The cover story of the Time Magazine of March 14, 2005 was dedicated to the theme, "How to End Poverty". It was based on an essay by Jeffrey Sacks "The End of Poverty", from his book with the same title. The photos accompanying the essay are homeless children, scavengers in garbage dumps, heroin addicts. These are images of disposable people, people whose lives, resources, livelihoods have been snatched from them by a brutal, unjust, excluding process which generates poverty for the majority and prosperity for a few.

Garbage is the waste of a throwaway society - ecological societies have never had garbage. Homeless children are the consequences of impoverishment of communities and families who have lost their resources and livelihoods. These are images of the perversion and externalities of a non-sustainable, unjust, inequitable economic growth model.

In "Staying Alive, I had referred to book entitled "Poverty: the Wealth of the People" in which an African writer draws a distinction between poverty as subsistence, and misery as deprivation. It is useful to separate a cultural conception of simple, sustainable living as poverty from the material experience of poverty that is a result of dispossession and deprivation.

Culturally perceived poverty need not be real material poverty: sustenance economies, which satisfy basic needs through self-provisioning, are not poor in the sense of being deprived. Yet the ideology of development declares them so because they do not participate overwhelmingly in the market economy, and do not consume commodities produced for and distributed through the market even though they might be satisfying those needs through self-provisioning mechanisms.

People are perceived as poor if they eat millets (grown by women) rather than commercially produced and distributed processed junk foods sold by global agri-business. They are seen as poor if they live in self-built housing made form ecologically adapted natural material like bamboo and mud rather than in cement houses. They are seen as poor if they wear handmade garments of natural fibre rather than synthetics.

Sustenance, as culturally perceived poverty, does not necessarily imply a low physical quality of life. On the contrary, because sustenance economies contribute to the growth of nature's economy and the social economy, they ensure a high quality of life measure in terms of right to food and water, sustainability of livelihoods, and robust social and cultural identity and meaning.

On the other hand, the poverty of the 1 billion hungry and the 1 billion malnutritioned people who are victims of obesity suffer from both cultural and material poverty. A system that creates denial and disease, while accumulating trillions of dollars of super profits for agribusiness, is a system for creating poverty for people. Poverty is a final state, not an initial state of an economic paradigm, which destroys ecological and social systems for maintaining life, health and sustenance of the planet and people.

And economic poverty is only one form of poverty. Cultural poverty, social poverty, ethical poverty, ecological poverty, spiritual poverty are other forms of poverty more prevalent in the so called rich North than in the so called poor South. And those other poverties cannot be overcome by dollars. They need compassion and justice, caring and sharing.

Ending poverty requires knowing how poverty is created. However, Jeffrey Sachs views poverty as the original sin. As he declares:

A few generations ago, almost everybody was poor. The Industrial Revolution led to new riches, but much of the world was left far behind.

This is totally false history of poverty, and cannot be the basis of making poverty history. Jeffrey Sachs has got it wrong. The poor are not those who were left behind, they are the ones who were pushed out and excluded from access to their own wealth and resources.

The "poor are not poor because they are lazy or their governments are corrupt". They are poor because their wealth has been appropriated and wealth creating capacity destroyed. The riches accumulated by Europe were based on riches appropriated from Asia, Africa and Latin America. Without the destruction of India's rich textile industry, without the take over of the spice trade, without the genocide of the native American tribes, without the Africa's slavery, the industrial revolution would not have led to new riches for Europe or the U.S. It was the violent take over of Third World resources and Third World markets that created wealth in the North - but it simultaneously created poverty in the South.

Two economic myths facilitate a separation between two intimately linked processes: the growth of affluence and the growth of poverty. Firstly, growth is viewed only as growth of capital. What goes unperceived is the destruction in nature and in people's sustenance economy that this growth creates. The two simultaneously created 'externalities' of growth - environmental destruction and poverty creation - are then casually linked, not to the processes of growth, but to each other. Poverty, it is stated, causes environmental destruction. The disease is then offered as a cure: growth will solve the problems of poverty and environmental crisis it has given rise to in the first place. This is the message of Jeffrey Sachs analysis.

