Through a variety of multi-disciplinary programs, ASIP will
bring American public attention to important social issues
in Asia and the innovative strategies that have been generated
within the region in response to those issues. In doing so,
ASIP will strive to articulate why Asian social issues matter
to Americans.
Tonight's program will begin with a keynote address by Dr.
Nafis Sadik, Executive Director of the United Nations Population
Fund. After a brief question and answer period, Dr. Linda
Lim, Asia Society Trustee, ASIP Advisor and Director of the
Southeast Asia Business Program at the University of Michigan,
will moderate the panel discussion responding to Dr. Sadik's
remarks and to the issue of Globalization - Promises and Perils.
Now it's my privilege to introduce Dr. Sadik. Dr. Sadik is
Executive Director of the United Nations Population Fund and
holds the rank of Under Secretary General. On her appointment
in 1987, she became the first woman to head one of the United
Nations major voluntarily funded programs. She has consistently
called attention to the importance of addressing the needs
of women and of involving women directly in making and carrying
out development policy. This is particularly important for
population policies and programs. In June 1990, the Secretary
General of the United Nations appointed her Secretary General
of the International Conference on Population and Development.
Please join me in welcoming Dr. Nafis Sadik.
Keynote Address
Dr. Nafis Sadik, Executive Director, United Nations Population
Fund
Ambassador Platt, panelists, distinguished guests, it's a
great pleasure for me to be here. I think I've been set with
a rather formidable task to launch this wonderful initiative,
the Asian Social Issues Program. I had prepared quite a different
presentation based really on population and gender and reproductive
health and rights until I had a visit from some members from
the Asia Society and they talked about globalization and perils
and opportunities or some such thing. So I really had to do
some thinking between Tuesday and Thursday and try to reconstruct
what I thought you, as the audience, would be interested in.
Nevertheless, you will find a lot of references to population,
to gender issues, to women's empowerment and to reproductive
health and rights. But I have tried, as we do in the UN, to
participate in a lot of discussions on globalization, on poverty
and participation - all of those issues also fit in the Asian
context.
I want to start by looking at some of the experiences in the
Asian region. For almost three decades, until 1997, East Asia
offered a model for rapid economic growth. They were called
the Asian tigers and everyone was waiting for them to join
the group of developed countries. This was enabled by massive
and early investment in human development in health and education
and to some extent also from watching gender equality and
participation of women. These investments certainly in these
countries improved maternal and child health, encouraged smaller
families, encouraged women's participation in all development
sectors, including the economy. Investment in these sectors
became progressively more productive. A higher proportion
of GNP was available then for economic investment. And a healthy
and educated workforce sustained even higher standards of
economic activity. The result was to draw in international
investments overseas - investment fueling. In fact, even more
economic growth. We compared this with other parts of South
Asia with high population growth rates, lack of investment
in the social sectors, continuing low level of women's participation;
their low status in society has really slowed economic growth
and economic development. They've kept all the social indicators,
low health and education standards and have discouraged, in
fact, external investment and resource growth. But, development
is not a smooth process. The financial and economic crisis
that began in East Asia in mid-1997 showed how quickly unsustainable
development can go into reverse. The hot money, as I discovered
and which is discussed all the time from overseas, vanished
as quickly as it had arrived. We studied, as a number of organizations
did, some of the social effects of the economic crisis in
Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippians and Thailand and found that,
in common with I'm sure many others, women were disproportionately
effected by unemployment and under employment; that malnutrition
increased in babies and young children; that people became
poor almost overnight; unwanted pregnancies, unsafe abortions,
sexually transmitted diseases, HIV, Aids, all increased. The
indicators were all very clear.
Poverty increased the pressure on women to enter the commercial
sex industry. They are exposed to overexploitation, violence
and infection. The crisis certainly cut expenditure in the
social sectors. On education, there was increased dropout
in Indonesia for example. A large number of children were
kept out of school. Girls and the poor were obviously the
hardest hit. Reports on the experience of Asian women back
up our study. Women are often the first to be laid off when
companies shut down. You see this also in the China experience,
as economic activity has increased the status of women and
their access to economic bars seems to have been less visible
than it was before the free market. Women tend to be assigned
to dispensable work and more women are temporarily part time
workers. Although women own or manage at least half the small
and medium scale enterprises in many of the Asian and Pacific
countries, they still find it more difficult to obtain credit
or loans than their counterparts. And lack of credit had made
adjustments for women even harder and more difficult in this
environment.
What were some of the lessons then that we learned? Asia's
love affair with the global market tends to downplay the negative
side of globalization, including its effect on the poor and
on the environment. It also pushed aside Asia's first love
- social investment - as the foundation for sustainable prosperity.
I think this is a lesson that we've learned. Now that the
passions have cooled a little, perhaps we can look at some
of the positive, as well as the negative effects of globalization
and find some pointers to the future, not only for East Asia,
but also for all Asian countries.
East Asia's prosperity, as I said - and I think this is born
out by many studies including the world bank study recently
- was built on social investment. Recent experience has shown
how easily the effect of these investments can be undermined.
But it has also demonstrated their underlying value. East
Asian countries are now bouncing back. I think with more emphasis
on poverty, eradication and gender equality in the years to
come, they will be better able to protect themselves from
future shocks. As they say in America, remember who brought
you to the dance.
Renewed emphasis on social investment will also allow East
Asian countries to invest in their older people of whom there
are now an increasing number and for whom there is still little
provision. The extended family is still continuing but we
are already testing the limits of what can be expected from
it.
One
of the costs of breakdown of expansion has been the environmental
damage. I think we all know what has happened in Indonesia
and the consequences of those actions. I hope that East Asian
countries are alive to these efforts. They could perhaps learn
from the experience of Europe and Japan, where investment
and conservation is paying economic dividends. I think these
are some lessons from the globalization and from the interchange
that we need to examine and apply.
There
is no reason why Asian countries should repeat some of the
mistakes that have been made by some of the industrialized
countries.
One of the other outcomes of the globalization process has
been the greater mobility of labor and as you know, this is
one of the great political divides between the north and the
south in the UN; while we advocate very strongly on the free
market system in a globalized environment, we are less open
about the other side of the coin, which is the labor markets
which go along with the free market system.
Migration has been of course a mixed blessing for both the
sending and the receiving countries, especially because there
is no comprehensive international agreement covering labor
movements and the right of migrants. These economies drew
workers from across the regions, some of who now are in a
difficult position. And of course, still there's migration
and movement problems between countries in the Asian region
as much as they are between the countries of the South and
the North.
Within
the East Asian countries, we see some difficulties on migration
movements of labor between the Philippians, Indonesia and
Malaysia. We see it between India and Bangladesh; between
Bangladesh and Pakistan; between Sri Lanka and Pakistan; Nepal
and Bhutan. These are all examples today - practical examples
- of some of the difficulties of labor movements and their
consequences after long term movement and living of people
in certain countries not of their origin, but after twenty-five,
thirty, forty years - in some cases fifty years - their offspring's
really regard as their own countries, yet they are regarded
as foreigners. This is a politic issue that is there in many
regions - in all regions - and it is a global issue as well
between North and South.
