SACW | 16 March 2006 | Pakistan: Mosque extremism; India: Sealing up Democracy; Manipur women's defiance; Amartya sen reveiws aid politics book; The Bamako Appeal

[Harsh Kapoor]

South Asia Citizens Wire | 16 March, 2006 | Dispatch No. 2234


[Interruption Notice: Please Note there will be no SACW dispathes
between March 17 - April 3, 2006]

[1] Pakistan: Extremism of the mosque (Editorials, Daily Times)
[2] India: Sealing up Democracy (Partha Chatterjee)
[3] India - Manipur: Moral Force (Editorial, The Telegraph)
[4] The Man Without a Plan (Amartya Sen)
[5] The Bamako Appeal

____________________________________


[1]

Daily Times
March 16, 2006

EDITORIAL: Extremism of the mosque

Speaking to a delegation of traders, politicians, exporters and lawyers
in Faisalabad on Tuesday, President Pervez Musharraf said that “some
khateebs were creating disharmony among the people for their vested
interests”. Since government agencies alone could not stop them, he
urged the people to come forward and stop such elements. He said that
extremism preached at the mosque was one of the causes of terrorism that
destabilised the country and tarnished its global image. He could have
added but didn’t that Pakistan developed as a terrorist base for nearly
20 years after General Zia “Islamised” Pakistan on a borrowed model.

The jihad in which Pakistan participated in the 1980s brought it a lot
of dollars that remained unaccounted for. It also brought in an alien
version of Islam that is equally unaccounted. Pakistani society was
forced to think that only stringency of faith could set things right in
the country. What actually resulted from this stringency was extremism
that today radiates not only from the khateebs but also from the TV
channels that sell religion with an eye to the market. Money came with
this hard brand of Arab Islam, symbolised originally by Islamabad’s
International Islamic University funded by Saudi Arabia.

And who taught here? One of the many extremist teachers was Abdullah
Azzam, the Palestinian Ikhwan thinker who had become Osama bin Laden’s
mentor while in Saudi Arabia. The Kurdish terrorist Mullah Krekar,
leader of Iraq’s Ansar ul Islam, who is wanted for acts of terrorism in
Turkey, was also on the faculty in this University, which is today run
by a retired judge who was on the Supreme Court panel that banned bank
interest in Pakistan in 1999 and made life difficult for the civilian
government. Ramzi Yusuf, the man who tried to blow up the World Trade
Centre in New York in 1993, often stayed in the hostel of the
University. The connection went to the extremist chief cleric of Saudi
Arabia, the blind and now late Sheikh Bin Baz, who thought that our
planetary system was geocentric and that the earth was flat. Last year a
praising report printed in a Lahore-based newspaper stated that the
famous Madina Islamic University, which began with Bin Baz as its first
chancellor, had welcomed 6,000 foreign students who formed almost 80
percent of the total student population. It gave generous scholarships
plus an air ticket back home during vacations to all foreigners.
Pakistani students came from Lahore, Faisalabad, Turbat, Mamo Kanjan,
Karachi, Kasur, Gujranwala, Peshawar, Nowshehra, Haripur, Gilgit and
Mekran. There used to be 300 Pakistanis in the university but now there
were less than 200. There was a report that mosques in Dipalpur in
Punjab were preaching the khutbas of Sheikh Bin Baz.

The Wahhabi creed of Saudi Arabia was once considered a khariji
phenomenon that had pushed Islam to an extreme posture. It was based on
xenophobia and an original version of the jahiliyya creed as explained
by Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahhab, the founder of extremist Islam in Najd. He
looked at Muslims not following his strict creed as reverters to the
condition of pre-Islamic days and held them to be not erring Muslims but
apostates who should be violently stopped. This idea was revived by Syed
Qutb in the 1930s and today forms the central pillar of the creed of
Osama bin Laden and Aiman al Zawahiri. The irony is that the House of
Ibn Saud is straining to exorcise the genii of extremist faith today but
the clerics there are convinced that extremism is the right way to go.

The biggest damage that our Afghan-war past did to us was to change our
idea of waging war. Since Pakistan relied on private warriors to achieve
deniability, jihad as a concept was taken out of the hands of the
Islamic state and given to the mercenaries and their militias. That is
why, shockingly, there is a consensus today among the clergy that jihad
is not the state’s job, nor is it to be fought with the permission of
the state, but that all Muslims are free to start a war without
reference to a state that has not yet come completely under the control
of the clergy. The khateeb in the mosque sees this kind of opinion being
expressed on TV channels every day and links his own rather modest
fortunes to prospects of becoming a part of the ruling Islamic elite in
the proposed new Islamic state. It may be noted that in the United
Kingdom a policy of importing Pakistani khateebs without prior screening
led to the terrorism of 7/7.

