New Paradigm of Globalization: Replacing
the Existing One of Unequal Relations Among Peoples and Nations with Humane
Form - Issue Papers
 |
New Paradigm of Globalization:
Replacing the Existing One of Unequal Relations Among Peoples and Nations
with Humane Form
Mathura P. Shrestha,
Indira Shrestha and Mahesh Maskey
- People's Health Assembly - Issue Paper
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Abstract
World leaders could have done better to solve the health and
development problems of the world if they were serious and committed to their vision of
'New economic order' of early seventies. Instead we have with us an unequal and divided
world where things are better for those who are rich and worse for those who are poor. The
gap between the poor and the rich is painfully increasing. Equity and social justice are
shadowed and poverty is everywhere. In spite of tremendous scientific and technological
development the world today is less secure and less stable. Economic giants and power
bosses of the world have misdefined and misused the word 'Globalization' to serve their
interests. Globalization of today is tinged with dominance cult and subservient mentality
to impose unjust and unequal relation among nations and peoples. Globalization should have
fostered equitable relation based upon social justice and opportunity without barriers -
economic, political, cultural, social or any other status. New globalization with humane
understanding should solve human problems. Globalization should not be used as obstacle
between human and human goods - information, science, technology and human services. It is
our social responsibility to make the people empowered to take assertive role in using
their health and development rights.
1. Health and Development: Missed Opportunity for LDC?
Mid-seventies ushered the hope of the developing nations and
their people with a promise of “New Economic Order”. It was said to bring about
capacity development of countries and people in the third world including the least
developed countries (LDCs). Several opportunities to be assisted by Technical Cooperation
among Developing Countries, South-South Cooperation, and North-South cooperation were
envisioned. It was also said to have focus on equity and social justice. Much was desired
at the conceptual level of ‘New economic order’. The desire was not
operationalized. Nor there was any serious attempt on it. If the world leaders, including
those in developing countries, were serious and committed we could now have a different
world with major problems solved, gaps diminished, and much of the conflicts prevented or
resolved. The Alma Ata Declaration was a landmark in health rallying massive support and
political commitment all over the world. However, the painful reminder of the fact is that
most of LDCs have not met single criteria set for the Health for All as of today. It is
the time for the leaders including public health leaders in the East to look back to learn
from the lessons of the history, and also look forward to appraise the emerging threats
and opportunity for proper development of strategy. We have to question now whether we
missed the opportunity, and also what would be the consequence of if such episode of
missed opportunity will continue because of our failure.
2. Health, Development and Globalization
Instead of promised ‘New Economic Order’ we now have a
poorly worked out and misdefined Globalization. It is said to mean ‘free flow
capital, goods, ideas, services, and opportunities throughout the world’. However the
globalization process is aggressively pushed and used by the advocates of economic
liberalization and free market to sub-serve the interest of multinational companies and
western power centers. They are successful in conditioning the opinion of the ruling class
all over the world, especially its bureaucrats and technocrats, that globalization is key
to economic development. Similarly, reform is said to be possible only after foreign
direct investment (FDI) is attracted, and globalization would pave the way for
FDI. This
notion engulfed all nations affecting life of people all over the world. Sponsored study
results by Bretton Wood Institutions were enforced as development model in developing
countries, Eastern Europe, Yugoslavia, and Former Soviet Union. International Monetary
Fund (IMF) and World Bank (WB) prescribed such model in the form of ‘macro economic
stabilization’ and ‘structural adjustment programs (SAP)’ as economic
medicine for development. But these brought devastating economic and social
consequences[1]. The LDCs and those countries that switched from socialist economy to
capitalist economy suffered most. In Caracas, the anti-SAP uprising (inspired by rhetoric
of President Carlos Andres Perez who enounced IMF of ‘practicing an “Economic totalitarism” which kills not with
bullets but with famine’) was brutally suppressed. The real cause of famine in
Somalia can be attributed to ‘economic genocide’ brought about by SAP.
In Nepal, after liberalization practices in the eighties, the industrial base nose dived,
industrial production declined, most of the 70,000 small scale industries collapsed
aggravating unemployment and poverty in a big way, and there were remarkable of
privatization of public enterprises, foreign debt, corrupt practices, and politicization
(partisan) of bureaucracy. The size of foreign debt increased to above 50 percent of GDP
in the mid-nineties from 16 percent in the mid-eighties[2]. The debt is estimated to rise
to 60 percent during this financial year (1999/2000).
Since SAP of eighties, IMF and WB have become increasingly harsh and unyielding in
imposing so-called ‘poverty alleviation’ programs. Countries that do not confirm
to IMF’s target are blacklisted.