The new economy is drawing also investments into Asia and
creating wealth in many countries beyond the original tiger
economies. They should be guided by the tiger's experiences
so as to avoid the same pitfalls. The first lesson I think
for all our countries is to spread the wealth more evenly
and you hear that in all of our societies, despite all of
the progress of the last thirty years, there's still nine
hundred million poor people in the Asia and Pacific region.
Growing wealth alone will not eradicate poverty as we learn
from the lessons of the fifties and sixties. In fact, the
disadvantages of poverty are likely to become bigger and not
smaller as wealth increases unless specific actions are taken
to counteract them. More private ability to pay for services
tends to mean less emphasis on public provision. The opposite
should be the case. Investments in public health and education
must be increased in good times to narrow the gap and to equip
the poor people to help themselves.
The second lesson is to pay special attention to the needs
of women. The changes over the last thirty years have meant
a new life for many women, especially in cities. But two-thirds
of the region's poor in Asia are women. For them, life has
not changed very much, especially in the villages. Compared
with some of the women in the cities and in the upper income
groups, rural women and the poor have less personal freedom;
they are less likely to have an education and access to health
services including reproductive health services and they are
much more likely to get pregnant unintentionally; much more
likely to die as a result of pregnancy.
Maternal mortality, for example, in Singapore is about four
per hundred thousand, which is like the developed society.
But in Bangladesh for example, it's eight hundred. It's the
same in some other parts of South Asia. Even in a country
like Indonesia, where in fact size of family has reduced tremendously
- family planning is very, very effective - but maternal mortality
still remains extremely high.
The number of Asian women living in poverty has increased
disproportionately over the past decade, compared to the number
of men. A lot of men have migrated to other countries or to
the big cities in search of work and this has placed an additional
burden on women, especially those with children or on old
people that are left behind. The proportion of Asian households
headed by women, ranges from twenty to forty percent. This
is quite staggering because we assume in Asia that most families
are headed by men, but in fact, the number of women headed
households is really quite high in many communities. Women
headed households seem to be more likely to be poor. There
is also for poor women in Asia's economic growth an increasingly
urban lifestyle. The greater inequality can mean more crime
and women and children are the most vulnerable. The creation
of new types of jobs and growing labor mobility can mean growing
risk. Greater disposable wealth spawns new varieties of urban
crime, such as the drug trade and trafficking in human beings.
With more ability to pay, there is less emphasis on free or
low cost health and education services and therefore, again,
inequalities have tended sometimes to increase. Urban life
also carries special risk for the young who don't necessarily
have the support of their families, especially for the poor.
Young people account for half the new cases of HIV infections
and there is a disturbing rise in sexually transmitted diseases
among young people in all of the Asian countries. And here
it is particularly serious because governments are not facing
the problem. They don't accept that AIDS infection is an issue
that needs to be addressed and needs to be addressed publicly.
And time and again, you hear that in our societies, there
is no sexual activity outside of marriage, which is something
a little bit hard to believe. That's sort of a feeling. These
are issues that are very sensitive - that are not to be addressed
publicly-- and therefore, the AIDS epidemic can be suddenly
upon us an we haven't really begun to deal with it.
One of the most effective ways to attack poverty -is to empower
women to take charge of their own lives. The first essential
of empowerment is better health and better education. It should
be available to all girls and women. High quality reproductive
health is a priority. It can be done, even in low income countries
and communities if the priorities are right, as some of the
Indian states have demonstrated, Kerala and Tamil Nadu are
examples. Of course, the states don't have nice defense budgets.
That's also a serious problem in parts of South Asia.
Economic opportunity for the poor is also vital. I think some
of the most successful programs come from Asia, like the Grameen
Bank, in which micro-credit opportunities, investing in the
poor directly and giving them access to credit, has shown
absolutely tremendous results and is being now emulated in
many parts of the world.
But the underlying issue in South Asia - and perhaps even
in all Asia - is the attitude of men towards women. Women
- especially poor women - in much of Asia today, suffer under
a form of gender, which is not less real because it is unofficial.
The law protects them, there is equality in the law, but it
still exists because really minds and mindsets have not changed.
Technically, they have the same rights as men. Practically
in marriage and the family and the workplace, in economic
life, in politics and in their daily lives, women are second
best - and we know that. The roots of this pervasive discrimination
are deep, but they have to be dug out and we can't allow them
to hide behind culture and tradition, as is often said in
my culture. And my culture always seems to be directed to
somehow controlling women in some form or the other.
If Asian countries sincerely wish for sustainable development,
they will dig them out; they must. An Asia divided between
men and women is literally impossible in the 21st Century.
In the UN, the many agreements that have been introduced at
the international conferences that were held during the 1990's
on environment, on population development, on human rights,
on women, on social development have become a blueprint for
social development in the 21st Century. What was interesting
about the conferences, apart from the subject matter that
they addressed, they were also part of the development strategy,
all had social goals and gender issues at the heart of their
goals and recommendations.
The International Conference on Population and Development,
for example, in which I had the possibility to participate
in 1994, for example, set twenty year goals for reproductive
health and sexual health, maternal and infant mortality deduction,
unsafe abortion as a public health issue, prevention of HIV
AIDS, gender issues, education with the elimination of gender
inequalities and geographical inequalities. If all these agreements
are implemented in the 21st century, Asia has a good chance
of development without crashes like that which occurred in
1997.
But of course, the decision is not all in Asia's hands. Emphasis
on the social sector depends on government involvement, but
globalization has tended, as you know, to downplay the rule
of government. The pressure is still on to reduce the role
of the public sector. Even in the UN setting, which is a membership
of governments, the role of the state is somehow not very
clearly defined. It's always said what the state should not
do, but not much discussed as to what the state should and
must do.
For example, and equalization of opportunity, the social safety
net providing equal opportunity for all, these have to be
the role of the state. But these are not very much emphasized
or discussed. I feel that the Asian countries must start to
speak with one voice on social issues and issues of social
investment and development in the United Nations, in the financial
institutions and in other economic groupings.
They
should also speak out for the value of social investment,
environmental protection and resources conservation. They
should defend the power of national governments against further
erosion by economic forces outside of their control. I think
there has to be some kind of framework within which globalization
and the non-governmental sectors - and I say this with a "small
n", which includes the private sector and multi-nationals
and so on - operate so that there's no exploitation and there
opportunity to equalize the playing field for all the people
within the country.
There is much also that Asian countries can do to help one
another. For example, in our field, we have facilitated an
exchange of experience in population and development. This
exchange has transferred good practices and supported expertise
and training. Extending such arrangements in other areas,
I think, is a matter of neutral self-interest.