Extremism of the mosque in Pakistan goes in tandem with the extremism of
the madrassa, which President Musharraf has not been able to tame. The
rejectionism that informs the mind of the khateeb comes from the
seminary. President Musharraf’s political opponents in the MMA and the
ARD are bound to ignore this phenomenon simply because his strategy has
strengthened the clergy and weakened the political mainstream. *

SECOND EDITORIAL: Azam Tariq’s killer

Syed Sibtain Kazimi has been caught in Greece for travelling on a fake
passport. He is supposed to have killed, in 2004, the Sipah-e-Sahaba
leader Azam Tariq with whose vote the PMLQ was able to claim majority in
the National Assembly. Azam Tariq was also at the centre of sectarian
violence in Pakistan with 21 attempts on his life. His alleged killer,
Kazimi, was obviously not alone when he ambushed Azam Tariq near
Islamabad. Since 2004, however, Azam Tariq’s ghost has got even with the
Shia community many times over.

Greece may not extradite Kazimi to Pakistan because Pakistan’s law
allows for the death sentence for premeditated murder. Perhaps that is
as it should be, given the abysmal state of our judiciary in which no
sessions/anti-terrorist judge can hand down a sentence against sectarian
killers and survive. *

____


[2]

The Telegraph
March 16, 2006

CLEANING UP DEMOCRACY
- Bengal's zeal to sanitize its public political arena

by Partha Chatterjee

The author is director and professor of political science, Centre for
Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta

There is little doubt that a robust and impartial Election Commission,
even if not essential for a liberal electoral democracy, is a very
useful institution. The lack of such an agency in the United States of
America has been cited by many as a reason for the widespread
allegations of fraud in the last two presidential elections in that
country. Most European countries have some institution of this sort.
Britain has, of course, managed without it, possibly because of its
long-established tradition of a non-partisan civil service. In India,
amidst mounting complaints about unfair electoral practices, the
Election Commission has been given, in the last decade and a half,
considerable powers to enforce regulations for conducting free and fair
elections. The time has now come, I think, to ask if the pendulum has
swung too far in the other direction, and whether a trend is being
encouraged that may be ultimately harmful for Indian democracy.

The question has arisen in the context of some of the unprecedented
steps taken by the Election Commission for the forthcoming elections to
the West Bengal assembly. No one can quarrel with its efforts to produce
an error-free voters’ list. Anyone who has the experience of working
with these lists will know that at any given time they contain many more
names than persons who are actually resident in a particular
constituency. The reason is that whereas young voters and new residents
in an area are promptly enlisted, whether at their own initiative or
that of political parties, those who die or migrate, especially those
who move out temporarily to study or work, remain on the list.

As a result, it is not uncommon at all for a person to be a voter in
more than one constituency. This is not a phenomenon peculiar to West
Bengal; it is true everywhere in the country. Election analysts have
long known that the official voter turnout in India is always lower than
what emerges in voter surveys, the reason being that the official
voters’ list overestimates the number of available voters in a constituency.

Needless to say, this creates an opportunity for voter impersonation,
although, if there is a presence of local election agents of all major
candidates in a polling booth, it is hard to see how such impersonation
can succeed on a large scale. The reported effort of the Election
Commission to remove from the rolls the names of those who do not have
proof of citizenship is more controversial. There is always a
possibility of this weapon being used unfairly. But at this moment, we
do not know how extensive the revisions have been on this count,
especially in the border districts. The decision to hold the elections
in West Bengal in five phases over more than three weeks has drawn much
criticism from the Left Front.

Unprecedented in the history of Indian elections, the decision seems to
have been prompted by a desire to deploy a large body of armed forces in
each group of constituencies on the day of polling. The chief election
commissioner is reported to have said that it was necessary to establish
“area domination” to ensure undisturbed polling. His reasoning is
unclear. Surely, there is no reason to believe that the law and order
situation in West Bengal is worse than everywhere else in the country;
the fact is that there has not been any major violence on election day
in this state in many years.

