UN's Faux Development Agenda

The United Nations seems to be headed for a summit session of the General Assembly in September that will agree on a meaningless global development agenda.

The draft of the document now being discussed in New York makes high minded declarations about "principles" and "commitment" but ignores such key issues as money laundering and drug trafficking that bedevil economic growth in poor countries.

Produced  after lengthy "consultations" by the Ambassadors of Ireland and Kenya, it does not mention drug trafficking at all. Governments only promise to "strengthen the prevention and treatment of substance abuse, including narcotic drug abuse and harmful use of alcohol."

Money laundering is noted obliquely in the pledge by governments that by 2030 they will "significantly reduce illicit financial and arms flows ... and combat all forms of organized crime."

There are four anodyne references to terrorism:

1. Governments say they will "take further effective measures and actions, in conformity with international law, to remove obstacles and constraints, strengthen support and meet the special needs of people living in areas affected by complex humanitarian emergencies and in areas affected by terrorism."

2. They will "Strengthen relevant national institutions, including through international cooperation, for building capacity at all levels, in particular in developing countries, to prevent violence and combat terrorism and crime.

The third and fourth mention of terrorism repeat those formulations word for word in other sections of the draft.

If any of this makes a difference to the lives of the billion people living on less than $1.25 a day it will be convincing proof that miracles do happen.

Open Letter to UN Diplomats

Hey Guys,

I’m writing to tell you what I think of your latest “Zero Draft” of post 2015 Development Goals .

Sorry to be so blunt, but it seems to me you're trying to avoid real issues.

 Take the first sentence. “Poverty eradication is the greatest global challenge facing the world today and an indispensable requirement for sustainable development.”

That sounds fine, but is it true?

Isn’t poverty just a symptom?

Of what, you ask?

Well, to begin with, of the theft of trillions of dollars from poor countries by corporations that misprice their trade flows.

Then there’s the problem that economists call “commercial wars” that spring from the “resource curse.” (Don’t you just love how economists whitewash grisly realities? It’s as if some great wizard in the sky cursed us with wars that actually result from criminal conspiracies.)

Those little wars are a major cause of extreme poverty. Take the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It’s one of the richest countries in the world, but also among the poorest because ever since the Europeans “scrambled for Africa” in the 19th Century, they’ve been stealing its wealth under one pretext or other (take a bow Belgian and French diplomats!).

That has happened throughout English-speaking Africa too (British diplomats take a bow!).

In Asia, the theft of resources has happened most often under cover of “Islamic terrorism” (British get the credit again), and in Latin America “Left guerrillas” and “drug lords” have been the fall guys (Americans take a bow!)

Drug trafficking needs special mention as a generator of poverty. It’s a $500 billion a year phenomenon, but most of that money goes to the same rich bankers noted earlier. If you ever wondered why Western bankers get such astronomical “bonuses,” that’s why: they keep the global criminal economy going, to the tune of anywhere between $4 trillion and $7 trillion a year.

Of course, they share it with the people who help them manage that underground economy. Every terrorist group in the world gets a cut: Al Qaeda, Taliban, Islamic Caliphate, Boko Haram, the Lord’s Resistance Army, Naxalites, Neo-Nazis; you name it, they get it. The Colombian drug cartels, the Mexican drug lords and the Central American murder squads all get funded too.

By the way, every one of those terror groups is a major producer of poverty for they make development impossible in many developing countries. The Naxalites we have in India specialize in destroying schools.

The bankers also plough much of the drug money back into other thriving businesses: producing counterfeit items in sweat shops in poor countries, environmental crime, and international trade of women and children for prostitution. The trade in counterfeit items, including medicines, now generates more returns than illicit drugs. The trade in endangered animals and body parts is a nearly $300 billion industry.

None of these “businesses” give non-criminals a living wage; all generate and sustain poverty big time.

I know you guys feel bad about all this and have just the right politically correct statements if the Press should call; but you’re also “realists” who know there’s no use wasting time on problems the rich and powerful don’t want solved, right?

So I know why your “Zero draft” is filled with noble goals like End poverty and hunger, Provide quality education for all, Attain health for all, as well as gender equality, secure water, sanitation, affordable energy, decent jobs, and so on.

Those are all issues poor countries can deal with on their own if they were free from massive theft of resources and constant economic and political subversion.

What we need the UN to do is deal with matters on which the poor have no purchase.

Those problems are not mentioned at all in your draft.

In case you are open to suggestions, here’s what I think the post-2015 Development Agenda should contain:

1. Introduction

The world stands on the cusp of a period of enormous promise. The new and emerging realities of the Information Age allow us to envisage a world in which we can make mass poverty, the threat of climate change and global environmental pollution the fading memories of a bygone era.

To realize that potential we have to deal effectively with the legacy of the Industrial era in which those issues are rooted. The first step in that process is to recognize the systemic nature of all existing global crises, including those already mentioned as well as endemic armed conflict, terrorism and rampant organized crime. They are not discrete problems and cannot be dealt with symptomatically.

The root systemic problem is a global criminal elite that rose to power during the colonial era; a meaningful post 2015 development agenda must disempower and dismantle it. The following goals are oriented to that end.

2. Goals & Implementation

A. Peace: The United Nations was meant to end war. The Security Council was created with its five “Big Power” Permanent Members to enforce action to that end. Instead, the five have become the world’s biggest arms merchants and supporters of war. Over the last six decades the five have promoted endless conflicts in poor countries that have not only killed well over a hundred million people but have drained them of wealth, blocked their development and trapped them in poverty.

