GOVERNMENT TAKES WHAT WAS ALREADY YOURS - & SELLS IT BACK TO YOU

How the Indian state captures local, free resources and turns them into controlled, unaffordable systems

The essay exposes how the Indian government systematically captures freely available local resources, skills, and traditions—such as water, food, healing, education, energy, and construction—and turns them into regulated, licensed, and monetized services. By declaring traditional practices backward, introducing fear, enforcing laws, restricting access, and then privatizing replacements, the state transforms community self-reliance into bureaucratic dependency. What was once shared or instinctive is now taxed, patented, and sold back—often with propaganda encouraging gratitude. The result is widespread loss of autonomy, dignity, affordability, and cultural memory, all disguised as development.

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SECTION 1: INTRODUCTION — THIS IS NOT PROGRESS

What if everything you now pay for was once freely available to your parents or grandparents?

What if you already had water, food, shelter, healing, knowledge, and skills — but they were declared unsafe, backward, illegal, or unqualified?

And then, a government system took them, branded them, taxed them, privatized them, and now sells them back to you — at a price?

This is not modernity. It is theft dressed as service. It is colonialism continued by your own people.

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SECTION 2: WHAT THEY TOOK FROM YOU (WITH EXAMPLES)

1. WATER

Wells, tanks, hand pumps, ponds

Natural springs in hills and forests

Home-filtered water, copper pots, ash and sand filtration

Now:

Packaged water (bottles, cans, dispensers)

RO filters, UV purifiers

Water taxes, tanker mafias

Sewage-contaminated municipal supply

2. FOOD & SEEDS

Native grains: millets, native rice, pulses

Seed saving by farmers

Community threshing, drying, sharing

Open grazing and organic composting

Now:

Hybrid seeds with licensing

Fertilizer subsidy traps

Supermarket produce with pesticides

Branded rice, pulses with inflated prices

Permits for grazing, manure banned

3. MEDICINE & HEALING

Home remedies: tulsi, turmeric, neem, oil massages

Bone setting, local midwives, barefoot healers

Forest medicine, tribal knowledge

Now:

Allopathy only recognised

Quackery laws criminalising local healers

Births only in hospitals, C-sections incentivised

Ayurveda packaged and sold back by Patanjali or pharma lobbies

4. SHELTER & CONSTRUCTION

Mud homes, lime plaster, stone floors, thatched roofs

Family-built or community-built homes

Now:

Permissions, contractors, government layouts

Bylaws banning natural materials

Stamp duty, registration, GST on repair services

5. EDUCATION

Guru-shishya, family trade, on-field learning

Libraries, panchayat gatherings, storytelling

Now:

Schooling monopoly

Compulsory curriculum and language medium

Teacher certifications

Fees, uniforms, transport, tuition dependency

6. ENERGY

Cow dung cakes, firewood, sunlight, wind

Traditional stoves and sun-dried fuel

Now:

LPG with subsidy traps

Ban on wood burning

Solar panels with import taxes

Electricity bills, meter fines, smart grid surveillance

7. BIRTH & DEATH

Midwives, home births, river cremations

Oral memory, rituals without paperwork

Now:

Birth certificates mandatory

Only licensed doctors

Cremation grounds require ID

Religious customs restricted during lockdowns

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SECTION 3: HOW THEY DID IT (CAPTURE STRATEGY)

STEP 1: Declare It Backward

"Home births are dangerous"

"Mud homes are unhygienic"

"Millets are poor man's food"

"Local healers are illiterate"

STEP 2: Introduce Risk & Fear

Water-borne diseases as justification for bottled water

Infection scare to ban community cooking

Fire hazards used to ban cow dung or diyas

Parental fear to push coaching culture

STEP 3: Legalise & License

You need registration to teach or heal

Farmer seed exchanges made illegal

Consent forms, IDs, tax numbers for everything

STEP 4: Regulate & Control Access

Ration cards, Aadhaar, caste-based restrictions

Water tankers need political connections

School admissions need documents

Home repair needs municipal approval

STEP 5: Privatise the Replacement

PPPs in water, roads, toilets

Patented seeds, pharmaceutical takeovers

Ed-tech, agri-tech, health-tech, climate-tech

NGO and CSR dependency

STEP 6: Propagandize Gratitude

Awards for packaged food brands

TV ads praising water filters

Government praise for hospital births

Olympians advertised as products of schooling system

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SECTION 4: WHO BENEFITS

Corporates get revenue, subsidies, and monopoly

Bureaucrats control access and receive bribes

Politicians earn votes and loyalty

NGOs and foreign agencies gain control over policy

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SECTION 5: THE COST OF THIS THEFT

Loss of self-reliance: Every small act requires permission

Loss of local skills: Youth mock their own heritage

Loss of dignity: Treated as incapable without a certificate

Loss of affordability: What was once free is now expensive

Loss of connection: Between people, land, animals, plants

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SECTION 6: THE ILLUSION OF CHOICE

You think you are choosing bottled water.

But you never chose to lose your river.

You think you prefer hospital birth.

But you never got a chance to experience midwifery.

You think mobile apps help you learn.

But your grandmother taught without a screen.

You are not choosing.

You are surviving in a system that stole your alternatives.

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SECTION 7: WHAT CAN BE DONE

1. Revive ancestral knowledge: Document elders, learn from doers

2. Use alternatives: Buy from small farmers, use traditional products

3. Practice & demonstrate: Build mud homes, host seed swaps, self-teach

4. Opt-out of systems: Delay tech, say no to fake health, stop over-legalisation

5. Reclaim language: Stop calling things "local" or "poor" — call them ours

6. Expose the illusion: Write, speak, show others what was lost

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FINAL WORD

They don’t want you to remember what you already had. Because the moment you do — you become free. And the market collapses.

