Saksar Sawasth Aur secular Haryana
Do Communicable Diseases Spread Faster Under Globalisation?
In addition to the key area of IMF/Bank induced health sector reforms, globalisation impinges on the health sector in many other ways. Globalisation leads to transnationalisation of public health risks. A major effect has been the resurgence of communicable diseases across the globe. Every phase of human civilisation that has seen a rapid expansion in exchange of populations across national borders has been characterised by a spread of communicable diseases. The early settlers in America, who came from Europe, carried with them small pox and measles that decimated the indigenous population of Native Americans. Plague traveled to Europe from the orient in the
middle ages, often killing more than a quarter of the population of cities in Europe (like the plague
epidemic in London in the fifteenth century). what festers in a metropolitan ghetto of the global North can emerge in a sleepy village in Asia - within weeks or days.
[*Studies indicate that due to rising food prices & subsidy cuts, hunger and morbidity levels have increased. Poor people were increasingly unable to access health institutions, which, under the reform measures, typically introduced fee for services; and it is not at all surprising!*]
This is a natural consequence of exposure to local populations to exotic diseases, to which they
have little or no natural immunity. Today what incubates in a tropical rainforest can emerge in a temperate suburb in affluent Europe, and likewise
[Due to poor health, nutritional status and poor access to health care in developing countries like ours, we are most susceptible to communicable diseases.]
In the case of AIDS the combination of global mobility and cuts in health facilities has been lethal for many developing countries - the disease in Africa, and now in Asia has ravaged a whole generation. Let us not forget that AIDS first manifest itself in the US, but it was Africa that feels the real force of its wrath. In the 1960s scientists were exulting over the possible conquest to be achieved over communicable diseases. Forty years later a whole new scenario is unfolding. AIDS is its most acute manifestation. We also have resurgence of cholera, yellow fever and malaria in Sub-Saharan Africa, malaria and dengue in South America, multi-drug resistant TB, plague, dengue and malaria in India. We see the emergence of exotic viral diseases, like those caused by the Ebola and the Hanta virus. Globalisation that forces migration of labour across large distances, that has spawned a huge "market" on commercial sex, that has changed the environment and helped produce "freak" microbes, has contributed enormously to the resurgence.
Wednesday, January 23, 2008
Different Countries'Health Affected
Saksar Sawasth Aur secular Haryana
How has Globalisation Affected Health in Different Countries?
Public health is an obvious casualty of this process. There is a clear contradiction between the principals of public health and neo-liberal economic theory. Public health is a "public good", i.e. its benefits cannot be individually enjoyed or computed, but have to be seen in the context of benefits that are enjoyed by the public. Thus public health outcomes are shared, and their accumulation lead to better living conditions. It does not mechanically translate into visible economic determinants, viz. income levels or rates of economic growth. Kerala, for example, has one of the lowest per capita incomes in the India but its public health indicators that approach the levels in many developed countries. The Infant Mortality Rate in Kerala is less than a third of any other large state in the country.
[It's Alarming!! Across the world, policies dictated by the forces of globalisation (in the form of structural adjustment policies in many countries) had the following specific effects on the health sector.].
But neo-liberal economic policies do not even acknowledge such benefits. The current
economic policies would rather view health as a private good that is accessed through the market.
i. A cut in the welfare investment, leading to gradual dismantling of the public health services.
ii. Introduction of service charges in public institutions, making
the services inaccessible to the poor.
iii. Handing over the responsibility of health service to the private sector and undermining the rationality of public health. The private sector on the other hand focused only on curative care.
India for instance, was forced to reduce its public health expenditure in health and to recover the cost of health services from its users by international banks.
iv. The voluntary sector, which has also stepped in to provide health services is forced to concentrate and prioritize only those areas where international aid is made available - like AIDS, population control, etc. These "fundamentals" were more sharply focused upon in 1987 by the World Bank document titled "Financing Health Services in Developing countries" which made the following
recommendations for developing countries.
1) Increase amounts paid by patients.
2) Develop private health insurance mechanisms (this requires a dismantling of state supported health services as if free or low cost health care is available there is little interest in private insurance).
3) Expand the participation of the private sector.
4) Decentralise government health care services (not real
decentralisation but an euphemism for "rolling back" of state
responsibility and passing on the burden to local communities).