Whether the sudden presence of large numbers of armed, and possibly
overzealous, troops near polling stations will be a cause of reassurance
or alarm remains to be seen. In the meantime, the prolonged period of
elections has already caused major disturbances in examination schedules
and academic calendars. It is feared that many students in West Bengal
will lose a whole academic year because of the sudden postponement of
examinations. The disruption in routine government work will be massive;
one can easily predict that most government offices in the state will
virtually cease to function for at least a month. And owners of motor
vehicles beware: the threat of cars and buses being requisitioned for
election duty will last for more than a month.

The steps that are most likely to disturb long-established practices of
campaigning and mobilization are the ban on wall-writings, posters and
banners, on the use of loudspeakers, and on rallies and processions
except on holidays. Regardless of parties, posters and wall-writings
have been the most important means of announcing one’s candidacy in an
election in West Bengal. So ubiquitous are they that they could be
described as the single most visible material sign of political activity
in the state. Used and perfected over more than half a century, they
have become essential aspects of West Bengal’s political culture, in the
same way that giant cut-outs characterize the public political culture
of Tamil Nadu. Specific codes and conventions have developed to
regulate, through local negotiations, the control of particular walls by
particular parties. There have been few instances in recent times of
major disputes breaking out over this. True enough, the owners of
buildings are never consulted in this matter. If this was the concern,
the Election Commission should have insisted that the permission of the
owner be secured before a wall was used for a poster or graffiti.
Instead, it has taken the lazy, and utterly wooden-headed, option of a
blanket ban.

It is being said that wall-writings cause “visual pollution”. It would
be interesting to see if the same argument would be levelled against
cut-outs on the streets of Chennai. In any case, those who prefer the
hasty daubs of whitewash applied under police supervision to the
practised calligraphy of graffiti artists may boast of a high level of
civic rectitude but little aesthetic judgment. It also appears that
political parties are yet to realize the full implications of these huge
changes in the ground rules of elections. It can be expected that the
largest, most organized and most resourceful party will adapt the
quickest to the new conditions and invent new techniques of reaching
their constituents; the others may suffer from being denied the use of
tried and tested methods.

But behind all this zeal to cleanse and sanitize the public political
arena, there lurks a no-longer-secret desire. It is visible not only in
the higher echelons of the bureaucracy, but in the law courts, among
business executives and professionals, and in the English language
media. The desire is to rid the space of citizenship of all the noise,
smell and gaudiness of a publicly mobilized plebeian culture that is now
being seen as both an impediment to, and an embarrassment for, an India
seeking to become a world power. The political space has to be
demobilized. The act of voting must become the private act of private
citizens. If the practices of Indian democracy have developed, in
flagrant violation of the rules of Western democracy, on the assumption
that the bourgeois individual, propertied and educated, is not the
typical Indian voter, then those practices will now have to go. Election
time is when this agenda can be promulgated, for those are the two
months when the normal politics of politicians is held in suspension. It
is a time of pure governance, unsullied by politics, when no questions
can be asked and no explanations have to be given. It is no coincidence
that the law against defacement of walls that has just been invoked in
West Bengal was one that was enacted in 1976, in the darkest days of the
Emergency, and long since forgotten.

Those who have marvelled at the ingenuity of Indian democracy in
creating spaces for the struggle of the weak and the oppressed through
the force of electoral mobilization will regard this as an alarming trend.


____



[3]

The Telegraph
March 16, 2006 | Editorial

MORAL FORCE

The women of Manipur have a history of defying fear and violence. But
their recent protest against “mass rapes” by militants is an exceptional
act of bravery. It is easier to admire the protest than to understand
its true dimensions. The women’s action makes two very significant
points. First, it goes a long way in demolishing some myths about the
militants in Manipur and other states in the North-east. The militancy
tries to thrive on the myth that the rebels are dedicated to the cause
of the people’s freedoms. They are also projected as selfless warriors
who sacrifice their lives for the cause. The women of Manipur have blown
the myth to expose the venal side of the militancy. That the testimony
comes from some of the twenty-one victims of the militants’ outrageous
act makes it particularly shocking. But it is the second message from
the event that needs to be emphasized. It shows that a public protest
can have a moral force that can face up to the gun. Manipur’s brave
women made history sometime back by dropping their clothes in in public
in order to protest against another alleged rape by some jawans of the
army. That event shook the country and forced the authorities to mend
their ways.

