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Globalization and Its Impact on Human Rights
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Globalization and Its Impact on Human Rights by

George Mathews Chunakara (ed.)
Published by Christian Conference of Asia, Hong Kong. The Indian Edition was published in October, 2000 by
Christava Sahitya Samithy, Tiruvalla - 689 101, Kerala, S. India, and is used by permission of the publisher. This
material was prepared for Religion Online by Ted & Winnie Brock.
(ENTIRE BOOK) A highlighting of globalization’s impact on human rights, assessing it in the

light of ethical theological considerations and helping the churches to identify concerns that
address the adverse impact of globalization and the search for alternatives.
Introduction
The impact of globalization on the Third World is disasterous. The author hopes for an adequate
response from the churches of the world.
Chapter 1: Globalization Threatens Humanism, by V. R. Krishna Iyer

Humankind is in the ghastly grip of soulless forces, moneyocracies incorporated, and
cannibalistic philosophies which validate satanic values and apotheosize social anathemas like
violence, vulgarity and intoxicated hedonism. A new debate must begin on human rights-oriented
economic policies where every person and his dignity matters.
Chapter 2: Globalization and Working Towards Alternative

Development Paradigms, by M. A. Oomen
The author suggests the formulation of development paradigms which are alternatives to
globalization.
Chapter 3: Development and Human Rights, by T. Rajamoorthy

The proponents of globalization appear sometimes to invest the whole process of globalization
with a quasi-religious status. They claim that resistance is futile.
Chapter 4: The Emerging Global Scenario and the East Asian

Perspective on Human Rights, by Michael C. Davis
A consideration of various claims about ‘Asian values’ made in relation to the East Asian human
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rights debate. 1. A challenge to the claims for exception from important international human
rights standards made in the name of “Asian values.” 2. The offering of a special version of
liberal constitutionalism as a proper domestic venue for contemporary human rights and values
discourse in East Asia.
Chapter 5: Globalization and its Impact on Human Rights, by

Mathews George Chunakara
Although globalization has been characterized as a locomotive for productivity, opportunity,
technological progress, and uniting the world, it ultimately causes increased impoverishment,
social disparities and violations of human rights.
Chapter 6: Globalization and Asian Women, by Matsui Yayori

What is needed is an alternative society based on gender justice, ecological sustainability and
local-global democracy. Asian women should have the confidence to change their own daily lives
and the world by supporting one another, and thus help bring about change.
Chapter 7: Some Ethical and Theological Reflections and

Considerations, by Feliciano V. Carino
In the Church’s teachings and highest traditions we find a meaningful contribution to the
emergence and foundation of a global community, namely, the dignity of the human, the unity
and universality of the human family, and the common human responsibility for all of creation.
Chapter 8: Globalization and Liberative Solidarity, by K. C. Abraham

An analysis of the phenomenon of globalization and the raising of some issues that are pertinent
in facing its challenges. A model is suggested of a Christian response, a liberative solidarity, that
is rooted in the experience and spirituality of the poor and the message of the cross.
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Globalization and Its Impact on

Human Rights by George Mathews
Chunakara (ed.)
Published by Christian Conference of Asia, Hong Kong. The Indian Edition was
published in October, 2000 by Christava Sahitya Samithy, Tiruvalla - 689 101,
Kerala, S. India, and is used by permission of the publisher. This material was
prepared for Religion Online by Ted & Winnie Brock.
Introduction
The advocates of ‘globalization’

described it as the panacea for all
economic woes, and that the only
path to prosperity is to adhere to
free-market principles. The
nations in the South, in particular,
are being urged to deregulate and
open up their economies to free
trade and foreign investment, to
ensure their speedy transition to
the status of developed
economies. But it is also held that
globalization has brought in its
wake, great inequities, mass
impoverishment and despair, that
it has fractured society along the
existing fault lines of class,
gender and community, while
almost irreversibly widening the
gap between rich and poor
nations, that it has caused the flow
of currencies across international
borders, which has been
responsible for financial and
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economic crises in many

countries and regions, including
the current Asian financial crisis,
that it has enriched a small
minority of persons and
corporations within nations and
within the international system,
marginalizing and violating the
basic human rights of millions of
workers, peasants and farmers and
indigenous communities.
Christian Council of Asia focused

on these concerns during an
international consultation on
“Globalization and its Impact on
Human Rights” held under the
auspices of the Cluster III
programme units of the Council.
The main objectives of this

Consultation were to analyze
globalization and its impact on
human rights; to study ethical and
theological considerations with
regard to globalization; to search
for alternative development
paradigms; to study the policies of
developed nations on
development and trade policies in
the context of globalization; to
gain inputs on the experiences of
indigenous people, workers and
farmers who are affected by
globalization; to consider the
response of the Churches to the
challenges posed by globalization
and to study and identify concerns
that the Asian churches can take
up in order to address the adverse
impact of globalization in the
Asian context.

