Nor does free trade create sustained markets for Indian manufacturers, as the case of free trade under the English East India Company shows. The increased import of Indian textiles through the East India Company started to affect the production of woollen textiles in England. Weavers in England, therefore, rioted, and an Act of Parliament prohibited the importing of Indian calicoes.

Later, heavier and heavier duties were imposed on Indian textiles in the interests of the Lancashire mills and this contributed to the reduction arid ultimately the death of the Indian trade. Protectionism is, therefore, an essential part of free trade. The raising of the issue of "social clauses" and "environmental clauses" at the GATT meetings indicates that for the powerful global actors who demand and determine "free trade" strictures, "free trade" and protectionism go hand in hand. Free trade is not anti-protectionist. It is the protectionism of the strong and powerful.

As free trade removes the protection of the weak, and as the protectionism of the powerful grows, de-industrialization and de-intellectualization of India begins. The free-trade regime established by the East India Company reversed the commercial relations between India and England. The balance of trade which had been in favour of India until the close of the eighteenth century began to turn against her. From being the industrial and trade centre of the world, it was quickly transformed into being a supplier of raw material and a market for British goods.

Thus, from the beginning of the nineteenth century, export of cotton, silk and dyestuffs was encouraged, to fuel the industrial revolution in England, while India's textile industry' was dismantled, leading simultaneously to the destruction of livelihoods and of natural resources.

The vital resources needed for human survival are land, water and biodiversity The most fundamental human and democratic rights are the rights to these vital resources. It is on the inalienability of these rights that the freedom of the peasant is based.

However, free trade as freedom for corporations is based on the forced alienation of rights to land, water and biodiversity that common citizens hold as a birthright.

THE WAR AGAINST diversity did not end with colonialism. With the definition of entire nations of people as undeveloped, incomplete and defective, Europeans were reincarnated in the "development" ideology, which predicated salvation on generous assistance and advice from the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and other financial institutions and multinational corporations.

Development is a beautiful word, which suggests evolution from within. It was, until the middle of the twentieth century; synonymous with self-organization. But the ideology of development has implied the globalization of the priorities, patterns and prejudices of the West. It has come to mean precisely the opposite of what the word originally meant. Instead of being self-generated, development is imposed. Instead of coming from within, it is externally guided. Instead of contributing to the maintenance of diversity it has meant the creation of homogeneity and uniformity.

The homogenization process of development does not fully wipe out differences. Differences persist not in an integrating context of plurality, but in the fragmenting context of homogenization.

Positive pluralities give way to negative dualities, each in competition with every other, contesting for the scarce resources that define economic and political power. Diversity is mutated into duality, into the experience of exclusion.

The intolerance of diversity becomes a new social disease, leaving communities vulnerable to breakdown amid violence, decay and destruction. The intolerance of diversity sets up one community against another in a context created by a homogenizing state, carrying out a homogenizing project of development. Difference, instead of leading to the richness of diversity, becomes the base for diversion and an ideology of separation.

This is the reason communalism and fundamentalism are on the rise in India. India's diversity and pluralism are getting split into fragmented, identities through the state driven development. Development has created an erosion of cultural norms, values and identities amid an erosion of community rights to vital resources like land, forests, water and biodiversity. These ecological and social costs of development are beginning to be made visible by emerging movements of communities to regain control over their resources and their culture. These movements are working to build a decentralized democracy, a sustainable economy and a just society. "Free trade" is the ruling metaphor for globalization in our times. But far from protecting the freedom of citizens and countries, free-trade negotiations and treaties have become the primary locations for the use of coercion and force. The cold war era has ended and the era of trade wars has begun.

Free trade is not free, because it operates in the economic interests of the powerful transnational corporations, which control 70% of world trade and for whom international trade is an imperative. Transna