Farhad Mazhar is managing director of the Dhaka-based research organization UBINIG, or Policy Research for Development Alternatives. The organization works with communities to strengthen popular struggle for social change and serve the research and informational needs of grassroots movements of women, farmers and workers. UBINIG campaigns on issues of popular concern in Bangladesh, including structural adjustment policies, agrarian and ecological issues including land reform and food security, export- oriented industrialization, marginalization of women and the poor majority in the rural areas, population control, health service delivery structure, trade union issues and issues of national health and drug policies. UBINIG publishes Chinta, a Bengali journal on social change and ecological issues and runs the only feminist bookstore in Bangladesh, Narigrantha Prabartana.
Multinational Monitor: Why has UBINIG focused its attention on structural adjustment?
Farhad Mazhar: If you work on health issues, you see that the degradation of health conditions is linked with conditional lending. If you work on the environment, you see the destruction of the environment is linked with conditional lending. This focus on how multilateral lending agencies affect the development of countries like Bangladesh represents the logical outcome of our analysis, a logical means of understanding why our society is becoming increasingly impoverished, why our balance of payments is getting so much worse, why our environment is being degraded. It is a way of linking and analyzing all the different issues .
We see structural adjustment policies as representative of how corporate interests operate. When we criticized the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) with regard to some of their policies in the past, a lot of the issues were not very clear to us - we did not understand why, for example, these agencies wanted to impose certain conditions on our countries. But the reason became increasingly apparent.
Through our community development work we realized how our grassroots programs are being frustrated by global forces beyond our immediate control. We realized that all local efforts for social change or even minimal reforms are futile unless we understand the interconnection of the global and the local processes.
Policies do not originate from the heads of consultants or from the clerical desks and "development" theorists of the World Bank and IMF. They are formed in the reality of global accumulation and expansion of capital of which multinational or corporate capital is the dominant form. The corporate environment shapes ideologies and casts theories and thus determines policies.
Once structural adjustment policies are seen in the context of the dynamics of the money, trade and production structures of the global economy, the reason behind imposing structural adjustment programs becomes increasingly apparent: to represent and promote corporate interests.
MM: In what ways do you consider World Bank and IMF policies to be an expression of international corporate interests?
Mazhar: The lending agencies push structural adjustment as a means of developing the "free market" in Third World countries. But structural adjustment is actually destroying these countries' national markets, meaning the small producing markets with potential to grow and expand. Before the World Bank and IMF had a presence there, the market was only beginning to evolve in many Third World countries. The nascent entrepreneurs needed time and experience to adjust to the new social reality emerging from the transformation of the rural areas and the disintegration of feudal and semi-feudal social structures. What they needed was a new political state, a democratic culture in which to realize their aspirations.
The imposition of structural adjustment policies formulated outside the political environment and the struggle of different classes within the country has reinforced the old military-bureaucratic state, a colonial legacy. It was inevitable because implementation of such policies requires an anti-people state. It must destroy the emerging national market and the aspiration of small national entrepreneurs. Structural adjustment programs are not designed to benefit the "free market," but rather to destroy the national capacities of Third World countries. They destroy not only our economic capacity, but also our social, political and cultural capacity to participate in the world market with strength and gain a favorable position within the international division of labor.
Lending conditionalities - such as privatization and currency devaluation - are now destroying the capacity of the national industries, meaning small producers and small businesses, by creating favorable conditions for large industries, multinational companies and large-scale financiers. In contrast to the nascent entrepreneurs who were catering to the needs of the local market, the large industries, multinationals and big financiers are linked to the export market. Their operations are global.
Thus the logic of the export market, that is, the world market, now determines the internal development of our economy. Locally based development has been eroding. Possibilities for internal development have been stagnating and consequently the small producers and the local market that satisfies local needs are being wiped away. It is a new form of colonialism.
MM: Can you describe the ways in which this new colonialism is manifested in Bangladesh?
Mazhar: In the past, it was easy to see how colonialism functioned. The British came to our country and harvested our raw materials. They set up the colonial state for the expansion of their industrial base, to safeguard and expand the market for the commodities produced by their industries as well as to ensure the raw materials for those industries. They had to do these things coercively, using force and violence.