To get things back on the track set by the UN Charter Development Goal #1 must be to end proxy wars in developing countries and establish a general peace by 2030.

The UN Secretariat should list all ongoing wars and create groups of independent experts to report on who is supporting them and identify the ultimate beneficiaries. The Security Council should be charged with meeting the 2030 goal and indeed, for accomplishing the larger task of general and complete disarmament. (In case you’ve forgotten, the General Assembly set the framework for such action in a 1961 resolution incorporating the McCloy-Zorin agreement between Washington and Moscow.)

B. Organized Crime: Through most of history, crime has been a local affair. It became global with colonialism and its ancillary crimes against humanity such as genocide, the slave trade and slavery.

When political decolonization set in after World War II, that criminal system disappeared “underground.” That is to say, the Big Powers that control world mass media began to pretend that it was all a deep mystery to them and that they had no control of it. The “war on drugs” is a typical outcome of such policy.

The trafficking of opium and heroin began as a “legitimate” colonial activity in the 18th Century; it was internationally recognized as a crime in 1912 but continued “underground” and became vastly more profitable as colonial Powers enlisted organized crime groups to expand markets and protect their turf.

Members of the British financial and political elite have continued to be in control globally because they run the system that launders drug money. They make obscenely large profits and spread corruption and endless violence throughout the world. Development Goal #2 must be to end all drug trafficking.

That will require ending the “war on drugs,” declaring all drugs legal, and providing them free as subscription pharmaceutical items. This will cost only a fraction of the “war on drugs” but will be far more effective: by knocking out all profit from trafficking it will remove the only reason why Organized crime is involved. Without drug pushers and their constant violence, governments can deal with the issue as one of mental and public health.

The General Assembly is set to have a special session in 2016 to focus comprehensively on the drug issue. Governments should use that session to amend the existing prohibitionist international drug Conventions and make them vehicles of the new policy.

C. Taxation: As long as there are taxes on income and profit, there will be people who cheat and honest people will always be at a disadvantage. That burden on the honest is a penalty on society as a whole. Governments should recognize that there are no police solutions to this problem; laws, regulations and enforcement agencies aimed at controlling economic forces only create more corruption. The only way to guide economic forces towards beneficial ends is by a market-driven system of incentives and punishments.

Development Goal #3 must be to abolish all taxes on personal and corporate income and profit while maintaining revenue neutrality with new imposts on immovable property.

Without taxes on income and profits there will be no incentive to hold black money; Governments should encourage all of it to surface by offering a general amnesty for those who invest their funds in long-term, profit bearing development bonds. Twinning that with the threat of prison terms for those found not to have revealed their holdings, and the offer to award all funds to informers should ensure full disclosure. These measures should make available a vast corpus of funds for development, more than enough to help all societies achieve the material goals in the current Zero Draft.

D. The Information Era: We are within a decade of having all people on the planet connected by mobile phone networks and broadband Internet. That opens the door to a range of new efficiencies in social interaction. It is not just e-governance and e-commerce, distance education and remotely administered medical care. There is spectacular potential in cloud-based data banks holding vast amounts of geospatially organized information that any smart phone can access and add to.

We are looking at the evolution of what has been called “the global brain,” with the strong possibility that a meta-consciousness will eventually emerge.

Two UN conferences in 2003 and 2005 promulgated the preliminary steps necessary for the healthy evolution of a World Information Society; it is now necessary to look farther ahead and decide on the mechanics, ethics, economics and politics of a fully interactive world.

Development Goal #4 should be to put in place by 2030 a global system to maximize the beneficial efficiencies of global connectivity.

The core effort to realize this goal should be the reform of the UN System, which is now a bureaucratic relic reflecting the brick and mortar realities of the 19th Century. The reform effort should aim to make each part of the thematically differentiated System the hub of global networks facilitating the work of a web of interconnected individuals, civil society organizations, corporations and governmental stakeholders.

C. Spiritual Development: As the world enters a new era of peace and material well-being, it will be necessary to address larger issues such as the nature of human evolution and its connection to universal realities. It will also be necessary to deal with the legacy issues of our swift ascent from barbarity manifested in attitudes such as religious intolerance, gender discrimination and abuse of other life forms.

Development Goal #5 should be an annually updated world map of spiritual progress based on the realization of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and established standards for the ethical treatment of animals.

Every country should map its own progress and discuss it publicly before submitting it to regional and global forums for comment. The UN Commissioner for Human Rights should compile the national submissions into the annual map and flag issues for discussion in the Human Rights Council.

Dear UN delegates,
I hope you do not think these goals are too unrealistic for action. They are the bare minimum if our species is to survive on a liveable planet.

Changing Land Acquisition

If the BJP government changes the  "Consent" and "Social Impact Assessment" of the Land Acquisition Act in a bid to accelerate development, I suggest it also add two new provisions that will go far to still opposition and serve the ends of justice.

1. It should  put a 99-year limit on the validity of all deals. That will allow those taking the land to make use of it, without depriving owners perpetually. No one can argue that such a provision will seriously hamper development; and it could reduce social impact/deprivation significantly.

2. Mandate that any corporation taking private land should allot a set percentage of shares and stock options over and above the cash compensation. This will provide those who have lost land with a stake in development, and, in combination with provision (1), give them a sense of ownership in what happens. That will itself be a valuable component of development. If the land is taken for public purposes, landowners should be compensated, over and above the purchase price of land, by regular payments from the treasury. Payments should be indexed to rising real estate values that result from public use of the land, and could be from a dedicated fund supported by higher tax revenues.

These two provisions could go a long way to ensure that land acquisition is not a block on necessary development.

