Mahatma Gandhi’s
spinning wheel and Gandhi’s ghani (the indigenous cold press oil mill) are both
symbols of swadeshi as economic freedom and economic democracy. Gandhi inspired
everyone in India to start spinning their own cloth in order to break free from
the imperial control over the textile industry, which enslaved our farmers to
grow cotton and indigo for the mills of Lancashire and Manchester, and dumped
industrial clothing on India, destroying the livelihoods of our spinners and
weavers. The spinning wheel and khadi became our symbols of freedom. Gandhi
promoted the ghani to create employment for the farmer and processor and to
produce healthy, safe and nutritious edible oils for society. What the spinning
wheel is to “kapda”, the economy of clothing and textiles, the “ghani” is to
“roti”, the economy of food.
Fresh, local and
artisanally processed food without chemical additives and industrial processing
is recognised as the healthiest alternative. That is why until the 1990s, food
processing was reserved for the small-scale and cottage industry sector. The
World Trade Organisation rules changed our food and agriculture systems
dramatically. Today we are living in food imperialism. We have become a sick
nation due to the rapid spread of industrially processed food and junk food,
which are destroying our healthy food traditions. The oils most Indians are
consuming today, as “vegetable oil” are industrially proc-essed imported palm
oil and genetically modified organism (GMO) soya oil. Unlike sesame, mustard,
groundnut, linseed and coconut these are not true oils because they cannot be
processed in ghanis or through cold press.
The oil from soya is
extracted at high temperatures in hexane solvent extraction plants. Hexane (CH3
(CH2) CH3) is a crude oil-based organic solvent with many industrial uses and
is a neurotoxicant. No tests or labelling inform citizens about this process
and the inclusion of GMOs in our food chain. In industrial refined oils, 30 per
cent “blending” in “refined” oils is legal. The adulterants are labelled as
“vegetable oils”, without letting consumers know that vegetable oils include
oil from the toxic GMO cotton seed. GMO foods are not allowed in India, yet Bt
cotton seed oil is being freely blended in industrial “edible” oils. The
industrial soya lobby has consistently attempted to monopolise the Indian
edible oil market. In 1998, it manipulated a ban on our ghanis and got a law
passed that each tiny ghani had to have labs — each costing lakhs — and hire
two chemists. Women working with Navdanya organised Mahila Anna Swaraj and
undertook the “Sarson Satyagraha” to bring our cold press mustard oil back.
Instead of
regulating those selling unhealthy, unsafe oils without proper labelling, the
government is trying to close down Gandhi’s ghani — producing pure oil in front
of the eyes of consumers — because it does not have a lab attached to it. It is
industrial food with chemicals which needs to be tested in labs, not just for
artificial ingredients, but also for the impact of chemical additives and
industrial processing on our health. The new food safety rules are arbitrary because
they do not differentiate between artisanal, chemical-free processing of oil
from the industrial chemical crude oil based processes. Imposing chemical labs
on a ghani ensures that safe foods made in the artisanal sector are shut down
to create a monopoly by corporations for unhealthy and unsafe foods.
The pure virgin oil
from the ghani is sold at Gandhi’s Sewagram Ashram and people come from far and
wide to buy it. Food safety in the artisanal sector needs participatory systems
where citizens who produce the oil and those who consume it set the standards
of quality and reliability. Just as there are participatory guarantee systems
for organic production, we need participatory systems for artisanal food
processing. Imported and adulterated edible oils are dominating the market
because they are subsidised and their ecological and health costs are hidden
and externalised. Even the price of these artificial oils is made cheap through
subsidies. The import duty of edible oil was reduced from 300 per cent to zero,
which is an indirect subsidy. In addition, the government gives Rs 15 per litre
to soya oil. This is over and above the subsidy given by the US government.
The expansion of
palm oil plantations is also the primary reason for the destruction of rainforests
of Indonesia. The expansion of GMO soya plantations is a major reason for the
destruction of the Amazon rainforests and Cerrado, in Brazil and Argentina.
This counters the big myth that industrial agriculture is contributing to
protection of wilderness and biodiversity. Forest destruction contributes to 18
per cent of greenhouse gases while 85 per cent of rainforest destruction is for
expansion of industrial agriculture, primarily GMO soya and palm oil.
Oil palm cultivation
in Indonesia accounted for an estimated two to nine per cent of all tropical
land use emissions, from 2000 to 2010. Indonesia was the world’s
seventh-largest polluter in 2009, and deforestation accounted for about 30 per
cent of these emissions, ranking second (behind Brazil) in pollution due to
deforestation. This threatens wildlife and biodiversity. It also adversely
affects people, the global climate, water reserves and soil quality. Soya
cultivation in India is destroying soil fertility and destroying farmers in
Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra.
Gandhi’s ghani is a
symbol of our freedom in times to a new corporate imperialism trying to control
what we grow on our farms, how we process our food and what we eat. While the
current food safety laws originate in the Sanitary and Phytosanitary Agreement
of WTO, with the Doha Round of WTO as good as dead after the recently concluded
Nairobi Ministerial, the toxic food industry is getting ready to impose the
Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal which will fully dismantle our food safety
systems. We must act now to reclaim our right to grow and eat safe, healthy,
indigenous foods. On January 30, Gandhi’s martyrdom day, I will join Gandhians
in Sewagram, in defence of Gandhi’s ghani as a symbol of the swadeshi food.
Anna Swaraj (Food Freedom) is the birthright of every Indian.
The writer is the
executive director of the Navdanya Trust
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