Skip to main content

Decorporatising Jawaharlal Nehru University campus

Dear friends,

Kindly mail the text that follows to these email addresses:

studentsolidarity@rediffmail.com; gkchadha@mail.jnu.ac.in; rghosh@mail.jnu.ac.in; ghosh_r@vsnl.com; rohanxdsouza@yahoo.co.in; rnmenon@mail.jnu.ac.in; jnusu_campaigns@yahoo.co.in; ahmar_bluez@yahoo.com

+++++++++++++ snip +++++++++

I support Students' Solidarity and the larger collective, Forum Against Corporatisation, in their fight to reclaim their campus space from big corporations like Nestle and to hand it over to more deserving local entrepreneurs.

Previously local entrepreneurs and those from the socially deprived sections of the society were given preferential access to campus space, but increasingly small businesses are being driven out, and larger corporations welcomed in. Nestle is only one particularly bad example: the company has violated workers' rights and supported the violent suppression of workers' unions in countries like Colombia, Philippines and Thailand; acquired cocoa for its chocolates from plantations in Ivory Coast and Indonesia where the work force is made up of children, who are treated like slaves; and marketed infant formula to poor nations for years at the cost of thousands of infant lives.

I also urge you to read this report from 2002, which does reveal a lot more about Nestle and their hunger for profits - no matter what!:

http://www.counterpunch.org/begley1224.html

" Nestle Corporation, which last year earned 5.5 billion dollars in profits is demanding 6 million dollars from Ethiopia, a country facing famine. That over 14 million people are in danger of dying of starvation in a country so poor (an average income of less than $2 per day) that it can't afford to buy enough food on the overabundant world market doesn't seem to bother the world's largest food corporation. Hey, business is business! "

Here is something more potent - and something that should open up the eyes of the powers-that-be in JNU.

" Practices like sending sales reps into hospitals dressed as nurses to promote products to mothers were common place. The pitch was that Nestle's formula was better than breast milk - in fact, any mother that "really" cared about her baby would use Nestle breast-milk substitute. Mothers were often given a free supply of baby formula that lasted just long enough to dry out their own breast milk. These mothers, lacking sanitized water, and with their breast milk now dried up, mixed the formula with the only water they had. The results were predictable. According to the World Health Organisation a child bottle fed using unsafe water is up to 25 times more likely to die as a result of diarrhea than a breast fed child. 1.5 million children die in this manner each year. "



I am deeply concerned about the increasing corporatisation of JNU, from academic research to the contracting out of basic services, as we do not believe this serves the interests of the students, the local community, or society at large. It only serves the interest of large corporations.

I support the demands of Students' Solidarity and the larger collective, Forum Against Corporatisation, and believe that the Campus Development Committee should scrap the contract with Nestle immediately.

I hope reason would prevail over greed for profits.

+++++++++++++ snip +++++++++



Comments

sume said…
I love the new layout, sans.

"I hope reason would prevail over greed for profits."

Since when does that happen?
Sans said…
Thanks Sume for stopping by. Glad you liked the new design.
I am going to hold on to reason, wanna join me?

Popular posts from this blog

Arundhati Roy: The 2004 Sydney Peace Prize lecture

The 2004 Sydney Peace Prize lecture delivered by Arundhati Roy, at the Seymour Theatre Centre, University of Sydney. Peace & The New Corporate Liberation Theology It's official now. The Sydney Peace Foundation is neck deep in the business of gambling and calculated risk. Last year, very courageously, it chose Dr Hanan Ashrawi of Palestine for the Sydney Peace Prize. And, as if that were not enough, this year - of all the people in the world - it goes and chooses me! However I'd like to make a complaint. My sources inform me that Dr Ashrawi had a picket all to herself. This is discriminatory. I demand equal treatment for all Peace Prizees. May I formally request the Foundation to organize a picket against me after the lecture? From what I've heard, it shouldn't be hard to organize. If this is insufficient notice, then tomorrow will suit me just as well. When this year's Sydney Peace Prize was announced, I was subjected to some pretty arch rema

"Global Doubts as Global Solutions"

by Amartya Sen Melbourne Town Hall Tuesday, May 15, 2001, 6pm 1. Misery and Resignation We live in a world of unprecedented prosperity - incomparably richer than ever before. The massive command over resources, knowledge and technology that we now take for granted would be hard for our ancestors to imagine. But ours is also a world of extraordinary deprivation and of staggering inequality. An astonishing number of children are ill nourished and illiterate as well as ill cared and needlessly ill. Millions perish every week from diseases that can be completely eliminated, or at least prevented from killing people with abandon. The world in which we live is both remarkably comfortable and thoroughly miserable. Faced with this dual recognition, we can go in one of several different directions. One line of thinking takes the form of arguing that the combination of processes that has led to the prosperity of some will lead to similar prosperity for all. The advocacy of this perspective c

Prisoners in the land of the free

Better be careful if you are in the US and want to buy a ciggy lighter. You could be arrested for conspiring to detonate the nuclear arsenal the US has been piling up over the years. America's attitude towards anyone with a Middle Eastern origin is not too shocking. In Chinua Achebe's wonderful piece of writing 'Things Fall Apart' -- there is a passage where African tribal men sit around eating and drinking, contemptuously referring to white men, comparing their white skin to lepers’ white skin. One can understand the ignorance of the African tribals; they thought all white men are lepers! If America as a nation is as ignorant as the African tribals were 100 years ago... it is time to salvage their souls from the dark depths of ignorance. UN should set up an Educational Aid programme to help the ignorant and ill-educated American population, which includes the President of the US. 3 Texas men arraigned on terror charges CARO, Mich. — Three Texas men were arraigned Satur