The rural dwellers of Meghalya will not benefit from the development of their region under these conditions. Without infrastructure enough to sustain the needed power supply for industries that may give them "better" jobs, I can't help but fear that they will be the un-unionized and exploited removers of their own rightful resources. Their natural skepticism will not diminish, I'm sure, as they watch or partake in the extraction of coal etc. with nothing coming back in to profit them. It seems the government is so desperate to have something develop in the area, that they may not be too discriminating about the corporations that are willing to venture their own capital. This however, has renewed my curiousity about those corporations that have a conscience, those that admit that a solely for profit objective has historically lead to disastrous, inhumane, and environmentally destructive results. Often, it is the giant commercial corporations scrutinized into making the public conscience somewhat at ease (like Starbucks), publishing how much they recycle, how they treat their bean growers, etc, their slick advertising campaigns reflecting some accountability. So many powerful, and smaller corporations are not in the public eye, their activities are of uninterest to the media until the damage has been done, or activists expose government corruption. My friend's brother, Satish, an activist in India was murdered recently. Though he was not working in an undeveloped region, he was nevertheless committed to the prevention of private farmland and government rations being stolen and trying to keep his municipality honest. One of the following links mentions that activists are considered "soft-targets" and gives us a tragic sense of the risk these people are taking everyday and also of their power to affect change. http://beta.thehindu.com/news/article80222.ece http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/pune/RTI-activist-Satish-Shetty-killed-near-Pune-/articleshow/5440198.cms
The rural dwellers of Meghalya will not benefit from the development of their region under these conditions. Without infrastructure enough to sustain the needed power supply for industries that may give them "better" jobs, I can't help but fear that they will be the un-unionized and exploited removers of their own rightful resources. Their natural skepticism will not diminish, I'm sure, as they watch or partake in the extraction of coal etc. with nothing coming back in to profit them. It seems the government is so desperate to have something develop in the area, that they may not be too discriminating about the corporations that are willing to venture their own capital. This however, has renewed my curiousity about those corporations that have a conscience, those that admit that a solely for profit objective has historically lead to disastrous, inhumane, and environmentally destructive results. Often, it is the giant commercial corporations scrutinized into making the public conscience somewhat at ease (like Starbucks), publishing how much they recycle, how they treat their bean growers, etc, their slick advertising campaigns reflecting some accountability. So many powerful, and smaller corporations are not in the public eye, their activities are of uninterest to the media until the damage has been done, or activists expose government corruption.
ReplyDeleteMy friend's brother, Satish, an activist in India was murdered recently. Though he was not working in an undeveloped region, he was nevertheless committed to the prevention of private farmland and government rations being stolen and trying to keep his municipality honest. One of the following links mentions that activists are considered "soft-targets" and gives us a tragic sense of the risk these people are taking everyday and also of their power to affect change. http://beta.thehindu.com/news/article80222.ece
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/pune/RTI-activist-Satish-Shetty-killed-near-Pune-/articleshow/5440198.cms