Mining And Peoples Culture

Seminar Organised by: Peyara Kerketta Foundation & B.I.R.S.A. (Bindrai Institute for Research Study & Action ) 16th December 2003 – Hazaribagh JHARKHAND Mining and People’s Culture – Xavier Dias Can we sing in these bad times? Yes, let us sing of the bad times. Culture & its Economic Roots in Jharkhand Culture does not evolve from a vaccum or shaped bypeople alone. Culture evolves from the interaction of the people with the economy and politics of the particular time. The uncriticalacceptance of the character of the economy and politics leads to the development of a kind of culture. If the character of the economy is creative and has place for creativity and creation then the culture it spawns will imbibe these cultural characteristics. Jharkhand Dominant Culture Jharkhand has been categorized as a colonial economy. If this is so then the colonial character of the economy and politics of Jharkhand has shaped what we have today as culture. But the effects or benefits of thiseconomy and politics of Jharkhand has not been the same for every one living in this homeland. Generally we can say that there are two kinds of people affected/influenced by the Political Economy of Jharkhand.

1. Those who benefited by the colonial economy and politics 2. Those who are its victims. Naturally therefore the development of the culture of both these groups are different. For those who benefited from the system it meant an assurance of survival, employment, health and educational possibilities. For those who were its victims it meant, deprivation, dispossession, peril to life and property and denial of their traditional economy the very roots of their existing culture. What then was the character of this economy? In classical economic terms it is called ‘the penetration of Capital/money’ into an economy that was not a money economy. In real terms there was not much of ‘penetration of Capital’ but rather the extraction of goods from this area to be converted into ‘Capital’ in another location. It was more of export of ‘capital’ rather than import or penetration of capital. The tools for expropriation i.e. technology, railways, electricity etc was certainly brought in. But the colonisation of Jharkhand was not to create a ‘capitalist economy’, and its benefits but just to plunder and then abandon. This characteristic of capitalist economy i.e. plunder and then abandon, from one region to develop another region, is not only found in Jharkhand but all over the world where the natural resources i.e. forest, minerals are in abundance. Internal colonisation has also taken pleace in USA or Canada or even Australia in the mining regions.

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If we mark on a world map all these regions where mining is undertaken, we will find that most of the places arethe homelands of the Indigenous or Adivasi Peoples. It is certainly not coincidental that Indigenous lands are plundered. There is a political reason for this but it would be out of the scope of this paper to go into this question even though it is a very important one to be understood. If the character of the political economy of Jharkhand was so i.e. plunder and abandon then what kind of a culture could it have spawned? And secondly if the economy was based on solely the ‘extractive’ industries with no ‘product’ to be created, then what further effect would it have? Mining, Lumbering, are two visibly destructive industries. The earth is terminated of all life around the region where it is done and apart from termination of life it leaves back tones of toxins and hazardous substances that continue threatening all life for years after it is abandoned. Areas where the extractive industries operate, experience one part of the capitalist process of production and not the whole process of creation or manufacturing of the ‘product’. They invariably witness the ‘destructive’ part and are denied what could be considered as the creative part i.e. of manufacturing of the total product. A very simply and simplistic example would be to take a potter, who only digs the sand and sells it to be taken to some other region to be converted into pots. Would he/she be a potter or a mazdoor selling just sand? And what would the culture of such a community be then? In the colonial economy of Jharkhand what then can the ethos of the culture be, for those who are considered as ‘beneficiaries’ of this economy? What then can the esthetics, morals or character of the Society be? Those who ‘benefited’ from this economy and political process will have to answer this question at some stage in History. What about the victims? After Globalisation The word ‘Capitalism’ ‘Capitalist’ are common words in Jharkhand. Not only in our cities and townships but today in remote areas people understand these two terms. Capitalist are the middlemen, the exploiters, the Mining industrialist and incidentally or very specially in Jharkhand the common person also include the Government, the State and its Civil bureaucrats when they mean ‘Capitalist’. What we have to understand today is that the character of Capitalism duringthe past 150 years has not been the same. Up to the late ‘70’sCapitalism was associated with certain benefits for the people. Health, Education, Civic amenities etc. It was called ‘Welfare Capitalism’ Even though most of the benefits of this Welfare Capitalism was concentrated in the Western World a fairly good amount of it did trickle down to the Third Worldand even the remotest areas. It was this welfare aspect of capitalism that hid its real character from the masses of people. We can become like Japan or the USA was at the back of the mind of many people aspiring for emancipation from slavery, poverty and inhuman conditions of living. Capitalism has changed or is growing so fast that its logic is now being exposed. What is this change and what is this logic?

