The Pauperisation of Senegal.

(Still reading the book, "Eat your Heart Out", by Felicity Lawrence. Among other things, she writes that globalisation with a skewed free market, where the rich countries subsidise their agricultural industry, exploits the poverty of the poorer countries. She cites the case of Senegal. Much of this post is indebted to her insights.

I am putting up this post, mainly in view of the comment made by Nasaki:

"The government is bent to safeguard the 50000 odd workers of satyam, who might loose work at satyam because of the fraud in accounts committed willingly by their management.

Here in the textile industry the workers are to loose their jobs because of the government's failure to stop the cotton exports and its failure to alter the dollar rate in time to compete China.

Now our PM and co. discuss on its grave about treatments and medicines."

We could go the same way as Senegal if we are not alert to the dangerous side-effects of free market economy and globalisation. Totalitarian countries like China and corporate-controlled States like USA make their own rules, and less privileged nations like India could end up as the losers in this game if we are not careful).

The point that Felicity Lawrence makes is that poorer countries are forced to open up their agricultural market as the price of participating in the global market. Once this is done, the heavily subsidised agri-industries of the rich countries move in and drive local agriculture and the wider economy down to ground.

Senegal, which was once a colony of France, was where millions of  West African people were shipped to the Caribbean islands and the Americas as slaves. 

During the period when Senegal was ruled by the French, it had exported groundnuts for oil. After obtaining freedom in 1960, Senegal prospered to some extent- its government subsidised seeds and fertilisers, maintained the prices, improved health and education and Senegal was a democratic nation.

The 1970s were marked by severe drought. Falling agricultural and commodity prices, coupled with the oil shock of 1973 led to the economic downturn and debt.

The 70s were a period of global recession, and there was no flow of credit. Senegal could not pay back its external debt.

Senegal seeks loan from IMF and World Bank: Senegal gets money, but it has to subject itself to the conditions of the 1981 Berg report:- development must be based on free trade, using the private sector, but not that of the 'inefficient' state interventions.

Senegal corrects its protectionist policies, opens itself to imports. The government stops its subsidy of food  and support to farmers. But during the same period, this was not the case with the rich countries. They were pampered with subsidy and support.

Cheap subsidised goods from US and EU flood into Senegal. Local producers could not compete with the transnational corporates, local agriculture becomes unremunerative and its survival undermined. Soon, Senegal becomes dependent on imports for its food needs. Massive job losses in the agricultural and industrial sectors drive its population to fishing. More than seventy percent of the Senegalese are rural- they live by farming and fishing. when they could not farm, they moved into fishing. By the year 2000, food production per capita has fallen so low, it meets only half its food needs. (The impact of these policies is discussed by dembe moussa dembele here, at "Debt and Destruction in Senegal") 

The Example of Tomato: Until 1994, tomato had been protected with tariffs and quotas to discourage imports. After liberalisation, EU exported its triple concentrate tomato paste at prices well below that of local produce. About Eighty percent of this had been subsidised, even much later the support given to EU farmers in processors was Forty-three percent! In 1997, Senegal produced just a quarter o;f what it had produced before. In just four years, Senegal had slipped from self sufficiency to dependency!

The Example of Poultry: After liberalisation, in the five years prior to 2003, seven-eighths of the chicken farms went out of business.

Ruined farmers take to fishing. Fishery is earmarked for export, to bring in the necessary foreign currency and drive growth. Now fishery stock is under threat. EU, China and Japan buy licenses for its trawlers to fish in the Senegalese waters. The government earns short term revenue, but due to unconscionable fishing practices, fishery stocks become unsustainable.

The industrial fisheries drive the poor and indigent local fishermen out of work.

People have no job, and fishermen get no fish. So fishermen take people elsewhere, now the smuggling of people is how they earn their livelihood. 

A massive demographic shift is underway, from Africa to Europe and westward, and it poses its threats: see Which World by Allen L. Hammond

The poor illegal immigrants from Africa land up in Spanish Canary Islands; and then they move to Italy, where they work in the heavily subsidised farms, where they provide cheap labour for EU to produce its cost-effective crops (including tomato), which had originally driven them out of their home!

So, these unfortunate Africans, who had been once been forcibly taken to the western world as slaves, now voluntarily migrate to work in slave-like conditions.

This is the irony of globalisation and free-market economy, where the powerful countries make the laws. 

• This is not the end of story. Felicity Lawrence writes about how this agri-industry of the developed world which impoverishes third world nations, provides its own people with impoverished food, high on salt, sugar and fats, carcinogenic, inducing obesity, and gifting them with what are called lifestyle diseases.Like I found at Kartikey Sehgal's delightful post at The Young India: