Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell

Palagummi Sainath quite rightly pulls no punches when he describes the impact of the current global economic development model on the livelihoods of the poor in India (and elsewhere). One hundred and fifty thousand farmer suicides in India since 1995, in a period which saw the number of millionaires in Mumbai alone rise to 23,000. And he doesn't have much time for those of us who sit in our 'sand boxes' tinkering with our 'lego sets'. In fact, he much prefers to throw down the gauntlet and challenge us to get more proactive, 'engage with the street' and to not 'disconnect with reality' through applying ourselves to theory and abstraction. Sainath is one of the few journalists analysing and documenting the effects of the unprecedented rise of corporate power on rural dwellers in India. His words in this plenary session certainly back up the powerful images in his photographic exhibition, Visible Work, Invisible Women.