Globalization of today has exposed human population especially in our region to more risk
than opportunity. Globalization today is deliberately ill defined to impose unjust and
unequal relation among nations and peoples. ‘It is a mere episode in the history of
dominance of the rich industrialized nations over the poor ones. …, (and) unethical
justification of justification of unequal relationship’ (Banerji D)[3].Opportunity
often reported to be associated with globalization is not related it but to the knowledge
industry, or information network, science and technology. These are definitely not the
synonymous to globalization. Today the global opportunities are unevenly distributed -
between countries and peoples. In this age of high speed information technology and
services development, health and health services have definitely been better and easier to
those who are in the golden circle of affluence (the so-called haves), and more difficult,
costlier and inaccessible for those who are ‘have-nots’ and deprived[4,5]. The
same is true with other services. More than 80 countries in the world still have per
capita incomes lower than they were a decade ago. The income gap between the fifth of
world’s people living in the richest countries and the fifth in the poorest was 3 to
1 in 1960, 60 to 1 in 1990, and 74 to 1 in 1997. Even OECD countries registered big
increase in inequality after 1980s[6]. The same HDR 1999 reports that by the late 1990s
the fifth of the world’s people living in highest-income countries had:
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86% of world GDP - the bottom fifth just 1%,
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82% of world export market - the bottom fifth just 1%,
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Rollback or containment of wages and retrenchment of workers; deregulation of laws
protecting job security;
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68% of foreign direct investment - the bottom fifth just 1%, and
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74% of world telephone lines - the bottom fifth just 1.5%.
In addition:
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the assets of the top three billionaires are more than combined GNP of all least
developed countries and their 600 million people.
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Poverty is everywhere. Measured by human poverty index (HPI-1), more than a billion
people in developing countries still do not have some of the life’s most basic
choices - survival beyond age 40, access to knowledge and minimum private and public
services.
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Nearly 1.3 billion people do not have access to clean water.
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One in seven children of primary school age is out of school.
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About 840 million are malnourished.
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An estimated 1.3 billion people live on income less than $ 1 (1987 PPP$) a day.
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In developing countries there are still 60% more illiterate women than illiterate men.
This report warns of threat to human security in general because
of widespread:
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Economic insecurity,
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Food insecurity,
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Health insecurity,
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Personal insecurity,
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Environmental insecurity,
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Community and cultural insecurity, and
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Political insecurity.
The report further exposes the ever-widening gap between the have
and have-nots, between the know and know-nots in following terms:
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In private research agenda money talks louder than needs,
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Tightened intellectual property rights (IPR) keeps developing countries out of the
knowledge sector,
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Patent laws do not recognize traditional and systems of ownership,
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The rush and push of commercial interests protects profits, not people.
Existing Notion about globalization and Need for a new
paradigm[7,8].
Globalization is not a new or modern phenomenon. Historically,
three different trends influenced globalization process in course of human civilization
development.
One trend is related to ‘dominant cult’
- a product of a paradigm based on ‘Might is
Right’. Many empires and colonies were founded as a result of this episode in
the history of dominance. The prime determinant of all types of violence in this and
previous millennia is related to this cult. The same cult is responsible for much of the
environmental degradation as it directly or indirectly encouraged exploitation of nature,
humans and systems including norms. Quite recently cold war and hegemonistic overtures
were played around this cult. The same cult continues to nurture unipolar power games. The
exploiters of today collude with multinational companies and other financial giants to
monopolize the domination of people along with their mind and environment. The power
bosses today continue to subvert even religion, politics, economy and culture as their
predecessors. Another usual strategy used by them is to glamorize and mystify the theme
they wish to promote and attach these to a hype of so-called ‘new’ or
‘better’ way of life to motivate the people to become willing victims. Today the
globalization is much-hyped agenda. The players of this old and current paradigm tend to
restrict and even imprison knowledge, reason, conscience and technology. They also overtly
manipulate and ‘regulate’ all types of norms and culture to colonize humans
along with their minds, bodies and surroundings. They suppress human ingenuity, and
control creativity and thinking, putting these greatest human wealth in the rigid and
narrow frames of corporations, laboratories and institutions (even universities) which are
increasingly controlled by vested power centers. They develop and enforce regulations,
codes and contracts to ensure their control over people, nature, processes, knowledge,
science and technology.
The second nurturing paradigm of globalization in the present form is ‘subservient
mentality’ that dominates the psyche of lackeys and agents of power related to
dominance cult. This mentality subserves the power in two ways. Firstly, it serves as
effective media or intermediary for the power to be more effective in exercising the
latter’s dominance. Secondly, it subdues or dilutes the resistance against dominance
by effectively propogating the ‘culture of silence’ or of non-resistance.
