gaddeswarup
12th July 2005, 07:44 AM
[tscii:37f3a7e84a]On a recent trip to India, I found that some of the drinking water is now bottled by Pepsi and I was told that in Tamilnadu (by Mrs. Raina, Head of the Dept. of Mathematics of Bombay University. She is from Tamilnadu and it should be possible to find which river), one of the multinationals bought the rights to the water of a small river and that there are ongoing effort to privatize water resources in some places. Here is an extract from a 2002 article of Znet about water wars in Bolivia (http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=2612 ) when people had to get licenses to collect rain water from their roofs:
"Two years ago the population of the Chapare city of Cochabamba fought an epic battle against the selling off of its water. First the World Bank refused to renew a $25m loan unless water services were privatised. Then US water giant Bechtel stepped in and took control. It raised water rates by an average of 35 per cent, meaning Bolivians earning $100 per month were paying a monthly rate of $20 for water. People even had to obtain licenses to collect rainwater from their roofs.
The people of Cochabamba took to the streets – tens of thousands protesting daily against the rate hikes and subsequent water cut-offs. The so-called ‘water war’ led to months of confrontations, the killing of demonstrators by the police and a state of siege in the region. Eventually, the escalating protests ignited a general strike that shut down the city’s economy. At the protests’ height, Bechtel abandoned Bolivia and filed a $40m lawsuit against the government, claiming compensation for lost profits under a bilateral investment treaty.
Many of the participants in the cocalero and campesino organisations, Morales included, were schooled in this conflict. Their campaign’s strong anti-globalisation focus struck a chord among large sections of the local population who spent months facing down violent repression that included mass arrests, internal exile and killings. Significantly, these local activists began to reach out to form valuable connections with anti-globalisation and ecological groups across the world.
Not surprisingly, Morales has also become something of a public enemy for the US. He has been mocked in the US press as a ‘coca-chewing Aymara Indian leader who would nationalise Bolivia’s industries, stop payment of its foreign debt and halt US-backed efforts to end coca growing’ (New York Times, 6 July, 2002). But this has done little to arrest his rise to popularity in Bolivia. "
The recent struggles in Bolivia are chronicled in:
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=7543
swarup[/tscii:37f3a7e84a]
"Two years ago the population of the Chapare city of Cochabamba fought an epic battle against the selling off of its water. First the World Bank refused to renew a $25m loan unless water services were privatised. Then US water giant Bechtel stepped in and took control. It raised water rates by an average of 35 per cent, meaning Bolivians earning $100 per month were paying a monthly rate of $20 for water. People even had to obtain licenses to collect rainwater from their roofs.
The people of Cochabamba took to the streets – tens of thousands protesting daily against the rate hikes and subsequent water cut-offs. The so-called ‘water war’ led to months of confrontations, the killing of demonstrators by the police and a state of siege in the region. Eventually, the escalating protests ignited a general strike that shut down the city’s economy. At the protests’ height, Bechtel abandoned Bolivia and filed a $40m lawsuit against the government, claiming compensation for lost profits under a bilateral investment treaty.
Many of the participants in the cocalero and campesino organisations, Morales included, were schooled in this conflict. Their campaign’s strong anti-globalisation focus struck a chord among large sections of the local population who spent months facing down violent repression that included mass arrests, internal exile and killings. Significantly, these local activists began to reach out to form valuable connections with anti-globalisation and ecological groups across the world.
Not surprisingly, Morales has also become something of a public enemy for the US. He has been mocked in the US press as a ‘coca-chewing Aymara Indian leader who would nationalise Bolivia’s industries, stop payment of its foreign debt and halt US-backed efforts to end coca growing’ (New York Times, 6 July, 2002). But this has done little to arrest his rise to popularity in Bolivia. "
The recent struggles in Bolivia are chronicled in:
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=7543
swarup[/tscii:37f3a7e84a]