This publication is a remarkable effort on behalf of Shirkat Gah, Women’s Resource Center. The purpose of this book is to identify and discuss critical issues pertaining to the multi-faceted development injustices and inequities in the South, and its relation to the flourishing North. This crisp and critical collection talks of concerns like economic injustices in the South, the controlling agencies and how millions in our society suffer at the hands of those who ‘legitimately’ rob them off their resources. It aims to bring to light such pending concerns of which most of the population of our part of the world is a victim. The first chapter titled “The Making of the Third World – How it all Began” explains the mechanism by which the developed world took control over the developing nations’ resources and how wealth got concentrated in a few hands. “Colonization of Agriculture” explains how the Northern colonials took over the agriculture of the South and pioneered the monoculture system. The colonizers exploited the South’s resources and labor for their own profits. The adjoining chapters highlight other burning issues like “The Takeover of the South – Trade and Bondage”, “Imitation of Nature – Settled Agriculture”, “The Creation of Dependency – High-Yield Variety Seeds”, “World Bank and IMF – Banks that Dictate Economies”, etc. One of the critiques “Not-So-Free Trade – Export-Oriented Versus People-Oriented” underlines the West’s trade objective of ever-increasing production and consumption. It stresses how in the last couple of decades the South’s self-sufficiency has been damaged and how it has become dependent on importing food from the North – a situation artificially created by the latter. “The Gene Banks and Food Security – Killing Bio-Diversity for Control” discusses at length the importance of bio-diversity to healthy crops and how the multinationals have seized control over small enterprises responsible for plant breeding, commercial seed production and seed patenting – ventures with sizable profits and tools for making the South dependent on seeds as well as food. Other bravely written accounts include “Militarization of World Society”, “The Arms Industry”, “The Piracy of the First World”, “Where We Stand Today” etc.
The book is simple, comprehensible and reader friendly, especially for all those who are new to the concepts of strategically unequal and violatory development.
To order a copy or obtain more information, email Najma Sadeque at shirkat@cyber.net.pk or sgah@lhr.comsats.net.pk