These recommendations were further "fine-tuned" and reiterated by the Bank's World Development Report, 1993 titled "Investing inHealth".
[These "fundamentals" were more sharply focused upon in 1987 by our document titled "Financing Health Services in Developing countries" which made the following recommendations for developing countries. WB]
Today the Bank is the decisive voice in this regard, and the organisations like WHO and UNICEF have been reduced to playing the role of "drum beaters" of the Bank. In almost every developing country, where these prescriptions have been followed, public health conditions have deteriorated. In
Philippines health expenditure fell from 3.45% of GDP in 1985 to 2% in 1993; and in Mexico from 4.7% of GDP to 2.7% in the decade of the 80s. Even developing countries with a strong tradition of
providing comprehensive welfare benefits to its people were not spared (with the exception of
Cuba). In China health expenditure is reported to have fallen to 1% of GDP and 1.5 million TB
cases are believed to have been left untreated since the country introduced mechanisms for cost recovery. In Vietnam the number of villages with clinics and maternity centers fell from
93.1% to 75%. There have been dramatic reversals of health gains made after the Second World War. Thus the gap in the under-five death rate, considered a sensitive indicator of social and economic development, has widened between the rich countries and the poor. The under-five death rate gap increased from a ratio of 7.8 in 1978 to 12.5 in 1998. Similarly, the death rate ratio in the age group five to fourteen has also increased from 3.8 in 1950 to 7 in 1990. The impact was not limited only to poor countries.
[The involvement of the WB & IMF in moulding the policies of countries in Latin America, Africa and Asia expanded dramatically in the 1980s: by the end of 1991, 75 countries had
implemented structural adjustment policies that had an impact on the health sector].
20
In a number of the developed industrial countries, inequalities in health outcomes are being
soon among the poor. In many countries, more women entered the labour force but typically at
lower wages and with inferior working conditions than for men; in many others, women were
displaced from employment as levels of unemployment increase markedly. Simultaneously, the extent
of unpaid labour in households, performed largely by women, increased as public provision of basic goods and services declined. Young children, especially girls, were increasingly withdrawn from school to join the vast and grossly underpaid informal labour market or to assist in running the household. Rising food prices, along with cuts in subsidies for the poor, meant that an increasing proportion of families with precarious resources were pushed under the poverty line, affecting women and girl children disproportionately. As the table below indicates, they had to work for longer hours to purchase the same amount of foods as before, thus getting increasingly exploited. This also meant an increase in young women - and indeed women in general - being pushed into the sex industry, now increasingly global. Given increasing levels of under nutrition, infant and child
mortality rates, which had earlier shown a decline, either stagnated or in the case of some countries, actually increased. So widespread were these effects that even the UNICEF issued calls for "a human face" to structural adjustment programme.
[*An important consequence of globalisation has been commonly described as the "feminisation of poverty" as women increasingly had to strive to hold families
together in various ways in the face of increasing pressures, chief among them are increasing poverty and insecurity.*]
In the face of such evidence, even the World Bank was forced to modify its earlier recommendations. The World Bank started talking about investing in the poor through investments in health and
education; and about the promotion of safety nets and targeted social programmes. This is a clear recognition that specific programmes are necessary to protect the poor from the consequences of structural adjustment and that economic growth by itself does not reduce the problem of poverty. But these changes in the World Bank's thinking are still too inadequate and have come too late for millions who have died as a result of the policies it had promoted. Because of these effects the last two decades of the 20th century have often been described as lost decades. In 1960, the poorest 20 per cent of the global population received 2.3 per cent of the global income. By 1991, their share had sunk to 1.4 per cent. Today, the poorest 20 per cent receive only 1.1 per cent of global income. The
Table 1
Hours Worked to Purchase 1,000 Calories Before and After SAPs
1975 1984
Barley 0.07 0.59
Sugar 0.16 0.51
Corn 0.17 0.64
Wheat flour 0.21 0.52
Dried beans 0.22 3.47
Rice 0.22 0.48
Bread 0.28 0.51
Oil 0.28 0.51
Potatoes 0.76 2.35
Onions 1.02 3.22
Milk 1.05 3.95
Source: Susan George (1990), A Fate Worse Than Debt: The World Financial Crisis
and the Poor, PIRG, New Delhi.