The women’s protest on the streets of Churachandpur may not end the
insurgency; but it has been the strongest public condemnation so far of
the rebels’ vile ways. It is expected to have its impact on
insurgency-related abuses in other states in the region. Militant groups
have long forced the common people there to suffer many injustices and
indignities. The forcible collection of taxes is only a minor problem
compared to the gross violations of human rights inflicted on the
people. The fear of the gun stifles the people’s will and all voices of
dissent. Manipur’s example can thus help the victims of insurgency in
Nagaland and Assam. And, it is no coincidence that women of Manipur have
shown the way. Women pay heavy prices for the conflicts in the
North-east, as men die and homes are destroyed. But they also play a
leading role in rebuilding homes and lives. The Naga Mothers’
Association does that in Nagaland like the women’s groups in Manipur.
The important thing is the voice of protest, be it against the state’s
excesses or against the militants’ cruel ways. The least the state can
do is listen to the voices and act on them. That will lend credibility
to the state’s campaign against the militancy.

____



[4]

Foreign Affairs, March/April 2006


THE MAN WITHOUT A PLAN

by Amartya Sen


The White Man's Burden: Why the West's Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done
So Much Ill and So Little Good. William Easterly. : Penguin Press, 2006,
417 pp. $27.95


Summary: In The White Man's Burden, William Easterly offers important
insights about the pitfalls of foreign aid. Unfortunately, his overblown
attack on global "do-gooders" obscures the real point: that aid can
work, but only if done right.

Amartya Sen is Lamont University Professor and Professor of Economics
and Philosophy at Harvard University. His last two books are The
Argumentative Indian and Identity and Violence: The Illusion of Destiny.


"Be thine own palace," wrote John Donne, "or the world's thy jail."
William Easterly does not invoke this particular metaphor in The White
Man's Burden, but this exciting -- and excited -- book is about the
imprisonment of the world's poor in the trap of international aid, where
"planners" have incarcerated the wretched of the earth. The poor may not
have a "palace" to fall back on, battered as they are by grinding
privation, massive illiteracy, and the scourge of epidemics. But
Easterly -- a former World Bank economist who now teaches at New York
University -- nevertheless argues that in the fight against global
poverty, "the right plan is to have no plan."

In contrast to the typically well-meaning but allegedly always injurious
"planners," the heroes of Easterly's book are those whom he calls
"searchers." The division between the planners and the searchers, as
seen by Easterly, could not be sharper: "In foreign aid, Planners
announce good intentions but don't motivate anyone to carry them out;
Searchers find things that work and get some reward. Planners raise
expectations but take no responsibility for meeting them; Searchers
accept responsibility for their actions. Planners determine what to
supply; Searchers find out what is in demand. Planners apply global
blueprints; Searchers adapt to local conditions. Planners at the top
lack knowledge of the bottom; Searchers find out what the reality is at
the bottom. Planners never hear whether the planned got what it needed;
Searchers find out whether the customer is satisfied." The radical
oversimplification in this overdrawn contrast leads Easterly to a simple
summary of his book's thesis in its subtitle -- Why the West's Efforts
to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good -- which
supplements a title borrowed from Rudyard Kipling's lyrical paean to
high-minded imperialism.

As it happens, the empirical picture of the actual effects of
international aid (which, incidentally, does not come only from white
men, since Japan is a major participant in the effort) is far more
complex than Easterly's shotgun summary suggests. Nor is Easterly
particularly fair in describing what the leaders whom he identifies as
well-intentioned doers of great harm (including British Prime Minister
Tony Blair, British Chancellor Gordon Brown, the economist Jeffrey
Sachs, and former World Bank President James Wolfensohn) actually
propose and sometimes achieve. Nor is he persuasive in his use of
isolated quotations to indicate how the world is supposedly being misled
by The New York Times, The Economist, and The New Yorker when they
argue, as one of their writers, John Cassidy of The New Yorker, put it,
that "aid can be effective in any country where it is accompanied by
sensible economic policies."

All of this is a great pity, since Easterly's book offers a line of
analysis that could serve as the basis for a reasoned critique of the
formulaic thinking and policy triumphalism of some of the literature on
economic development. The wide-ranging and rich evidence -- both
anecdotal and statistical -- that Easterly cites in his sharply
presented arguments against grand designs of different kinds deserves
serious consideration. In a less extreme form, they could have yielded
an illuminating critical perspective on how and why things often do go
wrong in the global efforts to help the world's poor.

