonization. India was colonized to destroy its highly evolved textile industry. Its was transformed from being a producer and exporter of fine calicos and chintzes to Europe into a seller of raw material – Indigo and cotton – produced under slave conditions, and a buyer of factory produced textiles from Lancashire and Manchester. Africa was colonized to provide slave labour and the Americans were colonized to provide the land, to grow cotton for England’s hungry mills.
Cotton exports from US jumped from 400000 boles in 1820 to 4 m boles in 1861. This was made possible by the slave labour that worked on the plantations in the Southern states. That mentality that assumes slavery is now ruling the world. And cotton is again playing a role in the new imperialism.
Colonisation and the Spinning Wheel
The mechanization of textile manufacture was the leading technological transformation of the first industrial revolution. By the time that technological innovations made full impact on the British textile industry in the early 19th century, England had gained full political control over resources and its markets of its colonies; including India. India until then had been a leading producer and exporter of textiles in the world market. The industrialization of England was based in part on the deindustrialisation of India. The development of England was based on India’s underdevelopment. It is no co-incidence that India’s independence movement was based in large measure on seeding liberation from the control on resources and people of Third World that were part of the process of Europe’s industrialisation. Two symbols of India’s independence struggle were the ‘Champaran Satyagraha’ and the ‘Charkh’. The Champaran Satyagraha was a peaceful revolt against the forced cultivation of indigo as a dye for the British textile industry. The ‘Charka’ or spinning wheel was the technological alternative that created self-reliance instead of dependence, and generated livelihoods instead of destroying them.
While the rapid technological innovations in the British textiles industry were made possible only through the prior control over the resources and the market, the stagnation and decay of this industry in India was a result of the loss of political control first over the market and later over the raw material. The destruction of India’s textile industry necessitated the destruction of the skills and autonomy of India’s weavers. Often this destruction was extremely violent. For instance, the thumbs of the best Bengal Weavers were cut off to cut off market competition when Indian hand woven textiles continued to do better than the British mill products. The impact of the violence manipulation and control of the English merchants on the Indian weavers started when the East India Company become a territorial power by defeating Nawab Sirajuddaula in the battle of Palassi in 1757. Before that the Indian weavers were independent producers and had control over their produce. The East India Company replaced the indigenous merchants by a ‘body of paid servants receiving instructions from them with coercive authority over weavers that none had before. They had virtual monopoly of the market and had effectively exercised control over raw materials and began to extend this control over the weavers’ tools. Under the company weavers had virtually become wage workers on terms and conditions over which they had no control.’
In the context of such erosion of the control on resources and the market, the traditional weavers of India were displaced. There was an exodus out of the weaving trade. New textile technology was imported into India from England in the mid-19th century by the cotton traders of India who were involved in export of cotton to England. This new group of powerful merchants turned mill owners competed with the handloom weavers for the common market and the raw material base. The establishment of textile mills in Lancashire and later in India deprived the Indian weaver both of the market and the raw material. When the American cotton supply to the English textile industry was disturbed by the American civil war, the famous cotton famine of 1890s broke out and the English instantly reacted by grabbing the cotton in India. The cotton famine was transferred to India.
A government survey of 1884 gives the following picture of the production and supply of clothing:
“It is evident that the whole population must be far nearer a state of pristine nudity than ever before. Every poor person stints himself to an inconceivable degree in his clothing and every purpose to which cotton is applied. He wears his turban and breach cloth to rags, dispenses with his body clothing and denies himself of his annual renewal of his scanty suit”
There was also a devastating impact of the new textile mills opened in Indian on the handloom weavers.
“The growth of the industry began to impinge on the handloom industry…. This incursion of mills into areas hitherto considered the special reserves of the handloom industry had a many sided effect…and led to unprecedented worsening of the conditions of the handloom weavers…Actual unemployment was seen as in the statistics of idle handlooms; this was estimated at 13% in 1940 by the fact finding committee (of Handlooms and mills)
Gandhi’s critique of the industrialisation of India on the western model was based on his perception of the poverty, dispossession and destruction of livelihoods, which resulted from it.
