The Delhi gang-rape of December 2012 brought to the streets the deep and growing concern about violence against women and the demand for women's safety. The movement is the voice of women reclaiming their right to safety and freedom, through resistance to all forms of patriarchal power and celebration of women's peaceful power and energy.

Commodification, appropriation and control over women's bodies and the resources of the earth are one aspect of the threat to safety. Imposition of hazardous technologies that we do not need is another aspect.

Safety has emerged as an overpowering concern - safety of women and children, tribals, farmers and rural communities, safety from nuclear hazard, and environmental as well as health hazards of GMOs. Across India, protests and movements are also growing about the safety of people's resources and wealth - their land, their forests, their rivers, their property - in the context of the violent resource grab that is the basis of the new "growth" economy.

There is a pattern in this continuum of violence and threats to life and safety, just as there is a pattern in the continuum of the struggles for the defence of life, safety and freedom. The exponential rise in concern for safety - reflected in the explosion of people's protests to stop violence against women, tribals, fishermen, peasants, the urban and rural poor and the violence against environment and life on earth - is a direct consequence of the dominant culture of greed and commodification.

Sadly, this culture is shrouded in the garb of neo-liberal paradigms of economics in which there is no life, no values, no ethics, no community, no society, no people, no justice, no place for equality, dignity and people's rights, no place for freedom and democracy, just money and markets.

These values do not stay insulated in a silo called "the economy". Through osmosis they become the dominant values of a society, shaping the culture (or, should we say, anti-culture?).

Nuclear safety

As 2012 came to a close and 2013 dawned, hundreds of people protesting the nuclear power plant at Koodankulam and demanding nuclear safety sang and danced together at the Idinthakarai coast, adjacent to the nuclear plant. The New Year celebrations breathed new life into the anti-nuclear struggle. The beach reverberated with the spirit of resistance, assertion, freedom and democracy.

The movement for nuclear safety is a movement for freedom - we do not need nuclear energy when the sun and wind are so generous; we do not need GMOs when biodiversity and ecological agriculture produces more, safer and better food.

For two years in a row, at his address to the Indian Science Congress, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has tried to criminalise the citizen's movements for nuclear safety and biosafety. But his is not a lone voice. He is an echo of the structured money-making system that wants no breaks in its money-making, including the break that is necessary for ensuring safety. That is why he called for a "structured" debate onnuclear energy and GMOs, not a democratic debate.

More:

Safety as freedom