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
Wednesday, January 16, 2008
''PROHIBITING THE USE OF AGRICULTURAL LAND FOR INDUSTRIES IS ULTIMATELY SELF-DEFEATING'
Saksar Sawasth Aur secular Haryana
''PROHIBITING THE USE OF AGRICULTURAL LAND FOR INDUSTRIES IS ULTIMATELY SELF-DEFEATING'
Nobel laureate Amartya Sen speaks to Sambit Saha of The Telegraph on land acquisition for industrialisation, one of the most important issues facing Bengal and large parts of the country.
Q: What are your views on farmland acquisition for industry and the Singur-Nandigram controversy?
Amartya Sen: That is a very complicated question and has many aspects. Let me separate them out.
First of all, the need for industrial priority in West Bengal, which is a big long-term question and an extremely important issue.
It is sometimes underestimated the extent to which Bengal has been de-industrialised. Bengal was one of the major industrial centres in the world, not only in India. In European writings, Bengal has again and again come up as being one of the most prosperous areas in the world as an industrial base. The kind of reputation that some parts of Italy gained later.
It is often said that historically, Calcutta was founded 300 years ago by Job Charnock but it is also true that there was an urban settlement based on trade and industry, apart from agriculture, in this area. This we see not only from Indian records but also from the writings of Ptolemy and Pliny the Elder. The Europeans were aware of that.
Very near from Calcutta, there were industrial areas of huge prosperity. There is also mention in the writings of Fa Hien who came here in 401 and spent 10 years. He went back by boat. He took the boat from Tamralipta, which is very close to Calcutta. Effectively, it was greater Calcutta. So this has been a trading and industrial area for a very long time.
When Charnock came and the Battle of Plassey happened, there was not only English but the French, the Portuguese, the Spanish, the Flemish and the Danish merchants. They were all interested in the industrial products of this area. Under the British, there was de-industrialisation of classical industry but new industries came in the form, for example, of jute. But gradually that went off after Independence and there was further de-industrialisation.
The policy of the Communist Party itself was not well thought-out. The industrial agitation may have given the workers a little bit more rights, but they lost many more rights by the industries withdrawing out of Calcutta.
Jyotibabu was aware of the problem and Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee has tried to carry the understanding forward by trying to make it possible to have a big industrial base here. And it is extremely important.
It is also very important to recognise that production of industrial goods was based on the banks of the Hooghly and the Ganges, which are fertile areas anyway. So to say that ‘this is fertile agriculture land and you should not have industry here’ not only goes against the policy of the West Bengal government but also against the 2,000-year history of Bengal.
This is where industry was based because even though the land may be very fertile, industrial production could generate many times more than the value of the product produced by agriculture. The locations of great industry, be it Manchester or Lancashire, these were all on heavily fertile land. Industry has always competed against agriculture because the shared land was convenient for industry for trade and transportation.
Q: What about land acquisition?
Sen: I think some mistakes were made and the government should admit it and to some extent the government has admitted it.
Singur’s location could be questioned because there were some other locations one could have thought of like Kharagpur. But one of the difficulties is that Calcutta has such a huge attraction that it is very much easier to attract engineers and managers to an industrial base near Calcutta for the Tatas than in Kharagpur. And this is a dominant factor. Because Calcutta has such reputation.
I recently wrote in a book edited by Gopal Gandhi on Gandhi and Bengal about Gandhi’s relationship with Bengal. Interestingly, the first day he arrived in Calcutta in 1896, he went to see a play. In his stay of six days, he went to see another play. So here is a Gujarati arriving here, but he is so interested in the cultural life of Calcutta that he goes to see two plays in six days. So you just can’t say that because it is fertile land, you cannot allow managers and industrialists to be based in Calcutta and they have to be based in district towns. So the locational decision of Singur was probably not wrong.
Q: What are your views on the compensation paid for land?
Sen: The government paid much higher price than the value of the land in the free market. From that point of view, it was fair. Had there been no industry, they would have got the best value for the land. (Had the land not been taken for industry, the price they got would have been considered the best value, Sen explained.)
Where there is a mistake in the government’s thinking, and I think it is a big mistake of a tactical kind, is not to recognise that if this land were available for industry in general, and not just for the Tatas, the value of the land would have been much greater. While the compensation paid is greater than the value of the land seen as agricultural land, the compensation paid by the government is less than what the value would have been had it been free for competition with industries. If you are part of the market economy, then you have to take into account what the value of the land would have been had it been freely available for industry. So there is an issue to be addressed. I think it is a mistake, an honest mistake and it can be corrected in the future.