‘Why must India become industrial in the western sense?’, Gandhi has asked ‘what is good for one nation situated in one condition is not necessarily good for another differently situated. One mans’ food is often another man’s poison… Mechanization is good when hands are too few for the work intended to be accomplished. It is an evil where there are more hands than required for the work, as is the case in India.
It was to regenerate livelihoods in India that Gandhi thought of the spinning wheel as a symbol of liberations and a tool for development in that period of early industrialisation. However, the hunger of mills for raw-material and markets was the reason for a new poverty, created by the destruction of livelihoods either by diverting land and biomass from local subsistence to the factory, or by displacing local production through the market.
Gandhi had said that ‘anything that millions can do together, becomes charged with unique power’. The spinning wheel had become a symbol of such power. ‘The wheel as such is lifeless, but when I invest it with symbolism, it becomes a living thing for me.’
When Gandhi described the Charkha in 1908, in Hind Swaraj as a panacea for the growing pauperism of India, he had never seen a spinning wheel. Even in 1915, when he returned to India from South Africa, he had not actually seen a spinning wheel. But he saw an essential element of freedom from colonialism in discarding the use of mill woven cloth. He set up handlooms in the Satyagraha Ashram at Sabarmati, but could not find a spinning wheel or a spinner, who were normally women. In 1917, Gandhi’s disciple Ganga behn Majumdar started a search for the spinning wheel, and found one in Vijapur in the Baroda State. Quite a few people there had spinning wheels in their homes, but had long since consigned them to the lofts as useless lumbers. They now pulled them out, and soon Vijapur Khadi gained a name for itself. And Khadi and the spinning wheel rapidly become the symbol for India’s independence movement.
The spinning wheel symbolized a technology that conserves resources, people’s livelihoods and people’s control over their livelihoods. In contrast to the imperialism of the British textile industry, not labour displacing. It needed people’s hands and minds, instead of treating them as surplus, or as mere inputs into an industrial process. This critical mixture of decentralization, livelihood generation, resource conservation and strengthening of self-reliance were essential to undo the waste of centralization, livelihood destruction, resource depletion and creation of economic and political dependence that had been engendered by the industrialisation associated with colonialism.
Gandhi’s spinning wheel is a challenge to notions of progress and obsolescence that arise form absolutions and false universalism in concepts of science and technology development. Obsolescence and waste are social constructs that have both a political and ecological component. Politically, the notion of obsolescence gets rid of people’s control over their lives and livelihoods by defining productive work as unproductive and removing people’s control over production in the name of progress. It would rather waste hands then waste time. Ecologically, too obsolescence destroys the regenerative capacity of nature by substituting manufactured uniformity in place of nature’s diversity. This induced dispensability of poorer people on the one hand and diversity on the other constitutes if the political ecology of technological development guided by narrow and reductionist notions of productivity. Parochial notions o productivity, perceived as universal, rob people of control over their means of reproducing life and rob nature of her capacity to regenerate diversity.
Ecological erosion and destruction of livelihoods are linked to one another. Displacement of diversity and displacement of people’s sources of sustenance both arise from a view of development and growth based n uniformity created through centralized control. In this process of control, reductionist science and technology act as handmaidens for economically powerful interests. The struggle between the factory and the spinning wheel continues as new technologies emerge.
Extracted from: Dr. Vandana Shiva’s The Violence of the Green Revolution
Unfair Trade as tool for recolonisation
In September 2003, the WTO Talks in Cancun collapsed. Cotton was at the core of the breakdown.
While free trade had been sold as producing a “level playing field’, the rules of WTO were in fact rules of forced trade which forced Third World countries to open their markets to dumping by removing trade barriers while the rich countries subsidies kept increasing, artificially lowering prices and thus destroying the livelihoods of peasants.