The ratio of income of the wealthiest 20 per cent of the people to that of the poorest 20 per cent were 30 to 1 in 1960. By 1995, that ratio stood at 82 to 1. This is based on distribution between rich and poor countries, but when the maldistribution of income within countries is taken into account, the richest 20 per cent of the world's people in 1990 got at least 150 times more than the poorest 20 per cent. The 20 per cent of the world's people who live in the highest income countries account for 86 per cent of the global consumption; the poorest 20 per cent, only 1.3 per cent. In other words, while the world had grown incomparably richer, the wealth generated had been distributed remarkably unequally.
R.S.dahiya
How has Globalisation Affected Health in Different Countries?
Public health is an obvious casualty of this process. There is a clear contradiction between the principals of public health and neo-liberal economic theory. Public health is a "public good", i.e. its benefits cannot be individually enjoyed or computed, but have to be seen in the context of benefits that are enjoyed by the public. Thus public health outcomes are shared, and their accumulation lead to better living conditions. It does not mechanically translate into visible economic determinants, viz. income levels or rates of economic growth. Kerala, for example, has one of the lowest per capita incomes in the India but its public health indicators that approach the levels in many developed countries. The Infant Mortality Rate in Kerala is less than a third of any other large state in the country.
[It's Alarming!! Across the world, policies dictated by the forces of globalisation (in the form of structural adjustment policies in many countries) had the following specific effects on the health sector.].
But neo-liberal economic policies do not even acknowledge such benefits. The current
economic policies would rather view health as a private good that is accessed through the market.
i. A cut in the welfare investment, leading to gradual dismantling of the public health services.
ii. Introduction of service charges in public institutions, making
the services inaccessible to the poor.
iii. Handing over the responsibility of health service to the private sector and undermining the rationality of public health. The private sector on the other hand focused only on curative care.
India for instance, was forced to reduce its public health expenditure in health and to recover the cost of health services from its users by international banks.
iv. The voluntary sector, which has also stepped in to provide health services is forced to concentrate and prioritize only those areas where international aid is made available - like AIDS, population control, etc. These "fundamentals" were more sharply focused upon in 1987 by the World Bank document titled "Financing Health Services in Developing countries" which made the following
recommendations for developing countries.
1) Increase amounts paid by patients.
2) Develop private health insurance mechanisms (this requires a dismantling of state supported health services as if free or low cost health care is available there is little interest in private insurance).
3) Expand the participation of the private sector.
4) Decentralise government health care services (not real
decentralisation but an euphemism for "rolling back" of state
responsibility and passing on the burden to local communities).
These recommendations were further "fine-tuned" and reiterated by the Bank's World Development Report, 1993 titled "Investing inHealth".
[These "fundamentals" were more sharply focused upon in 1987 by our document titled "Financing Health Services in Developing countries" which made the following recommendations for developing countries. WB]
Today the Bank is the decisive voice in this regard, and the organisations like WHO and UNICEF have been reduced to playing the role of "drum beaters" of the Bank. In almost every developing country, where these prescriptions have been followed, public health conditions have deteriorated. In
Philippines health expenditure fell from 3.45% of GDP in 1985 to 2% in 1993; and in Mexico from 4.7% of GDP to 2.7% in the decade of the 80s. Even developing countries with a strong tradition of
providing comprehensive welfare benefits to its people were not spared (with the exception of
Cuba). In China health expenditure is reported to have fallen to 1% of GDP and 1.5 million TB
cases are believed to have been left untreated since the country introduced mechanisms for cost recovery. In Vietnam the number of villages with clinics and maternity centers fell from
93.1% to 75%. There have been dramatic reversals of health gains made after the Second World War. Thus the gap in the under-five death rate, considered a sensitive indicator of social and economic development, has widened between the rich countries and the poor. The under-five death rate gap increased from a ratio of 7.8 in 1978 to 12.5 in 1998. Similarly, the death rate ratio in the age group five to fourteen has also increased from 3.8 in 1950 to 7 in 1990. The impact was not limited only to poor countries.
[The involvement of the WB & IMF in moulding the policies of countries in Latin America, Africa and Asia expanded dramatically in the 1980s: by the end of 1991, 75 countries had
implemented structural adjustment policies that had an impact on the health sector].