Nandigram is a much more complex issue. There is a question whether that kind of operation was needed, whether it was the right place. But I have not studied it in the way I have studied Singur. So I won’t comment.
Q: What, according to you, are the other issues here?
Sen: It is now very important for both the government and the Opposition to avoid violence. There is never a case for violence. The government’s policing has been in some cases over-strong. I understand that some Opposition parties have now created ‘free regions’ where they would not allow anyone to come in. That is also violent activity. It is not in line with Indian tradition of non-violence. The government and the Opposition have to recognise that. It is possible that in the past, the violence committed by the government was greater, but from what I hear, it is possible the opposite might be the case now.
Whichever way it may be, we don’t have to judge. But it is extremely important that in a free country, any people can come in and go out from any place they like and you cannot establish restriction of movement either by the government or the Opposition. This is a subject for rational discussion, which has become so impossible as everything is politicised now. Ultimately, those who want to prevent industrialisation of Bengal do not look enough at the interest of the people of the state. They may intend well, but they are not serving the interest of Bengal’s working class or peasantry. The prosperity of the peasantry in the world always depends on the number of peasants going down. That is the standard experience in the world.
It is not that historically agricultural production goes up so much that they become hugely rich on that basis. Bengal has done very well in terms of agriculture compared to other states. But that has not made Bengal immensely prosperous. In countries like Australia, the US or Canada, where agriculture has prospered, only a very tiny population is involved in agriculture. Most people move out to industry. Industry has to be convenient, has to be absorbing.
When people move out of agriculture, total production does not go down. So per capita income increases. For the prosperity of industry, agriculture and the economy, you do need industrialisation. Those in effect preventing that, either by politically making it impossible for an industrialist to feel comfortable in Bengal or making it difficult to buy land for industry, do not serve the interest of the poor well.
The Communist Party made a mistake earlier when it drove industries out by union action, which was intended to create benefits for workers but ended up making the workers having no job. Second time it is happening now, not from the Communist Party but from the Opposition, preventing industrialisation, which is not in the interest of Bengal in general and the poor in particular. So if Bengal is to regain what it used to be — being one of the richest in the world — industrialisation has to happen.
Prohibiting the use of agricultural land for industries is ultimately self-defeating.
Q: Why not develop other areas in Bengal where land is less fertile and build infrastructure so that industry goes there?
Sen: You have to bring industry everywhere. But there is no way in which you will be able to avoid industrialisation around Calcutta, any more than you could have avoided it in London, Lancashire, Manchester, Berlin, Paris, Pittsburgh. You will find industry will come up where there are advantages of production, taking into account also the locational preferences of managers, engineers, technical experts as well as unskilled labour.
But we should not make the mistake of thinking that somehow while you are trying to attract business based on the market that the government can say: ‘I want you to go to Siliguri and that is where you are going to be.’ That is not the way the market economy works. The market economy has many imperfections, on which I have written extensively. But it also creates job and income and if the income goes up, government revenues go up, so there is money available for education and healthcare and other things.
So in order to do that, you have to give the market economy the operational rational of choosing one location over another, depending on their market-based calculation. You cannot be governed by the market but nor can you ignore the logic of the market if you want to use the market as one of the instruments in advancing the country. So the whole idea of thinking in highly bureaucratic terms that ‘I want it in Siliguri and Bankura but not here’, that is not going to work. That is not the way industry functions in a market economy.
Courtesy: The Telegraph, Kolkata
''PROHIBITING THE USE OF AGRICULTURAL LAND FOR INDUSTRIES IS ULTIMATELY SELF-DEFEATING'
Nobel laureate Amartya Sen speaks to Sambit Saha of The Telegraph on land acquisition for industrialisation, one of the most important issues facing Bengal and large parts of the country.
Q: What are your views on farmland acquisition for industry and the Singur-Nandigram controversy?
Amartya Sen: That is a very complicated question and has many aspects. Let me separate them out.
First of all, the need for industrial priority in West Bengal, which is a big long-term question and an extremely important issue.
It is sometimes underestimated the extent to which Bengal has been de-industrialised. Bengal was one of the major industrial centres in the world, not only in India. In European writings, Bengal has again and again come up as being one of the most prosperous areas in the world as an industrial base. The kind of reputation that some parts of Italy gained later.
