Simplified Intro Nat Sust Dev Plan Draft 1 Complete

8/3/2019 Simplified Intro Nat Sust Dev Plan Draft 1 Complete

1/14

Green Party of IndiaManifesto and National Sustainable Development Plan

Introduction

1. The Green Party of India is an umbrella political party to unite those whose livelihoods are being destroyed by enclosure.

All of us except the financial elite are dispossessed from the commons. And yet equitable use of common

land and common property resources underpins our only feasible development path.

All Indians however can jointly mobilise on this agenda which is not only the agenda of the poor but the a

genda of the country as a whole. This is the politics of the Green Party of India.

The majority constituency of the disposessed does not, almost by defintition, have the considerable resour

ces required to launch the Green Party of India on their own. They need to have a united form of political

representation, to assemble a voting majority to displace the current members of Parliament whose interes

ts diverge so greatly from theirs.

We believe

2. That we need to reclaim our social commons in order to make India endure. It is therefore clear that th

e interests of the poor, and therefore the interests of the Green Party of India, are ultimately the interests o

f humanity as a whole, since our collective survival requires that we protect the commons upon which the

poor depend.

3. That living on this planet is the central fact of politics. In order to have a future, we must recognise thatwe live within a finite global commons, and that our existence is within the metabolic exchange with our

shared environment.

4. That equity is the correct basis of government. We must answer the question Who is India? We believ

e that India is the relationship between its people and their environment, their livelihood. So we believe th

at people who extract from this relationship, from India, should pay back to support the life of the people i

n their relation to their environment, with the perspective that these relationships with the environment sh

ould support life on the scale of decades, centuries and millennia, rather then merely to the next financial

quarter or the next election.

5. That the only substantive method of redressing the imbalances of accellerating enclosure and disposessi

on is to found the political economy on substantive equity rights to land and the environment. Dispossessi

on without agreement and compensation should become a marginal component of the political economy.

6. That only in this way can the usage of natural resources become optimised towards the general benefit,

and unnecessary and now life-threatening over-consumption by economic elites reduced or eliminated.


2/14

7. That an equitable principle of access to the universe of resources should be coined to join environmenta

l concerns with those of human justice, The Justice of the Commons.

8. That a political economy founded in The Justice of the Commons, an Environmentalism of the Poor, is t

he only viable basis for modernisation. A Nation develops in the long-term through the increasing capabili

ties of its people. A natural resource intensive model undercuts this in two main ways: Firstly it directs investment away from people and towards extraction, and secondly that extraction undermines the livelihood

s of the people and thus their capacity to develop.

9. That it is impossible for the current imbalanced development model to bring all out of poverty within th

e constraints of the planetary resource base. The current development model of the Indian Nation State m

akes natural resource constraints multiply whilst inequality increases. Therefore an environmentalism of t

he poor is not a return to the past, but the only viable basis for the future.

10. That a positive set of equity and ecological rights chalk out the best pathway to building Indias univer

sal framework of environmental justice, necessary to complete the work of the constitution.

11. That it is not enough to merely manage resources on behalf of the people, rather democracy requires t

hat the people are engaged in the process of managing resources. For this reason we believe a level of loc

al resource autonomy is crucial to giving local government, particularly at the Panchayat level, substantiv

e powers.

12. That the greatest obstructions to progress, in both the Indian and global setting, are related to the over-

extraction of value by rent seekers, via enclosure, from both the productive economic commons (labour) a

nd the environment. Therefore government should penalise this extraction and rent-seeking rather than in

vestment into the social commons, which should be encouraged, through a harmonised framework of taxa

tion, public spending and financial regulation.

13. That this simple idea of a just allocation of value derived from the commons, and the prevention or re

dressing of rent-seeking activities through enclosure lays the foundation for a new monetary, taxation and

industrial policy model. This model can accommodate private ownership, framed within a model of taxati

on compensating for the scarcity created by enclosure, thus encouraging the productive use of enclosed re

sources as opposed to rent-seeking. This is a model actually able to provide the correct incentives and inv

estment patterns to provide welfare and employment to the general population from the current resource b

ase, in stark contrast to the current model.

14. That growth (even inclusive growth) cannot carry on long enough to lift the poor out of poverty. At

current levels of inequality, as Andrew Simms puts it in the New Scientist To get the poorest onto an inc

ome of just $3 a day would require an impossible 15 planets worth of bio-capacity. It is simply impossibl

e to solve poverty via the current unequal growth model predicated on disposession. This means that the

majority in India are currently being sold down the river.

