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 co-
incidental 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.