It is often said that historically, Calcutta was founded 300 years ago by Job Charnock but it is also true that there was an urban settlement based on trade and industry, apart from agriculture, in this area. This we see not only from Indian records but also from the writings of Ptolemy and Pliny the Elder. The Europeans were aware of that.
Very near from Calcutta, there were industrial areas of huge prosperity. There is also mention in the writings of Fa Hien who came here in 401 and spent 10 years. He went back by boat. He took the boat from Tamralipta, which is very close to Calcutta. Effectively, it was greater Calcutta. So this has been a trading and industrial area for a very long time.
When Charnock came and the Battle of Plassey happened, there was not only English but the French, the Portuguese, the Spanish, the Flemish and the Danish merchants. They were all interested in the industrial products of this area. Under the British, there was de-industrialisation of classical industry but new industries came in the form, for example, of jute. But gradually that went off after Independence and there was further de-industrialisation.
The policy of the Communist Party itself was not well thought-out. The industrial agitation may have given the workers a little bit more rights, but they lost many more rights by the industries withdrawing out of Calcutta.
Jyotibabu was aware of the problem and Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee has tried to carry the understanding forward by trying to make it possible to have a big industrial base here. And it is extremely important.
It is also very important to recognise that production of industrial goods was based on the banks of the Hooghly and the Ganges, which are fertile areas anyway. So to say that ‘this is fertile agriculture land and you should not have industry here’ not only goes against the policy of the West Bengal government but also against the 2,000-year history of Bengal.
This is where industry was based because even though the land may be very fertile, industrial production could generate many times more than the value of the product produced by agriculture. The locations of great industry, be it Manchester or Lancashire, these were all on heavily fertile land. Industry has always competed against agriculture because the shared land was convenient for industry for trade and transportation.
Q: What about land acquisition?
Sen: I think some mistakes were made and the government should admit it and to some extent the government has admitted it.
Singur’s location could be questioned because there were some other locations one could have thought of like Kharagpur. But one of the difficulties is that Calcutta has such a huge attraction that it is very much easier to attract engineers and managers to an industrial base near Calcutta for the Tatas than in Kharagpur. And this is a dominant factor. Because Calcutta has such reputation.
I recently wrote in a book edited by Gopal Gandhi on Gandhi and Bengal about Gandhi’s relationship with Bengal. Interestingly, the first day he arrived in Calcutta in 1896, he went to see a play. In his stay of six days, he went to see another play. So here is a Gujarati arriving here, but he is so interested in the cultural life of Calcutta that he goes to see two plays in six days. So you just can’t say that because it is fertile land, you cannot allow managers and industrialists to be based in Calcutta and they have to be based in district towns. So the locational decision of Singur was probably not wrong.
Q: What are your views on the compensation paid for land?
Sen: The government paid much higher price than the value of the land in the free market. From that point of view, it was fair. Had there been no industry, they would have got the best value for the land. (Had the land not been taken for industry, the price they got would have been considered the best value, Sen explained.)
Where there is a mistake in the government’s thinking, and I think it is a big mistake of a tactical kind, is not to recognise that if this land were available for industry in general, and not just for the Tatas, the value of the land would have been much greater. While the compensation paid is greater than the value of the land seen as agricultural land, the compensation paid by the government is less than what the value would have been had it been free for competition with industries. If you are part of the market economy, then you have to take into account what the value of the land would have been had it been freely available for industry. So there is an issue to be addressed. I think it is a mistake, an honest mistake and it can be corrected in the future.
Nandigram is a much more complex issue. There is a question whether that kind of operation was needed, whether it was the right place. But I have not studied it in the way I have studied Singur. So I won’t comment.
Q: What, according to you, are the other issues here?
Sen: It is now very important for both the government and the Opposition to avoid violence. There is never a case for violence. The government’s policing has been in some cases over-strong. I understand that some Opposition parties have now created ‘free regions’ where they would not allow anyone to come in. That is also violent activity. It is not in line with Indian tradition of non-violence. The government and the Opposition have to recognise that. It is possible that in the past, the violence committed by the government was greater, but from what I hear, it is possible the opposite might be the case now.
Whichever way it may be, we don’t have to judge. But it is extremely important that in a free country, any people can come in and go out from any place they like and you cannot establish restriction of movement either by the government or the Opposition. This is a subject for rational discussion, which has become so impossible as everything is politicised now. Ultimately, those who want to prevent industrialisation of Bengal do not look enough at the interest of the people of the state. They may intend well, but they are not serving the interest of Bengal’s working class or peasantry. The prosperity of the peasantry in the world always depends on the number of peasants going down. That is the standard experience in the world.