Now you see coercion being imposed in the name of structural adjustment. The lending agencies tell the state to devalue its currency, meanwhile dictating the exchange rate and prohibiting the country from developing the rate determined by the market. This is a form of violence.
The agencies say that debt situations and export performance will not improve unless the government devalues the currency or privatizes industries; they demand that the government stop taxing its imports and generate internal resources by taxing the people. You can see the connection between the old colonial force and this new colonialism. Only the form has changed with regard to coercion and violence.
The lending agencies talk about the market, but they are not really allowing the market to take command. They are not allowing Bangladesh or other Third World countries to compete in the world market on their own terms. They are forcing Third World governments to accept a position within the international distribution of labor which is disadvantageous for them and their people. Bangladesh has absolutely no choice - we have to take money from the agencies to pay back the balance of payment deficits.
The World Bank and the IMF are taking advantage of Bangladesh and other Third World countries by creating this balance of payment deficit. Many of the economic policies and much of the tied aid develops out of this form of coercion. They are not allowing us a fair chance to compete on the market, because their real purpose is to destroy the national market.
Who benefits from this? Multinational companies benefit. The big financial institutions benefit. If we reduce our exchange rate, then obviously those who are trading at the international level are the ones to benefit. Not the people of Bangladesh. The policies to boost exports favor only those who can operate globally. The adjustment policy is mainly centered around the circulation of money and commodities, not at the level of production or production structures. The policies do not aim to create new conditions of production favorable to our countries. Rather they thwart any new breakthrough made by any Third World country. The precise purpose is to retain and reinforce the colonial domination of the North over the South by controlling the flow of commodities and money.
Over the years, many of my colleagues working on the issues of development have argued that a world economic order exists and that the capitalist system is to blame for placing countries like Bangladesh at a severe disadvantage. But now we feel that this analysis does not go far enough. It is not enough to say that capitalism is at the root of destructive development. We now see that the system being used is not a capitalism of the free market. It is a capitalism of corporate violence, facilitated by the state. It is a capitalism of coercion.
MM: What are the main corporate operations in Bangladesh?
Mazhar: The multinational pharmaceutical companies have a huge presence in Bangladesh. We consider Ciba Geigy to be a criminal presence in our country, and its power is expanding. Pfizer is also very active.
These companies are not bringing capital into Bangladesh. World Bank officials say that the purpose of opening markets is for multinational corporations to bring capital into your country. But in fact, these companies are bringing in only a very small amount of capital while taking loans from the national bank. So the money that Bangladeshi people are depositing in the bank has been used to the service of multinational companies. And in turn, what these companies are doing to the Bangladeshi people in terms of health effects is criminal.
Ciba Geigy has recently been promoting one of its psychotropic drugs, Ludiomil, a tetracyclic antidepressant. The company has been advertising the drug on television as if antidepressants could be bought just like chocolate from the drugstore. It advertised the drug in a tricky way, without mentioning the name of the product. The Ludiomil commercial depicted a depressed yet very beautiful adolescent girl; then showed a white dove that is unable to fly because its wings are so heavy. A voice-over then announced, "if you suffer like this day after day, see a doctor." The doctors had already been told to prescribe Ludiomil when patients sought advice after seeing the ad. The patients are mainly adolescent, an age group that easily becomes addicted to drugs. Retail pharmacies were also told to provide the drug if asked about the ad.
In Bangladesh we do not have control or regulation of drugs sales through U.S.- type retail pharmacies. People can buy drugs without a prescription. So people are buying Ludiomil just by going to their drugstores and asking for it.
The advertising was a carefully orchestrated promotion to drug the youth of Bangladesh by exploiting innocence and emotion. Ciba Geigy has been unethical not only in its promotion of the psychotropic drug but also in the way that it medicalizes the normal worries and tensions of life.
Development strategies and lending policies create tremendous insecurity and have forced a bleak future upon the younger generation. Ciba Geigy is making money by exploiting that tension and insecurity. In this case you can see that multilateral development policies are indirectly creating new markets for multinationals like Ciba Geigy in ways we could not have previously imagined.
Ciba Geigy is also promoting pesticides without informing people of the possible consequences to health and the environment. The farmers do not know how to use them. There are severe health consequences for many of these pesticides.
These companies are very secretive and resist giving out any information. UBINIG has tried to get information from Ciba Geigy about its products, for example, the side effects of the drugs, what kind of safety information was being given to farmers. The company has refused to cooperate with us.