This book comprises edited

versions of selected presentations
at the Consultation. However, this
book is not the synthesis of the
rich diversity of the whole
discussions in the Consultation.
Hope, the papers included in this
book will help clarify several
issues related to globalization and
its impact and to initiate more
discussion on how the rush
towards globalization is
presumably affect our lives.
Mathews George Chunakara

International Affairs, Christian
Council of Asia

Globalization and Its Impact on Human

Rights by George Mathews Chunakara
(ed.)
published in October, 2000 by Christava Sahitya Samithy, Tiruvalla - 689 101, Kerala,
S. India, and is used by permission of the publisher. This material was prepared for
Religion Online by Ted & Winnie Brock.
Chapter 1: Globalization Threatens

Humanism, by V. R. Krishna Iyer
Justice Iyer is a former

Judge of the Supreme
Court of India
What man is there of

you, whom if his son
ask bread, will he give
him a stone? This great
biblical interrogation
of history postulates
basic compassion in
humanity sans which
the world is but an
animal farm, our
common cultural
heritage a misnomer
and the Universal
Declaration of Human
Rights nothing but
sententious claptrap.

Today, more than at

any time in the
millennia gone by,
mankind is in the
ghastly grip of soulless
forces, moneyocracies
incorporated and
cannibalistic
philosophies which
validate satanic values
and apotheosize social
anathemas like
violence, vulgarity and
intoxicated hedonism.
Fair is foul and foul is
fair is the paradox of
our decade and the
crisis of culture and
character, with no
happy denouement in
sight, may well
escalate to end in a
collapse and chaos
unless we act globally
and locally to save
homo sapiens from
going back to
barbarity. Science, not
being a spiritually
guided missile, may
not rescue us; nay, on
the gleaming wings of
gory science, mankind
may indulge in
Operation Massacre,
dig its own grave and
bomb itself out - a
quantum jump from
Hiroshima to
Globoshima. Beware!
The finer values are
withering away; the
vision of a universal

human family is
vanishing; and
Eccelsiastes which tells
us: the Lord is full of
compassion and
mercy... and forgive
the sins and saveth in
time of affliction is
now anathema to those
who wield power,
accumulate wealth and
crave after sensual
pleasures. The
governing passion is to
join the glitterati and
live a five-star life. The
story of Cain is
irrelevant to countries
whose great leaders go
to Church and kneel
before Christ without
missing any Sunday. Is
there anyone who
remembers, among
church-going profiteers
and racketeers,
insatiable sexists,
alcoholics, torturers,
and myriad murderers
of human rights - any
of the exploiting
respectables who
remembers the story of
Cain and Abel and the
piteous words: The
voice of thy brothers
blood crieth unto me
from the ground. These
sophisters and
calculators and
billionaires ask of the
Lord: am I my brothers

keeper? They believe,

as in Bernard Shaw’s
words in Major
Barbara: ‘I am a
Millionaire. That is my
religion’. Indeed the
World Wars were
fought with such
shockingly genocidal,
and horrendously
homicidal terror that
nations, vanquished
and victors, resolved to
set up by a noble
charter for the United
Nations, followed by
the triple instruments
constituting the Magna
Carta of Mankind.
Human rights, in
widest commonalty
spread, gained the
highest status accorded
by U.N. authority. A
new World Human
Order, after all the
blood and tears of war,
was dawning, with
colonies liberated,
technology trained and
tamed to make the
pursuit of happiness a
universally accessible
opportunity and
tranquil environs, with
peace and security, a
blessing for
development and
crimson unfoldment of
total personality. These
great expectations
hardly materialized and
the cold war between

the Soviet bloc and the

Western nations, under
American hegemony,
made Asia, Cuba,
Latin America and
Africa tragic theatres
of blood, sweat, toil
and tears. Expectation
darkened into anxiety,
anxiety into dread and
dread into despair. One
shudders at the trauma
inflicted on Vietnam,
Korea and Pol Pot’s
Cambodia. The tribal
massacres and mass
starvation in Africa
bring to mind vast
scenes of brutality and
inhuman privation
which, even in the
most devastating past,
no kindly eye had seen,
no compassionate heart
conceived, no pathetic
tongue could
adequately tell. The
danse macabre in the
Middle East, the Israel-
Palestinian conflict, the
torrent of diabolic
weapons showered by
the U. S. for the use of
Afghan rebels who
first hung noble
President Najibullah on
a street pole and then
indulged in mutual
massacre flooding with
blood the snow-white
mountains (the sombre
slaughter, even amidst

natural calamities, is
still unabated) and
other holocausts baffle
description. And then
come the Iraq
imbroglio where
America assumed the
terrible role of waging
on millions of Iraqi
humans for the sin of
President Saddam
having occupied tiny
Kuwait (whose oil
resources and a
foothold in that region
were reportedly the
real motivation behind
the malignant invasion
of Iraq). President
Bush, according to
former U.S. Attorney
General Ramsay
Clarke, was a war
criminal. All we know
is that the skies over
Iraq were rent with the
agonizing cries of
women and children,
denied food and
medicine by a U.N.
alias U.S. embargo.
The travail continues
and the threat of a
ghastly butchery is
looming, with a
stunned world
helplessly watching the
advancing doom.
Murders most foul, on
a massive scale, in the
name of the United
Nations makes a
mockery of human

rights and a trickery of

the Universal
Declaration. This -
under the specious
sanction of the
Security Council - is
‘the most unkindest cut
of all’. Each day’s
issue of the media
makes us tremble
about the right to life,
to survive, of our
brothers and sisters and
children in many
countries where
mutilation, massacre,
torturesome mayhem
frustrate fellowship
and crucify our faith in
the human future. The
human race is racing
towards the peril of
annihilation. ‘The time
is out of joint’. ‘To be,
or not to be: that is the
question’. The poser to
every sensitive
member of the race is,
in Shakespearean
diction, “whether it is
nobler in the mind to
suffer the slings and
arrows of outrageous
fortune, or to take arms
against a sea of
troubles, and by
opposing end them?”.
Humanity is at the
mercy of the imperial
majesty of Big Powers
and of the only Super
Power. No! If all