It is not that historically agricultural production goes up so much that they become hugely rich on that basis. Bengal has done very well in terms of agriculture compared to other states. But that has not made Bengal immensely prosperous. In countries like Australia, the US or Canada, where agriculture has prospered, only a very tiny population is involved in agriculture. Most people move out to industry. Industry has to be convenient, has to be absorbing.
When people move out of agriculture, total production does not go down. So per capita income increases. For the prosperity of industry, agriculture and the economy, you do need industrialisation. Those in effect preventing that, either by politically making it impossible for an industrialist to feel comfortable in Bengal or making it difficult to buy land for industry, do not serve the interest of the poor well.
The Communist Party made a mistake earlier when it drove industries out by union action, which was intended to create benefits for workers but ended up making the workers having no job. Second time it is happening now, not from the Communist Party but from the Opposition, preventing industrialisation, which is not in the interest of Bengal in general and the poor in particular. So if Bengal is to regain what it used to be — being one of the richest in the world — industrialisation has to happen.
Prohibiting the use of agricultural land for industries is ultimately self-defeating.
Q: Why not develop other areas in Bengal where land is less fertile and build infrastructure so that industry goes there?
Sen: You have to bring industry everywhere. But there is no way in which you will be able to avoid industrialisation around Calcutta, any more than you could have avoided it in London, Lancashire, Manchester, Berlin, Paris, Pittsburgh. You will find industry will come up where there are advantages of production, taking into account also the locational preferences of managers, engineers, technical experts as well as unskilled labour.
But we should not make the mistake of thinking that somehow while you are trying to attract business based on the market that the government can say: ‘I want you to go to Siliguri and that is where you are going to be.’ That is not the way the market economy works. The market economy has many imperfections, on which I have written extensively. But it also creates job and income and if the income goes up, government revenues go up, so there is money available for education and healthcare and other things.
So in order to do that, you have to give the market economy the operational rational of choosing one location over another, depending on their market-based calculation. You cannot be governed by the market but nor can you ignore the logic of the market if you want to use the market as one of the instruments in advancing the country. So the whole idea of thinking in highly bureaucratic terms that ‘I want it in Siliguri and Bankura but not here’, that is not going to work. That is not the way industry functions in a market economy.
Courtesy: The Telegraph, Kolkata
Playing Cards in the Village
Saksar Sawasth Aur secular Haryana
At many places the people in the villages play Cards.
Bhagat Singh Thinks through a Folk Song
Saksar Sawasth Aur secular Haryana
One day Bhagat Singh was reading revolutionary literature. The plight of India and torture of Britishers was in his mind.How he thinks all that ?
Monday, January 14, 2008
PROTESTS IN FRANCE
Saksar Sawasth Aur secular Haryana
Vibrant Student And Workers Movement In France
US fashion magazine ‘Vanity Fair’ ranked the ‘smart’ French President Nicolas Sarkozy to be the 68th best-dressed person in the world along with Hollywood superstar Brad Pitt and English soccer hero David Beckham. Like the pied piper of Hamlin, Nicolas Sarkozy initially enchanted eminent figures on all sides with his verve and brio. The media were equally spellbound and joined in the mass hysteria. France was virtually hypnotised by their new president. .
The scales began to fall from everyone’s eyes when the true nature of the sideshow was revealed. The magician was just a neo-liberal in disguise. This was clear from the first economic and social measures announced: reductions in tax on high incomes and death duties, a tax shield, medical franchises, longer working hours – the essence of neo-liberalism. And it was even clearer from Sarkozy’s speeches on September 5, at the Medef (Mouvement des entreprises de France) business seminar, and on September 18, the 40th anniversary of the AJIS, the association of social security reporters.
Sarkozy said that his government’s priority was to deal with the question of special pension schemes. According to him reforms in that sector was necessary without delay. He also declared of reviewing the Health service funding because the health insurance system could not cover everything. Some costs should be met by individual insurance schemes. In other words, patients must have private insurance as they do in the United States, where almost 50 million people have no health cover.
Sarkozy repeated that the 35-hour week rule would have to be abolished. He also proposed to end early retirement schemes, and introduce stronger and more effective procedures and sanctions against unemployed people who refused two job offers. The Left condemned it as the greatest offensive to be mounted against the social security system in 50 years and urged the French people to rise in all-round protests.