20
In a number of the developed industrial countries, inequalities in health outcomes are being
soon among the poor. In many countries, more women entered the labour force but typically at
lower wages and with inferior working conditions than for men; in many others, women were
displaced from employment as levels of unemployment increase markedly. Simultaneously, the extent
of unpaid labour in households, performed largely by women, increased as public provision of basic goods and services declined. Young children, especially girls, were increasingly withdrawn from school to join the vast and grossly underpaid informal labour market or to assist in running the household. Rising food prices, along with cuts in subsidies for the poor, meant that an increasing proportion of families with precarious resources were pushed under the poverty line, affecting women and girl children disproportionately. As the table below indicates, they had to work for longer hours to purchase the same amount of foods as before, thus getting increasingly exploited. This also meant an increase in young women - and indeed women in general - being pushed into the sex industry, now increasingly global. Given increasing levels of under nutrition, infant and child
mortality rates, which had earlier shown a decline, either stagnated or in the case of some countries, actually increased. So widespread were these effects that even the UNICEF issued calls for "a human face" to structural adjustment programme.
[*An important consequence of globalisation has been commonly described as the "feminisation of poverty" as women increasingly had to strive to hold families
together in various ways in the face of increasing pressures, chief among them are increasing poverty and insecurity.*]
In the face of such evidence, even the World Bank was forced to modify its earlier recommendations. The World Bank started talking about investing in the poor through investments in health and
education; and about the promotion of safety nets and targeted social programmes. This is a clear recognition that specific programmes are necessary to protect the poor from the consequences of structural adjustment and that economic growth by itself does not reduce the problem of poverty. But these changes in the World Bank's thinking are still too inadequate and have come too late for millions who have died as a result of the policies it had promoted. Because of these effects the last two decades of the 20th century have often been described as lost decades. In 1960, the poorest 20 per cent of the global population received 2.3 per cent of the global income. By 1991, their share had sunk to 1.4 per cent. Today, the poorest 20 per cent receive only 1.1 per cent of global income. The
Table 1
Hours Worked to Purchase 1,000 Calories Before and After SAPs
1975 1984
Barley 0.07 0.59
Sugar 0.16 0.51
Corn 0.17 0.64
Wheat flour 0.21 0.52
Dried beans 0.22 3.47
Rice 0.22 0.48
Bread 0.28 0.51
Oil 0.28 0.51
Potatoes 0.76 2.35
Onions 1.02 3.22
Milk 1.05 3.95
Source: Susan George (1990), A Fate Worse Than Debt: The World Financial Crisis
and the Poor, PIRG, New Delhi.
The ratio of income of the wealthiest 20 per cent of the people to that of the poorest 20 per cent were 30 to 1 in 1960. By 1995, that ratio stood at 82 to 1. This is based on distribution between rich and poor countries, but when the maldistribution of income within countries is taken into account, the richest 20 per cent of the world's people in 1990 got at least 150 times more than the poorest 20 per cent. The 20 per cent of the world's people who live in the highest income countries account for 86 per cent of the global consumption; the poorest 20 per cent, only 1.3 per cent. In other words, while the world had grown incomparably richer, the wealth generated had been distributed remarkably unequally.
R.S.dahiya
What Did Globalisation Mean for Poor Countries like
Saksar Sawasth Aur secular Haryana
What Did Globalisation Mean for Poor Countries like
India?
We discussed earlier, the developed countries in North America and Europe were engulfed in an economic crisis in the 1970s. But very quickly they found a way out of this. They did this by transferring the major impact of the crisis on to developing countries like India. One method they did this was by opening up the markets of these countries by dangling the promise that a "borderless world" under globalisation will benefit everybody. T h e rich countries and the large banks t h a t they controlled had already used the bait of easy loans to trap many developing countries into a debt crisis. The debt crisis meant that many poor countries could not even pay back the interests on the
loans they had borrowed. Now the developed countries used this situation to their advantage. They said that they would bail out these countries facing a debt crisis by giving even more loans! But now these loans would be tied to certain conditions. Future loans were now linked to accepting a broad package of policies called Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP). These policies, that were now forced upon poor debt ridden countries, included conditions that governments need to spend much less on social sectors like food security, health and education. The conditions also required these countries to open their markets to goods and services from the rich countries. In agriculture these countries were asked to produce for exports and not worry about producing food grains for their own people.
