Saving J&K�s Ladakh region from onslaught of globalisation

28 April 2008

Helena Norberg Hodge / Photo credit: Infochange

You have had a long association with Ladakh. What took you there and made you return year after year?

I first went to Ladakh (in state of Jammu and Kashmir) in 1973 as part of a film crew. The Indian government had recently made a decision to open up the region to development, yet the traditional culture was very much intact at that point. I spent my first years in Ladakh analysing the language and collecting folk stories for studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London.

I had never before met people who seemed so emotionally healthy, so secure, as the Ladakhis. One of the important factors was the sense of being part of something much larger than yourself, of being inextricably connected to others and to your surroundings.

The Ladakhis belonged to their place on earth. They were bonded to that place through intimate daily contact, through knowledge about their immediate environment with its changing seasons, needs and limitations.

Before I went to Ladakh I used to assume that the direction of �progress� was somehow inevitable, not to be questioned. As a consequence, I passively accepted a new road through the middle of the park, a steel-and-glass bank where the 200-year-old church had stood, a supermarket instead of the corner shop, and the fact that life seems to get harder and faster with each day.

In Ladakh, however, I was beginning to see that another way was possible. I returned year after year to learn more and also to do what I could to help protect Ladakh from the onslaught of globalisation and conventional development, to help Ladakhis make their own informed choices about their future rather than having a one-size-fits-all Westernised development model thrust upon them. That was why, in 1978, I set up the Ladakh Project, which is now part of the International Society for Ecology and Culture (ISEC), an organisation that I founded in 1990.

What are some of the sweeping changes (cultural, environmental, social) that you have seen in Ladakh?

Ladakh had, of course, experienced change before the 1970s, from year to year, from generation to generation. However, around the time I first arrived, external forces began descending on the Ladakhis like an avalanche, causing massive and rapid disruption.

There have been changes at every level � environmental, cultural, economic, social, psychological; conventional development leaves nothing unaltered.

When I first arrived in Leh, the capital of 5,000 inhabitants, cows were the most likely cause of congestion and the air was crystal clear.

For the next 20 years I watched Leh turn into an urban sprawl.

For the first time, there were homeless people. Within a few years, unemployment and poverty, pollution and friction between different communities appeared. All of these things had not existed for 500 years.

What brought about these changes?

Fundamental to these negative changes was a shift away from an economy based on local resources and local knowledge to a global economy based on capital and technology from the outside. Suddenly, the local market was flooded with all sorts of foreign goods, including subsidised food.

In addition, media, advertising and tourism gave an idealised impression of a consumer culture of infinite wealth and leisure, which led young Ladakhis to see their own culture as backward and inferior.

Modern education also contributes to the dismantling of Ladakhi culture. It not only ignores local resources, but worse still, makes children think of themselves and their culture as inferior.

Over the past 30 years, the Ladakh Project has worked with thousands of Ladakhis in hundreds of villages to help strengthen and rebuild the local economy and cultural self-esteem.

But hasn�t globalisation got some positive aspects too? How would your vision of the world balance the positive aspects of globalisation against the negative?

It is important to make clear that it is economic globalisation that is causing so many problems in the world. Proponents of the global economy would have us believe that its spread brings democracy, peace, prosperity, sustainability and even respect for human rights.

Economic globalisation has done more to create corruption, poverty, pollution, exploitation and inequality than even colonialism. I am very much in favour of the globalisation of genuine cultural exchange.

This is something that I call �counter-development� � countering development propaganda with real information so that people everywhere are empowered to make informed decisions about their future.

It is vital that more committed people in the Third World have the opportunity to spend time in the West, in order to see, firsthand, something of the dark side of modernisation. Whether it be fears about nuclear contamination, the realities of car gridlock, or public concern about the overuse of industrial chemicals. An honest picture of life in the West with all its problems needs to be highlighted and communicated truthfully.

The dissemination of real information would move beyond specialisation and fragmented expertise to reveal the systemic underpinnings of an industrial society. It would show up the hidden subsidies of a society based on fossil fuels, and draw attention to the consequences: global climate change, disease and death due to poor air quality, economic instability and international conflict. Environmental damage, family and community break-up, illness and accidents would be judged as the failures that they are, rather than boosting GDP.

You are an active proponent of �localisation�. What does this mean?

Fundamentally, localisation is about shortening the distance between producers and consumers, wherever possible bringing the economy back to a human scale. It is about restoring democracy and empowering people. It is about meeting everybody�s needs without compromising the earth�s ability to sustain life. It is about honouring diversity, both biological and cultural. It is about reconnecting with each other and with nature to build a healthier world.

Why is there so much emphasis on local food in the localisation discourse?

The negative impact of globalisation is perhaps nowhere more obvious than in the food economy. Food is reduced to a commodity, farming is becoming ever more specialised, capital-intensive and technology-based, and food marketing ever more uniform and artificial.

These trends are proving disastrous for consumers, farmers, local economies and the environment. Since food is something that everyone, everywhere, needs everyday, even small changes in the way it is produced, marketed and distributed can make a significant difference.

Local food is, simply, food produced for local and regional consumption. For that reason, �food miles� are relatively small, which greatly reduces fossil fuel use and pollution.

There are other environmental benefits as well. While global markets demand monocultural production � which systematically eliminates all but the cash crop from the land � local markets give farmers an incentive to diversify, which creates many niches on the farm for wild plant and animal species.