Vibrant Student And Workers Movement In France
US fashion magazine ‘Vanity Fair’ ranked the ‘smart’ French President Nicolas Sarkozy to be the 68th best-dressed person in the world along with Hollywood superstar Brad Pitt and English soccer hero David Beckham. Like the pied piper of Hamlin, Nicolas Sarkozy initially enchanted eminent figures on all sides with his verve and brio. The media were equally spellbound and joined in the mass hysteria. France was virtually hypnotised by their new president. .
The scales began to fall from everyone’s eyes when the true nature of the sideshow was revealed. The magician was just a neo-liberal in disguise. This was clear from the first economic and social measures announced: reductions in tax on high incomes and death duties, a tax shield, medical franchises, longer working hours – the essence of neo-liberalism. And it was even clearer from Sarkozy’s speeches on September 5, at the Medef (Mouvement des entreprises de France) business seminar, and on September 18, the 40th anniversary of the AJIS, the association of social security reporters.
Sarkozy said that his government’s priority was to deal with the question of special pension schemes. According to him reforms in that sector was necessary without delay. He also declared of reviewing the Health service funding because the health insurance system could not cover everything. Some costs should be met by individual insurance schemes. In other words, patients must have private insurance as they do in the United States, where almost 50 million people have no health cover.
Sarkozy repeated that the 35-hour week rule would have to be abolished. He also proposed to end early retirement schemes, and introduce stronger and more effective procedures and sanctions against unemployed people who refused two job offers. The Left condemned it as the greatest offensive to be mounted against the social security system in 50 years and urged the French people to rise in all-round protests.
SENSEX OR HUNGER INDEX
Saksar Sawasth Aur secular Haryana
What Is The Govt's Priority - Sensex Or Hunger Index?
BOTH the policy makers and dominant sections of the media have been ecstatic over the more than 45 per cent rise in sensex during the last year. It is being highlighted as one of the major national achievements in the background of 8 to 9 per cent GDP growth in economy. But in the midst of the so-called booming share market index can the country forget its Hunger Index? In a country where 836 million people have per capita daily consumption of Rs 20 or less (as per the Report of National Commission for Enterprises in the Unorganised Sector), hunger remains one of the major problem and most important challenge facing the nation. Higher percentage of GDP and sensex touching 21,000 become irrelevant unless this important issue is addressed, notwithstanding the misplaced concern of the prime minister on so-called high subsidies on food and fertilizer.
GLOBAL HUNGER INDEX
The International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) measures Global Hunger Index based on following three equally weighted indicators:
· The proportion of undernourished as a percentage of the population (reflecting the share of population with insufficient dietary energy intake);
· The prevalence of underweightedness in children under the age of five (indicating the proportion of children suffering from weight loss and/ or reduced growth);
· The under-five mortality rate (partially reflecting the fatal synergy between inadequate dietary intake and unhealthy environment).
Combining the proportion of undernourished in the population with two indicators relating to children under five ensures that both the food supply situation of the population as a whole and effects of inadequate nutrition on a physically very vulnerable group are captured. The Global Hunger Index goes beyond the dietary energy availability which is the focus of FAO's measure of under-nourishment and reflects the multidimensional manifestation of hunger.
The Global Hunger Index (GHI) 2007 prepared by IFPRI was calculated on the basis of data from 2000-2005 and released in its report titled The Challenge of Hunger 2007 in October 2007. The calculation was limited to 118 developing countries excluding western developed countries and a few eastern European countries. The GHI score varies between the best possible score of 0 (zero) and worst possible score of 100. Higher the score, greater the hunger and lower the score, the better the country's situation. GHI score above 10 are considered serious, above 20 alarming and above 30 are extremely alarming.
INDIA'S
POSITION
India ranks 94th in GHI scoring 25.03 coming under alarming category. Only 12 countries come under extremely alarming category. Among our neighbours Sri Lanka ranks 69th (GHI – 16.6), Pakistan 88th (GHI – 22.70), Nepal 90th (GHI – 24.30) and only Bangladesh below us on 103 (GHI – 28.10).
In the data underlying the calculation of GHI of India, the three major indicators show that proportion of undernourished in the population is 20 per cent, prevalence of underweight in children under five years is 46.6 per cent and under five mortality rate is 8.5 per cent.
The above phenomenon has been analysed in IFPRI report in the following words:
In South Asia the prevalence of underweight children is relatively high whereas in sub-saharan Africa child mortality and the proportion of people who can not meet their calorie requirements play a major role.… In India where the large majority of South Asia's population lives, economic growth in the agricultural sector has lagged considerably behind growth in other sectors over recent years. This has negative effect on progress in alleviating poverty and hunger in rural areas. Furthermore members of the lower castes and certain ethnic minorities continue to be discriminated against in society and are therefore disadvantaged with regard to educational opportunities and the labour market.