mankind catalyze
world opinion in
support of human
dignity and the worth
of personhood,
together with all the
wealth of rights and
values already part of
U.N. instruments and
international
jurisprudence, there is
hope. The pity is that
Corporate Power and
State terror, the world
over, buy with base
bribes. Quislings and
fifth columnists who
betray human rights.
T.S. Eliot versifies
such people: ‘We are
the hollow men, we are
the stuffed men leaning
together Headpiece
filled with straw’.
Alas: In Pakistan,
internecine killings
have been colossal.
Even India, ignoring
Gandhian vintage, has
scattered blood and
fury of violence. Quo
Vadis the World
Order? And lovely Sri
Lanka dies daily in
bleeding battalions!
These general
observations on the
universal dilemma is
not a wonder or
thunder of a day but a
simmering trend

slowly hotting up, with

lucent forces of life
and darker forces of
death clashing over the
decades. Materialism
challenges spiritual
values; but who wins?
Will Durant sums up
this battle of
Kurukshetra in a
Western perspective.
In his book The
Pleasures of
Philosophy, there is a
chapter titled: Is
Progress a Delusion?
He writes:
“Wealth came to
Western Europe with
the Renaissance and
the Industrial
Revolution; and as it
multiplied, it displaced
the hope of heaven
with the lure of
progress.
“Europe’s, nouveau
riche, imported
luxuries and exported
ascetics and saints.
Trade made cities,
cities made
universities,
universities made
science, science made
industry, and industry
made progress.
“Obviously, the
conception of progress

is for industrial and

secular civilization
what the hope of
heaven was for
medieval Christendom.
The dearest dogmas of
the modern mind, the
crura cerebri of all our
social philosophy, are
the beliefs in progress
and democracy. If both
of these ideas must be
abandoned we shall be
left intellectually naked
and ridiculous beyond
any generation in
history”.
Durant proceeds to
present the other side
of the case:
“Disraeli was one of

the first to sense the
difference between
physical and moral
progress, between
increase in power and
improvement in
purposes. “The
European talks of
progress because by
the aid of a few
scientific discoveries
he has established a
society which has
mistaken comfort for
civilization”.
“Enlightened Europe is
not happy. Its existence
is a fewer which it
calls progress. Progress

to what?” Ruskin, a
rich man, questioned
the identity of progress
and wealth: were these
wealthy shopkeepers
and shippers better
specimens of humanity
than the Englishmen of
Johnson’s or
Shakespeare’s or
Chaucer’s days?
“Even the increase of

knowledge may be part
cause of the pessimism
of our time. He that
increaseth knowledge
increaseth sorrow, says
Ecclesiastes. And his
modern avatar
confirms him: “In all
the World”, says
Anatole France (if we
may believe
secretaries), the
unhappiest creature is
man. It is said, “Man is
the lord of creation”.
Man is the lord of
suffering, my friend.
“Then the Great

Madness came, and
men discovered how
precariously thin their
coat of civilization
was, how insecure their
security, and how frail
their freedom. War had
decreased in
frequency, and had
increased in extent.

Science, which was to

be the midwife of
progress, became the
angel of death, killing
with a precision and a
rapidity that reduced
the battles of the
Middle Ages to the
level of college
athletics. Brave
aviators dropped
bombs upon women
and children, and
learned chemists
explained the virtues of
poison gas. All the
international amity
built up by a century of
translated literatures,
cooperating scientists,
commercial
relationships, and
financial
interdependence,
melted away, and
Europe fell apart into a
hundred hostile
nationalities. When it
was all over it
appeared that the
victors as well as the
fallen had lost the
things for which they
had fought; that a
greedy imperialism had
merely passed from
Potsdam to Paris; that
violent dictatorships
were replacing orderly
and constitutional rule;
that democracy was
spreading and dead.
Hope faded away; the

generation that had

lived through the war
could no longer believe
in anything; a wave of
apathy and cynicism
engulfed all but the
least or the most
experienced soul. The
idea of progress
seemed now to be one
of the shallowest
delusions that had ever
mocked man’s misery,
or lifted him up to a
vain idealism and a
colossal futility”.
Durant dolefully
philosophizes about the
mortality of nations,
the obituary of
cultures, the fatality of
history and the
decadence of time, past
and present. Industry
produced wealth but
where wealth
accumulates men
decay. Durant laments:
“The family has been
the ultimate foundation
of every civilization
known to history. It
was the economic and
productive unit of
society, tilling the land
together; it was the
political unit of
society, with parental
authority as the
supporting microcosm
of the state; it was the

cultural unit,
transmitting letters and
arts, rearing and
teaching the young;
and it was the moral
unit, inculcating
through cooperative
work and discipline
those social
dispositions which are
the psychological basis
and cement of civilized
society”.
“But today the state