15. That in India it would be far more resource efficient to look at income redistribution in order to eradic

ate poverty. A 1% income redistribution in India from the richest 20% to the poorest 20% is equivalent to


3/14

4.7% GDP growth, in terms of moving people put of poverty. So just a mild Justice of the Commons will l

ead to major progress. A 3% redistribution of income from the top 20% to the bottom 20% is more effecti

ve than an ongoing 10% growth rate! The richest 20% control 41.63% of income and the poorest 20% onl

y 8.89 %, so this would be a tiny loss for the rich whilst a huge gain for the poor. Now whilst escalating in

come redistribution cannot carry on indefinitely, it is clearly the best place to start under such extreme co

nditions of inequality, since changes in income distribution have lasting effects of a far greater scale than those achievable through growth (see diagram).

16. That climate change scenarios combined that with the risks of price shock from impending peaks in O

il, Gas and Coal, make it clear that energy markets are going to destabilise even as the weather does. This

will bear down on the poor via food markets, which rely on the weather and oil prices to a large degree. F

ood price spikes are known to lead to social unrest, as the situation in the Middle East has recently shown.

It is clear, therefore, that in order to get prolonged social stability in a period when massive technical and

social progress is required to recover from climate overshoot, there needs to be a radical shift of the position of the poor in the political economy. It makes sense to redistribute resources to them, and to do so in a

way that reduces their dependence on both energy markets and rainfall, as well as on rent-seekers who dis

empower them.

17. That The Justice of the Commons is the best way to achieve redistribution, because whilst lifting peopl

e out of poverty is a moral imperative, strengthening the situation of the poorest is also a matter of collecti

ve survival. Empowerment of the poor can only occurr through substantive rights, either directly to the e


4/14

nvironment, or through direct payments that others cannot manipulate to maintain disempowerment and f

urther rent-seeking.

18. That for a more or less stable usage scenario of a basic resource that is not substitutable within the nea

r term, a commons emerges, and social sites within that commons can be defined. The notion of a site wit

hin the social commons is important because it creates a distinction between value derived from private investment into a site, and the value derived from taking that site out of common and into private circulatio

n, and thus creating scarcity as a basis for rent-seeking. It is this value, derived from the site within the so

cial commons, that is liable for taxation as compensation for removing a resource from a socially-defined

commons, an approach that avoids excluding the possibility of private ownership, whilst giving a theoreti

cal basis for justly regulating it for the common good.

19. That this allows an overall approach to Governments relationship with the rest of society to be worke

d out, firstly in economic terms. The government has a presence in the economy in 3 main ways, taxation,

its own spending and various forms of subsidy, as well as its regulation of the financial and economic syst


5/14

em legally. The financial footprint of the government should be co-ordinated in a way to gives an overal

l direction to development, and Justice of the Commons is the correct principle for organising that co-ordi

nation. At the same time the governments overall regulation of finance and the economy should also follo

w these principles.

20. That some subtlety is required in redistribution. That centering your taxation system on taxing accumu

lated capital directly would trigger a crisis of profitability, so the biggest substantive choice in taxation is t

he balance between taxing labour and taxing extraction from the material commons through the enclosure

of sites.

21. That the tax base rests on inputs to the economic process. These inputs are from various commons. So

taxes should be oriented towards rent-seeking on various sites in the commons (land, water, radio-spectru

m, issuing the national currency etc..) rather than directly on capital accumulated and labour.

22. That if you are in a situation where the centralisation of resources for the development of heavy indust

ry and infrastructure is less of a priority, and more employment creation per quantum of natural resource i

s the goal, then it is sensible to tip the balance away from taxing labour and towards taxing resource enclo

sure. In India today, there is a combination of high population density, high unemployment, and severe em

ergent natural resource constraint, so the case for such a taxation transition is overwhelming.

23. That this transition in taxation needs to be linked to a general transition away from a rapid return on in

vestment. Returns on investment in labour are generational in character (education and the buildup of wor

k-force capacities) whereas investments in natural-resource-intensive activities bring far more rapid return

s on investment. However (as shown in section 14) these shorter-term gains are not a sustainable basis for

economic activity and poverty alleviation. So it is important to address the forces that shape the rate of investment cycles, particularly the mechanisms by which money is issued into the economy, in order to arri

ve at more sustainable investment patterns that create an ongoing basis for the economy.


6/14

We demand...

Justice in Finance

24. The issuing of money at interest by private banks locks us into unending growth and an obsession wit

h inflation-management and status quo marginal tinkering, which displaces the supply-side work required

for an economic transition to sustainability. It is also a huge rent-seeking maneuver on the productive eco

nomy by privatised finance, through enclosure of the sites of the financial infrastructure commons. So it i

s amenable to being corrected through a Justice of the Commons approach.


