[ Background | Main Points | Difference India and West | They don't impose Culture | Begin at the Beginning | MNCs | Free Trade | Successful Models | The Propaganda Continues | Guptaji's Comment | Propaganda Continues ]
There has been a high alert for the bird flu since 2005. During one of the discussions on flu vaccines and the bird flu, etc., a colleague made an interesting point. He said that all the banana plantations in Australia are from a single type of banana. I don't exactly know as to what a single type of banana means but this is important if a virus was to hit bananas in Australia. A single virus can wipe out all the banana plantations. Had there been a diversity in banana plants, if one type of plants were attacked by a killer virus others would survive. This was on a radio programme and an expert on that programme said that statistically speaking within the life-time of people listening to that programme the entire banana plantation in Australia will be wiped out.
I am told that a rich diversity is preserved in the normal plant to seed cycle. Plants of the same type growing under different conditions become resistant to different diseases and hence the chances of one single virus wiping out the same variety of fruit or vegetable or grain is pretty slim. How do I connect this to Globalisation and economic prosperity? Globalisation is ruthlessly making all of us the same and when it succeeds a single virus will wipe us all out! A wise man has said: I am waiting for Europe to perfect her civilisation and then a child shall destroy it.
Globalisation has been the mantra since 1980s. I am unable to make up my mind if globalisation is good or not. I cannot comprehend the global economics. I have looked for help in books and articles but most of them are meant to confuse and not instruct so my understanding of pros and cons of globalisation is wanting. India has gone through globalisation of sorts during the British rule for about two hundred years (1750s-1947). What did India gain from that? If we look at the facts, the picture is beyond comprehension. In 1750 the Indian output of manufactured goods was a quarter of the world output and in 1913 it sank to just 1.4%. (Please see the table [pdf] below with the manufactured goods' figures for India and other countries from 1750 to 1913.) It doesn't take a rocket scientist to guess what was it like when British left in 1947. So much for the first globalisation. How should we look at the second and recent globalisation?
1750
|
1800
|
1830
|
1860
|
1880
|
1900
|
1913
|
|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Europe |
23.1 |
28.0 |
34.1 |
53.6 |
62.0 |
63.0 |
57.8 |
UK |
1.9 |
4.3 |
9.5 |
19.9 |
22.9 |
18.5 |
13.6 |
Germany |
2.9 |
3.5 |
3.5 |
4.9 |
8.5 |
13.2 |
14.8 |
France |
4.0 |
4.2 |
5.2 |
7.9 |
7.8 |
6.8 |
6.1 |
Italy |
2.4 |
2.5 |
2.3 |
2.5 |
2.5 |
2.5 |
2.4 |
Russia |
5.0 |
5.6 |
5.6 |
7.0 |
7.6 |
8.8 |
8.2 |
Neo-Europe |
0.1 |
0.8 |
2.4 |
7.2 |
14.7 |
23.6 |
32.0 |
United States |
0.1 |
0.8 |
2.4 |
7.2 |
14.7 |
23.6 |
32.0 |
Tropics |
76.8 |
71.2 |
63.3 |
39.2 |
23.3 |
13.4 |
10.2 |
Japan |
3.8 |
3.5 |
2.8 |
2.6 |
2.4 |
2.4 |
2.7 |
China |
32.8 |
33.3 |
29.8 |
19.7 |
12.5 |
6.2 |
3.6 |
24.5 |
19.7 |
17.6 |
8.6 |
2.8 |
1.7 |
1.4 |
Source: Calculated from Turner and others, eds., Earth Transformed, Table 4.32.
Note: These figures include handicrafts as well as industrial manufacturing.
A dominant image most Indians have about themselves is a mass of starving nation owing to the terrible femines India has known in its recent past. Professor Gideon Polya has this to say about it:
"One of the most extraordinary examples of such whitewashing of history is the sustained, continuing deletion of two centuries of massive, recurrent, man-made famine in British India from British and world history, and hence from general public perception. This massive, sustained lying by omission by two centuries of British academic historians occurred in a society having Parliamentary democracy, the means to readily disseminate information and a steadily expanding literate population. Furthermore, this process of lying by omission continues to this day in Britain and its English-speaking offshoots, such as Australia, countries having free speech, high literacy, democracy, prosperity and extensive media of all kinds."
