ISP Lecture Series: Freedom Firm

A professor of mine once said, “Don’t let your schoolwork get in the way of your education.” I doubt it could be any more practical when it comes to a study abroad experience. The India Studies Program offers its students many opportunities to learn outside of the classroom including fieldvisits, weekend trips, cultural events through their college, and the ISP Lecture Series. Kirk McClelland, the ISP director, stated that the purpose of the series is to “expand on the curriculum and expose the students to new issues and organizations that work to fight against those injustices”. As stated on the program's website, one of the goals of this program is to examine social justice in a radically different cultural context. Several nights ago, our students had the opportunity to hear form Freedom Firm, a non-profit organization dedicated to fighting the injustices of sex trafficking. This lecture not only provided an insider’s perspective on an organization fighting this injustice but also challenged our students to rethink justice within their own home settings.

Students listening to a response during the discussion portion of the lecture. 

Our students, peer mentors, and BACAS faculty heard from Rodney, an employee of Freedom Firm's  aftercare home, about modern day slavery, namely sex trafficking, and how rampant it is in certain parts of India.  Freedom Firm focuses on rescue, restoration, and justice for girls who are under 18 and were forced into prostitution. The group learned more of the Devadasi system, an outlawed system of belief still prevalent in the state of Karnataka, that calls for its followers to marry their daughters to a goddess. These girls, who typically come from lower income families, earn at least 3 times more as temple prostitutes than they would earn working typical job for their area. In addition to this system, the group also learned of the complications and challenges that face those currently fighting those injustices as well as some of the risks that Freedom Firm employees take.

{unrelated photo by Celiz Aguilar}

Rodney and his wife Diana work at Freedom Firm’s rehabilitation center located in Ooty, a hilltown that our students visited several weeks ago. The center hosts women during an intensive 18 month program that rehabilitates them back into their society. During the program, the girls take classes during the morning and participate in skills training activities in the afternoon. Their journey to become re-integrated into society is a long, tiring, and extensive one. But they have an incredible support system to help make this possible. They are befriended by the staff members and are taught how to do many of the basic things that most member of society take for granted. 

{The hill town of Coonoor, a city close by to Ooty}

The students learned of the struggles the girls face as well as their dreams and aspirations for themselves. They had the opportunity to learn from the Freedom Firm staff. They also had the chance to purchase some of the jewelry and cards that the girls make through the various projects of rehabilitation program. More importantly, though, the students had the opportunity to reexamine social justice within the Indian context. They were able to witness that where there is hope, there can be change. 

Staff Post: Jonathan Pinckney on Development in Light of "Occupy Wall Street"

ISP Staff member Jonathan Pinckney reflects on a lecture last week as part of the ISP Lecture Series, brought to us by Professor John Itty, of the Vichara Collective based in Mavelikara, Kerala. Professor Itty spoke on the necessity of re-thinking the traditional development model, something especially relevant in light of the Occupy Wall Street movement taking part across the states and the west at large.

Professor John Itty addresses ISP and BACAS students on development at the first lecture in the ISP Lecture Series.

Today in the USA economists worry about the possibility of a “double dip recession,” protesters occupy Wall Street – and the bankers and corporate executives who led the global economy to the brink of ruin three years ago are buying new mansions and bigger yachts as their companies record record profits.  Meanwhile today in India the government continues to defend why it considers 26 rupees a day (about 50 cents) an acceptable standard of living for India’s poor – and the increasing number of South Asian billionaires build more and more elaborate mansions with the money which record “economic growth” has provided them. What’s wrong with this picture?  Where did we go wrong when, contrary to the “rags to riches” American ideal, the rich only grow richer and the poor grow poorer? 

   

 To speak about some of these questions for the first lecture in our “ISP Lecture Series” we invited Dr. John Itty, an Indian economist and representative of the Vichara collective to speak about “development” and how it might be more equitably re-envisioned.  Traditionally development has been viewed in terms of simple dollars and cents, or, on the national scale, in terms of GDP (Gross Domestic Product), a measure of the total amount of goods and services produced in a country in a year.  GDP is the benchmark for how well a country’s “development” is progressing.  Countries with high GDPs (The USA, UK, France, Japan, etc…) are considered “developed” and countries with low GDPs (African nations, some Asian nations, etc…) are considered “undeveloped” or “underdeveloped” or, in more politically correct language, “developing.”

The problem with this approach is that it considers the ultimate good in people’s lives to be purely material, purely based on things that one can buy and sell.  It doesn’t take into account any number of things which can define whether an increase in GDP actually translates to an increase in people’s quality of life.  A rise or fall in GDP says nothing about environmental degradation, about education, or about the strength of the family.  Indeed, because of the wider impacts of industrialization and urbanization necessary to increase GDP a rise in GDP may mean that these much more real measures of quality of life are damaged.  And of course the GDP measurement says nothing about who gets the lion’s share of those goods and services, usually the top 1 to 10 per cent of people on the socio-economic ladder.   And because these top 1 to 10 per cent tend to own the companies which sell most of those goods and services, a rise in GDP means a rise in their wealth.

ISP and BACAS students and friends of ISP listen as Professor Itty speaks on how the current model of GDP-based development is unsustainable.

This focus on GDP by the world’s economic “experts” indicates a deeper global cultural trend: across the globe people have been brainwashed into believing in frantic consumption as gospel truth.  Corporate executives and advertising agencies make millions of dollars convincing us, whether we’re in Coimbatore, India or Columbus, Ohio, that what we have is never good enough – that our happiness depends on having a flat-screen TV or an SUV or a house that’s just a little bit bigger than our neighbors’.  But the frank reality is that this is a fantastic con job played on the poor and the middle class in order to line the pockets of the world’s politicians and corporate executives.   A new car or a new house or a new gadget will not make you happier, will not make your society stronger, will not create “economic development.”  And neither will new cars, new houses, or new gadgets in and of themselves make life better for the world’s 1,345 million poor people people who live on less than $1.25 a day, 300 million of them in India.  The more we buy into this myth the more we centralize wealth and power in the hands of the super-wealthy and the more we alienate and dis-empower the world’s poor and middle classes. 

So what to do with this backward way of looking at “development?”  Ultimately, Dr. Itty said to us, the responsibility lies with each of us as consumers, us as the drivers of this economic tornado.  We must detach ourselves from this endless race for more, more, more and instead seek the things that truly lead to a “life abundant.”  We must affirm in our own lives, in our communities, in our churches, that life is more than money, that the underclass is more important than the bottom line.  We must say by the things we buy, the way we live, and the people we vote for that we don’t believe in the corporate worldview that money and possessions equal happiness. As Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount (paraphrasing): “Do not build up for yourselves a high GDP on earth, where economic crises destroy and insider traders break in and steal, but build up for yourselves treasures in heaven.” That’s a message that all of us should listen to; on Wall Street, Washington DC, or the Western Ghats here in southern India; and if we let it sink in its impact on our lives will be revolutionary.