7/14

If money is issued at interest by private banks, then more money must come back than is issued, so two th

ings tend to happen:

a) The money supply expands, so that more money can come back than was issued at interest. This means

yet more money must be issued at interest, so this generates a positive feedback of ever increasing money

issue and debt.

b) Money must return out of the economy faster than it goes in, to give a rate of return in line with the int

erest payments demanded. This leads to a speeding up of life and a discounting of the future, since return


8/14

s right now are more valuable by later returns due to the rate of interest. In other words this means a short

ening of the overall social time-horizon, the antithesis of long-term thinking.

25. Ever expanding money supply means that you need to have expanded productive capacity to match th

e extra money with goods, and so avoid inflation (more money per good). As such the management of the

economy becomes about finding ways of dealing with this inflationary dynamic, so that the value of this huge systemic rent-seeking is protected. This implies that the amount that the economy extracts from the e

nvironment must go up in order to supply the extra productive capacity.

26. Heavy discounting of the future under the current money system means it is increasingly difficult to pl

an for a transition to a sustainable economy. Alternative energy sources are suppressed from the market si

nce they involve longer-term returns. Labour intensive development routes are suppressed, since they inv

olve long-term investments in the population. If restructuring the money supply seems utopian, the curren

t monetary realism seems suicidal.

27 It is clearly economically irrational to have the banking system tax resources out of the productive eco

nomy through rent-seeking on the commons of the financial infrastructure. Bank branches and ATMs are f

orms of private capital investment, but the site of monetary infrastructure. i.e. the social system of mon

etary exchange, is a public infrastructure created through a social agreement to reciprocate in transactions.

This is a commons, and so extracting excess profit (over and above a basic rate of return on capital invest

ment) from this system is a form of rent seeking through enclosure.

This kind of centralisation of financial resources out of the general productive economy may have made s

ense in the early stages of economic development, where building up the economy and infrastructure to su

pport emerging states was imperative, and huge pools of centralised investment capital were required for t

his. This was at the same time as natural resources were relatively abundant in relation to the size of and d

emand from these emerging economies.

However in an age of maturing state and economic structures and emerging natural resource scarcity (wh

ere supply falls behind ever-expanding debt-driven demand) the need is rather to direct resources to the pr

oductive parts of the economy, and to creating possibilities of employment in that, as the productivity and

job creation per unit of natural resource emerges as a critical limiting economic and social factor. A syste

m of centralising resources through the issue of money as debt with interest attached becomes very pernic

ious in this scenario. Justice in Finance is a clear principled basis for an alternative approach.

Justice in Taxation

28. Taxation should be based on a generalisation of the concept in Land taxation of a site tax, approached

along the lines of a site within the social commons as outlined earlier. This is not taxation on the labour or

capital invested into the social site, but taxation of rent-seeking from a site enclosed out of the commons -

a site tax, following the work of James Robertson and Richard Douthwaite on land.


9/14

The same principles could apply across all taxation, taxation of the site rather than the investment. The ris

e in subsistence costs that this would bring to the poor is offset by a basic entitlement to the commons on

a per capita basis. This is their right to life expressed as a right to livelihood expressed as a right to a reso

urce footprint within the socially-sited commons as a whole.

29. The policy of making currency issue a public sector function, will not only cause a rise in subsistence

cost, which is addressed by making a basic entitlement available to everyone, but also inflation. In the fisc

al approach we propose here, inflation is addressed through taxation. Taxation will take the surplus mone

y out of circulation again. Though taxes may have to be high, this does not matter as basic entitlement is n

ot affected. The taxes can be spent back into the economy once inflation comes down. This system for ma

naging inflation is reliable, incidentally, unlike the one we have currently.


10/14

Just as taxation is based on the price of the resource extracted from the commons and the rents accruable

on the scarcity that creates, so a citizens income would be an economic expression of their entitlement to

their share, their per capita footprint site in the commons. This would mean that the taxation of enclosure


11/14

would be directed to fund this basic entitlement to a livelihood. Thus there is a reconciliation set up betwe

en the requirements of private property for economic efficiency and a requirement for justice in the comm

ons as a basis for life.

Justice in Labour

30. Labour can also be considered in terms of the productive commons. Whilst investment in production raises productivity, there is an underlying social site, which is the opportunity to work and the cost of a wo

rker, in line with the expected standard of living. Since there is an ever rising general expectation of produ

ctivity levels combined with increases in standard of living, at a certain point, once a technique is no long

er innovative (its intellectual property monopoly has expired, this also being a social site in the knowledg

e commons) it becomes part of the social productive commons.

