inefficient and undermine markets, but that’s irrelevant—they
empow er the rich and help big multinationals exercise control over
the future of pharmaceuticals and biotechnology.
Countries like the U S, England and Japan w ould never have
tolerated anything remotely like product patents, or foreign control
of their press, during their development. But they’re now imposing
this sort of “market discipline” on the T hird World, as they did
throughout the colonial period. T hat’s one reason India is India, and
not the U S.
Another example is recruitment of scientists. Foreign firms pay
salaries w ay beyond w hat Indian researchers are used to, and set up
research institutes w ith facilities Indian scientists can’t dream of
getting anyw here else. As a result, foreign firms can skim off the
best scientists.
T he scientists may be happy, and the companies are happy. But
it’s not necessarily good for India, w hich once had some of the most
advanced agricultural research in the w orld.
An Indian farmer used to have a place he could go to and say,
There’s some funny pest in my fields. Can you take a look at it? But
now that’s being bought up by foreign firms, and w ill therefore be
oriented tow ards export crops for specialized markets, and
subsidized foreign imports that w ill undercut domestic production.
T here’s nothing new about this. It’s part of a long history of
“experiments” carried out by the pow erful of the w orld. T he first
major one in India w as w hat the British called the Permanent
Settlement of 1793, w hich rearranged all the land holdings in Bengal.
W hen the British Parliament looked into this thirty or forty years
later, they conceded that it w as a disaster for the Bengalis. But they
also pointed out that it enriched the British, and created a landlord
class in Bengal, subordinated to British interests, that could control
the population.
We’ve already discussed a recent example of such experiments,
in Mexico. Such experiments regularly seem to fail for the
experimental animals, but succeed for the designers of the
experiment. It’s an oddly consistent pattern. If you can find an
exception to that pattern over the last couple of hundred years, I’d
be interested in hearing about it. I’d also be interested in know ing
w ho in the mainstream talks about it, since I haven’t been able to
find anyone.
ann
(Ann)
#1