[My country is under huge indebtedness!Why should I worry so much about returning
merely Rs. 500 to the Seth! The rich countries took advantage of our debt crisis and placed conditions on future loans, they sought to offer. They wanted us to open our markets to goods an services of developed countries, and produce food grains for exports
without fulfilling our domestic needs.]
These policies were implemented in Latin America and Africa in the 1980s. In the agricultural sector, this led to the reinforcement of colonial patterns of agricultural production, stimulating the growth
of export-oriented crops at the cost of food crops. The problem at the heart of this pattern of production is that it was implemented at a time when the prices of primary commodities (that is, products from agriculture and mining) were the lowest in history. By 1989, prices for agricultural products were only 60 per cent of their 1970 levels. This led to the further devastation of the economies of these countries and seriously affected food availability. In the industrial sector, the new policies forced governments in developing countries to withdraw support to their own industries.
The government run public sector, set up to create basic infrastructure and provide public utilities like electricity, roads, communications, water, etc. were systematically dismantled. They were privatised, or handed over to multinational corporations. Further, over this period, capital (money) across the globe was concentrated in fewer and fewer hands. The driving force behind this phase of imperialist globalisation became this accumulated money. Countries were forced to remove restrictions on the flows of this capital in and out of their countries.
[Development will be best if you give free enterprise the green light. Build ports and office space to attract corporates. Set up more EOUs, plantations and factories…Don't waste your capital on basic food and clothing.]
This money is called speculative capital because it is invested for short term profits - just like a gambler would do - without any intention to create facilities that would promote manufacturing capabilities. Thus economies of poor countries are captive in the hands of those who have huge amounts of money - large multinational banks based in rich countries or foreign institutional investors (FIIs) - who have the ability to shut down these economies in matter of days if they decide to move their money to some other country. Together these policies and processes increased indebtedness of Third World countries that they were supposed to reduce, increased the rate of
exploitation of wageworkers across the globe, and shifted wealth from productive to speculative sectors. The policies also led to the increase of casual, poorly paid and insecure forms of employment. Fund cuts in education and health also meant that already weak and under-funded systems of health, education and food security collapsed. It is thus not accidental that
these policies increased levels of poverty in already poor countries even as a small section of the
population became richer; this section of the middle and upper classes obtained access to consumer goods that were earlier available only in the rich countries. Indeed this figure has increased substantially over the last three decades. Between 1990 and 1993 sub-Saharan Africa alone transferred 13.4 billion dollars annually to its creditors, substantially more than it spent on education and health combined. From 1987 to 1993, the net transfer of resources from Africa to the IMF was 38 billion dollars. As a result, inequalities within and between countries have risen sharply: the income gap between the world's richest and poorest has more than doubled, although the world has never been as rich as it is today.
[In spite of all the talk about developing countries receiving aid from the rich countries, in actual practice, every year close to 80 billion USD are paid by the former to latter just in order to return the loan that were forced upon them earlier.]
16
In 1960 the 20 per cent of the world's people in the richest countries had 30 times the income of the poorest 20 per cent; today they command 74 times more. The same richest 20 per cent of the
population command 86 per cent of the world GDP while the poorest 20 per cent command merely 1 per cent. More than 80 countries have per capita incomes lower than they were a decade or
more ago; 55 countries, mostly in sub-Saharan Africa, Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, have had declining per capita incomes.
r.S.Dahiya
What Did Globalisation Mean for Poor Countries like
India?
We discussed earlier, the developed countries in North America and Europe were engulfed in an economic crisis in the 1970s. But very quickly they found a way out of this. They did this by transferring the major impact of the crisis on to developing countries like India. One method they did this was by opening up the markets of these countries by dangling the promise that a "borderless world" under globalisation will benefit everybody. T h e rich countries and the large banks t h a t they controlled had already used the bait of easy loans to trap many developing countries into a debt crisis. The debt crisis meant that many poor countries could not even pay back the interests on the
loans they had borrowed. Now the developed countries used this situation to their advantage. They said that they would bail out these countries facing a debt crisis by giving even more loans! But now these loans would be tied to certain conditions. Future loans were now linked to accepting a broad package of policies called Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP). These policies, that were now forced upon poor debt ridden countries, included conditions that governments need to spend much less on social sectors like food security, health and education. The conditions also required these countries to open their markets to goods and services from the rich countries. In agriculture these countries were asked to produce for exports and not worry about producing food grains for their own people.