The Unites States, which was the other part of the question
that you are addressing will play an important role in Asia
as the biggest economy, as the biggest consumer of Asian products
and the biggest investor almost - I'm sure after Japan - in
Asian countries. The US has also historically supported social
development in Asian countries and in the area of population,
of course the US is the largest funder, in fact, of population
programs around the world and has done this very actively
and has participated in all of the success stories in Asia.
The US is and will remain preeminent in the international
community and its leadership can make a great difference to
the future direction in which Asian societies move. I feel
also that the US must take a longer view of its own self-interest
and not just a short term view. I think here many things are
judged by returns that must happen instantly. I remember a
story of a mayor that came from one of the cities in the former
Soviet Union and he came here looking for long term investment.
We were all at a lunch together and he said, "With all
the businessmen that I have met, they want to know when the
returns will start coming in and I was thinking of ten years"
and they said, "Oh, ten years. Our shareholders won't
stand for that". So I think long term and on the other
hand, when they talked to Japanese, the Japanese talked about
twenty-five years and thirty years. To them, five years and
ten years was nothing. I think it's a perspective that really
has to be taken into account.
While the emphasis in recent years has been very much on economic
growth, it's now time I think for the US to lend its way to
social investment as the foundation of all investment and
as the best guarantor of strong societies and stable democratic
government. I believe also that the US of course is the greatest
beneficiary of the brain drain. I mean a large part - fifty
percent - of all people that come to study here, for very
good reason, elect to stay on in the United States and I think
some of them are really the best brains.
Of course, that has been a mixed blessing because some of
them of course, while they stay here, also return resources
back to this and resources back to their own country. Some
also take their expertise back and try to do something within
their own countries. But the fact is that they have been lost
to their countries of origin. I think just for that reason,
the fact that they benefit from the brains, means also that
they have a responsibility to give back to these communities
something that they have gained from them. I think the US
can also continue to exert its great influence in the international
groupings on behalf of all the agreements and recommendations
that have been reached at the international level in the conferences
in conventions and treaties. Especially if it is to be a spokesman
for the empowerment of all people, in particular women, the
financial support is of course essential. But almost more
importantly, is the moral leadership. I can demonstrate to
you from our own field of work in the population field when
the US really takes a leadership role, for example, immobilizing
resources, in promoting certain sectors or issues that need
to be addressed, it does make a difference.
As some of you may know, the international conference on population
and development is the only conference that really agreed
on a financial set of goals that should be reached by certain
periods of time, both for the developed countries and for
the developing countries. This was done really under the leadership
of the United States, which, in fact, talked to all its partners
in the European Union, in Japan, and got commitments from
each one of these countries to increase support to the financial
goals that needed to be reached. The US, because of its unique
position, has a unique role that it must play. It's more than
financial leadership, it's also moral leadership.
Europe and Japan look to the US for indications of commitment.
For example, it called by the US for greater emphasis on social
investment, and will, I think, resonate throughout the world
and it will have its effect even on the poor woman at the
village. It could help bring all these poor people into the
21st Century.
Thank
you.
Question and Answer Session
1. Mr. Obud : I'm Calvin Obud, a member of the Asia
Society. As I understand it, one of the reasons that the US
Congress balked at meetings its obligations to pay its dues
to the UN was the population control issue. The Clinton administration,
as I understand it, reached an agreement with Congress. I
was wondering how that agreement would effect your hopes for
social investment and so forth? Thank you.
Dr. Sadik : That's a very interesting question because
when the US had that clause, the Mexico City clause, as its
called, on the UN arrears, it approved funding for UN FPA,
the same Congress. We got money from the US Congress, while
at the same time, the UN was not getting its funding. As you
know, then finally Mr. Clinton agreed to accept some modified
language on what is called the Mexico City language. The Mexico
City languages, in fact, prohibited US organizations from
supporting abortion, even from resources that they have collected
from other sources. If they promoted abortion, they would
not get any US funding. That's called the Mexico City Policy.
The refinement that Mr. Clinton accepted was that the limit
of that would be fifteen million dollars. The discontinuing
of funding the UN FPA happened in 1985 when President Reagan
was the President. In 1985, the US made the largest contribution
to the UN FPA. In 1986, when they decided to stop funding
UN FPA until Mr. Clinton came into power, that was because
of the program in China. They wanted a small program in China
to change all China's human rights - which, of course was
not absolutely possible - and to change the China policy on
abortion and so on. It was very clear from all the general
accounting office inspections, a follow up program and many
congressional reviews that went to examine our program in
China, that our program itself did not support abortion or
the one child family policy.
Nevertheless,
because China policy was so linked with human rights and so
on in the Congress, that many in the Congress were opposed
to any funds going for population programs in China. Since
President Clinton became President, UN FPA's funding has been
restored and we've been getting funding every year except
for 1999 when the Congress passed a bill again somehow de-funding
UN FPA for one year. President Clinton accepted it in exchange
for the IMF funding.
What they said was something had to be given up in order to
get what was the highest good and at that time, bail out of
the East Asian countries. Therefore, the IMF got its funding
and UN FPA didn't.
2. Nicholas Platt: I want to explore what's good about
globalization with the relationships between men and women
in Asia.
Dr. Sadik: Well there are many positive things. For
example, information technology. I think what you see on the
television and the satellite and you look at in e-mail systems
and so on, the information flow; I think that really does
make a change. I think from the international community and
from the international level, one thing is very clear, that
you know all women's rights, gender groups, human rights groups,
what they use as their basis for defining their own work,
are the international conventions and agreements. That's,
I think, part of this globalization process. The networking
has really been tremendous. Recently, in a case in Pakistan
on these links for example, one person here in the United
States set up a website and has linked herself with millions
of people - literally millions - around the world and they
have all come together on this issue and it's really having
an effect in Pakistan. I think there are many benefits.
Now, between women and men, I'm not absolutely certain that
I really thought about women and men but I think the status
of women certainly makes a difference to the relationship
between women and men and the understanding that you can have
more than you have. That's the best answer I can conceive
for you.
3. Mr. Clark: Could you give us a brief rundown, country
by country in Asia as to the population control in each country
- if it wouldn't be too much of an imposition.
Dr. Sadik : You mean the growth rates? I think the
growth rates in all the countries of the region are declining.
In China, I think the size of family has come down to two
or 2.1. Indonesia, for example, also is going to be at what
is called replacement level fertility. So is Thailand and
Malaysia by the year 2002. In the case of the Philippians,
also family size has declined - not as much as the other East
Asian regions, but it is declining. It is the same with Vietnam.
The countries that are behind are Cambodia and Laos, which
I've only just started and we haven't even got a program.
In the case of Bangladesh, they're doing extremely well. The
size of family has really reduced to 3.5. India, the continent,
is quite varied. The South, as you know, is increasingly reaching
replacement level fertility but the states of the north, Bihar,
UP in particular, but also Haryana, and Rajasthan, even with
the high economic level, because the status of women is so
low; they don't have the decision making power in their families
in family planning issues. So the size of family continues
to be much higher.
