World Trade Organization

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Its sad to read reply #1. I`ve seen that most Indians on this want to compete with nations that can not compete back. And they`re proud of Sadism. A strange type of sadism, beating a dead body with a stick and getting sexual satisfaction out of it!

The very first reply shows how useless it is to write such articles, because there are people in this world who want the rich to get richer and the poor to die, and then they want to tease the poor about it and think they`re establishing their superiority by doing that.

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my humble opinion is that as long as independent institutions are lacking, the rich-poor divide will not be significantly dented- rather, it seems that the poor will only get poorer.

and institution building is not determined by globalization but by local decisions and so the blame should go toward lack of local initiatives and not towards globalization which is inevitable and in the long run, beneficial.

thus independent institutions are not only needed for political reforms but for economic development.

Though I have no sympathies for multinational companies (particularly the tea/chai industry), the author of this piece should have elaborated on the critical point of lack of institutional development which is the MAIN problem. Blasting multinationals is only 20 percent of the issue.

So Butt sahb, where it the remaining 80% of this article??

The issue is not that globalization, free trade or competition is bad. What is hurting the developing countries is the way the western world is pursuing this. They talk about free trade and competition and at the same time are shy from discussing farm subsidies and textiles. Why should the poor countries open up their nascent manufacturing sector against foreign competition when agriculture remains a sacred cow in the west for the sake of preserving the ``farmer`s way of life``.

asim
are u asim butt of `indaba` some 7, 8 years back?

paagalinsaan,

The fact is that only those countries that have helped the farmers to come up are the ones benefitted by globalisation. Modernisation of the farm sector, green revolution and land reforms, the white revolution of milk etc have driven the economy in india.

What essentially happens is that as these poor people get some extra money, they are willing to buy what ever low quality manufactured item that is produced in the country. This helps the indistry to expand, and once it reaches a perticular scale, it can expand and take part in the competition. A good example is the Tata trucks in india. They sold the same design for more that 30 years, that was enough for income levels at that time, and now they are taking on the world.

In pakistan, where the focus has not been on the farmers, the urban rich became richer. They wanted sofisticated manufactured items, and that need to be imported. Luxury goods became increasingly in demand for the few rich, drainig the exchange earnings. In variably ugricultural producta rae the only exports, and in the global markets the farmers of pakistan are getting incresingly squeezed to lower wages to increase exports to support the habits of the urban rich.

Well my friend, the i only hope for pakistan is liberation by india.

The Other Face of Fanaticism
By PANKAJ MISHRA


n the evening of Jan. 30, 1948, five months after the independence and partition of India, Mohandas Gandhi was walking to a prayer meeting on the grounds of his temporary home in New Delhi when he was shot three times in the chest and abdomen. Gandhi was then 78 and a forlorn figure. He had been unable to prevent the bloody creation of Pakistan as a separate homeland for Indian Muslims. The violent uprooting of millions of Hindus and Muslims across the hastily drawn borders of India and Pakistan had tainted the freedom from colonial rule that he had so arduously worked toward. The fasts he had undertaken in order to stop Hindus and Muslims from killing one another had weakened him, and when the bullets from an automatic pistol hit his frail body at point-blank range, he collapsed and died instantly. His assassin made no attempt to escape and, as he himself would later admit, even shouted for the police.

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Millions of shocked Indians waited for more news that night. They feared unspeakable violence if Gandhi`s murderer turned out to be a Muslim. There was much relief, also some puzzlement, when the assassin was revealed as Nathuram Godse, a Hindu Brahmin from western India, a region relatively untouched by the brutal passions of the partition.

Godse had been an activist in the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (National Volunteers Association, or R.S.S.), which was founded in the central Indian city of Nagpur in 1925 and was devoted to the creation of a militant Hindu state. During his trial, Godse made a long and eloquent speech claiming that Gandhi`s ``constant and consistent pandering to the Muslims`` had left him with no choice. He blamed Gandhi for the ``vivisection of the country, our motherland`` and said that he hoped with Gandhi dead ``the nation would be saved from the inroads of Pakistan.`` Godse requested that no mercy be shown him at his trial and went cheerfully to the gallows in November 1949, singing paeans to the ``living Motherland, the land of the Hindus.``


Now, more than half a century later, many Indians feel that the R.S.S. has never been closer to fulfilling its dream. Its political wing, the Bharatiya Janata Party (Indian People`s Party, B.J.P.), the most important among the ``Sangh Parivar`` -- the ``family`` of various Hindu nationalist groups supervised by the R.S.S. -- has dominated the coalition government in New Delhi since 1998. Both Atal Bihari Vajpayee, India`s prime minister, and his hard-line deputy and likely heir, L.K. Advani, belong to the R.S.S., and neither has ever repudiated its militant ideology.

In the last five years, the Hindu nationalists have conducted nuclear tests and challenged Pakistan to a fourth and final war with India. They have taken a much harsher line than previous governments with the decadelong insurgency in the Muslim majority state of Kashmir, which is backed by radical Islamists in Pakistan. After a terrorist attack on the Indian Parliament in December 2001, they mobilized hundreds of thousands of troops on India`s border with Pakistan. The troops were partly withdrawn last October, but a war with Pakistan -- one involving nuclear weapons -- remains a terrifying possibility and is in fact supported by powerful, pro-Hindu nationalist sections of the Indian intelligentsia.