MM: How are your efforts to promote beneficial, community-based development influenced by corporations and by the World Bank and the IMF?
Mazhar: The issue of how to industrialize our country is very important to us. However, "industrialization" has a completely different meaning to us than the World Bank's definition. The historical model developed in the industrialized North and the ideology of "growth" in quantitative terms is not acceptable. Nevertheless, the present global system generates and promotes this model in many different forms. Ecologically, this model is not sustainable, and sooner or later will have to be dismantled. This is a global task.
We do not have a formula to offer except to build up solidarity and collaboration between popular people's movements throughout the world as quickly and as earnestly as possible.
Critical rejection of the existing processes of global economics and politics does not mean that we will have to regress to the past and glorify an existence narrowly defined by national or local boundaries. We are not opposed to exports, or to the socialization of life at the international level. Yet we see very clearly that export-oriented industrialization is not the answer for our country.
We definitely do not want international corporate interests planning our economy. At the same time, we can see that the evolution of industry in Bangladesh has some positive effects on a very disadvantaged sector of the population: women. So we had to find an alternative model to export-oriented industrialization.
MM: What role has the home-based weaving sector played in providing employment and contributing to an alternative export market in Bangladesh?
Mazhar: The weaving sector has great potential to produce enough for the whole market and thus spark a tremendous amount of employment in rural areas, which would mean that women who are now migrating to the cities to get jobs could get jobs back in the villages. In fact, we found that with some development of technologies and some reorganization of weaving production, home-based Bangladeshi weavers can actually compete with the big textile factories now being promoted by the government, the World Bank and the IMF.
That is the conflict. The government and the multilateral lending agencies do not want weavers to have five to 20 looms and run a small factory, satisfying the need of the community while producing a small surplus for export to an external market. They do not want these types of producers to develop. They prefer to destroy them and to create a new class of people in our country who are given money to set up textile companies and linked with international traders and retailers.
Most of the products from the home-based weaving sector are better in quality than anything the textile industry can produce. The weavers produce certain artisan products against which factory-made products can never compete. The government and the World Bank claim that the big textile mills are more efficient than the small producer, but we question their definition of efficiency. There are two types of small-scale weavers - the very small type has one or two looms and the other type has maybe five to 20 looms.
We support both. Neither one is using fossil fuel - a fact which has tremendous ecological implications. We would like to develop an industrialization that is different from that of the West which is based on fossil fuel use and large industries. We feel that Bangladesh can satisfy its own need for textiles and also compete in the world market, in a way that does not depend on polluting the air.
So we are trying to create employment and environmentally sustainable industrialization, while studying how structural adjustment and other World Bank/IMF policies are actually a constraint to the development of the smaller markets in our country.
We are not claiming that home-based or small factories are the only forms we envision for the future. We are only saying that this is the foundation upon which we may build up slowly and gradually. We do not claim that small production is the ideal form of production for all phases of our society. We are for socialization of life and labor and therefore for expanded production to satisfy our varied social needs.
MM: Could you elaborate on the forces that are holding back the development of the home-based weaving sector? Why isn't it currently competing successfully with the larger textile mills?
Mazhar: The handloom sector is capable of competing with large-scale textiles and of surviving through fierce competition. The point is that the international market is situated against it, as is government policy dictated by multilateral agencies. When the government devalues the currency, for example, the weavers have to buy their yarn at a higher price. Then they have to export the product at lower prices. Our government should have played a much stronger role in securing a place for them in the international market.
On the one hand the government is talking about the market; on the other hand it is closing the market for us through multilateral arrangements. For example, the government imposed a quota on how much countries like Bangladesh could export to North America and Europe. This is simply hypocrisy. If they expect us to compete in the international market, then we need access to the market in the North.
MM: How does UBINIG address ecological issues in Bangladesh?
Mazhar: We began by addressing our deep concern about how the multilateral agencies impose detrimental economic conditions on our countries; by asking ourselves, is there any way out of it, and what should be our political strategy for fighting it? The classical strategy was to separate economic and social activities from political activities. The strategy of the left was to form a political party or to create a movement against the government, the World Bank and the IMF.