The Indian growth rate is - I don't remember now - it's 2.8
or something of that order. Size of family is something like
3, something average. In the South, it's much lower, but in
the North, it's much higher. Pakistan has a size of family
still of five. It's come down from seven and the demographers
say demographic transition has started but its really way
behind in the demographic transition.
Sri Lanka has achieved demographic transition. Nepal is somewhere
in between Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. But it's moving along.
Nepal is extremely poor communication and it's extremely difficult.
These are all the countries that I can think about at this
moment.
4. Barnett Rubin: I'm sorry, this is also one of those
huge questions. You mentioned in your talk that there are
clear, very large scale regional differences within Asia between
especially Eastern Asia and South Asia; although, as you just
mentioned, of course, there are very big inter-regional differences
and even then there are such large interregional differences
within a country the size of India as well. But I wondered
if you would hazard some kind of big picture explanation of
why that might be the case. Is that the cause or effect of
different rates of economic development? What role do you
think different cultural factors might play, although the
so-called traditional culture in both regions was equally
higher in regard to gender relations, as far as I can tell?
And of course, behind that is the implications - what is a
strategy of transformation?
Dr. Sadik: One explanation that occurs to me for South
Asia, especially Indian and Pakistan, among others, is the
investment in defense. Especially India and Pakistan, I think
we spend such large amounts on defense. I was looking at Pakistan
many times and they made economic progress. But really social
progress has been very limited and social investment has been
very limited. In India, again, there are states where the
social investment was high, especially those that had socialist
governments: In Kerala and Tamil Nadu, there seems to be much
more progress. There's not gender equality, but there is a
better status of women in those parts of the country.
I think the East Asian countries always invested in education.
I think that was the influence of Japan at least that's my
person view. When they invest in a country, they invest in
the whole country in all ways, not just by aid. They invest
in trade, they invest in technical assistance, they have commercial
interest and they have development assistance. The model of
Japan then was a model that was emulated by the East Asian
countries which was also then an educated labor force. In
fact, I do recall that Japan, when it used to make its investment
in some of our countries, one of the first things they looked
at was the education levels of the labor force. Well, then
they couldn't make any investment in country X because how
would they be able to understand what to do. So I think that
the influence of the Asian - and perhaps I don't know, this
is just a speculation on my part - but why the difference
between the two groups of countries? Also, I think that in
the Sub-continent, the feudal system is much more powerful.
We have real strong feudal societies. I don't think East Asian
countries have that feudal society at all. I mean there may
be differences between women and men, but it's not a feudal
structure. But in South Asia, it's like passports in the forties
and fifties used to list women and children as household,
not as people. Not occupations - household - like you're a
part of the household. I know that even into my children's
passport, my daughters were so shocked, "I'm not a household
to anybody". It was automatic and then you had to have
it changed to student or whatever it was that they were. I
think that is a real problem in the South Asian system. Even
in the political process, in the social progress, in all aspects
of life, that's very much a problem in our societies.
Panelists' Remarks
Dr. Ashok Khosla, Founder, Development Alternatives
It's very hard to follow an act like Nafis. She's covered
so much ground and raised so many issues that one really can't
add very much Globalization has been with us for some time.
In some ways, we've benefited a great deal from it - globalization
of music, of culture, of political awareness, of the ideas
of human rights, democracy, self-governance. Globalization
is a good thing. It has also brought some problematic issues
that we can't really ignore just because some of it is a good
thing.
The word globalization actually has a particular meaning today.
Within that context, it has many problems. I don't want to
be heard saying globalization is good, bad or whatever, but
we need to analyze and look inside the black box of globalization
and see really what does it do to human beings? What does
it do to societies and communities? What has it brought into
the lives of people that is good or not so good?
Globalization today is an economic concept - political concept.
It's also a cultural concept; in some ways, it is quite destructive.
The average villager today, for instance, not only demands
better rights for women and for themselves, not only would
like to have local government and to have some degree of control
over their lives, but they're also subjected every night to
Bay Watch, to Santa Barbara, to Dallas and things that you
may have forgotten.
In essence, is bombarded with a consumerism and a message
about the good life that is, neither necessarily appropriate
nor achievable. So even within the context of culture and
communication, there are some problems with globalization.
But when you look at the economic meaning of globalization,
which really means liberalization and privatization, then
we enter some very deep waters - very deep waters. I'm a businessman
and clearly I believe the marketplace is a good place to be
in. But not the marketplace that globalization brings.
In fact, that is a marketplace - a very particular kind of
marketplace - that is extremely destructive of societies,
of environment, of the global survival systems, life support
systems, all of which are essentially outside the purview
of what today's meaning of globalization's about. Human beings
are not important in globalization and this meaning societies
are not important, communities are not important. The meaning
of globalization that most economists and their masters -
the politicians - talk about is very destructive, if you're
not careful. It has to be redesigned.
I'll give you a couple of examples of where it doesn't work.
I'll also try to give you at the end a couple of examples
of where it may be the only solution as well. Globalization
is about big. Globalization is about centralized. Globalization
is about homogeneity. If we believe that the only way to live
in life is to wear blue jeans, chew gum, live in five star
hotels, then globalization is for you. But if you believe
that there is some happiness and wealth in diversity, then
you have to worry about the kind of globalization that is
being forced in on us by the very powerful machinaries of
commerce that exist today.
I've been looking inside this black box because I see the
marketplace as the only real solution to very large numbers
of problems. Nafis has made a very strong and very, very appropriate
case for the role of government in social services and I'm
not talking about those. That's where government ought to
be. Most of our governments in poor countries tend to do the
things they're not supposed to do and forget to do the things
they are supposed to do.
But having said that, that a large part of the social sector
has to be the responsibility of the public sector, there is
a huge amount left over for the private sector. The private
sector can come in many different forms. It's not only big
multi-nationals. It's not only big global companies. The private
sector in small villages can be just as important and thriving
and change producing as the big companies - in fact, very
much more so. I'd like to share with you some examples.
Today, the aspirations of our leaders, both in the North and
the South, is what is called global competitiveness. That's
the buzzword. How could we be more competitive? Well, what
does it mean to be competitive? To be competitive means you've
got to produce things cheaper and deliver them at a lower
cost into the global marketplace, which means that you mustn't
take into account any of the costs that might be loaded onto
your goods and services. So you cut down your trees, destroy
your rivers, destroy your soils, you break up your families,
kill your communities and then you can be competitive.
To create an industrial job in the United States in the global
economy, it costs something like 1.3 million dollars investment
- one workplace. In Germany, it's about 1.8 million dollars.