grows stronger and
stronger, while the
family undergoes a
precarious
transformation from
homes to houses and
from children to dogs.
Men and women still
mate, and occasionally
have offspring; but the
mating is not always
marriage, the marriage
is not always
parentage, and the
parentage is not often
education. Free love
and divorce abbreviate
marriage”.
“And as wealth
increases, luxury
threatens the physical
less and less in the
work of their hands,
more and more in the
titillation of their flesh;
the pleasure of

amusement replaces
the happiness of
creation. Virility
decays, sexes multiply,
neuroses flourish,
psychoanalysts breed.
Character sags, and
when crisis comes,
who knows but the
nation may fail?”
The West has been

rebarbarized, says Will
Durant. How can
human rights and the
world order be safe
with such Powers?
Ruefully, the
philosopher tells us the
truth about his country
of Stars and Stripes:
“An ever decreasing

proportion of business
executives (and among
them an ever
decreasing number of
bankers and directors
control the lives and
labours of an ever
increasing proportion
of men. A new
aristocracy is forming
out of the once
rebellious bourgeoisie;
equality and liberty
and brotherhood are no
longer the darlings of
the financiers.
Economic freedom,
even in the middle
classes, becomes rarer

and narrower every

year. In a world from
which freedom of
competition, equality
of opportunity, and
social fraternity begin
to disappear, political
equality is illusory, and
democracy becomes a
dream.
“All this has come

about not (as we
thought in hot youth)
through the perversity
of men, but through the
impersonal fatality of
economic
development.
“Equality is only a
transition between two
hierarchies, just as
liberty is only a
passage between two
disciplines”. See how
the original equality in
colonial America has
been overgrown and
overwhelmed by a
thousand forms of
economic and political
differentiation, so that
today the gap between
the most fortunate and
the least fortunate in
America is greater than
at any time since the
days of plutocratic
Rome. Of what use can
equality be if political
decisions must obey

the majority of dollars

rather than the majority
of men
I have been divagating

into Will Durant, not
irrelevantly but mainly
to go to the roots of our
moral bankruptcy in
defending human
rights and averting the
gradual decay of
democracy. Now the
relevance of Jesus to
the issue of human
rights, often missed as
Christian religion, is
touched upon by
Durant quite
interestingly:
“From before the days

of Solomon the
position of Jerusalem
of the cross-roads of
the great trading routes
that connected
Phoenicia with the
Persian Gulf, and the
Mediterranean nations
with Assyria,
Babylonia and Persia,
had led to the
development of
mercantile
establishments and
pursuits among the
Jews, and had widened
the gap between the
rich and the poor. The
Jews who returned
from Babylon were

destitute. The
conquering Greeks and
Romans made barbaric
slave-raids upon this
helpless population,
taking young men by
the thousands. In the
boyhood of Jesus
whole towns near
Nazareth were sold
into slavery by the
Romans. Everywhere
in the larger ports of
the Mediterranean a
propertyless class was
growing and a
religious outlook was
forming among them
that was hostile and
contrary to that of their
maters. The rich,
though privately
agnostic, supported the
old orthodox ritual and
faith; the poor
developed a moral
code that made virtues
of their weakness,
misfortune and
poverty, and a theology
that culminated in a
heaven for Lazarus the
pauper and a hell for
Dives, the millionaire.
Hence Nietzsche’s
denunciation of
Christianity as the
victory of a poorer
over a more masterful
type of man. The
proletarian world was
ready for a religion that
would take the side of

the underdog, preach

the virtues of the meek
and humble of heart,
and offer the hope of a
heaven in which all the
slings and arrows of a
prejudiced fortune
would receive
compensation in
eternal happiness. The
greatest tactical
problem of modern
Christianity is to
reconcile its
dependence upon the
rich with its natural
devotion to the poor”.
The essence of Jesus is

the daring moral
imperative, the
universal goodness of
human members, the
spiritually catalyzed
proletarianism which
spread to the West,
civilizing humanity
and liberating the
slave, man and woman.
Says Durant: “I never
got over my wonder
that out of the ape and
the jungle should have
come at last a man able
to conceive all
humanity as one, able
to love it, and suffer
for it, without stint”.
‘Thou shalt love thy
neighbour as thyself’ is
the well-spring of
human rights. ‘The

kingdom of God is
within you is a sublime
statement of the
divinity of every
human being and is
manifest in material
terms as the dignity of
every person. I must
stress, as I sum up, that
your very appellation,
Christian Conference
of Asia, obligates you
to battle for the values
of human rights, global
and Asian, for which
Jesus, the first
spiritually non-violent
but irrepressibly
militant campaigner
and founder gave his
life. The Cross and the
passion of Christ
impart inspiration to
millennia of
generations to hold
aloft the banner of
human rights, be the
enemy insidious,
imperialist,
intimidatorily armed or
asuric avatar talking
double-speak and
robbing the neighbour
subtly or savagely.
This Consultation must
have no hesitation in
taking this fundamental
stand that humanity is
not mere marketable
commodity, that
divinity and dignity of
every person is non-
negotiable, that human

rights covered by both

the Covenants are
indivisibly integral,
that vulnerable sections
of people deserve more
protective concern
from States and the
international
community and a
holistic vision and
paramount
consideration are the
locomotive of the
collective human rights
process.
At this point, we must