ICDS
It is a matter of national shame that we rank 94th mainly because of prevalence of undernourishment in children, who are supposed to be the future assets of the country, inspite of the fact that government of India started Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) Schemes/project way back in 1975-76 with the specific objective to improve the nutritional and health status of children in age group of 0-6 years. This was so because the then planners had felt, and we quote There has, for some time, been an awareness of the importance of organising early childhood services for the future development of the child though resource constraints and basically sectoral approach to the needs of children had prevented the development of a co-ordinated strategy. It is now however realised that any deferment of action will be detrimental to the development of country's human resource which is a key factor in development (emphasis added). The organisation of early childhood services should therefore be regarded as an investment in the future economic and social progress of the country.
We have fared badly even after the above mentioned was spelt out in the government documents two and half decades back.
WHERE IS
THE REALISATION?
One of the major components of ICDS Scheme is providing supplementary nutrition to children below 6 years of age, in low income group through ICDS centres, commonly known as anganwadi centres. What is the factual position today? As per the written reply to a question in parliament on November 26, 2007, the government of India admits that only 60 million children out of 164 million children have received supplementary nutrition under ICDS Scheme as on June 30, 2007. This is because there are not sufficient numbers of anganwadi centres to extend total coverage of this service to the children. The realisation as envisaged by policy makers during the Fifth Five Year Plan for treating ICDS as an investment in the future economic and social progress of the country has been ignored by successive governments at the centre. The UPA government had committed to universalise ICDS Scheme to provide a functional anganwadi centre in every settlement to ensure full coverage for all children. Even the Supreme Court had to intervene and in its order in 2006 directed government of India to sanction and operationalise 14 lakh anganwadi centres by December 2008. Inspite of that, the lack of priority is clear from the aforesaid reply of the government in parliament wherein it states that As on June 30, 2007, out of 10,52,638 sanctioned centres in the country, only 8,63,472 are operational and of these, 7,97,155 centres were providing supplementary nutrition, which means that only 7.97 lakh centres are operational. Yet no target has been set and the government is totally silent on a time-frame action plan to universalise ICDS though the Supreme Court had fixed a target of 14 lakh anganwadi centres by December 2008. What prevents the government to stick to the schedule fixed by the Supreme Court? Why is the government, which shivers at the fall of sensex, so callous about India's position in global hunger scenario as depicted by GHI?
The fact is human development is not on the agenda of the government's agenda. The major motivating force to move forward the ICDS Scheme is the untiring work of the approximately 14 lakh anganwadi employees who are paid abysmally low honorarium viz. Rs 1000 per month for workers and Rs 500 for helpers. There have been continuous struggles by anganwadi workers, trade unions, Left parties to universalise the ICDS Scheme, to increase the honorarium to the workers and to improve their service conditions to ensure proper delivery of services in the anganwadi centres. The prime minister himself was apprised time and again of this issue which is closely linked with national development. Shockingly, being otherwise so loquacious on 10 per cent GDP growth and high sensex figures, he is eloquently silent on this issue.
The government's apathy is clear from the budgetary allocation for ICDS in 2007-2008 which was Rs 4761 crore. The minimum allocation should have been Rs. 12,000 crore to provide for expansion of ICDS and improving the conditions of anganwadi employees. Is it too much for a government which extends tax concessions to the extent of more than Rs 1.7 lakh crore to SEZ developers? Whether spending Rs 12,000 crore for 17 crore children i.e. Rs 700 per child per year is too much of a burden for a country whose Global Hunger Index status is ALARMING? It is high time that the UPA government goes back to Common Minimum Programme to find the answer, otherwise the hungry millions would give a befitting rebuff through the ballot boxes, taking into account prime minister's undue concern on food subsidy for a country whose hunger and under-nourishment is so sadly reflected in Global Hunger Index.
Let the government decide its priority – sensex or Hunger Index?
Dipankar Mukherjee
What Is The Govt's Priority - Sensex Or Hunger Index?