The other trend is opposite of the present form of globalization in nature and intent.
This is based on the inherent desire and dream of all
humans to be free and liberated. People
aspire to live in this global village where the communities of peoples and nations live
and prosper together (Ma Haide, 1978). They want to be free and mobile without boundaries
between nations and without walls or restrictions around human good - information,
knowledge, science, technology, education, health, security and other social and welfare
related services. These walls - whether physical, political, economic, social, cultural or
imposed regulation - need be removed between any human and human good. In order to protect
human development, eco-system and peace, our primary duty is to redefine globalization in
the latter spirit. Globalization of exploitation, monopolized advantage, disparity,
deprivation and poverty should be replaced by the globalization of social justice, equity,
knowledge and information, science and technology, global resources and human good without
walls of any short and, if possible, without a need to possess. All humans including those
in the lowest rung of the social relations are to have opportunity to mature politically,
socially, culturally, economically and spiritually[9]. Our social responsibility is to
resist the present misdirected globalization fueled by the forced dominance-dependence
relationship between privileged echelon and the vast mass of exploited people. We need to
work together to develop the new paradigm of globalization where primacy of people is
recognized and accepted as a guiding principle.
It is natural that the people - the exploited and deprived - to fight back. Many
revolutions were born in the history of mankind. Too many of them could not find way to
make the people involved in their governance and thus isolated from the people for whom
the revolutions were designed. Therefore, many revolutions fell pray to the same cult
against which they were founded. People need to take politics in their own hand and
participate actively in social process relying on their own power (People’s power).
They need and could develop solidarity to defuse and outmode all aspects of dominance cult. With the new paradigm one could live a
self-satisfying and productive life without a burden to exploit and or be exploited.
Living then becomes mutually responsible and interdependent but liberated, without guilt
complexes. The Leaders in LDC, if sincere, must learn from the lessons of the past to
ensure the just future.
Redefining globalization in the latter spirit may appear as an impossible utopia. But with
the present advances in understanding and knowledge base, global capacity, and
human’s networking potentialities for responsible world, this may be possible in
future if not in near future. If we reflect on the history of evolution we witness a
revolutionary transition from evolution governed by spontaneous biological factors (the
period of Biogenesis) to evolution governed by human mind, and now, to the period of
noogenesis[10]. Noogenics is a science of logic so that people think and behave in anew
and rational way for the intelligent management of interrelations between humans and
nature[11,12,13]. The ‘thinking layer’ is to be blended with responsible
behavior, especially in ‘mixing science with senses’ so that harmful technology
and inadequate social contract give place to better technology and better social system.
As Aristotle wrote ‘… the most guiding of all sciences … is such as learns
for what each thing is to be done; and this final goal in each case is good and, in
general, the best in all nature’[14]. People all over the world could together
participate in this development. However, the people should work out the possibility
themselves rather than hope that somebody will rescue them or something will take care of
them[15].
[This paper is a part of the paper ‘Lesson for Public Health Leaders: LDC
Perspectives’, presented by Professor Mathura P. Shrestha in the Regional Conference
on Public Health in Souath East Asia in the 21st Century, Calcutta, 22-24 November 1999].
References
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[10] Kamshilov MM. Evolution of the biosphere. Moscow: MIR Publishers, 1976: 227-225.
[11] Verdansky VI. The chemical structure of Earth’s biosphere and its environment.
Moscow: Nauka Publishers, 1965:327 (This translated portion from Russian is by the
courtesy of Sushlikov of Chuvashia State University, Chevoksary, Russia).
[12] Teilhard de Chardin P. The phenomenon of man. NY: Harper and Bros., 1959.
[13] Shrestha MP. Envisioning health for the coming century. Ibid.
[14] Extracted from Kamshilov MM. See 7.
[15] Abernethy Virginia D. Population politics: the choices that shape our future. NY and
London: Insight Books, plenum Press, 1993.
Biodata summary
Mathura P. Shrestha
Chairperson Resource Center for Primary Health Care, PO Box 117, Bagbazar,
Kathmandu,
Nepal. Email: mathura@healthnet.org.np
Indira Shrestha
Pediatrician and Honorary Member Secretary and Coordinator, ENHR Nepal Network, PO Box
117, Bagbazar, Kathmandu, Nepal.
Mahesh Maskey
Lecturer Dept. of Community medicine and Family Health, TU, IOM, Currently
DSc. Candidate
on Epidemiology, Boston University, US.