The Hindu nationalists` attempts to stoke Hindu fears about Muslims also appear to be succeeding among many of India`s disaffected voters. In December, the B.J.P. won elections in the western state of Gujarat, despite being blamed by many journalists and human rights organizations for the vicious killings of more than 2,000 Muslims in Gujarat early last year.

According to a report by Human Rights Watch, the worst violence occurred in the commercial city of Ahmedabad: ``Between Feb. 28 and March 2 the attackers descended with militia-like precision on Ahmedabad by the thousands, arriving in trucks and clad in saffron scarves and khaki shorts, the signature uniform of Hindu nationalist -- Hindutva -- groups. Chanting slogans of incitement to kill, they came armed with swords, trishuls (three-pronged spears associated with Hindu mythology), sophisticated explosives and gas cylinders. They were guided by computer printouts listing the addresses of Muslim families and their properties . . . and embarked on a murderous rampage confident that the police was with them. In many cases, the police led the charge, using gunfire to kill Muslims who got in the mobs` way.``

to read the rest:
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/02/magazine/02HINDU.html?pagewanted=2

Globalization is a modern form of colonialism, pure and simple, and WTO is a tool to achieve that objective. The idea is to divide humanity into Capitalist nations and Worker Nations and this world view is not the Marxist paradigm any more. What people were fearing years ago is now smacking humanity so bluntly in the face. But we still have time-if we act now- we can save ourselves from the slaveryof othersand of centuries to come.

http://63.194.130.82/cgi-bin/show_article.cgi?aid=00000864&channel=university%20ave&start=0&end=9&page=1&chapter=1

Do you write fiction, poems?
Do you live in the Bay Area?

FOSA (Friends of South Asia) is arranging a South Asian literary evening on Saturday, Feb 22, at Gates 104, Stanford University, at 4 p.m. Writers and poets of South Asian descent will read their original work. If you are a South Asian writer or poet, and are interested in reading your work on Feb 22nd, please contact Cemendtaur at Cemendtaur@caddworld.com, or call him at 408-244-6797.

The key to trade liberalisation is the elimination of tarriffs on textiles and farm products.

The only real hard issue will be patents/price controls on pharmaceuticals.

Jay,
I agree!

Jay wrote:
``In pakistan, where the focus has not been on the farmers,``

Do you have statistics to state that farmers have not been the focus? One would assume that since over 2/3 of the economy is dependent upon the agricultural sector, farmers would be given incentives. From my experience they have been given lots of incentives.

I think the bigger issue is lack of institutional development. Business owners (from smallto large) point out how in the 60`s when Pakistan was faring better than South Korea had a sounder financial system that had loans available for small investors to start up firms. Now, due to instututional collapse, with entities like WAPDA, KESC, PIA etc being subsidised by the government/national banks with amounts running into tens of billions of ruppees, there is nothing left for the investor to borrow.

THE ONLY THING wrong with Pakistan is the lack of independent institutions.

rozaiba,

Pak rural sector with the feudal system can be called subsistance non-monetised economy. The feudal shares the farm out put with the workers, the artisans and the like in the village and most of the needs are met with out using money. Only the feudal sells the output fpr money and buys some ofthe modern inputs. In this non-monetised system, there is no demand for the manufactured out puts simply because it is subsistance economy.

What ever you might say as the golden years of ayub and its colapse only proves that it was not based on a systainable footing, it was merely an expression of the US largesse for sending U2s over russia.

I am not gret supporter of the gret man theories and I refuse to accept that the nationalisation by bhutto led to the collapse of instutuions in pakistan.

To put it very mild form, the ideology of the creation of pakistan was faulty, and there is no hope for pakistan untill and unless the very foundation is questioned.

Or you can wait for an afghan style liberation by india.

Dear Jay, #15,

I probably do not agree to the ideology of Pakistan, but I know for sure, had their been no Pakistan, I wouldve been moving the ``pankha`` in the court of some some Muslim Raja or Nawab. Life in Pakistan is pretty close to that sometimes, its just that unlike in India, over here you don`t get burnt alive in thousands without getting noticed.

Commenting now on the ``Ideology of Pakistan``, which in the shape and form that it is presented today, was think-tanked about 25 years ago. The first use of the phrase ``Ideology of Pakistan`` was noticed not very long before that. Pakistan had been in trouble since much before that. Do not forget Jinnah`s speech on 11th of August 1947, that is the real ideology of Pakistan. The ideology you here of today, has been woven by the Jamaat-e-Islami that opposed the creation of Pakistan.


I can see most Indians have never been able to accept the very existence of Pakistan, but after creating and exploiting feelings of hatred among the masses for political gains, I think you`re letting go of all the chances of a United India yourself. How can you assure no incidents like Gujrat will occur in the liberated Pakistan? If both Hindus and Muslims have to hate and kill anyway, its better to stay away from each other.


A lot of people talk of liberation of India through Jihad. If they`re terrorists, any Indian thinking of liberating Pakistan to impose its own views is also a terrorist. I am sure terrorism under the cover of politics and secularim is much more dangerous than naked Jihad. If the ideology of Jamaat e Islami gives you a right to liberate Pakistan, do not be surprised if the ideology of shiv sina or RSS makes people claim a right to liberate India.