It will also bring into perspective the fact that over the next century the Indian population will peak and begin to decline. All development work would benefit from keeping that perspective in view.

The Blindness of Thomas Picketty

I haven't read Thomas Piketty’s book on Capital in the 21st Century, but going by numerous and lengthy reviews, the French academic deserves the Blind Economist of the Year Award.

At a time when the connective and analytical technologies of the Information Age have opened up the possibility of a truly egalitarian use of capital, he argues the opposite: that capitalism is bound to create increasing inequality.

The reason for this massive misreading is obvious: he looks not at the reality of the world but at the distorting mirrors of statistical analysis that cannot capture new and emerging phenomena.

If we look at the real world it is clear that a quiet revolution is taking place against a system that has, throughout its history, allowed the corporate elite to apportion a lion’s share of wealth to itself.

It is a revolution that promises to reverse that process and equalize societies more comprehensively than any with flags and incendiary slogans. Consider the following:

1. The Internet and Worldwide Web allow small and medium sized enterprises to find and cater to niche markets. In effect, that destroys the mass market, which is no more than a conglomeration of niches homogenized by advertising.

2. Without a mass market, giant corporations have no reason to exist. Their decision-making hierarchies make them corporate dinosaurs, incapable of competing with smaller companies capable of adjusting far more swiftly to changes in consumer demand.

3. Without giant corporations to finance, the great bourses of the world will also become dinosaurs, especially as they face competition from crowd-funding. That fund-raising model is already revolutionizing indie film production in the United States – Spike Lee movies are now entirely financed that way – and will undoubtedly spread to all other economic sectors under a new American law that allows crowd-funding for profit. That law, which is sure to be replicated around the world, allows very tiny enterprises to raise funds publicly, in effect, creating innumerable little stock markets, tapping into minuscule pools of capital.

4. An added kick to the old gargantuan world of industrial production comes from the combination of off-grid renewable energy and 3D printing. It makes possible high quality manufacturing in areas without the heavy and expensive infrastructure that has always before been necessary for industry.

What all this means is that the global corporate elite created by the mercantile and industrial eras will have millions of new competitors capable of eating its lunch.

The days of corporate biggies strong-arming governments and riding roughshod over social and environmental concerns are over. Not because of any Good Corporate Citizen Code of Conduct, but because the biggies and their weird values will no longer exist.

Economic Development after 16 May

The parties with a realistic chance of assuming power after 16 May are agreed on the need for "economic reforms" to help India industrialize rapidly.

Both BJP and the Congress have declared their intention to ramp up industrial manufacturing, which they think is the only way to create the millions of new jobs the county needs.

They ignore what has happened in China, where such "development" has created the world’s most unequal society and the worst levels of air, water and soil pollution anywhere on the planet.

I was thinking of this on a recent trip to Bangalore to attend a wedding

The ceremonies were at a temple I had never heard of, and other guests who did know of it were foggy about how to get there: our cab driver had to ask for directions repeatedly as we traveled along narrow country roads and came eventually to a small flyblown town where the temple was located.

The temple itself was a pleasant surprise, a graceful complex of grassy squares, carved rock structures and statuary, a portal to another universe, serene and ancient.

A plaque said it was a thousand years old.

After the wedding we had lunch at an establishment near the temple. The food was excellent but served with a raw lack of style. Before and after eating we washed hands at a cracked sink with a wobbly faucet. The toilets were primitive.

It occurred to me on the hour ride back to Bangalore that the temple could easily be developed into a major tourist attraction. That would create thousands of new jobs at all skill levels and transform the economy of the surrounding countryside. From that thought, it was but a step to the proposition that in a land richly endowed with natural beauty and littered with the monuments of a millennial history, such a process could be the basis for rapid, sustained and sustainable development.

A national crash programme to create world-class tourist facilities would bump up GDP faster than any campaign to make India an international manufacturing hub.

It would not require imported capital and technology or create a super-rich class: tourism is the world's largest industry but it consists mainly of small and medium enterprises. The benefits of tourism-based growth would thus be widely distributed.

Instead of fouling the natural environment and causing the proliferation of every type of cancer and lung disease, it could improve the ecosystem and the urban habitat.

Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, the least developed parts of India, have the richest potential for tourism development and could vault ahead.

What will it take to implement such a programme?

The first essential is to sell the concept to the people of India as equal in importance to the freedom struggle. We cannot transform the country without everyone pitching in enthusiastically.  

The next three essentials are imaginative planning, innovative problem solving and excellent quality control, all eminently feasible. Especially so if we get a government after 16 May that is capable of concerted strong action.

How can we actually begin?

By setting up a task force to outline an overall strategic plan of action, identifying what needs doing where. Other expert groups could then carry forward progressively more detailed planning, all the way down to the recommendation of standardized templates for the new facilities to be constructed, and check-lists for cleaning up our towns and cities.The aim should be to have at the end of that process a number of specific project proposals in the form of business plans for examination by investors. Everyone involved in the process should be given strict deadlines and failure to provide quality work when expected should lead to dismissal.

To ensure success, it will be critically important to:

1. Maintain overall government oversight but contract out most of the actual work, including quality control, to private businesses, domestic and foreign.

2. Minimize corruption by establishing a policy of total transparency, with all budgetary information and analyses freely available on an official Web site. It should have links to the web sites of all private contractors, who should be required to maintain similar open access to information. An email system to distribute whistle-blower complaints to the Press and multiple levels of government should make a serious dent in corruption.

