Food, Water,
Air and the World Bank
By Professor Nazeer
Ahmed
CA
“At
the moment of death”, the learned Shaykh
was describing a parable to his students, “three
angels appear one after the other. The first one
declares: I am the angel appointed to provide
you with food. I have searched all of God’s
creation but I cannot find one single grain with
your name written on it. Then the first angel
bids farewell and departs”
As the students listened intently, striving to
grasp the gravity of the last moments of a dying
soul, the Shaykh continued. “Then the second
angel appears. He says to the dying person: I
am the angel appointed to provide you with water.
I have searched all of God’s creation but
I cannot find one single drop of water with your
name written on it. And the second angel departs”
“Then the third angel appears”, continued
the learned Shaykh, “and he tells the dying
person: I am angel of breath appointed to provide
you with air. I have searched all of God’s
creation and I have returned empty handed. I cannot
find one molecule of air with your name written
on it. Then he too departs”.
“Immediately thereafter, the angel of death
appears, and by God’s command, takes the
soul of the dying person. There are no further
questions asked and none to intercede”.
If the World Bank has its way, it is not the angels
who will determine whether or not you have any
food, water or air left, it is the multinational
corporations (MNCs) who will. It is not far fetched
to imagine a scenario when every man, woman and
child will pay a price not just for the food he/she
eats but also for the water he drinks and the
air he breathes.
In the name of privatization, the World Bank has
been pushing the agenda of Big Money for control
of the vital resources of the world. The control
of oil is an old story that is being written with
increasing ferocity. The control of forests too
is a story, old and tragic, that is nearing its
end. The story of food, water and air is just
unfolding.
The World Bank has made no attempt to hide its
agenda. In its report, "World resources sector
strategy, strategic directions for World Bank
engagement”, the Bank argues, “…
water resource management is best done when all
stakeholders participate, including the state,
private sector and civil society”.
And who are the stakeholders? To obtain an answer
to this question, I traversed National Highway
4 from Mumbai to Bangalore in India last month.
About thirty kilometers from Bangalore is a sprawling
Pepsi processing plant. The company draws water
from bore wells so deep that they have dried up
the wells in the neighboring villages. The farmers
must necessarily depend on surface water impounded
in tanks and when there is none available they
must transport it from miles away. If the monsoons
are late, the crops fail, the farmers and their
livestock starve. But the Pepsi plant churns along.
Is Pepsi a stakeholder in the water resources
of this neighborhood?
No longer is water a human right, a divine gift
for the sustenance of life on earth. It has become
a commodity that is to be exploited for profit.
The global bottled water business is worth $100
billion annually and is growing by double digits
each year. It will soon surpass the soft drink
business in its profitability. The margins are
so huge that local governments and bureaucrats
have become willing partners in the great party.
Recently, the government in Hyderabad, Deccan
was selling water to MNCs for one rupee per gallon
while much of the city of six million was thirsty
and received a trickled supply for barely one
hour per day.
It is a similar story the world over. In Bolivia,
Latin America, under prodding from the World Bank,
the government privatized the use of water. Prices
soared. Water became so expensive that the farmers
were spending more than a third of their income
to buy water. The result was a mass upsurge of
protest and the government was forced to relent.
The World Bank has altered the nature of debate
on water supplies by inventing and imposing a
new vocabulary. No longer is water a human right
bestowed by the Creator. It is a commodity to
be haggled over by “user groups”.
No longer does it pour down from heaven as divine
mercy. It is owned by “stake holders”.
The jargon skews the debate in favor of the MNCs.
If water is owned by the “stake holders”
like corporate securities, then who speaks for
the “non users”? Is a water buffalo
a “non user” and must therefore become
extinct to protect the “users”?
To be fair to the World Bank, the situation is
not entirely of its own making. It reflects the
graft and corruption so rampant in Asia and Latin
America. In India and Pakistan, wealthy landlords
routinely divert canals and illegally tap city
pipes to divert water for their own usage. One
does not have to go back to Mir Jamadar who betrayed
his Nawab and sold out Bengal at the Battle of
Plassey in 1757. Dozens of bureaucrats are on
the take and sell off scarce water for a pittance
of a bribe. This happens every day.
It is the mismanagement of canals, dams and city
water systems that has provided an opening for
MNCs and their sponsor, the World Bank, to make
a bid for global control of food, water and air.
Those who argue for privatization offer as evidence
the efficiency that private ownership brings to
bear. “Look at private toll roads”,
they argue, “and see how efficiently they
are run and how well maintained they are. Just
compare them to the public roads and how poorly
they are maintained”.
There is merit in this argument. But the price
of privatization is too high. Private investment
bestows benefits on the basis of returns and is
weighted heavily in favor of corporations and
wealthy landlords. If water is a commodity, it
will be rationed and the benefits will invariably
accrue to those who can afford it. As the recent
example of Hyderabad city suggests, the poor will
be thirsty while the rich pay a dollar a gallon
to enjoy chilled bottled water in five star hotels.
Millions of little farmers will go out of business
and will be forced to sell their land. Consolidation
in favor of MNCs will be the result. Control of
food and water by the super rich will be complete.
Centralization and monopolization of the food
supply chain is already well on its own. The introduction
of hybrid crops is a good example. While the hybrids
increased the yields per acre, they also placed
the MNCs that own the hybrids in a position of
near monopoly. Many of the hybrids do not yield
seeds for the following year’s crop. The
farmers are forced to buy new seeds each year
from the MNCs who control the supply through their
patents and licenses.
A march down this road will lead to a world wherein
a few individuals with Big Money control the resources
of the globe. The rest will be left as proletariat.
Each morning vast armies of workers will walk
out and work for the MNCs to earn back the food,
water and air that God had bestowed upon them
in the first place. It is an inverted social pyramid
standing on a sharp edge. It is inherently unstable
and has the potential for a chaotic world as was
amply demonstrated by the example of Bolivia.
A long-term solution to water usage must include
three fundamental elements. First, there must
be a universal declaration that food, water and
air are human rights, not user assets. Second,
water resource management must be the privilege
of the local population, not of multinational
corporations backed by the World Bank. Third,
and this is the most difficult of all, corruption
in the distribution of food, water and air must
be rooted out.
All life on this planet depends on water and air.
The lowly Asian buffalo has as much right to it
as the billionaire who runs a huge corporation.
Each animal, every plant, and every human being
is an indispensable piece in the infinite mosaic
of life on God’s earth. You cannot take
one piece away and not risk destroying the whole.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