"Ultimately, millions of Bengalis died because their British rulers didn't give a damn and had other strategic imperatives. The Bengal Famine and its aftermath for the debilitated Bengal population consumed its victims over several years in the case of complete British inaction through most of 1943 or insufficient subsequent action. Churchill had a confessed hatred for Indians and during the famine he opposed the humanitarian attempts of people such as the Prime Minister of Canada, Louis Mountbatten, Viceroy General Wavell, and even of Japanese collaborationist leader Subhash Chandra Bose. The hypothesis can be legitimately advanced that the extent of the Bengal Famine derived in part from sustained, deliberate policy."
" This whitewashing of Indian famine extends to two centuries of famine in British India. I have recently published a very detailed account of this two-century holocaust in British India that commenced with the Great Bengal Famine of 1769-1770 (10-million victims) and concluded with the World War 2 Bengal Famine (4-million victims) and took tens of millions of lives in between. In contrast to the response to the Jewish Holocaust, these events have been almost completely written out of history and removed from general perception and there has been no apology nor amends made. While Tony Blair has apologised for the mid-19th century Irish Famine that took over a million lives, there has been no apology for the World War 2 Bengal Famine."
Never forget that India was extremely rich before the British arrived and it was the murderous taxation policy and inhumanness of the British rule that ravaged India.
There are innumerable protagonists—both wealthy and politically motivated—of the benefits of globalisation so I will concentrate on what are the dangers. I must admit that many reasons for globalisation appear to me to be sound. The main points against are:
Terms like "they", "us", "India", "West" may mean different things to different people but in my mind their meaning is fixed. There is a fundamental difference in the social structure of India and the West. The Indian society is built around the concept of a joint family as its smallest unit and in the West husband-wife (and their dependent children) form an independent social unit called the nuclear family. The concept of joint family varies in India. The majority of Indians form a unit with all the brothers, their spouses, and children but there are notable exception with the sisters, their husbands and children forming a unit.
The ideal of joint family is not easy to achieve, there are lots of tensions and separating forces. Indian customs and economy is designed to keep these divisive forces from tearing apart the joint family unit. Much about India is explained by keeping this simple principle of joint family in mind and similarly the behaviour of the Western societies can be understood as the dynamics of their wife-husband social unit.
Most of the vocal (and at times violent) opposition to globalisation has come from the guardians of local culture. They have so far not succeeded in slowing the march of globalisation. There are two reasons for this: Firstly they have not made their case in intellectual terms and secondly our preoccupation with other matters has left us with little opportunity to give them a good hearing.
There are strong intellectual arguments, against the present globalisation trends, based on both economic and social reasons.
To put forward an economy based case we have to first disabuse ourselves of the idea that capital is economy and economy is capital. All the prevalent isms—capitalism, socialism, and communism—have only capital as their basis so my line of thinking is not against one ism and in favour of another ism but how to replace capital as the main factor in economic matters. Factors such as health, environment, people, culture are already much talked about as economic indicators but one has to be careful. For example, economists will discourse at length on health but in the end they will conclude their arguments with how much money is being spent on healthcare. When we observe events and discussions we realise that it all ends with the dollar value of it. So to disabuse ourselves of the centrality of capital is not easy. It needs a big effort.
Socially speaking the most visible force of globalisation is in conducting commerce not to provide for our necessities but only pander to our unlimited desire for pleasures. Please mark the only. The globalising forces do not provide for both necessities and luxuries in the same way. They capture and monopolise the provision of necessities, as seen in the commercialisation of water and power in South America. Choice, competition, cheap goods are the mantras only in products such as cosmetics and fast-food where an intense brainwashing and coercion is needed to get people to part with their hard earned money. Commerce only in the service of luxury is a highly destructive social force and globalisation has to be evaluated from this point-of-view too.
Let us picture the India of 1750. It must have been very prosperous since India contributed to one quarter of the global production. The prosperity must have been mostly in terms of goods and services with universal education and healthcare. There are records of the East India Company kept in the British Museum which note that there was a school for every 400 persons and Chinese travelers have recorded universal healthcare. The image of a prosperous India is not far-fetched but if you have difficulty with that, for the time being please replace India with an imaginary country.