3. Mobilize and sustain public support for the programme by providing a multimedia flow of information on what is happening around the country and inviting their views on how things could be improved. An e-news service should pay free-lancers for articles on problems and progress. State and central cabinet committees should report quarterly and annually on the overall process.

4. Arrange for public-private partnerships to identify and develop human resources necessary for smooth implementation of the plan. Those with technical skill sets such as electricians and plumbers should get nationally standardized training to enable them to work at short notice in any part of the country. There should also be a common standard for the esthetic quality of their work.

In addition to the action directly related to the development of tourism, the government should move simultaneously to:

1. Create a national Youth Internship Corps to enable college students to volunteer for work in their chosen fields and gain on-the-job training.
2. Establish a cadre of community-level social workers to care for people living on the streets, especially, children, women and the elderly without family support. They should have the necessary institutional back-up from medical and educational institutions to function effectively.
3. Give real estate developers tax breaks and land grants to build public shelters for the homeless and rental housing available only to those in the lowest income strata. National awards should be instituted to acknowledge good work. 
4. Encourage and support animal lovers throughout the country to cooperate in looking after strays. The support could be through financial grants when necessary and by building/improving facilities for animal care in every community. Students in veterinary colleges should be required to work with such community activists before they can graduate.
5. Work with entrepreneurs to make every post office a cyber café offering support for first-time computer users and students.
6. Promote modern watershed management throughout the country. An excellent model for this already exists in the Watershed Organisation Trust, a Pune-based NGO that works in several Indian states. WOTR uses mobile phones and tablet computers to collect and organize multimedia input into a database that is used to plan and implement appropriate land and water management. The success of its efforts was evident during the recent drought in Maharashtra when the areas where WOTR worked had no shortage of water.
7. Concentrate all energy development funding on off-grid solar energy. A model for action on this exists in Simpa Networks, a Bangalore-based company that finances renewable-energy kits for homes and recovers the cost by charging for the electricity used. The energy is free after the cost of the kit is repaid.

How can we fund all this?

The simplest way would be for the government to abolish all personal and corporate income taxes and announce an amnesty for all black money invested in interest-paying 10, 20 and 30-year Development Bonds. The bonds could be issued in series tied to the time-bound implementation of particular projects. (New taxes on immovable corporate property could make the abolition of income taxes revenue neutral.)

Foreign Policy Aspects

None of our efforts will work as planned unless the government addresses key aspects of our international and regional situation. It must: 

1. Focus public attention on the post-independence role of Britain in creating our most serious national security problems, ranging from communal violence to terrorism and armed insurrection. There is a great deal of evidence of this dating back to partition, but successive Indian governments have felt it necessary to pretend that Britain is not involved. That reflects the strength of British corporate and media proxies in India, and it has led to a situation in which Indians have no clear idea why their society is in a growing state of crisis. Clarifying what has been happening will build the public support necessary for the steps below.  
2. End the $60 billion trade in opium and heroin out of Afghanistan run by terrorist groups obedient to Britain’s SIS and Pakistan’s ISI. The only way to kill the trade is to change the prohibitionist drug conventions that reward drug traffickers with enormous profits. A high-level International Commission on Drug Policy declared in 2011 that the current prohibitionist approach had failed; more recently, Latin American countries at the presidential level have been pushing for change because current policies are having a devastating impact on their countries. With the UN General Assembly scheduled to undertake a comprehensive review of existing policies and practices in 2016, New Delhi should go into high gear in support of a new International Convention on Psychotropic Drugs. It should decriminalize all substance abuse and move policy towards therapeutic approaches. That would immediately knock out all profit from "illicit drugs" and pull the rug out from under the SIS-ISI-Taliban- Al Qaeda combine. 
3. Stabilize the Rupee. The value of the Indian currency has been subject to egregious manipulation through off-shore markets, mainly Singapore and Dubai. These manipulations have helped British corporations make windfall profits, especially in the energy sector. New Delhi must make clear that those who profit from such manipulation will pay an equal price in new taxes.
4. Enlist the support of all British corporations operating in India and Indian corporations with close ties to the British power elite (ESSAR, Reliance Industries, Cairn India and the Tata Group), to communicate a blunt message to London: unless it stops all subversive activity, there can be no normal economic relations. To spell out exactly what that means, the Law Ministry should frame a new law specifically invoking national security (and thus overriding all applicable international instruments), empowering the Indian government to confiscate and hold in escrow the profits of all British corporations doing business in India. 
5. Help all members of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) to undertake their own versions of our tourism-based development.

End Note 

What happens if 16 May results in a hung parliament?

I would suggest a unity government with the proposals above as a common operating platform.

Priyanka and Post 2015 Goals

Priyanka Chopra appeared yesterday at a United Nations function in Mumbai to launch the mobile phone app of the manipulative "One World Survey."

The OWS is manipulative because it pretends to be consulting people on international development priorities but actually excludes from its list of six anodyne goals all serious problems afflicting development. 

Predictably, of the six choices offered by the OWS, "the votes so far have indicated" strongest support for "better education" followed closely by "better job opportunities" and "better healthcare.

Quite oblivious to the snake oil she was peddling, Priyanka twittered prettily on about how the Survey was meant for "the most marginalized communities in India," how it was "truly groundbreaking" that with a simple phone call "people can take a virtual seat at the UN to participate in a global conversation on a road-map for the future," and how "for the first time I feel we have an opportunity at hand to think ahead, think together yet individually and have a truly impactful plan for a future without poverty and suffering."

A collection of UN local brass with truly Dickensian names (Grande, Arsenault, Pimple) chimed in appreciatively.