Four tiny countries – Benin, Burkina Faso, Chad and Mali made cotton subsidies the main issue in Cancun. The US is subsidizing its 20000 agribusiness farms up to $4 billion, and dumping cotton on world markets. According to the World Bank 15 million growers of cotton in African countries are losing $ 250 million each year due to the false law prices of US cotton. In 2001, the cost of cotton in US was $ 0.9313 / bushel, and the export price was $ 0.39 68/ bushels, a dumping of 57%. From 1995 to 2001, dumping jumped form 17% to 57% in the case of cotton.
As the African countries said at a press conference in Cancun:
“Africans came to Cancun hoping for solutions to the problems faced by some 15 millions cotton producers.
African cotton producers received good words. But 24 hours before the end of the Ministerial Conference, the countries which submitted the Cotton Initiative did not receive a response to their problems.
They had been told “trade not aid…”
The cost of cotton production in Western and Central Africa is among the lowest in the world. But producers cannot anymore live with their earnings and they could be excluded from the world market to the benefit of producers with higher productions costs receiving massive subsidies.
Cancun provided a unique opportunity for lifting millions of people out of poverty and, at the same time, bringing coherence between the aid and trade policies of industrialized countries. But no solutions has been found yet because the interest of a few. Have to be preserved.
If Africans leave Cancun without practical results, they may not return because so much efforts have led to so little.”
The fact that a Korean farmer Lee Kyung Nee had taken his life in Cancun, showed that trade negotiations in WTO have laterally become a life and death matter for millions. As Lee had stated:
“My warning goes to all citizens that human being are in an endangered situation that encontrolled multinational corporations and a small number of big WTO members/ officials are leading an undesirable globalisation of inhumane, environment distorting, farmer killing and undemocratic. It should be stopped immediately otherwise the false logic of neoliberalism will perish the diversities of agriculture and prove disastrous to all human beings”.
On 10th Sept, Lee climbed the barricades with his banner which read “WTO kills farmers” and ended his life.
Seeds of Suicide
Suicides among Indian farmers began in 1997, when global corporations like Monsanto started to buy up Indian seed companies and sell hybrid and genetically engineered seeds. The epidemic of suicides fast spread in Warengal in Andhra Pradesh and Bhatinda in Punjab where the new cotton seeds spread. In Warangal, cotton jumped form 0 hectares – 1986 to nearly a 100000 hectors in 1997, displacing diversity of jowar, bajra, green gram, red gram, house gram, black gram, sesame, groundnut. Hybrid cotton us the most pesticide intensive crop. The Bhopal factory of Union Carbide, which killed 3000 people in 1984 and has killed 30000 since then made “carboryl” a pesticide, used primarily cotton.
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B Ramanamma belongs to Gangapur village in Jadcherla in Mehboobnagar District of Andhra Pradesh. She and her husband cultivated 20 acres of leased land. Taken in by the marketing hype of seed companies, they replaced paddy with cotton. This proved beneficial at the beginning, but demanded intensive irrigation, for which they took a loan of Rs.50000. the subsequent crops failed. Burdened with loans and accumulating interests Ramanamma’s husband consumed pesticide and committed suicide. Ramanamma and her son are today working as construction workers in order to survive.
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Kottula Yakayya, of village Samudrala in Staton Chanpur Mandal committed suicide in 1999. His family owns 4 acres of land. On 2 acres of land chilies were sown and remaining two acres cotton was frown. Last year for cultivating cotton he burrowed as sum of Rs.25,000/- on loan basis. With interest it totaled to Rs.60,000/-. Moneylenders started pestering him for payment of their interest. Not getting proper price for the cotton in market and unable to know how to clear the heavy debt, the farmer got agitated and consumed insecticide and committed suicide.
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Pacchikeyala Kameshware Rao of Akinepalli village of Mangapeta Mandal, unable to bear the financial problems committed suicide same year. Insects intensely attacked the cotton crop cultivated by him. Use of many insecticides could not stop the spread of insects. Due to this the crop got completely destroyed. Due to lack of advice from the scientists and agricultural officers he got completely disillusioned and consumed poison in the form of insecticides and committed suicide.
There are may cased of suicide where the lack of scientific advice by the concerned agricultural departments led to suicides of Indala Ayilayya, Malotu Danja, Tallapalli Lakshamayya, Pentala Odelu.