For some foolish reason (in 1750s) the prosperous India doesn't take care of its defences, puts too much trust in the words of the first globalisation agents, the East India Company. Very soon India finds out that the trading company has interests beyond trading and India's internal rivalries are made use of by the traders to support its own military ambitions and thus the trader becomes the ruler. India's prosperity is based on its agriculture. The manufacturing supports the agriculture for utilitarian purposes and the agricultural wealth supports the manufacturing for its social and ornamental needs. The adventurous amongst Indians take their spices and other manufactured products to different parts of the world and bring back other goods in return. It's all mostly done through barter. The economy is resource rich, goods rich, and service rich but capital poor. In that economy, cooking was done at home so the labour of the housewife is not a contributor to the capital economy, the teacher taught students free, most of the goods were exchanged in barter so again it was not a part of the capital economy. This aspect of goods and services rich but capital poor economy is critical.
The trader has little industrial base back home so there is no question of shifting the manufacturing (as done presently) to the colony but the colony is used to produce cash crops which fetch good money in the international market. The cash crops are cotton, indigo, coffee, tea, etc. Farmers are forced to change their crop patterns and the cultivation of staple crops for local population is stopped. Farmers have little idea how to manage these resource heavy crops in the land they have used to grow sustainable crops. Crops after crops fail but the master doesn't relent on taxing the feudal lord who screws it from the farmer, even at the expense of farmers selling their seeds. No seed so no crop next time and the nation suffers serious famines. Millions die and the local manufacturing industry which relies on the support from agriculture vanishes. This way a proud and prosperous nation is completely ruined. This cycle of ruin would have continued indefinitely but for the fact that on the back of its colonies Britain became an industrialised nation with a great surplus in goods which had to be disposed. When these goods, clothe being the main product, reached India it hurt the Indian business class directly.
Unlike the farmers and the manufacturers, the business class was better organised and Gandhiji was himself from the business class. He was shrewd to sense the opportunity provided by the import of clothe and he united the business class behind him first. The poor had nowhere to go so they joined Gandhiji in his struggle to oust the British in the name of self-rule. Gandhiji's main interest was to experiment with Leo Tolstoy's doctrine of nonviolence in India, the freedom struggle was secondary. He had no fight with the British and he was an anglophile at heart. Gandhiji even abandoned the independence movement at its peak in 1920s because eager Indians went beyond Tolstoy's doctrine of nonviolence in their pursuit of independence. One would say that Gandhiji had no fight with anyone, since he considered all humanity as one large family, but we will discuss this later. Gandhiji's liking for English ideas and society meant that returning English educated Indians found a natural ally in him. They had all been saturated with the socialist politics then prevalent in Europe. They used socialism as a counterpoint to the British colonial and capitalistic exploitation. For a variety of reasons as the British left they partitioned India and gifted each partition to English educated Indians in the August of 1947.
Gandhiji had united Indians in the name of self-reliance and self-rule. The new rulers of India cobbled together the ideologies of self-reliance and socialism together and started to ruthlessly rule India. The team of then rulers included several internationally recognised well-meaning economists but all trained in the West. The economic theory of the West has capital as its origin, middle, and end. The difference in the economic view of capitalists and socialists is to my mind superficial. The difference between capitalism (of say the USA) and socialism comes down to this: both have capital as their handle, in the so called capitalist societies individuals control the capital but in socialist countries the government controls the capital. In the end it's still capital which pervades the entire thinking process.
Unfortunate India now (1947) had English educated rulers with capital-blinders for its services rich but capital poor economy. I have used the adjective ruthless for them before, I mean they were ruthless in excluding the ability-rich but capital poor common man from the economy. Even today I cannot bear to think of the inhumane and cruel government treatment of my relatives who had sterling qualities but no capital. To compensate for this handicap, the government did open it largesse in the form of government jobs which were quickly grabbed by opportunists and the cunning people with freedom fighter "certificates".