[My country is under huge indebtedness!Why should I worry so much about returning
merely Rs. 500 to the Seth! The rich countries took advantage of our debt crisis and placed conditions on future loans, they sought to offer. They wanted us to open our markets to goods an services of developed countries, and produce food grains for exports
without fulfilling our domestic needs.]
These policies were implemented in Latin America and Africa in the 1980s. In the agricultural sector, this led to the reinforcement of colonial patterns of agricultural production, stimulating the growth
of export-oriented crops at the cost of food crops. The problem at the heart of this pattern of production is that it was implemented at a time when the prices of primary commodities (that is, products from agriculture and mining) were the lowest in history. By 1989, prices for agricultural products were only 60 per cent of their 1970 levels. This led to the further devastation of the economies of these countries and seriously affected food availability. In the industrial sector, the new policies forced governments in developing countries to withdraw support to their own industries.
The government run public sector, set up to create basic infrastructure and provide public utilities like electricity, roads, communications, water, etc. were systematically dismantled. They were privatised, or handed over to multinational corporations. Further, over this period, capital (money) across the globe was concentrated in fewer and fewer hands. The driving force behind this phase of imperialist globalisation became this accumulated money. Countries were forced to remove restrictions on the flows of this capital in and out of their countries.
[Development will be best if you give free enterprise the green light. Build ports and office space to attract corporates. Set up more EOUs, plantations and factories…Don't waste your capital on basic food and clothing.]
This money is called speculative capital because it is invested for short term profits - just like a gambler would do - without any intention to create facilities that would promote manufacturing capabilities. Thus economies of poor countries are captive in the hands of those who have huge amounts of money - large multinational banks based in rich countries or foreign institutional investors (FIIs) - who have the ability to shut down these economies in matter of days if they decide to move their money to some other country. Together these policies and processes increased indebtedness of Third World countries that they were supposed to reduce, increased the rate of
exploitation of wageworkers across the globe, and shifted wealth from productive to speculative sectors. The policies also led to the increase of casual, poorly paid and insecure forms of employment. Fund cuts in education and health also meant that already weak and under-funded systems of health, education and food security collapsed. It is thus not accidental that
these policies increased levels of poverty in already poor countries even as a small section of the
population became richer; this section of the middle and upper classes obtained access to consumer goods that were earlier available only in the rich countries. Indeed this figure has increased substantially over the last three decades. Between 1990 and 1993 sub-Saharan Africa alone transferred 13.4 billion dollars annually to its creditors, substantially more than it spent on education and health combined. From 1987 to 1993, the net transfer of resources from Africa to the IMF was 38 billion dollars. As a result, inequalities within and between countries have risen sharply: the income gap between the world's richest and poorest has more than doubled, although the world has never been as rich as it is today.
[In spite of all the talk about developing countries receiving aid from the rich countries, in actual practice, every year close to 80 billion USD are paid by the former to latter just in order to return the loan that were forced upon them earlier.]
16
In 1960 the 20 per cent of the world's people in the richest countries had 30 times the income of the poorest 20 per cent; today they command 74 times more. The same richest 20 per cent of the
population command 86 per cent of the world GDP while the poorest 20 per cent command merely 1 per cent. More than 80 countries have per capita incomes lower than they were a decade or
more ago; 55 countries, mostly in sub-Saharan Africa, Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, have had declining per capita incomes.
r.S.Dahiya
Tuesday, January 22, 2008
Present Day Globalisation
Saksar Sawasth Aur secular Haryana
How Did Today's Phase of Globalisation Start?
Human beings, as long as they have lived on earth, have been moving around the world, trading, learning and interacting. But from the seventeenth century arose a new situation, that of colonialism.