If anyone is able to use the phone app to write in new goals, I suggest the following:

• Make Tax havens illegal. They have drained trillions of dollars from poor countries.

• Legitimize all "illicit drugs" so as to drive organized crime out of the racket and cut the largest source of funds flowing into Tax Havens (about $500 billion annually).

• Rich countries should stop taxing the products of poor more than they do that of other affluent nations.

• Rich countries should stop paying billions of dollars in subsidies to their own farmers and thereby making it impossible for farmers in poor countries to survive.

• Rich countries should not insist that their "development aid" is spent on their own companies and supplies.

• UN documents should not lie about the causes of "resource wars" in developing countries; the truth might stop rich countries backing their corporate interests in violent conflicts that have killed millions of poor people.

Britain and Hinduism 3: The Fight for the Future

What kind of India will we have when an “industrial corridor” runs from Delhi to Mumbai and another from Chennai to Bangalore?

Who will benefit most and who will lose most from the $1 trillion in infrastructure investment that Finance Minister P. Chidambaram deems necessary in the next decade?

What will be the impact of a Chernobyl/Fukushima-style disaster at an Indian nuclear power plant?

How will unrestricted foreign investment in the Indian economy change our politics?

How will the Land Acquisition Bill now before Parliament change Indian society?

The answers to those questions should cause general alarm, for in every case they portend disaster.

The lion’s share of the benefits of “development” will flow to a small group of super-rich Indians and their foreign partners. There will be increased employment opportunities for all Indians but that will be poor compensation for a range of devastating costs. “Development” as currently conceived will poison our land, air and water, ravage the country’s natural heritage, destroy the intricate balances on which our social coherence rests, and sell our economic and political freedom to a corrupt global elite.

We do not have to imagine many of the dangers; China illustrates in grim detail the future we are building.

Three decades ago China had a poor but largely egalitarian society under a brutally authoritarian regime (a norm throughout its well-recorded history). “Economic liberalization,” the magic potion now being pushed on India, softened the oppressions to some degree but also made Chinese society the most unequal in the world.

This is how it happened.

Massive Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) created a new class of super-rich Chinese so wedded to their own and foreign interests as to be completely alienated from their own people: an astounding 80 per cent of the country’s millionaires have either emigrated or plan to do so.

The urge to flee abroad has good reason. Their wealth has been built on the expropriation of the land from millions of poor farmers and the exploitation of some 280 million “migrant workers” who powered China’s manufacturing boom but continue to live hand to mouth in urban areas without residency rights or social services. Almost all wealthy Chinese are related to corrupt members of the Communist Party, and many have done nothing more to earn their fortunes than gamble with embezzled public funds in real estate, commodities and stock markets. The enormous asset bubbles they have created are now moving towards collapse, and there is little hope the regime will be able to bring them to a soft landing. When the inevitable crash comes, the modern version of China’s traditional “peasant rebellions” will surely target the rich; it makes sense for them to leave.

Much of the country they leave behind will be a toxic wasteland. The tens of thousands of dead pigs, ducks and dogs that have floated down Chinese rivers in recent months are only the most graphic indicators of the poisonous nature of China’s widely hailed growth. The hazardous air pollution in many Chinese cities, the deadly contaminants in the soil and groundwater of many agrarian areas and the recently discovered “disappearance” of some 27,000 small rivers underline why the rich plan to flee.

There is a broad misconception that despite these heavy costs China has risen to the status of a super-Power-in-waiting. The reality is the opposite: its rapid economic growth has left China virtually incapable of facing foreign pressures. The much vaunted “workshop to the world” now has over 50 per cent of its exports in the hands of foreign corporations, and an even larger proportion of its manufacturing tied into transnational production chains. In short, foreign corporations effectively control the Chinese economy and the Communist mandarins know it. The fact that corporate biggies kowtow to Beijing only indicates that they will do anything for profit.

These scary facts explain China’s regional belligerence over the last two years: like its Mini-me counterpart in Pyongyang, the regime in Beijing is hoping that its growling and snapping will be mistaken for strength and perhaps help rally domestic support in dealing with the impending crises.

It is very clear that the proponents of “economic reforms” in India do not recognize what has happened in China as cautionary. At last year’s Mumbai “summit” of Indian business leaders under the aegis of the World Economic Forum Mukesh Ambani of Reliance Industries called for the government to get out of the way of business. “In today’s world” he declared, “everything is instantaneous, everything needs to happen now.” State and Central governments in India should “align and move a lot faster” in making decisions affecting business.

The general fatigue with arrogant Babus made Ambani’s demand pleasing to the gallery, but in view of our history it is a dangerous proposition. Indian businessmen pursuing their own interests untroubled by national political concerns were primarily responsible for British success in colonizing, ruling and indeed, Partitioning India. Robert Clive borrowed the money to bribe Mir Jafar at Plassey from Jagat Seth of Calcutta, the wealthiest banker of Mughal India. In the 150 years that followed, every expansion of British rule happened with the collaboration of Indian financiers and dalals too engrossed in their own profit to see what they were doing to the country. Such people even helped arrange the “communal riots” that killed over a million people at Partition, and they have continued to be foreign proxies in independent India.

It is frightening that all this is unseen in the push for “economic reforms” to attract greater foreign investment in India. Even recent examples of anti-national behavior by Indian businessmen have been swept under the rug.