In Japan, of course, it's about 2.3 million because they're
much more mechanized and automated. In a poor country, like
Thailand or India, when you want to create a job that's going
to be so called 'globally competitive', you have to import
all this machinery, all these experts, all the other technological
know-how and everything else, it ends up that it costs you
something of the order of three hundred, four hundred thousand
dollars per workplace. If you do your calculations, it's pretty
stark because we have massive unemployment and if we were
to close the unemployment gap by the year 2015 - not a great
ambition because in fifteen years time, one would hope to
be able to do that - in my country alone, in India, we would
have to create fifteen million jobs every year, starting today.
Now, you multiply fifteen million by, let us say, just one
hundred thousand - it's not even four hundred thousand to
create one workplace - it comes out to eight times the GNP
of the country. So if you want to be globally competitive
and you're going to set up all these industries making Nike
shoes and all kinds of other stuff the global economy wants,
you're going to end up basically by de-creating jobs because
you don't have the eight times the GNP to invest only in job
creation, let alone on the other things that need to be done.
In fact, I've interviewed a large number of the captains of
industry in my country and they've all told me that since
1991 when we started liberalizing our economy, they have not,
among them, created a single job. So, that's globalization
too. I don't believe that it has to be like that. I think
we can design totally different kinds of technology and industry
and resource management systems, which are based in the community.
We don't have to bring people into the slums of big cities
when they could stay where they are and make goods and services
that are needed right there. But that's what the globalized
economy is heading for at the moment. I don't think that one
can justify that. So one really has to look at it, not just
as a moral or ethical imperative, which suddenly is there,
but a practical issue. If development is to be sustainable,
you have to have sustainable consumption patterns, sustainable
production systems. That's by definition. But a sustainable
development must also meet the basic needs of everyone and
not destroy the environment.
Now, if you're going to look at the basic needs, what is the
most basic need of all? It's livelihood. You've got a job;
you can earn some money; you can decide whether you want to
have kids or not; you can decide whether to send them to school
or not; you can stand up to your husband and say, "Look,
I'm making money and you don't have to push me around."
You can do a lot of things if you have a livelihood. And a
sustainable livelihood particularly, I think, is the most
fundamental thing for the liberation and the empowerment of
homogenized people - particularly for women.
I have a factory and we make recycled handmade paper. There
are forty-five women in there. Over the last eight years,
that cohort of women compared with their sisters in the same
villages has had four babies as against eighteen expected.
Education, healthcare, reproductive health - all these are
important. But you can get access to them if you have a little
money. I've come to the conclusion that sustainable livelihood
is the fundamental issue that confronts our countries. And
globalization isn't addressing that. Globalization is about
producing what the rest of the world wants, not what the locals
need. My own experience in this area is setting up a so called
multi-national, if you'd like, working in villages, setting
up industries. We call them mini-industries because they're
neither the Grameen Bank micro credit schemes, nor are they
the big, large industries, but they create jobs. They're the
only ones that create jobs. My organization creates a job
for one thousand dollars - not a hundred thousand, not four
hundred thousand - one thousand, which gives you the same
kind of purchasing power, same kind of quality of life and
right there, in the village, as you would get if you migrated
the slums of Bombay or elsewhere.
So there are other ways to do these things and I would imagine
that one day that will come to be called globalization because
that's the only future. It's the only way you're going to
stop climate change. It's the only way you're going to protect
your biodiversity, it's the only way you're going to build
up your communities and your human beings. Thank you.
Muzaffar Chishti, Director, Immigration
Project, Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees
(UNITE!)
Thanks very much. I guess I'm to give the US response and
more particularly, the American trade union response to the
issues of globalization. I think in Dr. Sadik's reference,
I'm the classic example for the foreign of brain drain; here
we had to get an Asian person from India to give the trade
union and American perspective to audience of the Asia Society,
and that's global economy for you, I guess, in some manner.
let me try to summarize the American trade union perspective
on globalization. First of all, globalization by itself is
neither good nor bad. I think it depends on who benefits from
it and who sets the rules of the game. First, the issue of
benefits. I think one of the most remarkable evidence about
globalization is how it has reaped unequal benefits. I think
even countries of the world like the United States where globalization
seems to benefit a lot of people, evidence of an equality
is so dramatic in the last two decades that it boggles your
mind. We have had sustained economic growth since the 1960's.
We have never had a more sustained economic growth. And this
era of sustained economic growth, we have never had deeper
in the equality as of income in this country. Today, a typical
CEO makes four hundred fifty times more than an average worker
in the United States and on a long term basis, as Dr. Sadik
reminds us, is not a particularly good trend. If you look
beyond the United States, I think the evidence and the rest
of the world is pretty troubling. I think the World Bank report
that I saw last time about the majority of the income of the
population of the last decade has gone down and the per capita
income about eighty countries of the world is less today than
it was ten years ago - not very good news about the benefits
of globalization.
Second is that there is clearly a disproportionate group of
people who have benefited from globalization. If you look
at a hundred economies of the world today, forty-nine of them
are multi-national corporations. The gross annual income of
General Motors is bigger than that of Thailand. General Electric
is bigger than Poland. Wal-Mart is bigger than Malaysia's.
So in this kind of unequal distribution of wealth, you really
have to wonder about the effects of globalization.
The most striking figure that I read and talking about this
in the UN makes my heart skip a beat, is that two hundred
richest people of the world today have an income higher than
the two billion people on the rest of the economic ladder.
Whenever historically, we have seen such islands of prosperity
among the seas of misery, it is generally a prelude to upheavals.
The second point I want to make is that the rules of globalization
that have emerged essentially are skilled - they're intended
to favor capital at the expense of labor. This is not just
true in the US worker's context; it's true about workers everywhere.
When corporations decide that wages in Thailand or Korea are
too high for them, it doesn't stop them from moving to Vietnam
to China or to Malaysia.
The third thing that I want to say is that rights in this
whole debate do matter. After all, if you look at NAFTA, if
you look at the World Trade Organization, their rules are
intended to give privilege to rights of capital and are silent
of the rights of workers. And rights of workers ultimately
are important. We are not talking here about the parity of
wages between the United States and the rest of the world,
we are talking simply about core labor standards. I think
there is a lot of consensus in the world.
The core labor standards that we are talking about are the
right to free speech, right to organize, right against child
labor, right against forced labor and right against discrimination
in the workplace. No country in the world is too poor to demand
that these basic rights are part of their legal structure.
I think rights alone obviously are not going to solve all
problems. But rights do matter a lot in terms of people's
standard of living and in terms of meeting the issue of equality.
And we have also known from our US's own experience that when
people make higher wages, they become better consumers and
that helps the economy in general.
The last word on this is that democracy matters. A rather
impressive article in Business Week recently looked at wages
in democracies of the world against wages of non-democracies
of the world. The evidence is absolutely clear that democracies
do pay higher wages. I don't want to say too much because
I know there are a lot of interesting questions that we'll
hear from the audience, but from a trade unionist, it's impossible
to talk about globalization today without mentioning Seattle.
I think it's absolutely clear whether you're in Seattle or
you watched those proceedings away from Seattle on television,
that Seattle was a very important transition point in the
debate about globalization.
