WFTO - Dr Sharma: Fair Trade foot soldier, activist and WFTO honorary member

Dr Sharma: Fair Trade foot soldier, activist and WFTO honorary member

09 February 2010

A Tribute to the late Dr Shyam Sharma by Carol Wills

Dr Shyam Sharma

It is difficult to remember a time when I didn’t know Dr Sharma. He was always there in the front row of every Fair Trade Conference (usually sitting next to Panchu). He presided over so many inaugural ceremonies, lit so many lamps, gave us all such wise counsel over so many years. I interviewed him twice. The first time was for a presentation on our vision at the Ecuador Conference in 2005.

The second time was just over a year ago when I was preparing a lecture on the motivation of social entrepreneurs. Dr Sharma was always gracious, always willing to give his time and thoughts to the issue being discussed. Happily, I have the transcripts of those two interviews. This tribute draws heavily on Dr Sharma’s own words.

Dr Sharma described himself as an academician who later turned into a social activist, a development worker and then a social entrepreneur. He was influenced by the independence movement in India in which Gandhi played an important part.

“The Gandhi movement, which promoted the idea of gram swaraj, based on local, appropriate models of economic upliftment of the poor, was inspiring,” he said. Charkha, the symbol of Gandhism, put stress on the creation of appropriate models of income generation based on sustainable production and consumption.

As a boy, Dr. Sharma dreamt about a prosperous and independent India. Like many young people of his generation, he dreamt that the able political leadership, which led India towards freedom, would also lead the nation towards the heights of prosperity. He quickly learnt that this was not to be.

“I realized that the system wanted to keep the untouchable and other marginalized sections (of society) as marginalized (as possible) to exploit them and protect vested interests.” Dr Sharma was affected particularly by the plight of working poor children and campaigned against child labour for the rest of his life.

Despite his academic career and family obligations, Dr Sharma set up Tara Projects in 1966 to assist the community living around his university and neighbourhood in Delhi.

“To fight against curses such as people who were almost outcaste, I started inviting people from the nearby Harijan community to my house in functions and festive occasions ….. unfazed by the protests from my relatives or colleagues who are from conservative family background.”

Through Tara Projects, Dr Sharma and his co-activists started to help marginalised people find work. These income generation programmes resulted in training and then production of items that were sold initially to local, middle-class Delhi people and then to youth clubs and “friends societies” in several European countries. Products from Tara Projects were among the first to be sold through the European world shop network.

The vision, Dr Sharma said, was: “to help the needy and unprivileged producers as human fellow beings and to make the world equitable for all.” Dr Sharma, and other young people like him, were fascinated by the idea of making trade beneficial to disadvantaged communities everywhere. In this way, they were ahead of their time.

In 1968, the UNCTAD Conference was held in New Delhi.   Its slogan was “Trade not Aid”.   Trade was seen as the sustainable alternative to Aid, more likely than aid to bring long-term development to underprivileged people. Dr Sharma attended the Conference.

Tara Projects grew. Dairy, poultry and piggery projects were started. Seeing that many unemployed women and men had traditional skills which were not being utilised, Dr Sharma   set up clusters for production of handloom, embroidery, stone, metal, glass, jewellery, horn and bone products.

“At that period of time I used to travel to villages where I was moved intensely by seeing the poverty as well as social backwardness and the resultant human sufferings. Later, the opportunities received to travel abroad to developed countries, mainly Europe, helped me to understand the contrast between the developed countries and the impoverished South.”

Dr Sharma found it painful to realise that on the one side there was excessive wealth and prosperity and, on the other, people living in the most inhuman and exploitative circumstances. He was determined to do more to address the suffering he saw all around him. Tara opted to focus on production and trade because Dr Sharma thought that trade could be a powerful means of achieving development.

“The concept of Fair Trade,” Dr Sharma wrote, “addresses the diverse facets of exploitative strategies of mainstream trade and business which restrict the avenues of prosperity to a handful of the world populace. The concept aims to give justice to all the stakeholders of the trade. It gives due consideration to the human efforts involved in production besides aiming to end … curses like child labour. It accommodates … concerns about unrestricted aggression on (the) environment in the name of development. It pledges to eliminate - or at least reduce - all kinds of exploitation from the arena of trade by bringing in the culture of transparency.”

With WFTO President Paul Myers (L)

When I asked Dr Sharma about his achievements, he was modest about himself and generous to all those who work in Fair Trade. Dr Sharma’s writing and active campaigning drew the attention of the media and the general public to the curse of child labour in the handicrafts sector and while, regrettably, it still exists, there is - due to Dr Sharma’s efforts - much greater awareness of its horrors and the need to stamp it out.

Being a campaigner himself, Dr Sharma believed that advocacy and lobbying is an important part of the Fair Trade mission.

“Awareness generation among masses is the most important prerequisite to establish market for Fair Trade products,” he wrote. “Grassroots level activities for income generation should be adequately supplemented with campaigns and awareness building programmes to make trade and business fair. Our task includes instigating policy changes to make trade just and fair at national (and international) levels.   More coordinated and regionalized efforts without depriving the core values of Fair Trade are the need of the hour.”

With fellow honorary member Carol Wills

Founder of Tara Projects, one of the first producer organizations to join IFAT (now WFTO), a founding member and former President of Fair Trade Forum - India, in the thick of debate about Fair Trade, always ready with a contribution, Dr Sharma will be sadly missed. He was made a WFTO Honorary Member in 2007.

Dr Sharma was a great optimist, convinced that a fairer world is imminent, that the world is definitely getting better for more people and that, through Fair Trade, it can get better still. He knew that there is still a long way to go but, he said: “We can look forward to a different, better and (more) humane world made possible with the major contribution of Fair Trade true practices.”

(Postscript: Dr Sharma was an Honorary Member of WFTO when he passed away at the age of 75 on 24 December 2009. He was born on 4 September 1934. The writer Carol Wills is also an Honorary Member. WFTO members elect an Honorary Member for the impact of his/her works to the Fair Trade Movement and contribution to the growth of Fair Trade during a general membership assembly that takes place every two years.)

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