One, posted earlier today, is titled "Greening India's deserts with olives" (http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/poverty-matters/2011/apr/04/india-deserts-olives-cultivation) and describes a pilot project to import saplings and grow olives in the north-western Indian state of Rajasthan, using technology developed in Israel.
On the face of it, there are only advantages to the scheme. The poor are introduced to a new cash crop with export implications, appropriate technology transfers take place, bare land is cultivated and the Indians have easier access to olive oil, helping against heart disease prevalence rates.
The other, five days old, is called "There's more to development than ending absolute poverty" (http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/poverty-matters/2011/mar/31/ending-extreme-poverty) and suggests that living standards across the board and across the north-south divide are steadily improving and absolute poverty is on its way out. The author, Mr. Glennie, appears to make the point that the eradication of absolute poverty, in so far as it is the dwindling to zero of a number, is not wholly a good thing and deserves close inspection as to the means.
Some extracts from his post bear this out:
"But there is more to poverty than absolute poverty. The hundreds of millions of people working in sweatshops are not living in absolute poverty.
Women and minorities who suffer persecution are not poor in an absolute sense.
Farmers who had lived in poverty, but with dignity and hope, became people living on the margins, part of someone else's plan, having lost their land, their self-reliance and culture.
Many indigenous and tribal communities will contribute to the eradication of absolute poverty by quietly being wiped out over the next few years and decades."
So development is not just about increasing GDP per-capita, but ensuring that people behind the statistic are treated with dignity, even if it means that the figures will improve at a slower rate.
Now that we've made this assertion, let's go back to the first post, the one about olives, the one that is utterly devoid of any mention of a disadvantage. The author, Ms. Patel, writes:
"The challenge will be how to modernise the traditional farming community and encourage small farmers to come together to farm and manage olives on larger, more efficient plots."
How is this "challenge" going to be met? Many Indian farmers work small plots of land - this is obviously inefficient. What is the solution? Allow market forces to ensure that prices of their produce fall so low that they are forced to sell, leading to a consolidation of arable land? This shouldn't be too difficult, given that richer farmers, with bigger holdings, able to invest in modern farming technology, should be able to afford a lower selling price. On top of that, the government can cut off any existing subsidy and call in any existing loans - that ought to do the trick.
What does "come together" in this context mean? Collective ownership, like in the Soviet textbooks?
What does "encourage" mean? How does the State go about encouraging adult citizens, who might tend to be illiterate and unsophisticated, even if schooled in cynicism? Will there be lectures by local politicians? By agricultural experts accompanied by the respected, held-in-awe, bureacracy?
The way I see it, in one possible playing-out, Indian farmers will be forced - through simple and cold-blooded economics and political-scientific blackmail - to grow olives. We'll have lots of olives, the profits will help to pay for overseas technology development costs, Indians will have less heart-disease and the farmers will make more money. In return, they will have given up their independence to plant what they wish and their sense of land-ownership. They will be growing a plant they have never heard of and which has been chosen for them by outsiders. They will stop growing crops which are part of the local culture, celebrated in the local spring festival through millennia. Perhaps we no longer need all of them to be farmers - modern machines tend to save labour. Diets will change - we'll soon be able to enjoy alu-olive curry. Alu is an Indian word for potato. The Indian word for olive is olive; or will be, anyway, when Indian languages first encounter it. Later, perhaps we can persuade the Indians to bake crusty bread. And wine goes really well with bread and olives, doesn't it? Toothpicks are a natural follow-on. The winds of change and all that sort of thing.
The global economy creates value and allows more humans more leisure time - and is the way forward. But there are many possible ways, open for us to choose.
The introduction of the olive will certainly, one hopes, not be as brutal and disastrous as the indigo planting in Bengal, on the other side of India, in the nineteenth century. But surely that's not good enough, is it? Development, yes, but development and aid with open dialogue and participation.
Another possible progression of the olive story involves the local community, not just the farmers, but also their suppliers and current customers, being brought in at an early stage and probable future consequences explained to them. Really explained, with independent controls to evaluate level of comprehension. If the community then does decide to go the olive way, being an informed decision, then the olives will taste just a little better.
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