My article on mental health got published
http://www.wgnrr.org/blog/361/improving-mental-health-missing-goal-mdgs
Ambedkar,
Gandhi and Justice
April is the month when Ambedkar was born, and it is
time to revisit development paradigms from both Ambedkar (less known) and
Gandhian lens (better known).
The UNDP web page on Millennium Development Goal
states “Goal of cutting in half the proportion of people in the developing
world living on less than $1 a day by 2015 remains within reach. However, this
achievement will be due largely to extraordinary economic success in most of
Asia. In contrast, previous estimates suggest that little progress was made in
reducing extreme poverty in sub-Saharan Africa. In Western Asia, poverty rates
were relatively low but increasing. And the transition economies of the
Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) and South-Eastern Europe were still
recovering from the rise in poverty in the early 1990s” (UNDP, nd. Are we on
track to meet the MDGs by 2015?,http://www.undp.org/mdg/progress.shtml)
But are the path ways to growth followed by Asia just
and sustainable across generations? China and India are growing fast, but as
pointed out by Kemal Dervis (Dervis, nd. Unique Economic Growth in India and
China, http://blip.tv/file/4652766) the pathways to growth adopted in China are
leading to massive disparities between urban and rural sectors, and in India to
a spate of farmer suicides (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farmers'_suicides_in_India).
One could add suicides of weavers, dalits, landless households and poor women
who have borrowed from profit oriented micro finance institutions
(www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-11997571). The phenomenon of increase in
missing girls in
both countries (with spread of dowry as a strategy for equalization and
combating poverty by households with sons) needs to be looked in this larger
context. The rate at which agriculture
land is being converted for other purposes is high in both countries, as well
as usurpation of nature for corporate interest and elite consumption. There is
tremendous restlessness amongst the 36.3% in China living in less than $2 per
day (PPP) and 75.6% Indians living with less than $2 per day as of 2005
(http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SI.POV.2DAY).
The failure is not just of these two countries, but global neo-liberal model of
development. One does not want a pathway of development where MDG 1 of
Eradicating Poverty is achieved by eliminating the poor and socially
marginalized groups and but by effective poverty reduction.
Post collapse of USSR there is a crisis in
development theory. As observed by Dervis, one needs to go beyond unfettered
capitalism and communism and look for non violent solutions to just poverty
reduction. While Gandhi’s concept of non violence, Swaraj (people’s self rule)
and trusteeship (people are trustees of what they own, and beyond that meet the
needs of the poor) are globally relevant, history has proved that it needs to
be combined with ideas of Ambedkar, wherein he asked for separate electorate
for the marginalized so that they could constitute the majority in Parliament,
land to be distributed to dalits, and other landless household (with equal
rights to women), questioned casteism, patriarchy, and anti minority sentiments
and converted to Budhism (not that it is fool proof today, but at that time
looked just) and raised the concept of Dominion (see Penguin, 2010, Words of
Freedom: ideas of a Nation B.R Ambedkar, Penguin, New Delhi). He observed that
in a Dominion the government cannot step in when constitutional government has
failed to maintain law and order. If he was alive today, probably he would say
that the uprisings that we see in India and quelled in China are not just a
result of state failure but inter-state institutional failure too (in
particular the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, World Trade
Organisation, global public-private partnerships and and I would say even the
UN for it has not put
in place mechanisms to make these interstate organizations accountable). In
fact, the UN Security Council structure itself would look different if low
income and lower middle income countries had a greater say (in particular those
who have followed just pathways to poverty reduction and eradicating
injustices) and oppressed were called for UN-NG0 meetings in equal numbers with
NGOs who represent them.
Ambedkar saw the inter-connection between the
culture, economic and political subordination of dalits, tribals, women,
minorities and laboring class in India. Let us combine his concept, with that
of non-violence, Swaraj (self governance), and trusteeship of Gandhi and move
development debates beyond capitalism and communism. Self governance without
addressing the material and cultural basis of subordination of oppressed groups
is pointless as was revealed in a public hearing of women and men local
government leaders by a coalition of organizations in Tamil Nadu, wherein even
when dalits were majority in self governance institutions, dalits were proxies
for upper caste on whom they were dependent for livelihood, centuries of caste
hierarchies prevailed and dalit women where proxies for dalit and upper caste
men. At the same time Gandhi’s concept of trusteeship is extremely relevant if
the paths followed are not to be violent. Gandhi believed that those who own
money now should behave like trustees holding their riches on behalf of the
poor. As observed by the organization Mani
Bhavan Gandhi Sangrahalaya trusteeship is not just a legal fiction. If
rich people in the world meditate over
it constantly and try to act up to it, then life on earth would be governed far
more by love than it is at present
(www.gandhi-manibhavan.org/gandhiphilosophy/philosophy_trusteeship.htm).
One could add rich nations too. Are they acting non-violently, in trusteeship
and following Ambedkar’s paradigm? Are
they leaving things for next generation not only in their own countries, but
their investments and invasions on developing world?
Ranjani Kamala murthy
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