Unfortunately, Easterly gets swept up by the intoxicating power of
purple prose (I could not avoid recollecting Kipling's description of
words as "the most powerful drug used by mankind"). He forgoes the
opportunity for a much-needed dialogue, opting instead for a rhetorical
drubbing of those whom he sees as well-intentioned enemies of the poor.

JUST SO STORIES

Empirical evidence of the ineffectiveness of many grand development and
poverty-alleviation schemes is undoubtedly worth discussing clearly and
honestly, as Easterly does when he is not too busy looking for an
aphorism so crushing that it will leave his targets gasping for breath.
And Easterly is also right to note that the failure of many grand
schemes results from their disregard for the complexity of institutions
and incentive systems and their neglect of individual initiative, which
must be societally encouraged rather than bureaucratically stifled. All
of this may not yield Easterly's overblown conclusions; in fact, even he
acknowledges the success of many international aid efforts, from the
dissemination of deworming drugs and the use of oral rehydration therapy
for diarrheal diseases to indoor spraying to control malaria and several
programs to slow down the spread of AIDS. But all of the failures he
does cite should encourage the type of scrutiny that can help translate
good intentions into effective results.

The challenge is to respond to the plight of the hopelessly impoverished
without neglecting to insist that help come in useful and productive forms.

In fact, Easterly makes exactly that point once the blast of rhetoric is
turned down: "The good news about the noisy anti-globalization
protesters, the hard-working NGOs, the rock bands and the movie stars,
and the rich-country governments' increased interest in the Rest coming
after 9/11 is that the constituency for the poor is growing. It's time
for the rich-country public to insist that aid money actually reach the
poor." Although not coming until after page 200, those sentences provide
a better summary of the contribution of The White Man's Burden than do
the rather extreme slogans to which Easterly chooses to give pride of place.

Those slogans also give the misleading impression that Easterly is
against efforts to help the poor altogether, preferring to leave them to
rely on their own devices and their own "search" for ways of making
things better through unaided individual efforts. The hardheadedness of
his bombardment of "do-gooders" can be read -- wrongly -- as a general
skepticism toward the idea that one person can consciously and
deliberately do good to another. This is not Easterly's actual position
at all. He clearly knows how appalling the lives of the poor of the
world are, and his sympathy for them is manifest throughout the book. In
Easterly's rejection of plans to aid developing countries, there is
nothing of the false ethics that finds frequent expression in the
anti-aid attitudes of those who argue, whether explicitly or implicitly,
that the affluent have no moral responsibility to help the wretched,
because their problems were not caused by the rich. Nor does he show any
sympathy for the growing tendency to blame the predicament of the poor
on the basic deficiencies and hard-to-reform nature of their own
regressive cultures, which supposedly make it quite futile to try to
help them. In contrast to those who make this case -- under the
apparently benign slogan "culture matters" -- Easterly has faith in the
creativity of all.

Furthermore, Easterly's critique is not confined to foreign aid as it is
usually defined; it is a critique of all grand plans to save the world
hatched in Washington or London or Paris. Market ideologues may love the
battering that large-scale state intervention receives through
Easterly's hard-hitting prose. But they will be less happy with his
carefully spelled-out skepticism of schemes for the immediate
replacement of all economic institutions with a pure market system.
Easterly is particularly critical of the reasoning behind programs that
go by the name of "shock therapy" -- plans to jump-start a market
economy by comprehensively dismantling all preexisting institutions. He
also criticizes the growing tendency to advocate an exclusive reliance
on capitalist property rights, which often end up replacing old societal
arrangements that, among other things, play an important part in
mitigating problems of "shared commons." Although Easterly recognizes
the importance of a market system with good property rights, he looks
for its nurtured emergence in a qualified form -- rather than its
drastic imposition on bemused recipients by befuddled "planners of markets."

Although a great champion of democracy, Easterly is also deeply critical
of the majestic pretensions of a handful of world leaders who think they
can impose democracy on other countries they know little about. The
continuing debacle in Iraq affirms his general critique of grand plans.
Easterly presents a similarly effective critique of the recent spell of
imperial nostalgia -- a temptation to save the world by filling the void
left by the decline of old empires with the activism of a new American
one. Here he comes closest to responding to Kipling's exhortation:

Take up the White Man's burden --

The savage wars of peace --

Fill full the mouth of Famine,

And bid the sickness cease.

