Page 45 - Rights beautiful : collection of Professor Saneh Chamarik

Rights Beautiful Collection of Professor Saneh Chamarik

relying on the varying support of those most immediately affected by the
15
deleterious action of the market ...”. Or what, in the contemporary context,
James Robertson conceives of as creating a global economy that is both
16
human enabling and nature conserving. The social principle and practice
such as this of course sounds quite familiar to our fellow indigenous
peoples and rural communities. After all, it is precisely their traditional way
of everyday life. There is nothing extraordinary about it. But, mind you, it
becomes something so alien and subversive in the current world of
industrialism, where the freedom of capital and free market turns into
absolutism and totalitarian control over life on earth.
It is in this global perspective that the issue of bio-diversity
and indigenous knowledge must needs address itself. As emphasized
earlier on, it is the whole question of human freedom and progress that is
at stake. But first and foremost, the grassroots peoples and communities
must pull themselves together as united front in face to face with the
transnational structure of power. As a matter of fact, because of its own
overbearing abuse and aggrandizement, the agents of industrial capitalism –
transnational corporations, the IMF, the World Bank, etc. – have to confront
with strong protests and increasingly steadfast opposition from the common
people, urban and rural, everywhere. But street actions and manifestoes
in themselves would be of no avail without community rights being
recognized and realized at the grassroots level, both in principle and in
practice. As for the role of nation-states, little, if any, can be expected
under the contemporary elite system that, more often than not, tends to
be alienated from its own people. On the other hand, empowering local
communities would greatly help consolidate nation-states vis-à-vis
transnational encroachments. Humanity has gone through the age of nation
building, modernization and development patterned upon Western industrial
capitalism. Throughout, local communities have been neglected and their

15
Karl Polanyi, op. cit., p. 132. Italics mine
16
James Robertson, op. cit., p. x. Italics mine
OFFICE OF THE NATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS COMMISSION OF THAILAND 39