Consider, for example, that the Ruia brothers of ESSAR felt no compunction in helping Hutchinson-Whampoa, a Hong Kong based conglomerate with close links to China’s People’s Liberation Army, to enter the Indian telecom market; nor did they feel the need to keep New Delhi in the picture when structuring a deal in the Cayman Islands to sell their joint venture to British telephone giant Vodafone. Now, when money laundering is a major national issue, Vodafone is set to roll out the “m-pesa,” its mobile telephone “currency” that will make it impossible for the government to track payments to violent subversive groups in the country. (The rollout is set to begin in the troubled Northeast!) Meanwhile, ESSAR agents have been caught making payments to Naxalites.

Mukesh Ambani is another recent example. Today’s richest Indian felt comfortable blindsiding the Indian government in signing a deal in the British Prime Minister’s office to allow BP, perhaps the most predatory of the major oil companies, entry into our strategic energy sector. Reliance got $8 billion from that deal but India was left with an unpredictable and serious security threat.

The blindness to security aspects of investment decisions has become endemic. Some people are even pushing to open the Indian defence industry to FDI at a time when a former Chief of Army Staff is suspected of treasonous collusion with foreign arms suppliers and a former Air Force Chief is under active investigation for corrupting a procurement process. Perhaps decision-makers in the Finance Ministry should each be given a desktop copy of US President Dwight Eisenhower's speech warning of the threat to American democracy from the "military industrial complex." 

This state of affairs is more than a failure of policy-making, governance and Intelligence; it points to a wholesale loss of political dharma. That is also the reason for the unending series of “scams” our politicians generate. Instead of the selfless and visionary leaders of the pre-independence era the Indian political class now seems to produce only insatiably greedy and corrupt individuals devoted to nothing but their own profit.

Those who retain their basic integrity have tended to be, like the current Prime Minister, technocrats with little sense of history or the long-term interests and needs of Indian society. Mr. Singh’s speech at his alma mater in Britain a few years ago, and the direction of his economic reforms illustrate the extent of that intellectual vapidity. The Supreme Court’s green lighting of the nuclear plant at Koodankulam and the multidimensional idiocy of Justice Markandey Katju indicate that the judiciary suffers the same disease. In other areas, especially the vitally important realm of mass media, the falling away from integrity and excellence has been scandalous.

Unless we understand why this has happened and take remedial measures, our future will stand on sand.

Fortunately, we do not have to look far for an accurate diagnosis. The Bhagavad Gita in Chapter 2, Verses 62-63 says that a focus on material objects breeds sensory desires that are inevitably frustrated and cause a delusive state of mind. A deluded mind cannot remember, and without memory human intelligence loses its power of discrimination; with that, the “Self itself is lost.”

During the colonial era the national focus on freedom brought out the best in our leaders; since independence the predominant concern with “development” defined entirely in material terms has called out the very worst. The votaries of “development” have no historical memory. They do not remember how India was colonized and the terrible price exacted by foreign rule. In their delusional state they dismiss Gandhi’s specific warnings about industrialization and are blind to the fact that the global environmental and economic crises confirm his prediction of disaster.

The widely deluded state of the Indian elite is not all grim and earnest; there is comedy in its manic desire to become ersatz Europeans. Editors of “elite” newspapers see nothing weird in routinely using photographs of Europeans to illustrate Indian stories. The advertising industry cleaves to the idea – unsupported by any evidence – that Indian consumers are most powerfully induced to buy by salacious depictions of European models and mores. English television channels imitate their Western counterparts in breast-beating coverage of individual cases of child abuse, rape and murder but routinely ignore the millions of baby deaths that make India one of the most dangerous place in the world to be an infant.

Largely because of that dementia in the mass media, Indians in general do not see that the country's mounting wave of crime and corruption is driven by the social dislocation and moral confusions of its “development.” Harsh new laws and punishments will not make a whit of difference if we do not change the nature and patterns of economic growth to support the stability and coherence of our society.

How realistic is it to expect that we can change a model of “development” that has gained such weight and momentum?

It is entirely realistic, for our democratic processes allow it: but we must initiate and support the necessary political action.

The remedial process must begin with the awareness that British rule of India did not end in 1947; the people who took power were Brown Sahibs incapable of charting an independent Indian route to modernity. They have remained emotionally wedded to the British and perhaps even been in their pay. A look through Jawaharlal Nehru’s writings, especially his letters explaining the world to teenaged Indira, illustrate just how little he knew/understood/cared about traditional India. The contempt Markandey Katju sprays on all Indians is bred from that same combination, and unfortunately, it is widespread among our so-called “secular” elite.

A major reason for their dismissive attitude is the narrow, intolerant concepts spread under the rubric of Hindutva by the Hindu Mahasabha and its modern progeny, the Sangh Parivar. Having seen the damage caused by their interpretation of the Hindu ethos, Indians in the national mainstream have very rightly rejected it as subversive and dangerous. But they have thrown the baby out with the bathwater, for in rejecting Hindutva, they have dismissed Hinduism itself. They have closed themselves off from a broad and generous tradition that offers an alternative to Western style “development.”

Perhaps the best way to delineate the difference between the Hindu and the Hindutva approaches is to look at their attitudes to India’s Muslim and Christian minorities. The Hindu attitude is to blur the differences and emphasize commonalities; Hindutvadis underline differences and demand dominance for their own beliefs.

The difference is rooted in history.

Conversions to other religions, especially those won by the sword or under the compulsions of power, appear in the long Hindu view as the unavoidable price of meeting existential challenges. Only by Indians walking in the shoes of the invasive Other will we be able to know how to respond; that has been at the heart of the tremendous Indian capacity for assimilation. The Hindutva approach springs from the British attempt to divide Indians on the basis of religion. Its offensive and unsupportable demand for social dominance is essentially an expression of insecurity and fear; it weakens India.