31. On this basis, it is possible to tax private companies on the basis of them monopolising both employee

s and their opportunity to work, on the basis that they should pay for the social site of their work with the

price of reproducing them as a worker, at the standard of living implied by the level of the productive com

mons. These funds can be channeled by the state into guaranteeing the reproduction of a healthy and educ

ated workforce, who should become the focus also of investment more generally due to the shifts towards

Justice in Finance and a framework of Justice in Taxation in general. To clarify, income would not be taxe

d, as this raises the price of labour. Rather natural resources and the usage of the social site of a worker w

ould be taxed, in order to ensure the reproduction of the productive commons. Any investment into produ

ction would not be directly taxed, but rather the resource usage involved would be. Thus industries that m

ake the most of their labour force with the least resource usage would be promoted.

32. Structures that already invest back into their labour force would see the taxation on the social site of a

worker relieved in proportion to their extra investment in their workers. Thus fairer structures such as wor

ker co-operatives, which tend, due to democratic control, to allocate more of their resources to the ier wor

kers, would accrue considerable tax incentives under this system, since as an organisational form they tend to invest back into the productive commons in the manner favoured by this approach. If, under a regime

that reflects the full costs of production (including environmental externalities) worker co-operatives are

more viable, this reflects that they are of greater social benefit, a position that is both economically efficie

nt and ethically rational, as well as leader to improved patterns of long-term investment.

Justice in Land

33. Land has been an enormously divisive issue in India. The two most extensive forms of land use in Ind

ia are Agriculture and Forestry. With mounting population, increased consumption of animal products, ca

lls for biofuels, climate change destabilising crop production, and increased usage of land for hydropower,

SEZs and now afforestation schemes as a part of meeting carbon emissions targets, the struggles over lan

d in India are set to heighten.

34. Most social movement politics in India are centered on land, and the estabilished left, in episodes like

Nandigram and Singur, have put themselves at odds with social movement calls for a more democratic ap

proach to governing natural resources such as land. This is because the mainstream communist parties hav

e tended to focus on capital-intensive growth as a route to emancipation. However this route is impossibl


12/14

e, as we have shown, and thus such a politics leads these parties into a collision with those being diposses

sed by the processes of primary accumulation that result from their vision of social progress.

35. In this context, an approach to land based in the principle of Justice in the Commons looks like a possi

ble solution to these kinds of divisions. It opens the door to an alternative view of progress based on inves

tment in the commons and in people rather than extraction, and underpinned by basic rights to natural resources as a proxy for a right to life.


13/14

36. Justice in the commons for land would entail that every citizen of India is in principle entitled to a sha

re of the land area of the country. This principle will guide either a direct right to land, for communities w

ith an established direct dependency, such as Adivasis and traditional forest dwellers, or some share of agr

icultural land for those in a position and with the inclination to farm it, or with a direct citizens income to

compensate them for loss of access to their share of the social commons of land, the original basis of a su

bsistence livlihood.

37. Justice in the Commons would also provide a unifying pronciple for land law. Instead of Forest Right

s, PESA and various state land reforms leading to fragmened rights to land, alongside ad-hoc approaches t

o compensation for relocation that differ between wildlife reserves and industrial projects for instance, a c

omprehensive approach to peoples rights to land could be adopted, accross forest, agricultural land, coast


14/14

al zones and so on. This principle would also allow a unified approach to declaring protected areas, reserv

e forests, SEZs, critical wildlife habitats and so on, with a similar process of settlement of rights, resettle

ment packages and livlihood gaurantees put in place. This will allow the administration of processes that

cross many land classification types to be simplified and harmonised. It will also create a realtionship bet

ween basic common minimums and land use, that will avoid a situation where NREGA necessarily takes

people off the land, where livlihood payments can pay people to stay on the land and improve it where it is appropriate, particularly along labour intensive and sustainable lines (see agriculture), since a more com

prehensive framework of rights for livlihood support is allowed for.

38. The central principle for land use should be the democritisation of its control, and the payment of taxa

tion where a land site is taken out of democratic control (and thus the commons) and into private ownersh

ip. This taxation will take the form of a site tax, following James Robertsons work, where the removal of

a site from the social commons, and any income derived based on rent seeking from the scarcity created, i

s compensated back into the social commons as a basis for providing basic subsistence incomes. This tax

would not fall on investments into the site, or labour on the site, but just on the disposession and rent seek

ing represented by the privatisation of the social site itself. Thus private usage of land can be balanced wit

h the common requirements of livlihood support, and improvement of land will be rewarded, whilst rent-s

eeking and dispossession taxed punitively.

Further Sectoral Analysis of Justice in the Commons

39. These themes of how Justice in the Commons operates in terms of financial flows, taxation, subsidy a

nd regulatory regimes, as well as the sorts of technical approaches congruent with this, will be explored o

n a sector by sector basis in order to flesh out the form of our proposals.

Documents

Simplified Intro Nat Sust Dev Plan Draft 1 Complete