Satyagraha for Gandhi’s Ghani – Awareness Campaign

Dr Vandana Shiva speaking to us from Gandhi’s Ghani in Wardha . This ghani (traditional oil extraction unit) was started by Mahatma Gandhi has now been served a notice to shut down. Thousands of these units across the country are under attack from the pseudo-safety conspiracy of the industrial processing industries. With an aim to destroy all our rural and national oilseed economies industrial soy oil corporations are destroying our small scale traditional ghanis. The corporations want to create a monopoly over the food system.

Soy oil corporations have time and again manipulated safety laws and disguised them as the new food safety modernisation regime. While these regimes are presented as new health and safety standards, they in reality are corporate shaped instruments to oppress and criminalise traditional food processors and deliver more profits and markets for the agro-food corporations. But none of these efforts can make Soy oils or palm oils true oilseeds. A simple review of their productions will make it clear that they are not true oilseeds.

by Indra Shekhar Singh, 21 December 2015

To defend Gandhi’s Ghani (Ghani = a traditional method of oil processing in India), Dr Vandana Shiva joined with Gandhian organisations for a three day awareness campaign into the Vidharba region of Maharashtra. Gandhi’s Ghani was served a notice to shut down after coming under attack from the pseudo-safety conspiracy of the industrial processing industries. With an aim to destroy all our rural and national oilseed economies industrial soy oil corporations are destroying our small scale traditional ghanis. They want to create a monopoly over the food system.

Soy oil corporations have time and again manipulated safety laws and disguised them as the new food safety modernisation regime. While these regimes are presented as new health and safety standards, they in reality are corporate shaped instruments to oppress and criminalise traditional food processors and deliver more profits and markets for the agro-food corporations. But none of these efforts can make Soy oils or palm oils true oilseeds. A simple review of their productions will make it clear that they are not true oilseeds.

Soy oil is extracted at very high temperatures using solvent extraction plants which heats the oil upto 400 C and use hazard chemical such as hexane in the process. When n-hexane is ingested, it causes nausea, vertigo, bronchial irritation, intestinal irritation and other adverse Central Nervous System effects. Plus they also actively facilitate GM Soy oil dumping on India. None of this Soy oil is tested for safety of human consumption.

A larger issue puts the health of Indian at jeopardy as all industrial edible oils are allowed to be blended with 40 percent of anonymous vegetable oils. Apart from the hexane treated Soy oil this includes the genetically modified Bt cotton oil. GMOs in foods is illegal in India and instead of stopping this transgression, our government is shutting down Gandhi’s Ghani.

yuva-anna-swarajToday, our consumers are kept in the dark as their is no labelling to tell them what oils have been mixed into these industrially processed ‘edible’ oils. There is an outright violation of consumers rights as there is now no testing or labelling being required for these industries. They continue their illegal activities (adulteration) while small cottage processing unit like Gandhi’s ghani is being threatened.

Back in the late 90s the Soy oil corporations lobbied for the ban on traditional mustard ghanis and mustard oils using the pseudo-safety mechanism. Navdanya fought them by uniting mothers, sisters, children and all the mustard oil lovers of India and launching a Sarson Satyagraha to bring the goodness of our desi sarson back in our foods. This is the reason we can still enjoy pure mustard oil in India.

Under threat from GM Mustard, Navdanya revived our campaign in 2015 at the Rajghat, New Delhi to stop the sabotage of our desi strains of mustard by a GM mustard with sterility genes and herbicide resistant genes. We have sent teams all from Rajasthan to Jharkhand to spread awareness about the GM mustard and the health hazards it posses. We have even distributed free sarson and rai seeds in all these villages to help converse our rich mustard biodiversity.

Dr Shiva explains the adverse health implications of GM Soya oil and the benefits of organic Mustard

Dr Shiva explains the adverse health implications of GM Soya oil and the benefits of organic Mustard

GM mustard poses a grave threat to not only human beings but to environment. Mustard will is also a food crop in India, studies have proven that GM crops decrease the pollens and nectar of the plant and thus harming bees. GM mustard also is resistant to carcinogenic pesticides such as Glyphosate. The introduction of the GM mustard will force our farmers to us more noxious pesticides, which will lead to higher cancer rates and deaths in the villages.
Glyphosate is responsible for over 25000 deaths in Sri Lanka alone and known to cause birth defects, retardation, nerve damage, cancer and other serious aliments. GM mustard also is know to sterility in males and is a potential health disaster waiting to be unleashed on India.

The GM mustard if introduced will destroy the regional mustard diversity forever. It will kills thousands of years of plant evolutions and make our sarson sterile.

Gandhi has promoted small scale cottage industry in India. We know that democracy can be built by means of economic democracy, where every hand has meaningful creative work. This vision today encompasses all beings including our mother Earth therefore our production is ecological with no dependence on fossil fuels, chemicals or toxic, or uses requires long distant transportation dependent. It is sustainable, fair and local. This ensures high quality products are available to the poor at an affordable price.

To plan the satyagraha in defence of the Gandhi Ghani, Navdanya met at Magan Sangrahalya, Wardha on December 16th. The meeting took place between Gandhians, organic farmers and NGO activists of Vidharba and us to build a movement to keep our oilseed security in our hands and a develop Gandhi’s Ghani in every village. As a result of this meeting this Republic day 26th January 2016, we will start a satyagraha to defend Gandhi’s Ghani. We shall work towards Anna swaraj by reviving our ghanis and rich biodiversity of our oil seeds. On 30th January Gandhi’s martyrdom day we will gather to take a pledge to defend Gandhi’s ghanis and his vision of swaraj as the true freedom for India.

Given the world wide rise in unemployment and economic inequity, which stems from  centralised archaic capitalist models of economy. Sustainability is the only way to return to our Earth and to health. It the only way we can rid ourselves and our foods of industrial corporations that are producing hazardous products such as Soy and Palm oil at high cost.  Today the oilseeds scarcity artificially created for these corporations to receive greater government subsidies from the public treasury to make their products even more artificially cheaper. Affordable price is the model symbolised by Gandhi Ghani which ensures good healthy nutrition food to be very individual’s right.

Corporations are creating artificial scarcity by displacing our traditional oilseeds with industrially processed GM oils and destroying our local ghani based economies. These policies are directly displacing people and their products come to us after a huge wastage of resources. Fossil fuels and toxics are being pumped into our bodies through industrially produced oils. First bad material produced at high cost with our tax money and then we  pay a second time when we suffer due to adverse climate changes like rains, drought,etc and health hazard such as cancer, diabetics,etc. They are creating a nutrition apartheid where good food available to us under food democracy is being deliberately denied to the poor.

Navdanya to empower our rural communities and bring swaraj to our villages is conceptually building local economies and creating Gandhian model at the rural level.  For we know that there is no democracy without true economic democracy.

Related Article

Anna Swaraj (Food Freedom)

By Dr Vandana Shiva – The Asian Age, 30 December 2015

“Instead of regulating those selling unhealthy oils, the government is trying to close Gandhi’s ghani — producing pure oil in front of the eyes of consumers — because it does not have a lab attached to it”

Read more: http://seedfreedom.info/anna-swaraj-food-freedom/

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