This has led to the destruction of nature and people's economy, and massive uprooting of people to clear the way for development. It has caused the replacement of self-sufficient individuals and communities and made them dependent on a centralized state for their everyday needs produced wastefully through a resource-hungry production system.

Fifty years of maldevelopment have been based on:

1. Marginalization of indigenous science, indigenous medicine and indigenous agriculture, even though two-thirds of India is still supported by these systems.

2. The takeover of the functions of the community by the state, hence the erosion of decentralized democracy.

3. The artificial support to a capital intensive development through debt and subsidies and its control through licences and permits.

Today this so-called Nehruvian model of centralized planning is in dispute. It is being assaulted by the paradigm of globalization and free trade.

HOWEVER, THE globalization of the economy worsens all the negative features of the Nehruvian paradigm such as centralization, ecological destruction and cultural erosion. India has experienced globalization and "free trade' before. The new wave of trade liberalization is, therefore, not so new. We have been there before.

For us "free trade" is not a late twentieth century innovation. It is the re-emergence of a very old instrument of monopoly control. It does not herald the end of history: merely its repetition. It does not create new liberties for the ordinary' Indian; it leads to recolonization.

The GATT treaty might be more complex than the Faruksheer "firman" (order) of 1717 granted to the English East India Company, and, instead of one large corporation, we now have many multinational corporations, but in core content and in impact, free trade in the eighteenth century and free trade in the late twentieth century do not differ very drastically.

The language and concept of free trade was central to the East India Company policy for laying the "foundation of a large, well grounded, sure English dominion in India for all time to come.

The East India Company's first factory, in Bengal, was established on 14th May 1653 at Hariharpur. On 2nd February 1634 the English obtained from Shah Jahan an order to bring their ships to Bengal. In 1651 the English East India Company was permitted to trade freely in Bengal in return for a fixed annual tax of Rs.30.000, on the basis of a sealed permit, granted by the Governor of Bengal. However, the English were not Satisfied with freedom to trade in Bengal only

They wanted free movement of trade over the entire country. For this, they asked the Mogul emperors for a single document which would remove the impediment's in the way of trade of the Company, and give them legal and moral justification to assert their rights, whenever they came into conflict with local and provincial authorities. The 1717 order was their route to extra territorial power for free trade.

However, freedom for the East India Company implied the end of freedom for local producers and traders.

As Radhakamal Mukherjee writes in his Economic History of India the Indian merchants were placed under a serious handicap as they not only had to pay both customs as well as transit duties and other charges (from which the Europeans obtained exemptions), but also lacked the protection of the Mogul fleet against attacks by European frigates. The free-trade order of 1717 led to the rise in the monopoly of the East India Company in trade in manufactured goods as well as in agricultural commodities.

Textiles were the most important export item from India. In the times of the Mogul government, the weavers manufactured their goods freely. Master weavers often employed their own capital to manufacture and sell freely. With the introduction of monopoly, the entire weaving population as well as the merchants and intermediaries connected with the cloth trade were subjected to oppression. The coercion of the weaving community was intrinsic to the creation of freedom for the East India Company.

The Company appointed a large number of agents who advanced money to the weavers, obtaining from them signed contracts and exercising a monopolistic control over them, so that the weavers were not permitted to work for others. The weavers could not obtain a just price for their clothes. The English East India Company fixed prices in all places at least 15%, and in some even 40%, less than the clothes would sell in the public bazaar or market on a free sale.

"Free trade" was at the root of the loss of freedom for India and her people, because free trade is essentially freedom for foreign trading interests. "Free trade" is supposed to create a level playing-field. However, free trade does not create a level playing-field for all economic actors because it puts small local producers and traders at a disadvantage. As freedoms grow for corporations, small producers lose their freedom to engage in economic activity on their own terms and can either become bonded, contract labour to the corporations, or become economically dispensable.