Government ignored the bleeding obvious because there was no capital. Trains, even in 1947 with one-third of the current population, had passengers sitting on the roofs of the carriages, roads were narrow and non-existent, an urban family got hardly 100 gms of milk and sugar per day, basic supply of grains had to be obtained by standing hours in a queue. The overall scene was miserable but it was the same ruthless excuse, we don't have capital to provide our citizens with the basic needs. Now when I think about it I am aghast. All our leaders toured the US, Europe, and the USSR extensively. Didn't they ask someone when they traveled on that 30,000 miles of interstate road system in the US as to how it was built? Had they taken the trouble to ask someone they would have been told that during that rare period in their history, after the great depression of the 1929, when they were capital poor they made use of their great workforce and used volunteer labour to build the greatest road network in the world. That road network is even today the backbone on the US economy. No our leaders were ruthless and never once removed their capital-blinkers and looked at millions of service providers who could have worked an economic miracle.
We are now at the beginning. A rich nation was first conquered and made bankrupt by choking all the vital organs of its economy. Conquerors were forced to depart but the new rulers continued with the economic principles the past rulers had taught and with which they had bankrupted a rich nation. The once rich nation continued to face famines, poverty and deprivation for almost all its citizens, save for people running the government or with capital. This ruthless deprivation not only sapped the economy of the people but also their intellect. Government exploitation fuelled several separatist movements and at its peak led to the assassination of its prime minister.
This was the scene when MNCs started their march into the country. And in general this is the genesis of MNCs. Political corruption, exploited and impoverished population, and general lawlessness are the primary conditions when MNCs enter a nation as messiahs.
[ Talent | Language and Self-esteem | The Loan Industry | The Disappearing Act ]
The easiest way for a corrupt politician to make money in a country with tightly controlled economy is to invite an MNC to the country in partnership with a family member. In India where government tightly controlled every single thing, this was easy. Governments permitted limited MNC entry for either their relative or for someone who bribed them heavily. These MNCs had a monopoly and consequently easy and large profits. This continued till India reached an economic catastrophe in early 1990s. Even though self-reliance was the aim, India found that it was not as self-reliant as its citizens thought. It regularly needed a large dose of imports to support its economy. After negotiations to ward off its impending bankruptcy it was realised that the only way India could continue to import was to officially say good-bye to its self-reliance policy and open its economy. This seems to be India's baptism into globalisation.
In a country like India where its corrupt politicians don't have the intelligence or honesty to conceive or motivate projects to provide employment to its citizens, a good way out is to invite MNCs. The setting up of the MNCs works this way: Corrupt governments go out looking for investment which will automatically solve all their problems, MNCs return the call by telling these governments the laws they want in place before they can come, corrupt governments are generally powerful so they pass laws to suit the MNCs, and then the MNCs start their magic. They pay ten times the going wages, they build a work culture, they in general dazzle the community with the glare of easy money. A culturally rich people with boundless qualities suddenly feel the rush of capital and they lose it all.
The first casualty is the drain on the talent. I well remember in 1970s and 80s, IIT and IIM graduates took sales job with MNCs like Cadbury's because it paid well. Imagine the situation, a capital poor country has spend huge capital to produce engineers to solve the country's pressing technical problems, and they start selling chocolates for an MNC.
When MNCs come and set their shop in a foreign country they have solved most technical problems and they need labour for routine purposes. Still they would like to hire the best trained workforce and they do so because of their ability to pay. So the most talented people spend all their talent maintaining a perfected technology.
The talent badly needed to solve local problems is lost to the most unproductive use. India's biggest problem is cleanliness and hygiene but this pressing need is only attended by most lowly paid workers who never show up for work. These workers get paid so low that they know that there is none who would accept their job and so they can do as they wish-work or not work. Cadbury chocolate will sell itself but the cleanliness and hygiene problem needs an enormous intellectual and physical labour but there is no talent to attend to it.
The hidden cost of wasting local community's talent is the biggest cost that MNCs impose.
When we will live in a global village which language shall we speak? When an American MNC goes to France it does its business in French but when they come to India they do their business in English. This takes away two of the most important ingredients that form a complete person—self-esteem and language.
There are plenty of examples of South American economies which were given easy loan without worrying if they could repay and not ruin themselves. In fact each and every South American country ruined themselves after accepting generous loans from globalisation agents.
The MNC messiahs finally leave when they find another country with a cheaper labour and more complaint government. It has happened in Latin America and it will happen in India too.