Easterly writes, "Harvard historian Niall Ferguson, whose work on every
topic but this I greatly admire, says that there is 'such a thing as
liberal imperialism and that on balance it was a good thing. ... In many
cases of economic "backwardness," a liberal empire can do better than a
nation state.'" Easterly's skepticism of the benefits of such "liberal
imperialism" is well presented. It could be supplemented by noting that
there were big famines in India -- the subject of Kipling's eloquent
phrase -- until the very end of the British imperial rule. The last one,
the Bengal famine of 1943, killed between two million and three million
people four years before Indian independence. Since the end of the Raj
and the establishment of a parliamentary democracy, there has not been a
single one.

PLAIN TALES

Despite the simplicity of its subtitle, Easterly's book is concerned
with a much wider range of problems than just the pros and cons of aid.
He is moved by a rich vision of indigenous creativity that can flower in
the absence of extraterritorial grand designs. This vision informs and
inspires his general approach and leads him to a number of empirical
exercises -- which are interesting but not quite unproblematic. To
arrive at his negative view of economic aid, Easterly draws on
large-scale cross-sectional statistical analysis, as well as on case
studies of particular plans and programs. Such intercountry comparisons
have become fashionable as a way of isolating solid connections between
causes and effects, but they are seriously compromised by the difficulty
of comparing diverse experiences: countries can differ significantly in
variables other than those that are brought under cross-sectional scrutiny.

Many such studies are also impaired by difficulties in identifying what
is causing what. For example, a country's economic distress may induce
donors to give it more aid -- which may, in terms of associative
statistics, suggest a connection between aid and bad economic
performance. But using such a correlation to prove the bad effects of
aid turns the causal connection on its head. Easterly tries to avoid
such pitfalls, but the statistical associations on which he draws for
his comprehensive pessimism about the effects of aid do not offer a
definitive causal picture.

In some ways, the more interesting parts of Easterly's analysis lie in
his case studies of particular programs. Many of those detailed
depictions of donors' failures to foster development are indeed
persuasive. And yet, there are very few cases cited in which aid has
actually "done so much ill," as Easterly claims. Rather, sometimes it
has simply not done much good. (Presumably, Easterly would argue in his
defense that the waste of resources is itself scandalous and that the
belief that something good is being done can discourage a fresh
examination of what is really needed to help the wretched of the earth.)
There are also many examples that Easterly considers where aid helped
rather than hindered -- which could have led him not to the total
dismissal of the importance of aid, but to a more subtle rendering of
the overall picture. Such a more nuanced view could yield important
insights for policy, including on the need for more emphasis on social
institutions and individual incentives. On the basis of his own
investigations, Easterly is in an excellent position to systematize such
insights. But this does not quite happen here, despite Easterly's
occasional suggestions for how to make international aid more effective
and less wasteful. Useful hints at balanced evaluation come amid
deafening outbursts against the advocates of aid; again and again,
unifocal extremism is snatched from the jaws of discriminating judgment.

A similar point can be made about Easterly's insistence that
aid-oriented international institutions are doing unmitigated harm (even
though, in this case too, Easterly lapses into the occasional interlude
of passing approval). The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund
do not need me to defend them, but it should be noted that the way
Easterly describes them and their work includes a strong element of
caricature (rather surprising, given his long experience working for the
bank). To be sure, these organizations have often imposed terrible
policies on developing countries, and Easterly is right to criticize
their sometimes insensitive agendas, overly grand designs, and lack of
engagement with the way the wretched themselves see their problems. But
these deficiencies call for better economic and political reasoning and
a bigger voice for the poor in the governance of these organizations,
rather than simple dismissal. Global institutions have important roles
to play in the coordination of short- and long-term economic policies
across the world. As it happens, coordination is an issue that receives
surprisingly little attention in this grandly conceived book. Easterly's
rejection of all plans disposes of not only grandiose "gosplans," which
will not be missed, but also all efforts to try to do things together
without getting into one another's hair.

It is also worth noting that some of the studies on which Easterly draws
in making his case for "searchers" were produced by these very
institutions. Voices of the Poor was a World Bank project that received
direct encouragement from then President James Wolfensohn. The most
illuminating study of recent North Korean famines -- which linked
starvation to North Korea's authoritarian governance, a theme that
should appeal to Easterly -- was written by Andrew Natsios, until
recently the head of the U.S. Agency for International Development
(USAID). The need to move beyond unilaterally imposed schemes is not
nearly as unknown in these institutions as Easterly suggests. Indeed,
Natsios' valedictory statement (which included the observation that the
U.S. government's treatment of USAID efforts sometimes made the agency
feel "almost like an abused child") explicitly identified many of the
the problems with which Easterly himself is concerned. Shorn of their
dismissive denunciations, Easterly's investigations can be of use in
suggesting avenues for reform in those institutions. But there is a
difference between curing an affliction and eliminating the afflicted.