The second myth that separates affluence from poverty, is the assumption that if you produce what you consume, you do not produce. This is the basis on which the production boundary is drawn for national accounting that measures economic growth. Both myths contribute to the mystification of growth and consumerism, but they also hide the real processes that create poverty.

First, the market economy dominated by capital is not the only economy, development has, however, been based on the growth of the market economy. The invisible costs of development have been the destruction of two other economies: nature's processes and people's survival. The ignorance or neglect of these two vital economies is the reason why development has posed a threat of ecological destruction and a threat to human survival, both of which, however, have remained 'hidden negative externalities' of the development process.

Instead of being seen as results of exclusion, they are presented as "those left behind". Instead of being viewed as those who suffer the worst burden of unjust growth in the form of poverty, they are false presented as those not touched by growth. This false separation of processes that create affluence from those that create poverty is at the core of Jeffrey Sachs analysis. His recipes will therefore aggravated and deepen poverty instead of ending it.

Trade and exchange of goods and services have always existed in human societies, but these were subjected to nature's and people's economies. The elevation of the domain of the market and man-made capital to the position of the highest organizing principle for societies has led to the neglect and destruction of the other two organizing principles - ecology and survival - which maintain and sustain life in nature and society.

Modern economies and concepts of development cover only a negligible part of the history of human interaction with nature. For centuries, principles of sustenance have given human societies the material basis of survival by deriving livelihoods directly from nature through self-provisioning mechanisms. Limits in nature have been respected and have guided the limits of human consumption. In most countries of the South large numbers of people continue to derive their sustenance in the survival economy which remains invisible to market-oriented development.

All people in all societies depend on nature's economy for survival. When the organizing principle for society's relationship with nature is sustenance, nature exists as a commons. It becomes a resource when profits and accumulation become the organizing principle for society's relationship with nature is sustenance, nature exists as a commons. It becomes a resource when profits and accumulation become the organizing principles and create an imperative for the exploitation of resources for the market.

Without clean water, fertile soils and crop and plant genetic diversity, human survival is not possible. These commons have been destroyed by economic development, resulting in the creation of a new contradiction between the economy of natural processes and the survival economy, because those people deprived of their traditional land and means of survival by development are forced to survive on an increasingly eroded nature.

People do not die for lack of incomes. They die for lack of access to resources. Here too Jeffrey Sacks is wrong when he says, "In a world of plenty, 1 billion people are so poor, their lives are in danger". The indigenous people in the Amazon, the mountain communities in the Himalaya, peasants whose land has not been appropriated and whose water and biodiversity has not been destroyed by debt creating industrial agriculture are ecologically rich, even though they do not earn a dollar a day.

On the other hand, even at five dollars a day, people are poor if they have to buy their basic needs at high prices. Indian peasants who have been made poor and pushed into debt over the past decade to create markets for costly seeds and agrichemicals through economic globalisation are ending their lives in thousands.

When seeds are patented and peasants will pay $1 trillion in royalties, they will be $1 trillion poorer. Patents on medicines increase costs of AIDS drugs from $200 to $20,000, and Cancer drugs from $2,400 to $36,000 for a year's treatment. When water is privatized, and global corporations make $1 trillion from commodification of water, the poor are poorer by $1 trillion.

The movements against economic globalisation and maldevelopment are movements to end poverty by ending the exclusions, injustices and ecological non-sustainability that are the root causes of poverty.

The $50 billion of "aid" North to South is a tenth of $500 billion flow South to North as interest payments and other unjust mechanisms in the global economy imposed by World Bank, IMF. With privatization of essential services and an unfair globalisation imposed through W.T.O, the poor are being made poorer.

Indian peasants are loosing $26 billion annually just in falling farm prices because of dumping and trade liberalization. As a result of unfair, unjust globalisation, which is leading to corporate, take over of food and water. More than $5 trillion will be transferred from poor people to rich countries just for food and water. The poor are financing the rich. If we are serious about ending poverty, we have to be serious about ending the unjust and violent systems for wealth creation which create poverty by robbing the poor of their resources, livelihoods and incomes.