To make us all prosperous the first suggestion is to embrace free trade. I cannot understand how everyone benefits from free trade. My simple thinking is that if I have an existing capability to produce goods then I will benefit and those who don't have the capacity will lose. Australia started free trade with the US an year ago (in 2005) and some think that Australia is losing out. This is the story of free trade between two developed nations, what about between a developed nation and a developing economy?
The only surplus commodity developing nations have is their labour and there is no free trade agreement which agrees to the free movement of labour. I fail to understand how can the developing countries come ahead in this free trade where their most precious commodity cannot be sold.
There is an argument that developing countries have to export goods to the rich nations to sustain their economy and to do that there is no alternative but to accept their conditions of free trade. This is a flawed argument and the basis of the conditions which raise this argument is due to our corrupt politicians. They choke all manner of local commerce by corruption and thus the developing economies have no option but to survive on the handouts of rich nations.
Instead of free trade the answer is in getting rid of corrupt rulers which is be the cheapest option in the long run.
Prophets of globalisation have now increased their pitch and they cite the glittering examples of Singapore, Malaysia, and South Korea as the countries which prospered as a result of globalisation. Their memories fail them when it comes to the havoc wrought by the forces of globalisation in Philippines and Indonesia. I don't know enough about South Korea but as for Singapore and Malaysia they both had strong political leadership and would have succeeded regardless. It is a crime for others to claim credit for their progress. As an aside I think Malaysia might have already paid a heavy price by westernising itself to chase the development which would have come to it on its own terms.
I think globalisation, as trumpeted by a few, is not a guarantee of success by itself. A precondition for success is the right leadership and the right leadership will only come up if the people choose their own direction with full intellectual conviction borne out of their own intellectual efforts and not a copy of some other society. For this the society has to understand its own culture and fundamentals. There is no shortcut. From this point-of-view one can be almost certain that globalisation will fail in most countries.
To start with, corrupt politicians ruin the economy which has to be rescued by MNCs but then MNCs again bribe and corrupt the same politicians and so the economy continues to spiral down. There is an added trouble once you invite MNCs because they will not only support corrupt leadership but make sure that honest leadership is vilified and denounced at every step. One has to have extreme courage to fight the corrupt leadership, this courage is not common.
It boggles my mind to think that people have enough courage to get into leaky boats and freezer trucks to illegally enter rich countries and the same people do nothing to fight their corrupt leaders who are the cause of their misery. The chances of survival during illegal migration is much less than in fighting corrupt politicians but yet people will attempt one and not the other. What can one attribute this to? I think it is due to a complete destruction of self-esteem. The immediate need of the developing countries is to build their self-esteem and not chase capital investments.
(A friend, Shri Savyesh Gupta, has commented that there is a good reason why these people risk their lives to migrate. The question is: Even if these people stay put in their country and fight the corrupt leadership who will benefit from their sacrifice or in other words for whom should they fight? There is little chance that their children will reap the benefits much like what happened after Indian Independence. The real freedom fighters were thrown to the side and fake freedom fighters with "certificates" cornered all the benefits of Independence. So it maybe better to risk life and come to say Australia. This will at least secure the future of your children. Makes sense. )
No country whose leadership is corrupt should look towards globalisation to solve its problems. The immediate task should be to replace corrupt leaders with honest ones and this can only be done by people with self-esteem.
Some of my friends must think that I waste time and energy pointing out the obvious. But look at the following quote and get an idea of the lies people perpetrate about India and the British rule. British destroyed India and here is this Ibn Warraq advertising exactly the opposite. The article from which I have taken this quote has got an enormous publicity. I have seen it in The Australian and Der Spiegel. Unless we defend ourselves these lies will become facts.
This raises another more general problem: the inability of the West to defend itself intellectually and culturally. Be proud, do not apologise. Do we have to go on apologising for the sins of our fathers? Do we still have to apologise, for example, for the British Empire, when, in fact, the British presence in India led to the Indian renaissance, resulted in famine relief, railways, roads and irrigation schemes, eradication of cholera, the civil service, the establishment of a universal educational system where none existed before, the institution of elected parliamentary democracy and the rule of law?
6 February 2006
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,18048998%255E601,00.html
Muslim dissident Ibn Warraq in Germany's Der Spiegel, on why the West must stand firmly with the Danish