BOTH the policy makers and dominant sections of the media have been ecstatic over the more than 45 per cent rise in sensex during the last year. It is being highlighted as one of the major national achievements in the background of 8 to 9 per cent GDP growth in economy. But in the midst of the so-called booming share market index can the country forget its Hunger Index? In a country where 836 million people have per capita daily consumption of Rs 20 or less (as per the Report of National Commission for Enterprises in the Unorganised Sector), hunger remains one of the major problem and most important challenge facing the nation. Higher percentage of GDP and sensex touching 21,000 become irrelevant unless this important issue is addressed, notwithstanding the misplaced concern of the prime minister on so-called high subsidies on food and fertilizer.
GLOBAL HUNGER INDEX
The International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) measures Global Hunger Index based on following three equally weighted indicators:
· The proportion of undernourished as a percentage of the population (reflecting the share of population with insufficient dietary energy intake);
· The prevalence of underweightedness in children under the age of five (indicating the proportion of children suffering from weight loss and/ or reduced growth);
· The under-five mortality rate (partially reflecting the fatal synergy between inadequate dietary intake and unhealthy environment).
Combining the proportion of undernourished in the population with two indicators relating to children under five ensures that both the food supply situation of the population as a whole and effects of inadequate nutrition on a physically very vulnerable group are captured. The Global Hunger Index goes beyond the dietary energy availability which is the focus of FAO's measure of under-nourishment and reflects the multidimensional manifestation of hunger.
The Global Hunger Index (GHI) 2007 prepared by IFPRI was calculated on the basis of data from 2000-2005 and released in its report titled The Challenge of Hunger 2007 in October 2007. The calculation was limited to 118 developing countries excluding western developed countries and a few eastern European countries. The GHI score varies between the best possible score of 0 (zero) and worst possible score of 100. Higher the score, greater the hunger and lower the score, the better the country's situation. GHI score above 10 are considered serious, above 20 alarming and above 30 are extremely alarming.
INDIA'S
POSITION
India ranks 94th in GHI scoring 25.03 coming under alarming category. Only 12 countries come under extremely alarming category. Among our neighbours Sri Lanka ranks 69th (GHI – 16.6), Pakistan 88th (GHI – 22.70), Nepal 90th (GHI – 24.30) and only Bangladesh below us on 103 (GHI – 28.10).
In the data underlying the calculation of GHI of India, the three major indicators show that proportion of undernourished in the population is 20 per cent, prevalence of underweight in children under five years is 46.6 per cent and under five mortality rate is 8.5 per cent.
The above phenomenon has been analysed in IFPRI report in the following words:
In South Asia the prevalence of underweight children is relatively high whereas in sub-saharan Africa child mortality and the proportion of people who can not meet their calorie requirements play a major role.… In India where the large majority of South Asia's population lives, economic growth in the agricultural sector has lagged considerably behind growth in other sectors over recent years. This has negative effect on progress in alleviating poverty and hunger in rural areas. Furthermore members of the lower castes and certain ethnic minorities continue to be discriminated against in society and are therefore disadvantaged with regard to educational opportunities and the labour market.
ICDS
It is a matter of national shame that we rank 94th mainly because of prevalence of undernourishment in children, who are supposed to be the future assets of the country, inspite of the fact that government of India started Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) Schemes/project way back in 1975-76 with the specific objective to improve the nutritional and health status of children in age group of 0-6 years. This was so because the then planners had felt, and we quote There has, for some time, been an awareness of the importance of organising early childhood services for the future development of the child though resource constraints and basically sectoral approach to the needs of children had prevented the development of a co-ordinated strategy. It is now however realised that any deferment of action will be detrimental to the development of country's human resource which is a key factor in development (emphasis added). The organisation of early childhood services should therefore be regarded as an investment in the future economic and social progress of the country.
We have fared badly even after the above mentioned was spelt out in the government documents two and half decades back.
WHERE IS
THE REALISATION?
One of the major components of ICDS Scheme is providing supplementary nutrition to children below 6 years of age, in low income group through ICDS centres, commonly known as anganwadi centres. What is the factual position today? As per the written reply to a question in parliament on November 26, 2007, the government of India admits that only 60 million children out of 164 million children have received supplementary nutrition under ICDS Scheme as on June 30, 2007. This is because there are not sufficient numbers of anganwadi centres to extend total coverage of this service to the children. The realisation as envisaged by policy makers during the Fifth Five Year Plan for treating ICDS as an investment in the future economic and social progress of the country has been ignored by successive governments at the centre. The UPA government had committed to universalise ICDS Scheme to provide a functional anganwadi centre in every settlement to ensure full coverage for all children. Even the Supreme Court had to intervene and in its order in 2006 directed government of India to sanction and operationalise 14 lakh anganwadi centres by December 2008. Inspite of that, the lack of priority is clear from the aforesaid reply of the government in parliament wherein it states that As on June 30, 2007, out of 10,52,638 sanctioned centres in the country, only 8,63,472 are operational and of these, 7,97,155 centres were providing supplementary nutrition, which means that only 7.97 lakh centres are operational. Yet no target has been set and the government is totally silent on a time-frame action plan to universalise ICDS though the Supreme Court had fixed a target of 14 lakh anganwadi centres by December 2008. What prevents the government to stick to the schedule fixed by the Supreme Court? Why is the government, which shivers at the fall of sensex, so callous about India's position in global hunger scenario as depicted by GHI?