Jeffrey Sachs deliberately ignores this "taking", and only addresses "giving", which is a mere 0.1% of the "taking" by the North. Ending poverty is more a matter of taking less than giving an insignificant amount more. Making poverty history needs getting the history of poverty right And Sachs has got it completely wrong.

By Vandana Shiva

In a democracy, a ban on harmful products and activities is an expression of citizens' freedoms and rights. Bans protect citizens from hazards to health and the environment. That is why smoking has been banned in public places. That is why ozone-depleting substances were banned under the Montreal Protocol. That is why the Basel Convention banned the trade in toxic wastes and hazards.

Coke and Pepsi have firmly joined the group of toxic and hazardous products that need to be banned to protect the health of citizens and to protect the environment. On 22nd August, the "Coke Pepsi Quit India" campaign intensified its movement to ban Coke and Pepsi "with a ban Coke Pepsi" day of actions. Kerala has banned Colas. Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, Rajasthan have banned Soft Drinks in educational institutions and Government Canteens. And Coke Pepsi Free Zones are spreading across the country.

Stealing Water, Creating Thirst

There are strong environmental and human rights reasons to ban the production of soft drinks in India. Each plant of Coke and Pepsi extracts 1 - 2 million litres per day. If each plant is extracting 1 - 2 million litres per day and there are 90 plants, the daily extraction is between 90 - 180 million litres. This could meet the daily requirement of drinking water of millions of people Each litre of soft drink destroys and pollutes 10 litres of water. And the toxic sludge generated has been found to have high levels of Cadmium and Lead (Pollution Control Board, Kerala, Hazard Centre).

Long term exposure to Cadmium has the potential to cause effects like kidney dysfunction, damage to bone, liver and blood. Lead affects the central nervous system, kidney, blood and cardio-vascular system. Women in a small hamlet in Kerala succeeded in shutting down a Coca-Cola plant. "When you drink Coke, you drink the blood of people," said Mylamma, the woman who started the movement against Coca-Cola in Plachimada. The Coca-Cola plant in Plachimada was commissioned in March 2000 to produce 1,224,000 bottles of Coca-Cola products a day and issued a conditional license to install a motor-driven water pump by the panchayat. However, the company started to illegally extract millions of liters of clean water. According to the local people, Coca-Cola was extracting 1.5 million liters per day. The water level started to fall, dropping from 150 to 500 feet below the earth's surface. Tribals and farmers complained that water storage and supply were being adversely affected by indiscriminate installation of bore wells for tapping groundwater, resulting in serious consequences for crop cultivation. The wells were also threatening traditional drinking-water sources, ponds and water tanks, waterways and canals. When the company failed to comply with the panchayat request for details, a show-cause notice was served and the license was cancelled. Coca-Cola unsuccessfully tried to bribe the panchayat president A. Krishnan, with 300 million rupees.

Not only did Coca-Cola steal the water of the local community, it also polluted what it didn't take. The company deposited waste material outside the plant which, during the rainy season, spread into paddy fields, canals, and wells, causing serious health hazards. As a result of this dumping, 260 bore wells provided by public authorities for drinking water and agriculture facilities have become dry. Coca-Cola was also pumping wastewater into dry bore wells within the company premises. In 2003, the district medical officer informed the people of Plachimada their water was unfit for drinking. The women, who already knew their water was toxic, had to walk miles to get water. Coca-Cola had created water scarcity in a water-abundant region by discharging waste sludge contains large quantities of lead, chromium and cadmium.

The women of Plachimada were not going to allow this hydropiracy. In 2002 they started a dharna (sit-in) at the gates of Coca-Cola. To celebrate one year of their agitation, I joined them on Earth Day 2003. On September 21, 2003, a huge rally delivered an ultimatum to Coca-Cola. And in January 2004, a World Water Conference brought global activists to Plachimada to support the local activists. A movement started by local adivasi women had unleashed a national and global wave of people's energy in their support.