Colonialism is often referred to as the first wave of globalisation and contributed to the most significant feature of the global economy today: the division between the First World, of, by and large, colonial nations, and the Third World, of colonised ones. After the Second World War, newly liberated nations like India, China and many others attempted to break free of the colonial chains
that had forced their countries into underdevelopment. Policies of self-reliant development were put in place in the newly independent nations of Asia, Africa and Latin America that minimized dependence on the developed nations for import of resources and technology. Food availability and incomes rose in these countries, as did investment in social sectors such as health, nutrition and education. Reflecting all these changes there were improvements in health indices as life expectations increased, the morbidity and mortality rates declined and birth rates increased. In the late 1970s, however, the global economy was overwhelmed by a crisis, where growth of production started slowing down and rates of unemployment started growing alongside rises in prices of commodities. These changes took place together with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the state controlled economies of the socialist world. They also led to a reshaping of the capitalist world, and led to a complex of changes known as globalisation, privatisation and liberalisation. They are also described, equally accurately, as corporate globalisation, or imperialist globalisation.
[Economic policies that were now imposed by the developed countries, called "neo-liberal" policies, reflected an ideological commitment to market principles, ignoring the remarkable role that
the government had played even in the advanced capitalist countries.]
After the Second World War, government involvement in public health had been considered crucial and essential in developed countries of Europe. Soon neoliberal policies came to be imposed in the
developing countries as well, at the insistence of the developed nations and the institutions controlled by them, such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Reduction of the role of governments and importance provided to the role of the market was thus at the center of this model of development. Economic growth, it was maintained despite extensive evidence to the contrary, would trickle down to the less fortunate and thus result in overall development.
R.S.Dahiya
How Did Today's Phase of Globalisation Start?
Human beings, as long as they have lived on earth, have been moving around the world, trading, learning and interacting. But from the seventeenth century arose a new situation, that of colonialism.
Colonialism is often referred to as the first wave of globalisation and contributed to the most significant feature of the global economy today: the division between the First World, of, by and large, colonial nations, and the Third World, of colonised ones. After the Second World War, newly liberated nations like India, China and many others attempted to break free of the colonial chains
that had forced their countries into underdevelopment. Policies of self-reliant development were put in place in the newly independent nations of Asia, Africa and Latin America that minimized dependence on the developed nations for import of resources and technology. Food availability and incomes rose in these countries, as did investment in social sectors such as health, nutrition and education. Reflecting all these changes there were improvements in health indices as life expectations increased, the morbidity and mortality rates declined and birth rates increased. In the late 1970s, however, the global economy was overwhelmed by a crisis, where growth of production started slowing down and rates of unemployment started growing alongside rises in prices of commodities. These changes took place together with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the state controlled economies of the socialist world. They also led to a reshaping of the capitalist world, and led to a complex of changes known as globalisation, privatisation and liberalisation. They are also described, equally accurately, as corporate globalisation, or imperialist globalisation.
[Economic policies that were now imposed by the developed countries, called "neo-liberal" policies, reflected an ideological commitment to market principles, ignoring the remarkable role that
the government had played even in the advanced capitalist countries.]
After the Second World War, government involvement in public health had been considered crucial and essential in developed countries of Europe. Soon neoliberal policies came to be imposed in the
developing countries as well, at the insistence of the developed nations and the institutions controlled by them, such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Reduction of the role of governments and importance provided to the role of the market was thus at the center of this model of development. Economic growth, it was maintained despite extensive evidence to the contrary, would trickle down to the less fortunate and thus result in overall development.
R.S.Dahiya
Balancesheet of Globalisation
Balancesheet of Globalisation
Social and economic inequalities translate into nutritional and health inequalities. Despite remarkable achievements in global health over the last four decades, there is a 16-fold difference in infant mortality between the 26 wealthiest nations and the 48 least developed countries. Of the world's 6 billion people, an estimated 3 billion survive on the equivalent of less than $2 a day; 1.3 billion of them on less than 1 $ a day. Every day 840 million people go to bed hungry. Half of the people in the world's poorest 46 nations are without access to modern health car; three billion people - half the world's population - do not have access to sanitation facilities; one billion do not have access to
safe drinking water. Of the 100 largest economies in the world, 51 are multi-national corporations and only 49 are countries. The ratio between the wealthiest and the poorest countries in terms of per capita income has grown from 11 to 1 in 1870, to 38 to 1 in 1960, to 52 to 1 in 1985. In 1988, the
average income of the world's wealthiest 5 per cent of people was 78 times that of the world's poorest 5 per cent; just five years later, this ratio had increased to 123 to 1. The gap continues to widen. The per capita income in 100 countries is now lower than it was 20 or 30 years back. In Africa, the average household consumes 20 per cent less today than it did 25 years ago. 1 billion people saw their real incomes fall between 1980 and 1993. At the end of the 1990s, the wealth of the three richest individuals on earth was greater than the combined annual GDP of the 48 least
developed nations.