begin a survey of the
ground realities and
socio-economic
generalities of peoples’
lives worldwide,
especially in Asia.
Feudal times witnessed
sharp cleavages in
society, with slaves
and serfs and sweating
toilers of lands. This
system was overthrown
by the industrial
revolution which, in its
ruthless hunt for
money and machine,
dehumanized people
into robots and
automations and
created filthy slums,
destroying the pastoral
poetry of the
countryside and
substituting, in pitiless
ubiquity, grimy,

heartless stys for sub-

human habitation. Karl
Marx, and others with
a heart, felt the need
for a revolutionary
humanization of the
system as inevitable
and morally mandatory
for the dignity and
decency of the human
person. Colonies,
competitive capitalist
occupations,
imperialist wars and
chaos in the cosmos
were the sequels,
leading to military
clashes and blood and
iron regimes. Two
world wars shell-
shocked world
conscience and the
global map was
marred, mangled and
manipulated into a
‘white’ supremacy.
History never stands
still; and so, the
American, French and
Russian revolutions
with different tints and
types of terrorism
overtook mankind. The
League of Nations,
with President
Wilson’s 14 points,
failed; and global
blood in ceaseless
flood and genocidal
gore inflicting millions
of human casualties
awakened the peoples
of the earth to the

urgency of the United

Nations as a global
guardian and sentinel
on the qui vive of
peace and security and
respect for human
dignity, worth of the
human person and
inalienable human
rights. But we are
transient dreamers of
dissolving dreams and
like billows bursting
on sandy beaches
getting soon absorbed,
these rosy hopes were
becoming vanishing
cream.
Society, in a new
synthesis of humanism,
is a long way off.
Contradictions, in
terrible contrasts, keep
the humble masses in
inhuman subjection.
Do read about the
English Industrial
Revolution and pseudo-
prosperity. Dickens, in
The Tale of Two Cities,
put it pitilessly:
“It was the best

of times, it was
the worst of
times, it was the
age of wisdom,
it was the age of
foolishness, it
was the epoch
of belief, it was

the epoch of
incredulity, it
was the season
of Light, it was
the season of
Darkness, it
was the spring
of hope, it was
the winter of
despair, we had
everything
before us, we
had nothing
before us, we
were all going
direct to
Heaven, we
were all going
direct to other
way”.
That Industrial
affluence and
indigence inflicted
tearful privations and
intoxicating prosperity
was not an isolated
phenomenon but was a
universal pathology
where masses of
humans underwent
harrowing
excruciations among
surfeit of plenty,
Steinbeck, in The
Grapes of Wrath, is
poignant reading:
“The fields
were fruitful,
and starving

men moved on
the roads. The
granaries were
full and the
children of the
poor grew up
rachitic, and the
pustules of
pellagra swelled
on their side.
The great
companies did
not know that
the line between
hunger and
anger is a thin
line”.
The dialectical
materialist and
sensitive spiritualist
will rebel against this
bitter scenario so as to
midwife, through the
pangs of birth, a new,
just social order. The
insufferable extremes
did not end with the
inauguration of
decolonization and
technological
abundance. Diversion
of wealth for discovery
of instruments of mass
massacres, rather than
for universal
happiness, was the
distortion caused by
the Cold War. And the
world of hope rose
when bipolar global
terror dissolved and

science could shower

distributive justice and
drive out from the
earth poverty and
deprivation. Many
benign U.N.
instruments and
Summit Meets
promised a better deal,
for the least developed
hopes proved dupes
and human rights faced
their Waterloo, the
greed of the Corporate
Gargantuas denying
the needs of the
hungry, hapless tenants
of the earth under an
extortionate system.
Dr. Rajni Kothari
describes the human
condition under the
triune boons of the
Bretton Woods
institutions
tantalizingly patented
and painted as
Privatization,
Liberalization and
Globalization. He
begins with the
traumatic contradiction
of our times.
“We live in an
era of curious
stupefying
paradoxes.
Literacy
percentages are
going up but so
are the total

number of
illiterates.
Foodstocks are
continuously
piling up but so
are the number
of people
without access
to adequate
food, those
suffering from
hunger and
starvation,
while in the
meanwhile
there has taken
place a major
decline in the
quality of food
available to the
people, thanks
to the excessive
use of
pesticides and
chemical
fertilizers, more
so in the poorer
countries as the
more hazardous
pesticides are
banned in the
rich countries
and both
exported to and
dumped in the
poor countries.
The number of
people below
the poverty line,
measured in
terms of
minimum
necessary

nutritional
standards, is
said to be going
down and yet
malnutrition as
well as severe
physical
debilities and
destitution are
on the increase,
especially these
affecting
women and
children, the
simple physical
capacity of the
youngest
generation to
withstand the
strains of living
becoming ever
more unstable
and fragile.”
Speaking of India (this

applies to others too),
poverty alleviation
programmes are
abounding in print and
are propagandized
hypocritically by every
Party in State Power,
the Left not excepted,
and the United Front is
truly guilty as it
loyally, but ironically,
follows as ‘irreversible
progress’ the I.M.F.
commandments.
‘Reaganomics’,
‘Manmohanomics’ and
‘Chidambaromics’ are

contra-constitutional
but none calls the New
Economic Policy a
placebo, not panacea.
It is the comatose
opium of the huge have-
nots and the glow of
life of the top glitterati.
Privatization,
Liberalization and
Globalization are but
Orwellian newspeak
and this pro-MNC
world order is forced
by the North on the
South although, given
the will, we have the
capacity to build an
alternative Human
Order where
sustainable
development and
distributive justice will
give a new meaning to
the right to life in
dignity. That is the
Resurrection of Jesus?
Marketology, the
insatiable appetite of
gargantuan MNCs, has
no soul to be damned
but, driven by
Mammon, is
commoditizing
humans, thereby
annihilating
democratic
accountability and
social justice and State
undertaking to
implement basic
human rights. ‘And
yet’, says Dr. Kothari,