That difference between considering Muslims and Christians as part of a general Indian alliance in dealing with global realities and seeing them as traitors in waiting reflects a deeper division.

The silent confidence of the Hindu mainstream is embedded in the faith that Truth alone will triumph. Missionaries can use every dirty trick to win followers but in the end, the great verities of India’s eternal faith will prevail. In that context, individual responsibility is no more or less than to preserve personal dharma, to be honest in thought and deed, to understand that in all things God works for the ultimate victory of the Good.

In contrast, the Hindutva approach is totally Semitic. It is based on the belief that the defence and propagation of socially dominant Hinduism is necessary to ensure the survival of their faith. It reacts to conversions with hatred and violence. It has no faith that human destiny is eternally governed by a deeper and stronger moral reality.

The net result of these differences is that today no figure, party or movement brings the mainstream Hindu perspective into politics as Mahatma Gandhi did; our "development" is rooted in confusion.

If we are to resolve the internal contradictions of Bharat that is India and make it a meaningful global presence it is imperative to bring clarity to our concept of development. Who are we as a people and what do we want to become and/or do in the world?

To achieve that clarity we must wean the Hindutvadis into a more generous consideration of Sanatana Dharma and bring the so-called "secular forces" to reflect on the value and worth of that ancient tradition.

Part 4 of this essay will look at how we can effect those changes. Read Part 1 and Part 2

Mail Ordering Accelerated Development

With more than 154,000 offices and 4.7 lakh employees (roughly half of them non-staff “Grameen Dak Sewaks”), India Post is the largest mail distribution system in the world. It is also the largest retail bank in the country, for post offices allow people to maintain savings accounts, buy life insurance, invest in mutual funds and transmit money within the country and globally. Organized in 22 state-centric “Circles” (with a 23rd serving the military), the average post office in 2010 served an area of 21.21 Sq. Km and a population of 7,176 people (5682 in rural areas, 20,346 in towns and cities). If we consider the magnitude of work done under far from optimum conditions, India Post is undoubtedly the most efficient of public sector undertakings.

Despite all those positive factors post offices are “facing a big challenge to survive” as The Hindu headlined recently (13 March 2012). In a story pegged to the opening of a new post office in Cuddalore the paper said that in the same district over the previous two years “declining turnover and rising establishment charges” had led to the closing of 10 “sub-post offices.” (Each “administrative “Circle” in the system is ordered in a hierarchy ranging from Head Post Offices to Sub Post Offices; the Grameen Dak Sewaks operate autonomously.) The reporter quoted an official of the BSNL who believed the reduced demand for postal services resulted from the growing spread of mobile telephones and computers, and stiff competition from private courier companies.

According to statistics released in response to RTI requests, the Department of Posts (part of the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology now under Kapil Sibal), the number of urban post offices dipped fractionally (0.72 percent) over the last five years, while in rural India it grew at a compound rate of 0.2 percent. Most of the country’s 500,000 villages are without a post office and even among those large enough to have a Gram Panchayat 51 percent have none. Lack of budgetary resources will prevent this situation from being remedied if the system continues as currently conceived.

To see the development potential of the postal system we merely have to envisage it as the foundation of a national e-communications resource network. If every post office in the system had computers for public use and one or two staff members to guide first-time users, India could close the digital divide in a few years. If the government makes it a time-bound goal to extend the system to all villages it would kick-start a process of national change especially beneficial for the young, women, farmers/fishermen and entrepreneurs of all kinds.
 
This is not just hopeful speculation; it has been the actual experience of those who have been working to bring e-development to rural areas. On a recent visit to the hub of Pondicherry’s small network of rural “Knowledge Centres” run by the M.S.Swaminathan Research Foundation I was told how members of those different groups have responded to the opportunities offered by e-knowledge centres.

Ms. Girija who is in charge of the hub at Pillaiyarkupam told me that once the young get over the initial hump of unfamiliarity, they become adept at using computers and often outdistance the foundation’s “knowledge guides” in exploring their own interests on the Web. For women, computer access is a liberating escape into networks that expand their horizons dramatically and, not incidentally, improve their capacity as care givers. Farmers and fishermen benefit not by using computers themselves but by accessing the information services available on weather forecasts, market prices and technical guidance.

The content of the advice comes from the foundation’s strategic partners that include public and private organizations. “We take the information they provide and turn them into audio messages in Tamil” Ms. Girija said. The Metrological Service provides weather forecasts, the National Agricultural Bank for Rural Development supplies information useful for farmers at the time of sowing, transplanting and harvesting, and from the Tamil Nadu Agricultural University comes bulletins on market prices. The Indian National Council for Oceanographic Information Systems has information on weather and wind conditions that fishermen receive in audio or icon-based messages over mobile phones (which most of them now have). At the request of fishermen INCOIS now also provides guidance on water temperature gradients that often indicate what type of fish are likely to be available where.

Among the entrepreneurial initiatives made possible by the new connectivity is artificial insemination of cattle. Dr. A.R. Thiagarajan, a retired veterinary surgeon who is a member of the Jamsetji Tata National Virtual Academy, has trained “about 40 to 50” young men who now receive calls from farmers whose cows are in season and race off on their motorcycles to provide a service that would once have required the cow to be transported to a government facility. “They make 400 to 500 rupees a day,” Dr. Thiagarajan said. “The farmers don’t mind paying 200 rupees per cow” he explained, for the service saves them from an often stressful trip that can take up a whole day. Also, the adrenalin rush the cows get in making the trip often makes it difficult for them to conceive.