[Is this what globalization is about? Or is it about the imposition of certain patterns of development over the whole globe that benefits a small section of the global population
while depriving the vast majority?]
10
Three hours of world-wide military spending is equal to the WHO's annual budget. Three weeks of world arms spending could provide primary health care, including water and sanitation, for all individuals in poor countries.
"Globalisation" is a word that has been increasingly heard over the last three decades. It means many things to many people. To some it means a large variety of goods, increasingly available all over the world. People who can afford to buy such goods argue that globalisation provides people a choice in the market place. A small section of people in India can now have access to the best of products available from abroad – from clothes to cosmetics, from perfumes to Porches, from cars to
computers and from banks to insurance. Such people see globalisation as not only inevitable but
also as desirable. Usually, of course, these are also the people who have gained from the process
of globalisation. There are others who see globalisation as "Westernisation". They object to the loss of "Indian" values and culture, contaminated by ideas from the "West". These are simplistic and often mistaken understandings of globalisation. Globalisation is a complex process that is having profound impact on all people across the world. No one would deny that globalisation is indeed to
be welcomed if it means greater exchange of ideas and people across
countries. But is that happening?
[Is this why so many people across the world are rising up to protest the current pattern of
globalisation?]
{How has globalization affected different countries & who are the winners and losers in globalisation?}
How does it impact on health?
R.S.Dahiya
Social and economic inequalities translate into nutritional and health inequalities. Despite remarkable achievements in global health over the last four decades, there is a 16-fold difference in infant mortality between the 26 wealthiest nations and the 48 least developed countries. Of the world's 6 billion people, an estimated 3 billion survive on the equivalent of less than $2 a day; 1.3 billion of them on less than 1 $ a day. Every day 840 million people go to bed hungry. Half of the people in the world's poorest 46 nations are without access to modern health car; three billion people - half the world's population - do not have access to sanitation facilities; one billion do not have access to
safe drinking water. Of the 100 largest economies in the world, 51 are multi-national corporations and only 49 are countries. The ratio between the wealthiest and the poorest countries in terms of per capita income has grown from 11 to 1 in 1870, to 38 to 1 in 1960, to 52 to 1 in 1985. In 1988, the
average income of the world's wealthiest 5 per cent of people was 78 times that of the world's poorest 5 per cent; just five years later, this ratio had increased to 123 to 1. The gap continues to widen. The per capita income in 100 countries is now lower than it was 20 or 30 years back. In Africa, the average household consumes 20 per cent less today than it did 25 years ago. 1 billion people saw their real incomes fall between 1980 and 1993. At the end of the 1990s, the wealth of the three richest individuals on earth was greater than the combined annual GDP of the 48 least
developed nations.
[Is this what globalization is about? Or is it about the imposition of certain patterns of development over the whole globe that benefits a small section of the global population
while depriving the vast majority?]
10
Three hours of world-wide military spending is equal to the WHO's annual budget. Three weeks of world arms spending could provide primary health care, including water and sanitation, for all individuals in poor countries.
"Globalisation" is a word that has been increasingly heard over the last three decades. It means many things to many people. To some it means a large variety of goods, increasingly available all over the world. People who can afford to buy such goods argue that globalisation provides people a choice in the market place. A small section of people in India can now have access to the best of products available from abroad – from clothes to cosmetics, from perfumes to Porches, from cars to
computers and from banks to insurance. Such people see globalisation as not only inevitable but
also as desirable. Usually, of course, these are also the people who have gained from the process
of globalisation. There are others who see globalisation as "Westernisation". They object to the loss of "Indian" values and culture, contaminated by ideas from the "West". These are simplistic and often mistaken understandings of globalisation. Globalisation is a complex process that is having profound impact on all people across the world. No one would deny that globalisation is indeed to
be welcomed if it means greater exchange of ideas and people across
countries. But is that happening?
[Is this why so many people across the world are rising up to protest the current pattern of
globalisation?]
{How has globalization affected different countries & who are the winners and losers in globalisation?}
How does it impact on health?
R.S.Dahiya
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