Today the plant is closed and movements have started in other plants.

The Cola giants are aggravating the water crisis already experienced by people in rural areas.

There is only one standard and measure in the issue of water use - the fundamental human right to clean, safe and adequate water cannot be violated. And Coke and Pepsi are violating this right. That is why their extraction of millions of litres of water needs to be banned. In the Plachimada case the High Court of Kerala had ruled -

"that underground water belongs to the public. The State and its instrumentalities should act as trustees of this great wealth. The State has got a duty to protect ground water against excessive exploitation and the inaction of the State in this regard will tantamount to infringement of the right to life of the people guaranteed under Article 21 of the Constitution of India. The Ground water, under the land of the 2nd respondent, does not belong to it.

The underground water belongs to the general public and the 2nd respondent has not right to claim a huge share of it and the Government have no power to allow a private party to extract such a huge quantity of ground water, which is a property, held by it in trust."

This principle of water as a public good and common property is what led to the ban on extraction of water in Plachimada. This is the principle which led local communites at 55 plants of Coke and Pepsi to serve notice to the corporations on 20th January, 2005 that they were stealing a community resource.

Stealing Health, Creating Disease

The struggle against Coke is also a struggle for health. Pesticide residues have been found in Coke and Pepsi. However, soft drinks are hazardous even without pesticides.

Soft drinks have zero nutrition value compared to our indigenous drinks such as nimbu pani, lassi, panna, sattu. The soft drink giants have succeeded in making the youth of India ashamed of our indigenous food culture in spite of its nutrition and safety through their aggressive-advertising. They have monopolized the market for thirst, buying up indigenous companies like Parle and displacing indigenous cold drinks make at home or in the cottage industry. But what Coke and Pepsi sell is a toxic brew colours, with anti-nutritive values.

The Health Minister of India had asked film stars to not endorse Coke and Pepsi because of the hazards of sugar in soft drinks, implicated in the obesity and diabetes epidemic among children. Marion Nestle has called soft drinks a quintessential "junk food", high in calories but low in nutrition. The Centre for Science and Environment in the Public Interest has called soft drinks "liquid Candy". A 12 ounce can contain 1.5 ounces of sugar.

Increasingly the soft drink giants are shifting to High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS). Yet the Health Minister has not addressed the issue of health risks of HFCS and health risks of GM foods if the corn used is GM corn. If the Government wants citizens to have safe sweeteners it should ban High Fructose Corn Syrup and encourage sugarcane farmers in India to go organic. The Central Government is clearly failing in protecting the health of the Indian citizens.

The nutrient-composition of soft drinks, per 12 ounce serving in comparison to orange juice and low fat milk.

Contents Coca Cola Pepsi Orange Juice Low-fat milk % Calories 154 160 168 153 Sugar, g 40 40 40 18 Vit. A, IU 0 0 291 750 Vit C, mg 0 0 146 3 Folic acid, mg 0 0 164 18 Calcium, mg 0 0 33 450 Potassium, mg 0 0 711 352 Magnesium, mg 0 0 36 51 Phosphate, mg 54 55 60 353 Ref: Marion Nestle, Food Politics The sugar in soft drinks is not natural sugar, sucrose but high fructose corn syrup. Plants for making corn syrup have started to be set up in India, and if strict regulations are not put in place, the Indian diet could go the way of the US diet, with high fructose corn syrup causing insulin resistance. Unlike sucrose, fructose does not go through some of the critical intermediary breakdown steps, but is shunted toward the liver, where it mimics insulins ability to cause the liver to release fatty acids into the bloodstream. Studies have found that fructose diets have 31% more triglycerides than sucrose diets. Fructose also lowers the rate of fatty acid oxidation, P.A. Mayes, a University of London scientist has concluded that, Long-term absorption of fructose causes enzyme adaptions that increase lipogenesis fat formation and VLDL (bad cholestrol) formation leading to triglyceridemea (too many triglycerides in the blood) decreased glucose tolerance, and hyper insulinemia (too much insulin in the blood). Scientists at the University of California in Berkeley have also confirmed that overuse of fructose was skewing the American diet towards metabolic changes encouraging fat storage.