“people are on the rise

everywhere. There is a
great upsurge of
political consciousness
and with this the
strategies and sites of
struggle for democracy
and human rights are
fast shifting from
advocacy to real
action, from human
rights activism to the
engagement of people
themselves in a wide
range of specific
struggles against the
stranglehold of
hegemonies and
hierarchies, both
traditional and
modern.”
Mr. Justice Ismail

Mahomed, in his
convocation address at
the National Law
School of India
University, Bangalore,
said, “The fuel which
drove the great Indian
struggle for
independence, which
defines the very special
nature of Indian
civilization, which
gave expression to the
peerless magic of
Gandhi and which was
intended to propel the
constitutional chariot,
was and must be
spiritual. Central to the

ethos of this old

civilization is the
primacy of the spirit
within man and his
social regeneration and
spiritual self-
realization through
service to and love for
his fellowmen. The
finest hours in the
history of this noble
country were
experienced when the
spiritual fuel generated
by that ethos was
internalized within the
hearts and minds of its
people. There is a
continuing relationship
between any decline in
the quality of that fuel
and the intermittent
periods of decline and
degeneration in the
history of this country.
“It is precisely the

quality of this fuel
which has in recent
times insidiously been
invaded by a virus
which has
contaminated its
quality and
effectiveness. The
symptoms generated
by this contamination
are manifold. The
culture of consumerism
and the chase for
material symbols of
wealth and security

have sometimes come

to be dominant; the
pursuit of spiritual
fulfillment in many has
slowly begun to
degenerate into empty
and sterile ritualism;
the legitimate thirst for
education has often
become perverted into
an obsessive drive to
acquire with the
greatest speed the
formal diplomas
necessary to gain entry
to jobs offering the
easiest opportunities to
make the quickest
rupees; political
statesmanship in some
areas has begun to
depreciate into an
opportunities race for
power and position; the
spirit of SEVA
(Service) to the nation
has intermittently
begun to be suffocated
in many, by the abuse
of discretions,
sometimes mediated by
a bloated bureaucracy
itself enmeshed in a
vast network of
multiplying paper and
self-proliferating
regulations;
menacingly many good
and decent people even
in public life, have
come to be corroded by
a culture of demanding
corruption; and some

potentially creative
lawyers, have begun to
take perverted pride in
mere “cleverness”,
rendering themselves
vulnerable to the
prejudice that they are
a parasitic obstruction
in the pursuit of
substantive justice. We
have begun to
understand what
Gandhi really meant
when he described
modern civilization as
a “disease”.
We cannot talk of
human rights and
globalization as some
omnipotence in the sky
or golden colours at
dawn. Not abstractions
but actualizations are
our focus. The right to
life, the foremost of
human rights, is more
than mere breath or
tactile sense of touch.
Field J., in Murm vs.
Illinois (94 U.S. 113),
observed “... By the
term ‘life’ something
more is meant than
mere animal existence.
The inhibition against
its deprivation extends
to all those limbs and
faculties by which life
is enjoyed. The
provision equally
prohibits the mutilation

of the body by the

amputation of an arm
or leg, or the cutting
out of an eye, or the
destruction of any
other organ of the body
through which the soul
communicates with the
outer world. The
deprivation not only of
life, but of whatever
God has given to
everyone with life, for
its growth and
enjoyment, is
prohibited by the
provision in question,
if its efficacy be not
frittered away by
judicial decision”. The
Supreme Court of
India has adopted this
definition.
In Francis Coralic
Mullin (1981 S. C.
746), Bhagwati J.
observed: “The
fundamental right to
life ... is the most
precious human right
and ... forms the arc of
all other rights”. The
learned Judge added:
“... The question which
arises is whether the
right to life is limited
only to protection of
limb or faculty, or does
it go further and
embrace something
more. We think that

the right to life

includes the right to
live with human
dignity and all that
goes along with it,
namely, the bare
necessaries of life such
as adequate nutrition,
clothing and shelter
over the head and
facilities for reading,
writing and expressing
oneself in diverse
forms, freely moving
about and mixing and
co-mingling with
fellow human beings”.
The finer graces of

civilization which
make life meaningful
must be defended by
the New World Human
Order. A few more
judicial dicta are apt to
grasp the noble
amplitude of the
human right to life.
Pathak, C.J., stated as

below in this regard in
paragraph 5 of Vikram
Deo Singh vs. State of
Bihar, (AIR 1988 S.C.
1782):
“We live in an age

when this Court has
demonstrated, while
interpreting Article 21
of the Constitution,
that every person is