Local food systems have economic benefits too, since most of the money spent on food goes to the farmer, not corporate middlemen. Small diversified farms can help re-invigorate entire rural economies, since they employ far more people per acre than large monocultures.

Food security worldwide would increase if people depended more on local foods. Instead of being concentrated in a handful of corporations, control over food would be dispersed and decentralised. If developing countries were encouraged to use their labour and their best agricultural land for local needs rather than growing luxury crops for Northern markets, the rate of endemic hunger could be eliminated.

What are some of the other urgent shifts that we need to make today, if we are not to be overwhelmed by the globalisation juggernaut?

To shift from a globalising path to a localising one, we will need to take steps on several levels. Already, there are many individuals and organisations that are working around the world to make changes at the grassroots level. Yet these efforts must be accompanied by policy changes at the national and international level.

Phasing out multi-billion-dollar investments while offering real support for locally-available renewable energy supplies would result in lower pollution levels, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and less dependence on dwindling petroleum supplies and dangerous nuclear technologies.

In the South, large-scale energy plants are systematically geared towards the needs of urban areas and export-oriented production, thus promoting both urbanisation and economic globalisation.

We also need to take a look at national and international regulations that consistently favour large-scale, globally-oriented businesses at the expense of smaller, more localised enterprises. �Free trade� policies are leading to greater power and freedom for corporations, while leaving national and local economies ever more vulnerable and constrained.

Currently, Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is woefully inadequate as a measure of societal well-being. It is simply a gross measure of market activity, of money changing hands.

Increased expenditure on cancer, crime, car accidents and oil spills all lead to rising GDP, but any reasonable assessment would count these as symptoms of societal ill-health rather than well-being.

How can indigenous communities (like the Ladakhis) protect themselves and their cultures from the onslaught they face in the name of �development� or �modernisation�?

The most important defence is accurate information. Development propaganda and glamorised images of life in the West in media and advertising are overwhelmingly persuasive � they are designed to be.

In the West, we are equally susceptible and a whole range of social and psychological problems can be traced back to these insidious forces of globalisation.

The global economy has built a monoculture of ideas and consumer goods and is foisting them on people in every corner of the world. Information about the long-term effects of everything from powdered milk for babies to a dependence on fossil fuels tends not to reach the least developed areas of the world.

These seductive images in the media and advertising are not accompanied by warnings about toxic waste, the erosion of farmlands, acid rain, or global warming.

They do not hear that people who have been crowded into large urban centres, starved of real community and contact with nature, are beginning to question the assumptions behind �progress�.

They do not hear about the social and environmental side-effects of the automobile, and the fact that many who are dependent on them would rather use trains or bicycles, or walk.

It is not publicised that a growing number of consumers in the industrialised world are willing to pay more for unprocessed food free from chemical residues, and that even some governments are beginning to encourage farmers to move away from a reliance on chemicals, towards organic methods.

What�s the role of tradition and cultural assertion in all this? Most educated people, even within these communities, see it as backward and that they need to �move on�.

There is a middle ground, so often overlooked in popular culture, between �staying in the past� and embracing globalisation to the total annihilation of the local culture.

Development can be approached in a way that is sensitive to the local culture and adapted to the needs of people and to the environment.

How have the Ladakhis, especially the youth, received your views?

In recent years there has been a noticeable shift in attitude amongst the Ladakhis. There is a much greater awareness of the importance of maintaining the traditional culture than when we first began working in the region. Membership of the Women�s Alliance of Ladakh increases each year and other similar organisations are growing in size and influence.

Even the local government has been more amenable to cooperating with us � we are now collaborating on a project to strengthen local agricultural diversity with the agriculture department. The youth remain the most susceptible to pressures of the modern economy and the siren song of the West. Yet, there are promising signs that attitudes are also changing amongst young people.

You are a big inspiration to many. I am curious to know who and what your inspirations are? And also what drives you to do what you do?

The following have been a great source of inspiration to me: the book Small is Beautiful by E.F. Schumacher, Vandana Shiva in India, Wangari Mattai in Kenya, Arundhati Roy in India and Richard Douthwaite in Ireland. Perhaps, most importantly, countless individuals in both the North and South who have the courage to question the values of the dominant culture.

My work is motivated by great concern for the enormous environmental problems and social breakdown that we will all face if we don�t wake up to the need for fundamental change in economic policy.

When you look ahead, what gives you hope?

In these difficult times, the greatest sign of hope is that more and more people are becoming aware of the root causes of our social and ecological crises. Despite the opposite trend among our political leaders, there has been a shift towards more holistic ways of thinking: a growing recognition that social, environmental and economic issues are inextricably intertwined.

Increasing numbers of people understand that human health and the health of the planet are one and the same thing, and that the same policies that destroy jobs are also destroying the environment.

If you look close to the ground, �beneath the radar� of the mainstream media, you will find many inspiring efforts to heal the planet, to heal society. Each year I have the privilege of meeting and collaborating with people from all over the world.

It gives me great hope to see that in spite of what seem like overwhelming odds, people continue to work to re-weave the local, the small-scale, the intimate, the natural � doing what they can to make the world a better place. This coming together of a love and respect for nature along with the rebuilding of community is what we mean by �localisation�.

To read the full interview, please click the source below.

Source: Infochange

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