More the 25000 Indian peasants have committed suicide over the past 6 years.
In 2002, Monsanto manipulated a clearance for its genetically engineered BT cotton.
Bt. Toxins are a family of related molecules produced in nature by a soil bacterium, Bacillus thruigniensis (Bt.) Farmers and gardeners have used natural Bt. As an organic pesticide for more than 50 years. Bt. genes are now being genetically engineered into crops so that the plant produces toxins throughout most of its life.
Genetically engineered Bt. crops are being offered as a sustainable pest control strategy. However, the Bt. crops are neither ecological nor sustainable. They are not ecological because internalizing toxin production in plants is not a toxic free strategy – it merely makes toxics internal to plants rather than applied externally. The ecological impacts of this strategy of internalizing toxics have not been looked at, though indications are emerging that genetically engineered Bt. is harmful to beneficial insects such as bees and ladybirds.
The Bt. crop strategy is not a sustainable method for pest control because Bt. plants release toxins continuously. Constant long-term exposure of pest populations to Bt. encourages survival of individual pests that are genetically resistant to the toxin. As Margaret Mellon and Jane Rissler of the Union of Concerned Scientists state in their report “Now or Never”.
Over many generations, the proportion of resistant individuals in pest populations can increase, reducing the efficacy of the Bt. toxin as pesticide. If resistance evolves, Bt. toxins will cease to be effective both for the users of the new transgenic plants and those who have relied on Bt. sprays for decades. Scientists have estimated that widespread use of Bt. crops could lead to the loss of Bt’s efficacy against certain pest populations in as far as two to five years (Fred and Bruce, 1998).
The primary justification for the genetic engineering of Bt. into crops is that this will reduce the use of insecticides. One of the Monsanto brochures had a picture of a few worms and stated, “You will see these in your cotton and that’s O.K. Don’t spray”. However, in Texas, Monsanto faces a lawsuit filed by 25 farmers over Bt. cotton planted on 18,000 acres which suffered cotton boll worm damage and on which farmers had to use pesticides in spite of corporate propaganda that genetic engineering meant an end to the pesticide era. In 1996, 2 million acres in the US were planted with Monsanto’s Bt. transgenic cotton called Bollgard, which had genes from the bacteria Bacillus thuringensis (Bt). The genetically engineered cotton generates a natural toxin to kill caterpillars of their pest: cotton bollworm, tobacco budworm and pink bollworm.
However, cotton bollworms were found to have infested thousands of acres planted with the new breed of cotton in Texas. Not only did the genetically engineered cotton not survive cotton bollworm attack, there are also fears that the strategy will create super bugs by inducing Bt – resistance in pests. The question is not whether super-pests will be created, but when they will become dominant. The fact that Environment Protection Agency (EPA) of the US requires refugia of non-engineered crops to be planted near the engineered crops reflects the reality of the creation of resistant strains of insects.
The widespread use of Bt. containing crops could accelerate the development of insect pest resistance to Bt., which is used for organic pest control.
Extracted from: Seeds of Suicide
Instead of less pesticide use, genetically engineered BT cotton used more pesticides, and as the Indian experience shows, gives lower yields. Instead of 1500 kg, BT cotton gave 200 kg/acre as the average. Instead of Rs.10000 addition incomes, farmers lost Rs.6400/ acre. Besides pushing farmers to debt and suicide Monsanto’s BT cotton is contaminating the environment and creating inhuman health risks. These risks are unnecessary because there is an alternative – organic cotton.
Organic cotton frees the environment and our bodies of pesticide pollution, frees farmers of debt and slavery. Cotton can still be a fibre of freedom. But we will first have to free cotton of corporate control, of toxics, and of false and forced trade rules.
Campaign:
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Join the movement to get Agriculture out of WTO and create a fair trade agreement.
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Demand an attend to cotton subsides to US agribusiness.
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Boycott Monsanto’s BT cotton and clothing made from it. Demand GMO free, Monsanto free cotton from your clothing stores.
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Support the promotion of organic cotton in the Third World.
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Support fare trade in organic cotton.
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