entitled to a quality of
life consistent with his
human personality.
The right to live with
human dignity is the
fundamental right of
every Indian citizen,
and so ... the State
recognizes the need for
maintaining
establishments for the
care of those
unfortunates, both
women and children,
who are the castaways
of an imperfect social
order for whom,
therefore, of necessity,
provision must be
made for their
protection and
welfare”.
Sabyasachi Mukherjee,
J. as he then was,
expressed himself thus
in Ramsharan vs.
Union of India, (AIR
1989 S.C. 549,
paragraph 13): “It is
true that life in its
expanded horizons
today includes all that
give meaning to a
man’s life including
his tradition, culture
and heritage, and
protection of that
heritage in its full
measure would
certainly come within
the encompass of an

expanded concept of
Article 21 of the
Constitution”.
The importance of life

and liberty was
recognized in the
following words by
Pathak, C.J., in
paragraph 7 of Kehar
Singh vs. Union of
India, (AIR 1989 S.C.
6531):
“To any civilized

society, there can be no
attributes more
important than the life
and personal liberty of
its members. That is
evident from the
paramount position
given by the courts to
Art. 21 of the
Constitution. These
twin attributes enjoy a
fundamental
ascendancy over all
other attributes of the
political and social
order, and
consequently, the
Legislature, the
Executive and the
Judiciary are more
sensitive to them than
to the other attributes
of daily existence”.
Kuldip Singh J. in
Mohini Jain (1992 (3)
S.C.C. 666) added a

new dimension: “Right

to life is the
compendious
expression for all those
rights which the courts
must enforce because
they are basic to the
dignified enjoyment of
life. It extends to the
full range of conduct
which the individual is
free to pursue. The
right to education
flows directly from the
right to life. The right
to life under Article 21
and the dignity of an
individual cannot be
assured unless it is
accompanied by the
right to education . . .
“Basic needs of man

have traditionally been
accepted to be three -
food, clothing, and
shelter. The right to
life is guaranteed in
any civilized society.
That would take within
its sweep the right to
food, the right to
clothing, the right to
decent environment
and a reasonable
accommodation to live
in. The difference
between the need of an
animal and a human
being for shelter has to
be kept in view. For
the animal it is the bare

protection of the body;

for a human being it
has to be a suitable
accommodation which
would allow him to
grow in every aspect -
physical, mental and
intellectual.
Article 25 (1) of the

Universal Declaration
of Human Rights,
1948, specifically
recognizes “housing”
as one of the rights
relating to living.
Article 11.1 of the
International Covenant
on Economic, Social
and Cultural Rights,
1966, also recognizes
“housing” as a part of
the right to adequate
standard of living.
Reference has been
made to these
documents because
they do provide some
guide to understand the
width of our
fundamental rights.
Shakespeare, in The
Merchant of Venice,
says what is sound
jurisprudence of
human rights. ‘You
take my life when you
take the means
whereby I live’.
“Social and economic

rights, in short, are as

vital as political and
civil rights. Indeed,
basic human rights are
integral and “we
murder to dissect”. The
Third World,
wallowing in want and
victimized by
exploitation, may even
regard economic
survival as too
important to be
neglected. There is a
point of confluence
where materialism, as
primary human needs
and elimination of
suffering, meets
spirituality as mate”
One of the major

thrusts of this Asian
Consultation organised
by the CCA is the
arsenal of measures by
which the menace of
capitalist appetites of
giant corporations and
their global operations
may be stemmed so as
to secure for all
persons a fair share of
the work, wealth and
happiness as a sine qua
non of a just world
system.
Human rights holism

must be read in the
light of environmental
and ecological justice

because man can

survive only under
appropriate
environment and
ecological milieu
whereunder sustainable
development and
growth with justice
may be possible. In
this context, apart from
the numerous UN
instruments, we may
have to recall the
Summit assemblages
where the world’s
visionary statesmen,
sensitive scientists and
committed NGOs have
met to advance the
cause of social justice
in its many
dimensions. Among
the most important
concerns for which
considerable effort is
necessary bears upon
the twin values of
environment and
development. The
Stockholm Conference
of 1972 stressed the
paramount importance
of environmental
conservation. Indeed,
India has made various
enactments like the
Water Act, Air Act,
Environment
Protection Act,
Environment Tribunal
Act, etc. Mere laws,
without being
monitored in

performance, may
prove a flop and so, the
United Nations
Conference on the
Environment and
Development was held,
followed by the Rio
Declaration which is of
paramount importance
as it sets out the
famous Agenda 21 (3-
14 June 1992,
UNCED). The Rio
Summit sought to build
upon the past with the
goal of establishing a
new and equitable
global partnership
through the creation of
new levels of
cooperation among
states, key sectors of
societies and people,
working towards
international
agreements which
respect the interests of
all and protect the
integrity of the global
environmental and
developmental system,
recognizing the
integral and
interdependent nature
of the Earth, our home,
some excerpts will
help.
Pregnant with meaning

is Principle 1, which is
as follows:

