For quite some time two news items have been dominating the media in Delhi. The first relates to the intervention by the higher judiciary to remove commercial establishments and other kinds of encroachment from the residential areas and public land. The second item concerns the controversy whether the drinks marketed by Coca-Cola and PepsiCo contain pesticides whose level is 24 times or above the safe limit. The Centre of Science and Environment has come out with concrete facts and figures in this regard.
On the surface, these two items seem quite unrelated, but a moment’s reflection shows that it is not so. In fact, they reflect one and the same phenomenon, i.e., the growing attacks on the commons since the beginning of modern capitalism. To understand this, one has to go a bit in the meaning of the commons and the growing attacks on it.
clipped from: www.zmag.org