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The old variety of capitalism was simple; a capitalist manufactured goods sold them made profits and profits grew. The capitalist had to be protected in this process. The State or the Nation State came in and gave him the protection. The protection of the Nation State thus became very important and there fore Armies were maintained, the whole people had to be geared to protect this ‘Nation’ and therefore ‘nationalism’ has become a second religion. In this process, the capitalist no longer was just an individual or a group of individuals. They became ‘Corporations’. These Corporations did not stay in one Nation and set up shop in different Nations and thus they became Multi-Nationals (MNC’s). The logic of this process was that the need for a the ‘Nation State’ and nationalism declined. In other words they did not need the Government of a State to ‘protect’ them. But instead they do need the Government of a State to rubber stamp all their needs in order to give their needs a ‘democratic’ colour. So after the ‘80’s we see the rise of the Multi-National Corporations and the decline of the power of the State. There were certain events in global politics that expedited this process. In 1972 the Worlds Oil Exporting Nations formed an organisations called OPEC Oil & Petrolium Exporting Countries that raided the prices of petrol and diesel or petroleum products so high that it created huge profits for the oil companies. The Oil Companies are one of the biggest MNC’s. This resulted is huge amounts of cash/money floating around the world. The USeconomy was then de-linked from the Gold Standard and this further increased the cash reserves of the world. Such large amounts of money is no longer even called cash or money in English it is called ‘Fiscal’, that is why you hear this word more often today. This money had to be invested in places and it was safely invested in ‘stocks & shares’. This money had to earn profits and so it had to be invested in more and more industries. If it had to be invested in industries then the industries have to manufacture goods for people to purchase. There is a limitation to what people can purchase and so this manufacturing of consumer good economy cannot grow as fast as the Corporations need them to. So they have to manufacture goods that can get consumed faster. The best goods are weapons. They consume large amounts of money and they get used very fast. So a lot of this money is put into the weapon industry. Now a logic has to be created to use these weapons and war is the best dumping place for them. Therefore war has to be created. Be it in the dozen of wars going on in Africa or the bigger wars like Afghanistan and Iraq. This amount of money floating around the world is now so huge that it does not require an industry for it to make profits, it has become an industry in itself. The growth in this ‘fiscal industry’ is so huge and rapid that there is no democratic way to control it. It is like a huge demon that is growing and lives on blood, and each day needs more and more blood. What is being explained here is not going to be easy to understand unless one studies the worlds economy in more detail. But what is necessary to understand is that this is not the same ‘Capitalism’ that we were talking about a decade ago. That this present Capitalism called Globalisation is not concerned about the Welfare of Society. That it is so huge and out of control it is like a 1000 tonne dumper truck coming down Mt Everist. It has grown in such a way that existing democratic institutions like Governments or the UN or other bodies have no power to control it.

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That for the ‘growth’ of this economy it needs unemployment, lowering of Workers wages, cheaply available minerals and forest products, it needs people all over the world to work harder than their forefathers and to get lesser wages than their fathers. For such a situation it needs the divisions of people, social unrest, wars, conflicts. For then the State will spend more on ‘Security’ on Defence, on a terrorist scare, and the Corporation will supply them with the ‘systems’ and equipment. Thus violence has become an end, violence a means, violence has become the money spinner of the New Capitalism of today. And thus the New Capitalism of today needs violence as you and I need Oxygen. What this draws us to is that those who in the past benefited from the arrival of the colonial economy in Jharkhand. The Culture of Resistance Culture is also created and formed by those who chose not to accept this the logic of this system. To understand it, study it, and fight it. The history of the people of Jharkhand, the victims of this system is full incidences of resistance. It is a culture of emancipation, it is a culture of democracy and a culture for justice. It is a culture that puts life in the centre of all human activity and not profits or not wars.