DEVELOPMENT: Asia's Marginalised Dread Globalisation

Ranjit Devraj

HYDERABAD, India Jan 6 (IPS) - It is bad enough being discriminated against as a descendant of a ‘burakumin' or outcast in feudal Japan, but globalisation is now also taking away an occupation traditionally assigned to this ‘impure' group of people.

Explained Nozami Bando, a young Japanese lady representing the Buraku Liberation League at the Asian Social Forum (ASF) underway in this southern Indian city: ‘'The impure task of leather work was given to impure people - the buraku.''

‘'Now with globalisation and cheaper leather goods flooding the market, even this means of livelihood is being taken away from us,'' Bando said at the ‘Peoples Voices' section of the five-day ASF, which ends Tuesday and has drawn some 11,500 participants from across Asia and elsewhere.

In the centuries before the Meiji government abolished the caste system in 1871, the 'burakumin' -- the last tier of society after the 'samurai' or warrior class, farmers, artisans and merchants -- were tanners, butchers and undertakers. These were occupations that were impure at the time.

Today, many of the 3 million ‘burakumin' suffer discrimination at work, school and in society when word gets around about their ancestry.

But what Bando found really galling was that even when ‘burakumin' are out of leather work, their own impurity does not go away from the group, which is fighting for social equality in Japan along with the Ainus and people of Korean origin.

But Bando conceded that her situation and that of the ‘buraku' people may not be as bad as that of marginalised groups from other parts of Asia.

Take the case of Padamlal Viswakarma, a ‘Dalit' from Nepal where the Hindu religion deems as untouchable people cobblers and to a lesser extent artisans who work with metals or those who are agricultural labourers.

‘'Because we are considered untouchable, we are excluded from the markets where we might have got a fair price for the goods we make but the profits are taken away by upper-caste middlemen,'' said Vishwakarma.

Although Japan is a leader in the developed world and Nepal is at the other end of the economic spectrum as a least developed country, marginalised groups in both countries seem to face similar problems ¡- discrimination at home and competition from abroad.

Dinesh Acchami, a cobbler from Lalitpur in Nepal, said that where his family made two dollars from selling a pair of shoes a few years ago, profits were now down to a quarter of that thanks to the influx of cheap readymade shoes into the country.

On top of that, the privatisation of major shoe factories has added to unemployment among cobblers because the new owners from India have brought in automation as well as workers from their own country to run the machines.

‘'I have no idea how the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and the World Bank work ¡ I just know that there is no future in this business or for us ‘Dalits' because no one cares for people of my caste,'' Dinesh said.

Siva Pragasam, an educated youth from Sri Lanka, spoke of the plight of 1.5 million plantation workers whose forefathers were brought to the island country by British colonials from the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu.

‘'Our low-caste origins haunt us even after generations in Sri Lanka. We face all kinds of discrimination when it comes to educational opportunities and jobs that we now need badly because the plantations are failing thanks to sinking prices for commodities such as coconut, rubber and tea,'' he said.

In fact, many plantations in Sri Lanka are giving way to massive hydroelectric projects and industries and there is little new investment in plantations as is happening in many parts of Asia.

Sugar plantations in the Philippines, for example, were labelled a ‘sunset industry' by former president Joseph Estrada, recalled Romulado Noble, representing some 330,000 sugar workers in the central province of Negros Occidental.

Noble said that thanks to the Philippines acceding to WTO rules, sugar prices have crashed miserably and the markets were awash with cheap sugar imported both legally and illegally -- resulting in layoffs and starvation.

‘'The government continues to deny that there is hunger in the sugar plantations,'' said Noble, adding that the few hundred bags of rice distributed to the workers as assistance were far from adequate to stave off hunger.

In April last year, 7,000 sugar workers staged a sit-in at the provincial administration centre in Bacolod city, capital of Negros Occidental. When the governor refused to meet them, they forced open a government-run warehouse to get at grain stocks.

Yet stories of hunger were nowhere nearly as heart wrenching as those from India's Andhra Pradesh state, the capital of which happens to be host to the ASF.

Following India's decade-old liberalisation, Andhra Pradesh became a major recipient of World Bank loans and was compelled to open up its once prosperous agricultural sector to seed transnational corporations.

As a result, over the last two years the state has been witness to the spectacle of hundreds of farmers committing suicide because they could not pay mounting debts incurred from buying costly seeds, pesticides and fertilisers as harvests failed.

‘'My husband Abdul Rahima consumed pesticide and died a year ago because he could not pay his debts and the moneylenders and banks are now after me,'' said Sharifa, who now lives in her father's house along with a year-old daughter.

Widow after widow testified to their destitution and pleaded for release from their debts. But India's aggressively pro-liberalisation government has laid the blame on the dead farmers for trying to get rich too fast, and remains generally indifferent to the plight of their dependents.

Ironically in another part of the city, the Confederation of Indian Industries was busy with a ‘'Partnership Summit'' under the theme ‘Networking Business-Linking Nations'. It was expected to sign up memoranda of understanding worth an estimated four billion dollars.

Commented Vandana Shiva, anti-globalisation activist and internationally acknowledged farming expert: ‘'While marginalised people are being made refugees in their own homes, the government sees fit to host this corporate jamboree.'' (END/2003)