DISTINCTIONS MISSED

Perhaps the weakest link in Easterly's reasoning is his almost complete
neglect of the distinctions between different types of economic
problems. Easterly is well aware of the efficiency of market delivery
when commodities are bought in a market and backed by suitable
purchasing power, and he contrasts that with the usual infelicities and
inefficiencies in getting aid to those who need it most. But the
distinction between the two scenarios lies not only in the different
ways of meeting the respective problems, but also in the nature of the
problems themselves. There is something deeply misleading in the
contrast he draws between them, which seems to have motivated his entire
project: "There was no Marshall Plan for Harry Potter, no International
Financing Facility for books about underage wizards. It is heartbreaking
that global society has evolved a highly efficient way to get
entertainment to rich adults and children, while it can't get
twelve-cent medicine to dying poor children." The disparity in the
results is indeed heartbreaking. But jumping from there to arguing that
the solution to the latter problem is along the same lines as the
solution to the former reflects a misunderstanding of what makes the
latter so much more difficult. (That major issue is clearly more
important than the minor point that J. K. Rowling was on welfare support
and received a grant from the Scottish Arts Council when writing the
first Harry Potter novel.)

In his wholesale praise of "searchers" over "planners," Easterly says,
"Planners determine what to supply; Searchers find out what is in
demand." This may be just so, but there is a radical difference (of
which Easterly is surely aware, judging from what he writes elsewhere in
the book) between the enterprise of supplying "what is in demand" --
which is integrally linked to the buyers' ability to pay -- and that of
supplying needed goods and services to people whose income and wealth do
not allow a need to be converted into a market demand.

None of this, however, negates the importance of Easterly's general
praise of searchers. There is much merit in ground-level explorations of
what is feasible -- even when addressing problems that are a thousand
times more difficult than selling Harry Potter books to buyers who are
willing and able to pay for them. Information and initiatives have to
come from many sources, including the deprived themselves (this is why
studies such as Voices of the Poor are so important), and without
constant searching for what the problems are and how they can be
addressed, global aid efforts end up being far less effective than they
could be. Easterly is absolutely right to praise the visionary efforts
of the remarkable Muhammad Yunus of Bangladesh in pioneering the
microcredit movement through his Grameen Bank. Easterly could have also
enlisted Yunus' fellow activist Fazle Hasan Abed for his own momentous
initiative in launching huge cooperative efforts across the country
through BRAC (the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee). Such powerful
departures were based on a clear understanding of why the market had
failed to work on its own and of how that could be altered through
social efforts to supplement the market; these are not mere extensions
of the sale of J. K. Rowlings' fantasy novels.

There is much of merit in Easterly's perceptive vision about
initiatives, incentives, and communication. We should be grateful to
Easterly for the wealth of material he has presented, thereby enriching
the development literature. We may have less reason to celebrate -- or
even to accept -- the diagnosis of idiocy and obduracy he gives to those
whom he calls "planners." But there is a strong case for judging a book
by its best contributions, not its weakest points. My hope is that the
"searchers" among the readers of The White Man's Burden will look for
the convincing arguments Easterly does provide rather than for those he
does not.


____


[5] [SACW subscribers are invited to send criticism and comments on the
below text by April 15, 2006. Send your messages to: <aiindex at gmail.com>]


THE BAMAKO APPEAL

[As circulated on the NIGD listserve on February 7 2006, after receipt
from Samir Amin, President of the World Forum on Alternatives. Samir
Amin and the WFA were one of the organisers of the meeting in Bamako,
Mali, on January 18 2006, the day before the start of the Bamako Social
Forum, from which this Appeal was issued. We have made minor formatting
changes and also corrections and adjustments to the numbering, in which
there was an error.
This document is available at
http://www.openspaceforum.net/twiki/tiki-read_article.php?articleId=66.
Jai Sen, CACIM, New Delhi, 7.2.06 / 14.03.06]


I. INTRODUCTION

More than five years of worldwide gatherings of people and organizations
who oppose neo-liberalism have provided an experience leading to the
creation of a new collective conscience. The social forums -- world,
thematic, continental or national -- and the Assembly of Social
Movements have been the principal architects of this conscience. Meeting
in Bamako on Jan. 18, 2006, on the eve of the opening of the Polycentric
World Social Forum, the participants during this day dedicated to the
50th anniversary of the Bandung Conference have expressed the need to
define alternate goals of development, creating a balance of societies,
abolishing exploitation by class, gender, race and caste, and marking
the route to a new relation of forces between North and South.

