Back to UN millennial goals

The annual general meeting of the World Economic Forum at the snowy heights of Davos, Switzerland, in which the world's top business leaders, political luminaries and forthright academicians, like Nobel Prize-winners, participated, had a complex agenda.

The five-day meeting attended by 1,000 businessmen was spread over 235 sessions. It began with discussions on issues like security and promotion of global economic growth and ended with reducing inequity. As befits a business conclave, they did not talk of poverty in the developing countries or measures for its reduction, but of inequity which they wanted to reduce for the sake of better and larger business.

But behind the scenes, efforts for resuming a dialogue on globalization of the trade interrupted by the Cancun ministerial meeting of the WTO, continued, but without any success. The sentiment was in favour of resuming the dialogue with even US trade representative Robert Zoellick in favour of this.

James Scott Peterson, Canada's trade minister, voiced the feelings of many others when he said: "The message is we have to restart the negotiations very very quickly. We have to work very very hard." And there was agreement that the large gap between the developed and the developing countries has to be narrowed. But there was no agreement on the negotiating framework for the round. This has to be done before discussions resume and are placed on a sound track.

One leader who has been openly and strongly urging leaders of the industrial states to make concessions to the poor countries in trade is Kofi Annan, secretary-general of the UN. He made an impassioned plea at Davos to enable the poor countries get a fair deal from trade.

He wanted the leaders assembled there to use their influence to persuade the US and European Union realize that it was in everyone's interest that they give ground in areas such as farm subsidies.

He said: " Agricultural subsidies skew market forces. They destroy the environment. And they block poor country exports from world markets. For all our sake and for the credibility of the system itself, they must be eliminated." The US and Europe which spend as much as 350 billion dollars a year on farm subsidies have offered some relief but they are far from satisfactory to the developing countries which clamour for a far better deal.

But that is not the only major issue of grave concern for Kofi Annan. He sees the UN millennial goals which among others set 2015 as the year in which to reduce the world's poverty by half going out of focus of the world's nations, particularly of the rich states like the US.

He finds the increasing focus on fighting terrorism and accelerating economic growth in the industrial states bypassing those goals, which would reduce human misery in the world and make it a better place to live in.

The other key millennial goals are achieving universal primary education by the 2015 promoting gender equality and empowering women, reducing child mortality by two-thirds, improving maternal health by three quarters, combating AIDS, malaria and other diseases, ensuring environmental sustainability and ensuring global partnership for development. But at the moment the focus is on developing global partnership for fighting terrorism.

To refocus the world's attention on these very essential goals, he purposes to convene a new business summit at the UN headquarters in New York where such critical developmental issues will receive proper attention. He finds that in their effort to fight the political and military causes of terrorism the basic causes of terrorism are being ignored.

The US under George Bush and Britain and others supporting the coalition against terrorism are not in a mood to give equal priority to fighting poverty. So Kofi Annan is trying to take them back to the real track to eliminate the basic or eternal causes of crime and ultimately terrorism. Annan wants a rule-based global order instead of one based on military might or economic strength of a group of nations.

It remains to be seen how much support Annan receives from the US and western nations as a whole for convening the business session of the UN he proposes to deal with economic and social agenda or the UN millennial goals and in pledging the requisite funds for that. Without success in fighting terrorism in such areas the US may win the war against terrorism in one area but only to lose it in another or suffer severe setbacks.

"Without accelerated action to get more girls into schools over the next two years, global goals to reduce poverty and improve human condition would simply not be reached," says the Unicef report on the State of the Children - 2004.

The report adds that international efforts for development are drastically short-changing girls, leaving hundreds of millions of girls and women uneducated and unable to contribute to positive change for themselves, their children, and their communities.

Unicef has been stressing the importance of educating the girls year after year but few are willing to listen, and fewer in Pakistan where over 1,000 women were murdered last year in the name of the abominable karo-kari with no punishment to the offenders. In the case of such victims even higher education of women is no protection against male excesses.

With the industrial states engaged more and more in the fight against terrorism, while the US is also trying to reach Mars without comparative gain relative to the heavy cost, the developing countries with vast human problems and social tensions have to look after themselves. They have to mobilize their own resources instead of spending more and more on defence.

In this regard, India's role is very important, and it has to become an exemplar for others in South Asia instead of being too pre-occupied with a massing modern arms at a giddy cost, forcing the small neighbours to spend far more, which is beyond their means.

Peter Drucker, the super-management guru sees a great future for India, and soon. He says the economic dominance of the US is already over. What is emerging is a world economy. India is becoming a powerhouse very fast."

In an interview with Fortune magazine, he says:" The dominance of the US is already over. What is emerging is a world economy of blocs represented by Nafta , the European Union, Asean. There is no one centre in this world economy. India is becoming a powerhouse very fast.... The medical school in New Delhi is perhaps the best in the world. And the technical graduates of the Indian institutes of information technology at Bangalore is as good as any in the world."

He also holds India's success in reducing its rural population from 90 per cent to 54 per cent without any upheaval a great success. He compares that to China which is having great problems in checking its too rapid urbanization as the people want to rush from the villages to the exploding cities.

He deprecates the undue importance and excessive rewards given to the CEOs of corporations and quotes the famous J.P. Morgan as saying the CEO is just a hired hand." And the salary of the CEO should not be more than 20 times the pay of the rank and file worker, while it is now like 400 times more.

At a time when the CEO's salary has been rising excessively, more so in banks in Pakistan J.P. Morgan's advice is very valid, more so when interest rates in Pakistan have hit the bottom and banks are penalising the deposit-holders in banks.

Another U.S. economist who has spoken euphorically about India and its future is the famous Jeffrey Sachs, now director of the Earth Institute and professor of Sustainable Development at Columbia University. He says "As the world economic centre of gravity shifts to Asia, US pre-eminence will inevitably diminish."

He says on the basis of current trends the integrated Asian economy could reach about half the world's GNP (up from the current one-third) with about 60 per cent of the world's population. He says that by 2050 China, and maybe India, will have overtaken the US economy in size.

He says the American economic strength is based on its advanced technology, but that technology is increasingly available to the whole world. And that comes with foreign investment and foreign technological training.

It is the economic future of India of which New Delhi is aware which is making India close its ranks with Pakistan. As India moves forward it does not want Pakistan pull its shirt tails from behind whether that be when India tries to become a permanent member of the UN Security Council or vies for economic supremacy in competition with China.

Lord Meghad Desai of the London School of Economics has a somewhat different approach to the future of India. He said in a recent speech at New Delhi, quoted by the "IMF survey", on the "Tale of two giants - India and China, that China will become a great economic power and India will become a great society." How soon will it take India to become a great society by giving a fair treatment to its large minorities and the scheduled castes who form about 40 per cent of the Hindu community? Anyway, India is set to make large leaps economically and it is better for Pakistan to have increasing economic cooperation with it."

That means Pakistan has to close its ranks--sectarian ranks and religious ranks --and bridge the differences between its various classes and focus on economic growth earnestly.