I think the debate about globalization will never be the same
again. I think Seattle taught us that the rules about globalization
can no longer just be navigated and negotiated by protected
elites behind glass doors talking only about commercial interests.
That unless other issues of workers rights, of environmental
protection, about social standards, are made a part of the
trade of cause - and made a part of the protocols of international
financial institutions, we are not going to go very far in
the debate about globalization. No one said it better in terms
of the transition than President Clinton - no friend of organized
labor in this regard himself - when he stated that if global
economy has to succeed, it must work for working families.
And if it doesn't work for working families, it's not going
to be a successful phenomenon.
In terms of the long run that Dr. Sadik I think rightly asked
us to look at, I think in the modern democracy, the legitimacy
of every economic system is going to be measured by the quality
of life it affords the largest number of people against the
quality of life it has afforded very few. And I think the
working people everywhere in the world, not just in the US,
are going to react unless that becomes a reality. Thank you.
Nang Lao Liang Won, Co-founder, Migrant
Assistance Programme, Thailand
This evening, I would just like to tell you a story of migrant
women called Nimon Nimon Wego fifty-five, lived with her daughter,
son-in-law, and two grandchildren in a small village in a
central borough. One day, in 1996, the village headman came
to them and told them that the Burmese Troop came. Again,
she thought, because she knew them very well. They demand
everything. They demand money, food, building materials. They
use villagers as forced laborers. They used them as hoarders
to carry the weapons. They used them as human shields for
the land mines. They also raped women. What do they want now?
She found out all of the villagers were forced to go to outside
the village and the soldiers systematically burned down all
the houses - all the crafts - killed all the animals and they
also destroyed the farmlands. More than that, all the villagers
were forced to leave the village at gunpoint within five days
for a relocation site.
At the relocation site, there were no buildings, no food,
no clean water. There was no way for them to survive there.
So Nimon's family and the others fled to the Thailand border.
Once they arrived through a local broker, her daughter and
son-in-law got a job at an orchard at a wage of about one
dollar a day. That wage was just enough for the family to
live; not enough to send the children to school; not enough
for healthcare. The following year, the owner of the orchards
stopped paying the wages regularly. Instead, he gave them
rice, salt and cooking oil. He also told them that he would
give all the money after one year of work. For her daughter
and her son-in-law, this is daily survival. They didn't have
a choice, but kept working. And one day last year in November,
her daughter and son-in-law didn't come back from work. She
was so worried that she ran away crying looking for their
parents. Then her neighbor, who had escaped from police arrest
came and told her that police were everywhere arresting all
the illegal immigrants and workers and sending them back to
the border.
Now she's more than worried - it's fear. She didn't know what
to do and she was wondering. She didn't understand why Burmese
soldiers came and destroyed her village; destroyed their livelihood
they have been living all their life. And now again, she didn't
understand why they were accepted when they first came to
Thailand and now rejected. So she didn't understand anything.
She thought she and her two kids might face arrest and be
sent back to the border. Where should she go? Where should
they go? There was no hope in Burma. The only thing she knew
and she felt is fear. This is just a glimpse of real life
pictures of what happened to tens of thousands of ethnic families
who were forcibly relocated by the Burma military regime under
the name of peace, development and open door trade policy
to welcome the international investment to be part of global
trade.
This is also an example of how Burmese people, who had fled
to Thailand had been exploited in the Thai labor market during
the economic growth in the region. They did the jobs, dirty,
difficult and dangerous, which Thai workers don't want to
do. This story is also the example of the experience most
of the families - migrant families - faced when Thai economy
fell in the global markets.
So for women like Nimon, she doesn't know. She never heard
of what globalization is, nor did she know about the economic
expansion, nor economic crisis. For what she knows is just
to survive daily. Maybe for them, globalization means fear,
suffering and maybe exploitation. My organization, Migrant
Assistance Program, known as MAP is helping such families.
This is based in Chiang Mai, Northern Thailand. It helps these
families to get access to health services. We also are working
to lobby the Thai government for fairer conditions for illegal
migrant workers; also to recognize their labor and rights.
We hope that one day, these migrant workers will enjoy the
effect of globalization in a positive way. Thank you very
much.
Raymond Offenheiser, President, Oxfam
America
Well I'd like to begin by congratulating the Asia Society
on its inauguration of this five year program to launch the
Asia Social Issues Program. We in the Oxfam Family share the
concern of the Asia Society to promote internationalism and
internationalist values and a concern for other regions of
the world, among the American population and certainly among
the leadership here in the United States. I congratulate the
Asia Society for providing leadership to our community in
doing that. I must say just anecdotally that I have to thank
the Asia Society in some way for helping me personally sort
of see the importance of this kind of program. Some years
back, I collaborated with the Asia Society in a prior life
on an initiative to do a study of what some of the foreign
policy options were for the United States government in South
Asia.
As the Asia Society often does, it put together an extraordinary
blue ribbon panel of specialists in the region, sent them
there, gave them significant amount of time, organized all
variety of meetings with leadership and South Asia and then
came back and put together a very significant report and presented
it on Capitol Hill. I recall the meeting in the foreign affairs
room of the House when the panel was presenting their findings
and one senior congressman came to the session and sort of
looked over his glasses and looked at the panelists and said,
"Ladies and gentlemen, I have one question for you: Why
is it the Philippines is not included in this study of South
Asia?" And you could sort of hear the Asian journalists
in the back part of the room sort of whispering and wondering
where that question came from. But it speaks, I think, the
need for the kind of program that the Asia Society is launching
and I salute them.
Dr. Sadik gave us a kind of comprehensive overview of the
whole issue of globalization in a somewhat comprehensive way.
I found myself listening to her and looking at her remarks
and realizing there's very little of it that I disagree with.
What I'd like to do is maybe provide a perspective on the
issues of globalization to compliment Miss Won's presentation
- maybe from the perspective of a civil society actor concerned
about many of these issues. And what I'd like to do is maybe
begin by offering maybe just sort of three principal points.
One is to talk a little bit about how the perspective of civil
society - and I'm going to use that term even globally - global
civil society is evolving in terms of its perception and perspective
on globalization. And what perhaps is some of the emerging
consensus about the issue of globalization? And then maybe
what are some of the challenges that lie ahead as we try to
engage seriously this process?
First, I think it's important to maybe be humble about this
concept. In some ways, I think the more I participate in a
forum like this, the more I realize we're all learning about
globalization. I think often times, the concept is often used
in a very narrow sense to mean market immigration. But more
and more, I think those of us who are working on the issue
in a variety of different forms are realizing that it's really
not just about market integration, it's about the movement
of ideas, people, technology, images, money and goods at a
highly accelerated pace around the world in ways that are
reshaping our communities in dramatic fashion.