The Bamako Appeal aims at contributing to the emergence of a new popular
and historical subject, and at consolidating the gains made at these
meetings. It seeks to advance the principle of the right to an equitable
existence for everyone; to affirm a collective life of peace, justice
and diversity; and to promote the means to reach these goals at the
local level and for all of humanity.

In order that an historical subject come into existence – one that is
diverse, multipolar and from the people – it is necessary to define and
promote alternatives capable of mobilizing social and political forces.
The goal is a radical transformation of the capitalist system. The
destruction of the planet and of millions of human beings, the
individualist and consumerist culture that accompanies and nourishes
this system, along with its imposition by imperialist powers are no
longer tolerable, since what is at stake is the existence of humanity
itself. Alternatives to the wastefulness and destructiveness of
capitalism draw their strength from a long tradition of popular
resistance that also embraces all of the short steps forward
indispensable to the daily life of the system’s victims.

The Bamako Appeal, built around the broad themes discussed in
subcommittees, expresses the commitment to:

(i) Construct an internationalism joining the peoples of the South and
the North who suffer the ravages engendered by the dictatorship of
financial markets and by the uncontrolled global deployment of the
transnational firms;

(ii) Construct the solidarity of the peoples of Asia, Africa, Europe and
the Americas confronted with challenges of development in the 21st century;

(iii) Construct a political, economic and cultural consensus that is an
alternative to militarized and neo-liberal globalization and to the
hegemony of the United States and its allies.


II. THE PRINCIPLES

1. Construct a world founded on the solidarity of human beings and peoples

Our epoch is dominated by the imposition of competition among workers,
nations and peoples. However, historically the principle of solidarity
has played a role much more conducive to the efficient organization of
intellectual and material production. We want to give to this principle
of solidarity the place it deserves and diminish the role of competition.

2. Construct a world founded on the full affirmation of citizenship and
equality of the sexes

The politically active citizen must ultimately become responsible for
the management of all the aspects of social, political, economic and
cultural life. This is the condition for an authentic affirmation of
democracy. Without this, the human being is reduced by the laws imposed
on him or her to a mere provider of labor power, an impotent spectator
confronted with decisions handed down by those in charge, a consumer
propelled toward the worst waste. The affirmation, in law and in deed,
of the absolute equality of sexes is an integral part of authentic
democracy. One of the conditions of this democracy is the eradication of
all forms of the patriarchy, either admitted or hidden.

3. Construct a universal civilization offering in all areas the full
potential of creative development to all its diverse members

For neo-liberalism, the affirmation of the individual – not that of the
politically active citizen – allows the spread of the best human
qualities. The capitalist system’s unbearable isolation, imposed on the
individual, produces its own illusory antidote: imprisonment in the
ghettos of alleged common identities, most often those of a para-ethnic
and or para-religious type. We want to construct a universal
civilization that looks to the future without nostalgia; one in which
the political diversity of citizens and cultural and political
differences of nations and peoples become the means of reinforcing
individual creative development.

4. Construct socialization through democracy

Neo-liberal policies aim to impose as the sole method of socialization
the force of the market, whose destructive impact on the majority of
human beings no longer needs to be demonstrated. The world we want
conceives sociability as the principle product of a democratization
without boundaries. In this framework, in which the market has a place
but not the predominant place, economy and finance should be put at the
service of a societal program; they should not be subordinated to the
imperatives of dominant capital that favor the private interests of a
tiny majority. The radical democracy that we want to promote
re-establishes the creative force of political innovation as a
fundamental human attribute. It bases social life on the production and
reproduction of an inexhaustible diversity, and not on a manipulated
consensus that eliminates all meaningful discussions and leaves
dissidents weakened and trapped in ghettoes.

. . . [FULL TEXT AT:
http://www.openspaceforum.net/twiki/tiki-read_article.php?articleId=66 ]


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Buzz on the perils of fundamentalist politics, on
matters of peace and democratisation in South
Asia. SACW is an independent & non-profit
citizens wire service run since 1998 by South
Asia Citizens Web: www.sacw.net/
SACW archive is available at: bridget.jatol.com/pipermail/sacw_insaf.net/

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