Governments do not create value.

They capture it.

And then they make you pay.

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REFERENCES

Here is a comprehensive and credible list of references that support the themes and claims made in the essay, drawn from Indian and global sources:

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SECTION A: GENERAL THEFT OF COMMONS & RESOURCE CAPTURE

1. Illich, Ivan – Tools for Conviviality and Deschooling Society

Framework for institutional monopolies replacing community-based skills.

2. Vandana Shiva – Earth Democracy, Stolen Harvest, Water Wars

On seed patenting, water privatization, and local resource loss in India.

3. Arundhati Roy – Capitalism: A Ghost Story

Corporate-government capture of public resources and lives.

4. Utsa Patnaik & Prabhat Patnaik – A Theory of Imperialism

Historical model of surplus extraction and internal colonization.

5. Clair Brown et al. (2021) – The Devastating Cost of Privatization

University of Massachusetts Amherst – empirical data on global privatization failures.

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SECTION B: WATER PRIVATIZATION & CONTROL IN INDIA

6. Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) – State of India’s Water Reports

On bottled water industry, water tanker mafias, and drying aquifers.

7. P. Sainath – Everybody Loves a Good Drought

Real-life narratives of tanker politics and failed water schemes in rural India.

8. Jairam Ramesh, Ministry of Drinking Water (2011) – National Rural Drinking Water Programme Reports

Acknowledges privatized water delivery and inefficiencies.

9. World Bank (2004) – Case Studies of Water Privatization in India

E.g. Hyderabad, Nagpur – showing community resistance.

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SECTION C: SEED, FOOD, AND AGRICULTURE MONOPOLIES

10. Navdanya International – Reports on seed freedom, Bt Cotton, Monsanto

Real case studies of farmer dependency and legal battles.

11. Economic & Political Weekly (EPW) –

"Corporate Control in Indian Agriculture" – Vol 49 No 8, 2014

12. The Hindu – “Why Indian Farmers Are Fighting for Seed Rights”, 2020

Examines Seed Bill, 2020 and criminalization of seed exchange.

13. UN FAO Reports – The State of Food and Agriculture

Tracks loss of traditional crops, biodiversity, and dependence on global seed firms.

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SECTION D: MEDICINE, MIDWIVES & LOCAL HEALERS BEING OUTLAWED

14. WHO Bulletin (2018) – Integration of Traditional Medicine in Primary Health Care in India

Cites how traditional healers are unrecognized by law but heavily relied upon.

15. Government of India, Ministry of AYUSH –

AYUSH push for branded, licensed herbal medicine while discouraging home remedies.

16. Lancet (2017) – Over-Medicalization of Birth in India

Skyrocketing C-section rates; traditional midwifery sidelined.

17. EPW (2020) – “Quacks or Healers? Understanding Informal Medical Practitioners”

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SECTION E: HOUSING, CONSTRUCTION, AND VILLAGE ARCHITECTURE BANS

18. Laurie Baker Foundation – On low-cost eco-construction

Mud, lime, stone techniques being replaced with concrete due to policy bias.

19. INTACH Reports – Loss of vernacular architecture due to regulation and urban codes.

20. National Building Code of India (NBC) –

Bias toward RCC/concrete, discouraging local material use.

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SECTION F: EDUCATION & LOSS OF LOCAL KNOWLEDGE

21. Anil Sadgopal – The Politics of Education in India

How NEP and centralization kill local language, skills, context.

22. Right to Education Act (2009) –

Makes school attendance mandatory but kills apprenticeship, home learning.

23. UNESCO Global Education Monitoring Report – 2021: Non-State Actors in Education

Warns of growing commercialization of Indian education.

24. Lok Jumbish Project – A pioneering (but discontinued) Rajasthan-based decentralized learning model.

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SECTION G: ENERGY & TRADITIONAL FUELS

25. TERI India Reports – Traditional Biofuels in Indian Villages

Cow dung, agri-waste, and wood used efficiently before LPG dependence.

26. India Energy Outlook (IEA, 2021) –

Discusses transition away from self-reliant fuels to centralized energy grids.

27. National Solar Mission Policies –

Dependence on imported solar parts, taxing small producers.

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SECTION H: LAWS THAT CRIMINALIZE THE COMMONS

28. Indian Forest Act (1927)

Colonial law still in force; prevents communities from using their own forest.

29. Environment Protection Act (1986)

Used selectively to criminalize native livelihoods while allowing corporate pollution.

30. Seed Bill (2020)

Seeks to regulate all seeds, criminalizing seed saving without registration.

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SECTION I: THE MINDSET SHIFT THROUGH PROPAGANDA

31. Ministry of Information and Broadcasting Archives –

TV and radio campaigns glorifying packaged foods, bottled water, branded health.

32. NITI Aayog Reports – Innovation and PPP Models in Rural India

Promotes private alternatives to local solutions under “modernization.”

33. Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI) –

Warnings on misleading claims by bottled water and processed food companies.

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SECTION J: GLOBAL FRAMEWORKS MIRRORED IN INDIAN POLICIES

34. World Economic Forum (WEF) – Great Reset, Future of Food

Outlines global blueprints for privatizing essentials via tech platforms.

35. World Bank and IMF Policy Directives on Structural Adjustment

Behind India's 1991 liberalization — led to resource commodification.

36. UN SDG Reports – Critics show how Sustainable Development Goals allow corporations to capture traditional practices under climate rhetoric.

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