Many other types of entrepreneurial activity will also be possible. As Aditya Dev Sood, CEO of the Centre for Knowledge Societies, a Bangalore-based consulting firm wrote in his 12-page 2001 guide on “How to Wire Rural India,” “information networks can become conduits that allow money to flow into the village through new kinds of non-discriminatory, clean and relatively unoppressive industries.” They could “also compensate for other kinds of infrastructure limitations. For example, if online work, trade, or payment were to become available for members of a village community, the poor quality of roads to and from that village becomes less of an obstacle to earnings and employment.” Also, with money flowing more easily into villages they could themselves finance and undertake the building of basic infrastructure including roads, adequate educational facilities, power generation, and water and sanitation systems.

The vision of such development has always been constrained by the issue of who will pay to start the ball rolling. For instance, in 14 years the Pondicherry network of knowledge centres has developed only 13 spokes to the hub at Pillayarkupam. Growth has been hampered by the requirement that each village centre must be “community owned:” it must receive rent-free space and have two local volunteer “knowledge guides” (trained by the foundation). For India Post to shoulder the responsibility of making that initial investment should not be too difficult if it is able to draw on the very substantial rural development funds already in state and Central budgets.

The knowledge-centre network of India Post will bring the entire country on a shared information platform. Many of the disparities between rural and urban we now take for granted will not endure. Teacher training programmes and access to the most advanced teaching techniques and materials can radically improve the quality of rural schooling. The e-facilities of public libraries throughout the country (and indeed, throughout the world) can be hooked into the system, remedying what is now a dire national shortage of libraries. Among the major near-term benefits of these developments will be a generation of eminently employable young Indians even if their formal education does not extend to college.

In extending the network of knowledge-centre post offices to all villages India Post could expand its existing programme of public-private partnerships. In fact, much of the development described above can be financed and managed through such partnerships.

The major demand for computer hardware and language-specific content from information providers will open up a range of opportunities in that regard. (Quality control will have to become a top priority for government.) Other major sectors of private business will also benefit from the surge of rural economic activity and they should be keen to provide funding for specific initiatives such as installing solar power capacity and training of maintenance personnel.

The resulting boom in economic activity can be expected to begin closing the urban-rural gap opened up by corporate globalization. It will help slow the headlong thrust of the Indian economy into greater integration with a global system that is not only caught in a major crisis that could get much worse but is environmentally unsustainable. 

High-Level Talk With Low Level Impact

There was wall-to-wall talk about the world economy at the United Nations on Monday (14 April). The occasion was the annual high-level meeting of the UN Economic and Social Council with the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Trade Organization and the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD). There were official Press conferences, informal briefings, chats in the corridors, and of course, continuous speechifying in the graciously appointed ECOSOC chamber. It was a typical UN affair, with hardly a thought given to how meaningful the proceedings were to the real world of financial fraud, foreclosures and food riots.

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's opening speech had a hastily inserted paragraph echoing World Bank president Robert Zoellick's call for action on the growing problem of rising food prices, which "could mean seven lost years in the fight against worldwide poverty." The World Bank, he said, had "indicated that the doubling of food crisis (sic) over the last three years could push 100 million people in low-income countries deeper into poverty. We need not only short-term emergency measures to meet urgent critical needs and avert starvation in many regions across the world, but also a significant increase in long-term productivity in food grain production." The international community would "also need to take urgent and concerted action in order to avert the larger political and security implications of this growing crisis." The UN needed "to examine ways to lead a process for the immediate and longer term responses to this global problem."

After that Ban passed on to the theme of the day: “Coherence, coordination and cooperation in the context of the implementation of the Monterrey Consensus, including new challenges and emerging issues." The 2002 Monterrey Consensus on financing for development was supposed to provide significantly more support for developing countries but it has had little impact. Aid has increased but most poor countries have not benefited; in fact they continue to transfer large amounts of money to the rich. This reverse flow of capital has continued over the decades since the end of formal colonial rule because of unfavorable terms of trade and a variety of illicit transfers. Norway noted that about half of the $1 trillion to $1.6 trillion a year in illicit financial flows is estimated to originate from developing countries.

Ban announced that he had appointed M. Philippe Douste-Blazy, former Foreign Minister of France as "Special Adviser on Innovative Financing for Development" to lead the UN Secretariat’s "efforts to support that important process." (Bruised feelings at the Quai d'Orsay at its loss of the Department of Peacekeeping Operations are unlikely to be salved by the appointment.) He also designated two Special Envoys for the Doha Review Conference: Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul, Minister of Development Cooperation of Germany, and Trevor Manuel, Minister of Finance of South Africa; they will "help mobilize political support for, and high-level participation in, the Conference." Ban left the meeting with the uplifting exhortation:
“Let us make 2008 a truly great year in the field of development.”

Another moment of unintended comic relief came in the speech of a representative of the World Bank (not Zellick but someone of the order of Chief Assistant to the Assistant Chief). He told the meeting that a "Monitoring Report" prepared in collaboration with the IMF showed that the world is on track to meet the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) on gender parity in schools but not on nutrition, education, health and sanitation. Many "fragile" countries are "falling behind on most, if not all, the Millennium Goals." However, he added cheerily, the MDGs could still be met if global economic growth momentum is sustained, there is more progress on human development, aid is scaled up, trade is harnessed to inclusive and sustainable growth, international financial institutions provide more "leverage," and environmental sustainability is ensured -- all at the national and international levels. Sad to say, the audience did not laugh.

At the end of the day ECOSOC president Leo Merores of Haiti told delegates that a special meeting of the Council "in the very near future" would consider a global response to the food crisis.