I think it's perhaps worth asking, as was offered, what did
we learn from the Asia crisis in Seattle as civil society
actors? I think one thing we've learned is that perhaps the
Washington consensus - as it was once called regarding the
correct path to development - is no longer a consensus or
it's seriously in doubt.
The second thing we've learned, for what we saw in the streets
of Seattle, is that the world is awakening to the realities
of globalization and its impacts on individual's lives. Individuals
experience globalization as something other than just market
integration.
I think its important to also underline that Seattle was not
an isolated event. For those of us who live in the United
States, we were somewhat shocked to see furniture going through
the windows of Starbucks. But in fact, there was a larger
drama taking place in the streets there that really wasn't
reported on by much of the media.
Civil society organizations appeared in Seattle, but they
also appeared at G8 meetings in Cologne. There were seventy
thousand people there. They appeared in Birmingham before
that. And only just after the Seattle meetings, they were
in Bangkok in great numbers. So this is not just an isolated
event. But I would agree with Muzaffar, I think Seattle was
a watershed in some important ways.
The other thing that's important to underline is that the
population of people who appeared in Seattle and in these
other venues were not just Europeans or North Americans, they
were Asians and Africans and Latin Americans, as well as those
of us from the United States and Europe.
So what are these civil society groups attempting to say at
Seattle and these other places? Well the media interpretation
of the message is that civil society is anti-globalization,
anti-trade. But I think it's more complicated than that and
I think the civil society organizations have evolved to some
degree. I think what we're looking for is perhaps globalization
that is characterized by inclusion, accountability and transparency
or process of globalization under all those different categories
that allow for those kinds of characteristics.
Seattle I think has unleashed extraordinary phenomena. I think
there's an active, more conscious effort underway to build
a global social movement that links labor, environmentalists,
women, human rights organizations and NGOs at the national,
as well as international, level. Under a common banner and
under a common set of principals, largely I think constructed
- again, as Muzaffar has underlined - under sort of a rights
based approach to development emphasizing a social and economic
rights as cornerstones or principals.
We are likely to see more Seattle-like behavior and grassroots
organizing to support it that will connect Asian social actors
and their counterparts throughout the world. Only yesterday,
I'm coming from Boston to this meeting and we're hosting a
five thousand person large meeting on genetic engineering.
The streets have been filled with demonstrators and the police
have treated it as if it was another Seattle event - and there's
Asian representation alongside Americans at that event as
well.
What is the core of the message being put forward both North
and South by civil society actors in the face of this globalization
challenge? The simple message I think is, can we have globalization
with equity and justice - and can we participate in defining
the rules that will enable that to happen?
I'd like to ask maybe another question, which is what are
the particular institutional and social resources that Asians
bring to the process of shaping this emerging vision of globalization
in their own context and on their own terms? I think as we
look at Asia today, we see a rich tapestry of grassroots experience
at acknowledged global leadership in the NGO movements throughout
the region and throughout the world for that matter. We see
a tradition of innovation in social service delivery that
is being replicated, not only in Asia, but in Africa and Latin
America, as well as here in the United States.
We see centers of excellence and policy research and training.
We see a growing number of outstanding examples of civil society
and state collaboration. We see deepening experience in democracy
and in democratic practice at the local as well as national
level. We see tremendous capacity and technological management
and innovation. And perhaps most importantly, we see countries
that have the capital to link these various assets together
to produce a globalization or process of globalization in
the region that might enjoin equity and justice with the larger
process of market integration and other features of globalization
that I've underlined.
Challenges - what would it mean for the individual Asian states
and societies to embrace this broader vision of globalization?
Well I thin it'll mean the need to build a shared social contract
or vision that Asian societies want to be leaders and full
participants in the process of globalization and are willing
to look beyond traditional antagonisms to do this. It will
mean a commitment to building more open, inclusive and participatory
societies that motivate and capture the rich basis of knowledge
capital and human energy that rests throughout Asia. It means
confronting the realities of poverty and social exclusion
that we've heard about this evening and making the appropriate
investments in state and private programs to address these
issues. It means making a commitment to creating an environment
that encourages strong institutions and leadership, both in
the state and civil society to build this vision together.
It means giving meaningful space and investment to NGOs and
other civil society actors to innovate and experiment in collaboration
with, rather than in opposition to, the state. It means building
stronger and more diverse linkages with institutional actors
in the broader, international community who are debating and
shaping the rules of global economic governance in citizenship.
As citizens and decision-makers here in the United State,
it perhaps means seeing the Asia beyond Hong Kong and Singapore.
It means assessing our role in building creative partnerships
with Asian institutions around issues of globalization. It
means joining the international community and supporting important
initiatives in Asia that can enhance Asian participation and
the process of globalization that will benefit all of the
populations and not a narrow segment of a elite and middle
class. It means asking ourselves, as Americans, perhaps some
tough questions. I'd like to offer a few. What, for example,
is our role in building systems of global governance that
temper the excesses of the highly organized market systems
that are driving today's decision making about resource allocation
and defining the future global distribution of wealth?
Can we afford to leave this complex process entirely in the
hands of government officials and private money managers?
What is our role in investing in the learning and communications
capacity of our southern partners to optimize their access
to the flow of ideas, technology images that might nourish
and reinforce the positive dimension of their work and strengthen
their capacity to be heard within global forum?
What is our role in building modern, humanitarian and development
response capacities that are tailored to the needs, capacities
and opportunities of a post cold war and globalizing Asia?
In an era when we can cite very specific examples of a simple,
persuasive idea, like the Grameen Bank, having a more far
reaching short term social benefit than millions of dollars
of foreign aid, it is perhaps appropriate to ask whether we
need to reevaluate our institutional currency and determine
if what we have traditionally offered to organizations and
institutions in Asia - namely money and technical expertise-
continues to be the most effective and appropriate currency
to shape our future relations with Asian partner institutions.
Or indeed, do we need to consider giving higher status to
other currencies, such as ideas, access to certain kinds of
technology, networking and support for collaborative advocacy
initiatives on a global level? Should we as well evaluate
how prepared we are to support the emergence of new institutional
forum that will be essential to building systems of global
governance?
In many of our own institutions, such new institutional forms
in the past would have simply fallen between the cracks because
we're not ready for them - we do not see them or they do not
fit our version of how the world looked or should work.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly - and I think reflecting
the views of almost everyone on this panel - are we ready
philosophically to step forward and recognize that market-led
globalization unmonitored and unregulated may harbor certain
dangerous tendencies that may lead to even more profound economic
disparities in the world than what we have witnessed over
the last two decades?
As we imagine the future institutional landscape that would
be needed to support, monitor and regulate a world community,
further integrated by the forces of globalization, we would
be limiting our view only to formal interstate, international
or regional bodies. We would be limiting our view if we only
were looking at interstate, international or regional bodies.
Rather, we must have the imagination to presume a positive
role for non-state actors; propose the terms under which such
actors might be engaged as supporters and critics of these
historic change processes and afford them the legitimacy and
political coverage necessary to assure they may operate and
genuinely open in independent manners in global for and pursuit
of their missions.