The fact is human development is not on the agenda of the government's agenda. The major motivating force to move forward the ICDS Scheme is the untiring work of the approximately 14 lakh anganwadi employees who are paid abysmally low honorarium viz. Rs 1000 per month for workers and Rs 500 for helpers. There have been continuous struggles by anganwadi workers, trade unions, Left parties to universalise the ICDS Scheme, to increase the honorarium to the workers and to improve their service conditions to ensure proper delivery of services in the anganwadi centres. The prime minister himself was apprised time and again of this issue which is closely linked with national development. Shockingly, being otherwise so loquacious on 10 per cent GDP growth and high sensex figures, he is eloquently silent on this issue.
The government's apathy is clear from the budgetary allocation for ICDS in 2007-2008 which was Rs 4761 crore. The minimum allocation should have been Rs. 12,000 crore to provide for expansion of ICDS and improving the conditions of anganwadi employees. Is it too much for a government which extends tax concessions to the extent of more than Rs 1.7 lakh crore to SEZ developers? Whether spending Rs 12,000 crore for 17 crore children i.e. Rs 700 per child per year is too much of a burden for a country whose Global Hunger Index status is ALARMING? It is high time that the UPA government goes back to Common Minimum Programme to find the answer, otherwise the hungry millions would give a befitting rebuff through the ballot boxes, taking into account prime minister's undue concern on food subsidy for a country whose hunger and under-nourishment is so sadly reflected in Global Hunger Index.
Let the government decide its priority – sensex or Hunger Index?
Dipankar Mukherjee
GROWTH FOR WHOM?
Saksar Sawasth Aur secular Haryana
Growth For Whom?
THE euphoria time for India Inc. continues. The sensex has now breached the 21,000 mark. At the other end, every 30 minutes, a farmer is committing suicide somewhere across the country. The hiatus between `shining’ India and `suffering’ India is not merely growing but is galloping. This growing divide is not only because of the inefficiency of the distributive aspects in our economy that prevent an inclusive growth. It is also not because the government of the day is insensitive to this growing divide. The divide grows on the basis of a simple fact – under the given conditions for the rich to get richer, the poor needs to get poorer. This is the very logic of capitalism based on intensification of economic exploitation.
Take for instance, the continuing rise in the prices of essential commodities. This heaps additional economic burdens on the people. But, at the same time, inflation is a policy instrument in the distributive aspect of the economy which increases the income share of the profit earner while impoverishing the consumer. Inflation influences income redistribution in favour of the rich.
R.S.Dahiya
Growth For Whom?
THE euphoria time for India Inc. continues. The sensex has now breached the 21,000 mark. At the other end, every 30 minutes, a farmer is committing suicide somewhere across the country. The hiatus between `shining’ India and `suffering’ India is not merely growing but is galloping. This growing divide is not only because of the inefficiency of the distributive aspects in our economy that prevent an inclusive growth. It is also not because the government of the day is insensitive to this growing divide. The divide grows on the basis of a simple fact – under the given conditions for the rich to get richer, the poor needs to get poorer. This is the very logic of capitalism based on intensification of economic exploitation.
Take for instance, the continuing rise in the prices of essential commodities. This heaps additional economic burdens on the people. But, at the same time, inflation is a policy instrument in the distributive aspect of the economy which increases the income share of the profit earner while impoverishing the consumer. Inflation influences income redistribution in favour of the rich.
R.S.Dahiya
GHUNGHAT TAAR BAGAYA HEY
Saksar Sawasth Aur secular Haryana
GHUNGHAT SEY NIJAAT PA RAHI HAIN MAHILAYEN
AAJ BHI GHUNGHAT KAYON
Saksar Sawasth Aur secular Haryana
GHUGHAAT SEY AANKH KAAN NAAK JEEBH CHAR INDRIYAN BAND HO JAATI HAIN TO GYAN KAISEY MILEY?
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