But that is not enough. We have to reconstitute our community. We have to reorganize our production system. We have to introduce a new relation to production at the community level while political struggle is continued. We avoid mechanical separation between the political and economic sphere. We also do not separate ecology or the natural basis of life from economic activities. Similarly one can not separate culture from nature or nature from culture. Indeed, economy, ecology and culture are interrelated. This is the key principle of how we address ecological issues.
When we started working on the ecological issue, we found that all these issues came together at the entry point. We tell farmers not to use pesticides because they harm the environment, which reduces productivity. You cannot produce as much fish in rice fields that have been sprayed as you could produce in a field without pesticides. Many of the species are extinct because of pesticide use; the land becomes very degraded. The farmers understand these issues very quickly.
On the other hand, adopting more traditional farming methods gives them the opportunity to develop self-reproducing farms rather than to depend on the market. They use the green manure from their own farmland which frees them from the pesticide market. We organize the farmers, helping them exchange products among themselves to make sure there is some kind of subsistence food in their homes, so they are not affected by every fluctuation of the market. We organize around an agricultural/ecological/political strategy, not just an economic strategy.
We oppose those environmentalists who claim that to conserve certain species you have to exclude people from land use, or evict people from certain areas. They see the people as the enemy of the environment. We think that is a very racist and anti-people, especially anti-poor people, view. We want to demonstrate that historically, people have conserved nature by using it. People did not destroy forests. People did not destroy the agricultural lands. People did not destroy plant species.
Modern agricultural technology has been the cause of that destruction. Timber companies have destroyed the forests. These same companies now want to blame poor people for environmental destruction. What we are trying to do in our ecological agriculture program is to encourage farmers to take care of certain endangered species while engaging in agriculture.
MM: What are some examples of the traditional farming methods encouraged by UBINIG?
Mazhar: For example, people kill and export the monitor lizard, which is one of Bangladesh's endangered species. In Germany and other countries you see purses made of Bangladeshi monitor lizard. This situation relates to World Bank policies which encourage development through a non-traditional export market. We are telling farmers that the monitor lizard is a very important animal within the ecosystem because it eats snakes, rats and rodents and keeps their numbers down. When you discuss their role in this agro-ecosystem with the farmers, they understand immediately. And now they do not allow anyone to kill the monitor lizards.
Another example is the owl, which feeds on bats and rodents. We tell the farmers to erect pillars out of dead trees on their farmland so the owls can build their nests there. The farmers realize the importance of maintaining different species of animals.
We also try to educate people about medicinal plants. Our ecological program works to integrate medicinal plants into primary health care. We tell the people about the different plants - which are effective for cuts or fever, for example - and we tell them to use the plants directly from the field.
We have also developed a kind of inventory of what plants grow in the area so our primary health care clinic workers can use them along with other medicines. We are integrating medicinal plants into our ecological scenario and then working to develop a primary health care delivery structure which is dependent on these plants. This project, while providing health care directly to people, also works as a political strategy against corporate interests.
We call it a survival strategy. We have to convince people in the North that, unless we change the world order, it is not possible for people in Third World countries to survive.
MM: What is the relationship of the IMF and World Bank to your efforts to promote ecological agriculture?
Mazhar: The IMF and the World Bank are opposed to the institutional changes that we support, such as land reform. They say the market will take care of it. So they do not allow the people to determine what type of land reform will be implemented.
If we didn't have anyone dictating policy to us in such a coercive manner, the Bangladeshi people would have demanded some kind of institutional reform by now. They would have struggled, they would have challenged the land tenure system and limits on access to credit and capital.
When you turn to the land question, you see that the lending agencies are promoting increased productivity in agriculture through modern agriculture and through the market. That means that pesticides and fertilizers will be sold in the open market. That is the real agenda of the corporate interests that produce and sell pesticides.
This country is not being given a chance to improve the performance of agriculture through land reform, through reform of the land administration, or through other institutional changes that involve giving the rural poor credit. In fact, the government leaves it to the non-governmental organizations to give credit to the rural poor.
For us, ecological agriculture is not separate from industry. The separation or delinking of agriculture and industry is the key feature of underdevelopment and ecological destruction. Development is set in the industrial sector.
We propose the reverse. Agriculture is a way of life for us, not a sector
of production. Industrial activities, such as weaving, are an integral
part of agriculture. That is the difference between our development model
and the dominant development model.