India cannot afford these high health costs of a fructose diet which also has other nutritional costs as side effects. When corn is used for high fructose syrup, the poor are denied a food staple. Already 30% corn is going for raw material for making industrial cattle feed and fructose, and is diverted from human food. In addition, the displacement of healthier sweeteners derived from sugar cane such as gur and khandsari robs farmers of incomes and livelihoods. The impact of the Colas on the food chain and economy is thus very large and does not stop with the bottle.

But what is within the bottle in any case is not fit for a healthy diet. Consumption of soft drinks is well known to contribute to tooth decay and adolescents who consume soft drinks display a risk of bone fractures 3 to 4 fold higher than those who do not drink soft drinks are becoming the greatest source of caffeine in children's diets, with each 12 ounce can of cola containing about 45 milligrams of caffeine.

And there are other ingredients in the toxic brew, an anti-freeze compound - ethylene glycol for lower freezing, phosphoric acid to give it a bite. People are consuming 4 kg of chemicals a year per person on the basis of 20.6 million tonnes of chemicals in the form of artificial colours, flavourings etc. (Prashant Bhushan "Soft drinks - A toxic - brew). It is therefore not just pesticides we should be concerned about, but the toxic brew our children are being made addicted to by the Cola giants.

The other violation of Coke and Pepsi is the violation of the right to health. Phosphoric Acid and Carbon dioxide make soft drinks highly acidic which is why they are effective as toilet cleaners. We would not approve toilet cleaners as drinks for our children, yet industrial soft drinks, which have the same acidic properties, are being freely sold.

It is because of these hazards that schools in the U.S have banned soft drinks. It is because of these hazards 10000 schools and colleges in India have declared themselves Coke Pepsi Free Zones. It is because of these hazards, the Kerala Government has banned the Colas. It is because of these hazards the canteen in the Indian Parliament does not serve Coke and Pepsi. And it is because of these hazards Pepsi representatives admitted their drinks are not safe for children.

However, the Union Government is faltering under the pressure of the Corporations and the pressure of U.S. The Union Health Minister has questioned the Centre for Science and Environment study on pesticide residues in Coke and Pepsi citing verbatim from a study commissioned by Coca Cola. Clearly citizens health cannot be put in the hands of Government who set arbitrary standards which guarantee safety to Coke Pepsi for making super profits but do not guarantee safety for the health of citizens.

The Health Minister has announced that by January 2007 they will have safety standards in place for Coke and Pepsi. However, Coke and Pepsi will not become safe after January 2007. There are two reasons why depending on standard setting alone is unreliable for guaranteeing that citizens are getting safe and healthy products. Firstly, centralized Government decisions can be easily influenced by corporate interests, as we witnessed in the Government response to the debate in Parliament. There is a corporate science and there is a public science. In times of corporate rule, corporate science will rule. Secondly, standards by their very nature are reductionist. Standards will be set for pesticide residues only based on levels allowed for ingredients such as water and sugar, without looking at the harmful affects of the product on people's health and the environment. We need holistic food safety, not reductionist manipulated pseudo safety standards which protect corporations not people.

The Health Ministers own remarks make it clear that reductionist "safety standards" do not make Coke Pepsi "safe". While he declared that pesticide residues were "within safe limits" in bottles tested in Mysore and Gujarat, he also stated that Colas were junk foods and were not safe for health. Safety is more than standards for pesticide residues. And as we have witnessed different labs are giving different results.

To ban or not ban Coke and Pepsi cannot and should not depend only on whether a particular lab does not find particular levels of particular pesticide residues in the soft drinks above permissible limits. The problems with Coke and Pepsi creating a water crisis and a health crisis are separately enough reasons for a ban. Jointly, they make a ban imperative. These are crimes against nature and people. Crimes are determined by their impact, not the "standard" of instruments used for committing a crime. Coke and Pepsi are engaged in the rape of the earth's aquifers and slow poisoning of our children. And, there is no "safe standard" for rape. No "safe standard" for slow murder. That is why we must ban them from our lives through actions as free and sovereign citizens of a free and sovereign India.

