Article by Coco Marcus

As a child, I remember standing in the village my Nani (Grandma) grew up in located in Gujarat, India asking myself why them? Why don’t they have access to basic resources like water and I do? It filled me with a sense of guilt. Under a decade later I decided to take a deeper look into this. The first items which appeared were what I expected: natural calamities like droughts and floods and increased human consumption due to the rapid rise in population.  However, I then began to discover something much darker. I believe that a larger contributing factor is the expansion of corporations impacted by and impacting neoliberalism. Are these trans-national corporations (TNCs) the reason farmers, like my family in India, are struggling to make ends meet? As far back as 1908, corporations such as AT&T were working hard to give themselves a human face with ad campaigns suggesting that the organisation offered ’a new democracy of public service ownership’ (Bakan, 2005, p.19).  I find myself questioning whether TNCs are ever really benefiting their wider stakeholders or a select few.

This campaign trend from the early part of the twentieth century has continued at pace with neoliberalism becoming synonymous with altruistic democracy. By the start of the current millennium, the idea of removing barriers to trade was fully endorsed by none other than the UN secretary-general at the time – Kofi Annan – who suggested that the world should aim for ‘global markets with a human face’ (Nilsson and Fougère, 2024). This was aligned with the idea of corporations engaging in corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities. You would understandably expect that this could lead to an increase in protection for lay stakeholders.  But I believe the opposite is happening –the rise in the dominance of neoliberalism has created harsher and more vigorous working conditions for countries, especially those situated within the global south.

Who gets to make the decisions?

Since the advent of genetically-modified (GM) crops, there has been a sustained call for the introduction of ‘golden rice’ – GM rice which is vitamin-enhanced and can survive harsher climate conditions.  India recently removed regulatory obstacles to this and companies such as Monsanto (now owned by Bayer) have successfully gained control over small and medium-sized farmers, arguing that this crop was infinitely more sustainable (War on Want, 2023). This is supported by Bakan (2005) who argues that the large corporation’s primary motivation is profit maximisation over social responsibility and ethical concerns.

Economic decision making is being stripped away from the hands of farmers (Ranjan, 2018).  Instead, in the name of sustainability, large corporations are governing how farmers farm, and profiting from onward sales.  For example, farmers are required to buy batches of golden rice each year, and drones are used to provide real-time guidance to ‘induce farmers to buy more agricultural inputs (fertilisers, seeds)’.

Ranjan argues that entrepreneurial decision-making is so compromised for the farmer with low socioeconomic status, that these farmers are trapped in a system which is not benefiting them.  His research finds that poorer farmers ‘could end up inefficiently dedicating resources towards reducing social inequality through a process of social friction, which adversely affects their livelihood prospects’ (Ranjan, 2018, p. 433).

I now see that the subsistence farmers within my family community stood little chance in surviving and gaining access to core natural resources in the face of the power of the TNC.

Regulatory capture

People may argue that with enough government regulation, workers can be subsidised and protected. Surely a government would want to protect its own workers. However in countries with less wealth the government may not generate enough money through taxation. This leads the government to be more dependent on large corporations leading to regulatory capture. This term, according to Baker (2010) means that governments are swayed by particular interested parties, rather than regulating to meet the wider public interest. Often the large corporations within the industry are the most effective lobbyists here. John Lofland (1981, p.278) describes lobbying as ‘‘involv[ing] explicit efforts’’ to influence specific government decisions.

So what next?

The deregulation of farming in India under Modi in 2020 has further embedded the neoliberal agenda.  I believe that what is now needed to challenge the strength of the TNC is a mobilisation of grassroots cooperative institutions, supported by government regulation, which addresses the needs of the farming sector and the farmers themselves.

References

Bakan, J. (2005) The corporation: the pathological pursuit of profit and power. London: Constable.

Baker, A. (2010) ‘Restraining regulatory capture? Anglo-America, crisis politics and trajectories and trajectories of change in global financial governance’, International Affairs (Royal Institute of Internal Affairs 1944-), 86(3), pp. 647-63.

Lofland, J. (1981). ‘Sociologists as an interest group: Prospect and propriety’. Pacific Sociological Review, 24(3), pp.275-297.

Nilsson, E., Fougère, M. (2024) ‘Global South States’ Views on Building Partnerships with Corporations: An Agonistic Struggle in the UN and Beyond’. Journal of Business Ethics.

Ranjan, R. (2019). ‘How socio-economic and natural resource inequality impedes entrepreneurial ventures of farmers in rural India. The European Journal of Development Research, 31, pp.433-460.

The Conversation (2024). Moments of hope: how Indians keep pushing back against the hollowing out of democracy. Available at : https://theconversation.com/moments-of-hope-how-indians-keep-pushing-back-against-the-hollowing-out-of-democracy-230609

War on Want (2023). Profiting from Hunger: Popular resistance to corporate food systems. Available at: https://waronwant.org/sites/default/files/2023-02/Profiting%20from%20hunger%20PDF%20download.pdf

Related