I firmly believe that kind of commitment would perhaps go
a long way toward helping us build a sort of sustainable development
in just an economic type of globalization that we'd all, I
think, support. Thank you very much.
Question and Answer Session
1. Mr. Obud: I see kind of a cultural clash in so-called
Asian values. This meeting is largely structured on NGOs,
which are basically a Western and American - especially American
- phenomena - grassroots, bottom-up kind of process and structure.
And yet, much of East Asian development has been topped down,
government-led and so on. And the governments there seem to
be reluctant to yield to grassroots type activity - at least
that's the impression I get through the American media. I
was wondering if any of the panelists would care to address
that issue and maybe claim that it's a non-existent issue.
Thank you.
Mr. Khosla: That comment, with all due respect, may
be the exact and most important reason for the launch of this
program, the ASIP program of the Asia Society because I think
perhaps more so in the last ten years, since the fall of the
Berlin Wall, but for some time, I've been feeling that the
American public is becoming more and more insular and doesn't
necessarily recognize what is going on in the rest of the
world as it is going on.
Voluntarism has a long and very, very vibrant history in the
US - no question about it. Probably no county has ever had
the kind of voluntary action that this county has. India has
a voluntary movement that goes back centuries and the independence
of India was entirely a result of that kind of action.
NGOs
come in different forms. They have different kinds of functions.
But the kinds that we're talking about here - the ones that
are concerned about human values, about improving a lot of
people, about development, about environment, they're found
everywhere. It's true it's been hard for NGOs to function
in a country like China but they're coming into being there
too. But in most Asian countries, there's a great deal of
non-governmental, extra-governmental action of various types.
So it's not quite correct what you were saying, but I think
it is extremely important that a program like ASIP bring to
the attention of the American public and indeed to Asian publics
too, the values of these things and how they can learn from
each other and interact. Thank you.
2. Question: I'm with a company called Tactics and
we invest worldwide and very much so in Asia as well. I have
a question specifically for Ms. Won. You told such a beautiful
story. It was so heroic and you told it so vividly. It's a
story I'll remember forever. I have a question to ask you
specifically. How could the Burmese army justify, explain
or excuse that action of destruction as part of globalization?
Ms. Won: For them, their excuse is to develop the country
because our country is left behind so we need to develop up
our country so we have to welcome the foreign investment.
That's why they had to relocate these people. This is an excuse
- to develop up the country. Because these people live along
the Salween River where the mega dams will be built. It's
welcomed a lot of money.
Dr. Linda Lim: I should mention though that Burma is
actually a country with very, very little foreign investment
and trade. In fact, there are many sanctions on it and it's
actually an example of non-globalization - very self-sufficient
economy. Trade is about one percent of the total economy.
Most of the richer countries of the world don't invest in
Burma. So it's not a typical case at all.
Dr. Khosla: That story is repeated for one million
people in my country every year. It's exactly the same story.
So whether it's Burma or Thailand or India or anywhere else,
if some multi-national wants to put up a power station, everybody's
got to move. And if you want to put up a big dam because of
all the factories that are coming from elsewhere are being
invested in, the not only everybody has to move, but forests
have to be submerged, the wildlife has to be killed obviously.
We have forty million people who have been displaced since
the time of independence fifty years ago.
3. Ms. Pearlman: I'm from the Mega Cities Project and
Trinity College. My question is for Ashok Khosla, but I'd
like any of the other panelists to address it if they would
wish. I'm very excited by this concept of sustainable livelihoods
because of the work that I've been doing over the past thirty
years in Asia and as well in Africa and Latin America and
in this country. It always boils down to that - whether you're
looking at the urban or the rural or the housing problem or
the transportation problem. Without the livelihood, nothing
else makes a difference. If you can't educate, you can't do
anything. My question is about globalization and sustainable
livelihoods. I would like you to explain a little bit more
of how you see globalization being able to, in the positive
sense, enable sustainable livelihoods that permeate and percolate
to reach the people who may not be participating, either as
citizens or as producers or consumers at this point. Thank
you.
Dr. Khosla: That gives me an opportunity to finish
the story that I didn't have time for because Linda told me
I was running out of time. Sustainable livelihoods are livelihoods
or jobs that basically have three or four characteristics.
They give meaning and dignity to life; they give you a decent
income; purchasing power; to become part of the economy. They're
generally non-destructive and regenerating of the environment
because the environment's being destroyed already, more or
less. And they're particularly suited to women. So for me,
those are the four sort of characteristics. They're benign
jobs - jobs that essentially take you forward. I believe that
the only way to get there in large numbers, is through 21st
Century leapfrog in technology. Technologies that basically
are environmentally sound, are human oriented and so on. And
of course, one such technology is IT, information and communication
technologies. Nafis mentioned that a little earlier.
I
was mentioning to Linda a little while ago - she asked me
how do illiterates work? Well, I didn't know any manner in
Chinese. So I'm just as illiterate as anyone else. But being
able to read English is actually a handicap. It's the three
year old kids and the little old ladies in the village who
actually get to do the double clicking on the mouse much more
effectively than people who've got Ph.D.s and so forth. So
in essence, you are enabling people to enter the 21st Century
and be able to click their way into buying seeds or learning
about organic agriculture or getting their horoscopes, or
whatever it is that they want, right on the screen. So I think
the question you raised does in fact goes right to the roots
- the heart - of this new program we're launching today because
it brings together people who are thinking about these things,
both in Asia and in the US to commonly solve these problems.
If there's anyone out there who wants to work at a dot com
company at village salaries, we've got lots of jobs.
4. Question: It appears that globalization is strictly
bail. This is directed to Ashok Khosla. I wanted to ask one
thing - there was a sixty billion dollar problem with Mexico
that was ironed out by our Secretary of the Treasury and Wall
Street. Very shortly thereafter, all the countries of East
Asia and Asia started falling economically. I understand that
our Secretary of Treasury went out there and said, "Don't
worry about overheating, just keep doing what you're doing."
Very shortly thereafter, Indonesia and all the rest of them
just went down the rabbit hole. Any comments, sir?
Dr. Khosla: The only lesson one can draw from that
is don't listen to the US Secretary of the Treasury. I don't
know what else one can draw from that. I'm not sure in the
time we have, one can do justice to that question without
getting into some depth. I'd be happy to do that in the corridor
with you.
5. Mr. Klatsky: I'm presently a medical student but
spent last year working for Earth Rights International on
the border between Thailand and Burma. I just to speak to
that one question about international development and globalization
in Burma The recent construction of a pipeline across Burma
to Thailand has generated a guaranteed annual revenue of two
hundred million dollars to the country of Burma - and that's
a country that was defaulting in all it's international debts.
So globalization has impacted the people there and that has
led to a massive influx of people, many of whom - almost all
of whom - had similar stories to the one who are having a
similar experience happe