One speech by a Minister influenced by the Cola giants does not give them a "clean chit" as they have claimed. The clean chit must come from free citizens of India. And people of India have not given Coke and Pepsi a clean chit. We must build on the example set by Plachimada and Kerala to make India Coke and Pepsi free to protect our ground water and the health of our future generations.

We must resist any attempt to take away the Constitutional rights of citizens and states to make decisions about the safety of our food as the Food Safety Act 2006 proposes.

"My dad was against me moving back to India," Manish Amin tells me in his new flat in Delhi where he lives with his wife and two sons.

Three decades ago Manish's parents moved from India to the UK. He has just moved back.

"My dad's idea was that everyone wants to get away from India", Manish says. "But now he's seen the big high rise flats, the big shopping malls, even he's amazed. You get Marks and Spencer, Debenhams, everything's here now."

Manish has set up his own online travel company. He's already taking 200 bookings a day.

India's breakneck economic growth seems to be enticing the country's scattered diaspora back to the motherland.

In the sixties when people left India the buzz word was 'brain-drain'. We see it now as 'brain-gain' Mr Gurucharan, Ministry of Overseas Indian Affairs

In Bangalore, one of India's booming high-tech centres, an estimated 35,000 overseas Indians have set up home.

In the last few years people born overseas who are able to prove their Indian descent have been able to apply for a special immigration status.

The Overseas Citizenship Certificate provides many of the benefits of full citizenship without the need to give up a foreign passport.

Mr Gurucharan, Joint Secretary in the Ministry of Overseas Indian Affairs, says they are proving popular.

"In the last six months or so we've issued over 40,000 Overseas Citizenship Certificates, and I believe that this trend will grow," he says.

"In the 1960s when people left India the buzz word was 'brain-drain'. We see it now as 'brain-gain'."

Career prospects

India's healthcare system is benefiting. Doctors who have trained in overseas health services are finding faster career advancement.

Dr Shabnam Singh recruits doctors for a private hospital.

"The Indian private sector facilities are at a par, and dare I say it, in some cases better than what is available in the West," she says.

"In the last six years I would say that from a trickle at first there is now a constant flow of people wanting to relocate back home."

Returning Indians are finding their emotional bonds to the country

The Indian government does not have the detailed figures to prove whether "reverse migration" is increasing at a significant rate.

Many of those applying for the Overseas Citizenship status may simply want the convenience of visa-free travel, without intending to relocate to India.

But there can be no doubt that many young people of Indian origin no longer see the best opportunities as being in the West.

Lifestyle choice

Ferena Scott was born and raised in Glasgow. She now has a successful career as an actress in Bollywood.

"There's something for everyone here," she says.

"And because you have a luxurious lifestyle you can enjoy yourself more."

It is an attraction some find hard to resist. The yawning gap between the new rich and the old poor means the wealthy in India have a very high standard of living.

When I was young, growing up in the UK, we used to play football in the streets. Kids can't do that there now Returned Indian Manish Amin

There is also the emotional bond. Scott says that despite being born in the UK she has always felt a strong tie to India.

"As a young kid in Britain people would look at me and ask me where I was from. I'd say, 'Scotland', and they'd say, 'yes, but where are you really from?'

"Somewhere at the back of your mind you're wondering about this country that your parents came from and wondering if maybe you belong there."

Despite its so-called "economic miracle", India still has shocking levels of poverty, a burdensome bureaucracy and crumbling infrastructure. But many overseas Indians feel the country's time has come.

"When I was young, growing up in the UK, we used to play football in the streets," says Manish Amin.

"Kids can't do that there now. Here though, there's open ground, the kids can play by themselves. I think the main thing for us was just to have that comfortable life here."