“Human beings are at

the centre of concerns
for sustainable
development. They are
entitled to a healthy
and productive life in
harmony with nature”.
Principles 3 and 4 run

thus:
“The right to
development must be
fulfilled so as to
equitably meet
developmental and
environmental needs of
present and future
generations.
“In order to achieve

sustainable
development,
environmental
protection shall
constitute an integral
part of the
development process
and cannot be
considered in isolation
from it”.
What is often missing

with tragic impact is
the principle set out as
Principle 8: “To
achieve sustainable
development and a
higher quality of life
for all people, states
should reduce and
eliminate unsustainable

patterns of production
and consumption and
promote appropriate
demographic policies
Principle 16, so
necessary for
immediate application,
reads: “National
authorities should
endeavor to promote
the internalization of
environmental costs
and the use of
economic instruments,
taking into account the
approach that the
polluter should, in
principle, bear the cost
of pollution, with due
regard to the public
interest and without
distorting international
trade and investment”.
What we must bear in

mind, (but alas! it is
mindlessly violated by
Governments and
MNCs) is that peace,
development and
environmental
protection are
interdependent and
indivisible and that
warfare is inherently
destructive of
sustainable
development.
The ideological
underpinnings of

universal human rights

jurisprudence can best
be gathered by
glimpses of
International
Conferences organized
under the auspices of
the United Nations. We
have already noticed
the Rio Declaration
which claims
environmental
paramountcy if the
human race is to
survive. There is no
Noah’s Ark for the
nouveau riche if air
and water, land and
environment are fatally
polluted. The World
Conference on Human
Rights, culminating in
the Vienna Declaration
and Programme of
Action (1993),
expresses deep concern
about discrimination
and violence to which
women are exposed.
The Conference
invokes: “the spirit of
our age and the
realities of our time
which call upon the
peoples of the world
and all states Members
of the United Nations
to rededicate
themselves to the
global task of
promoting and
protecting all human
rights and fundamental

freedoms so as to
secure full and
universal enjoyment of
these rights”, and
adopts a positive
Declaration and
affirmation of
commitment. In
particular, there is a
mention on terrorism
and drug trafficking.
It says: “The full and

equal participation of
women in political,
civil, economic, social
and cultural life, at the
national, regional and
international levels,
and the eradication of
all forms of
discrimination on
grounds of sex are
priority objectives of
the international
community”.
“The World
Conference on Human
Rights urges
Governments,
institutions,
intergovernmental and
non-governmental
organizations to
intensify their efforts
for the protection and
promotion of human
rights of women and
the girl-child”.
The Declaration

emphasizes the unique

contribution and
inherent dignity of
indigenous people and
their right to
development and
plurality of society.
The Programme of
Action is
comprehensive and
seeks to build and
strengthen “adequate
national structures
which have a direct
impact on the overall
observance of human
rights and the
maintenance of the rule
of law. Such a
programme, to be
coordinated by the
Centre for Human
Rights, should be able
to provide, upon the
request of the
interested government,
technical and financial
assistance to national
projects in reforming
penal and correctional
establishments,
education and training
of lawyers, judges and
security forces in
human rights, and any
other sphere of activity
relevant to the good
functioning of the rule
of law. That
programme should
make available to
States assistance for
the implementation of

plans of action for

human rights
promotion and
protection”.
The implementation
and monitoring of
human rights
enforcement going
beyond mere
legislations but
insisting on the
creation of national
structures, institutions
and organs of society
which play a given role
is stressed. Special
attention to assist the
progress towards the
goal of universal
ratification of
international human
rights treaties and
protocols is also
stressed. But a cynic
may wonder whether
even the major
Covenants and
Instruments have been
ratified by the Big
Powers, including the
US.
The Summit for Social

Development at
Copenhagen (1955)
began with the
following Declaration:
“1. For the first

time in history,
at the invitation

of the United
Nations, we
gather as Heads
of State and
Government to
recognize the
significance of
social
development
and human well-
being for all to
give to these
goals the
highest priority
both now and
into the twenty-
first century.
2. We
acknowledge
that the people
of the world
have shown in
different ways
an urgent need
to address
profound social
problems,
especially
poverty,
unemployment
and social
exclusion, that
affect every
country. It is
our task to
address both
their underlying
and structural
causes and their
distressing
consequences in

order to reduce
uncertainty and
insecurity in the
life of the
people.
3. We
acknowledge
that our
societies must
respond more
effectively to
the material and
spiritual needs
of individuals,
their families
and the
communities in
which they live
throughout our
diverse
countries and
regions. We
must do so as a
matter of
urgency, but
also as a matter
of sustained and
unshakable
commitment
through the
years ahead.
4. We are
convinced that
democracy and
transparent and
accountable
governance and
administration
in all sectors of
society are

indispensable
foundations for
the realization
of social and
people-centered
sustainable
development”.
There is a commitment
to the goal of
eradicating poverty in
the world through
international
cooperation “as an
ethical, social, political
and economic
imperative of
humankind”. Equality
and equity between
men and women
insisting in changes of
attitudes, laws and
practices are also
specificated. Several
such commitments
have been made and
followed by a
Programme of Action
which insists on an
enabling environment
for social development.
Eradication of poverty
is made an important
objective:
“18. Over 1
billion people
in the world
today live under
unacceptable
conditions of
poverty, mostly

in developing
countries, and
particularly in
rural areas of
low-income
Asia and the
Pacific, Africa,
Latin America
and the
Caribbean, and
the least
developed
countries.
“19. Poverty
has various
manifestations,
including lack
of income and
productive
resources
sufficient to
ensure
sustainable
livelihoods;
hunger and
malnutrition; ill-
health; limited
or lack of
access to
education and
other basic
services;
increased
morbidity and
mortality from
illness;
homelessness
and inadequate
housing; unsafe
environments;
and social

discrimination
and exclusion.
It is also
characterized
by a lack of
participation in
decision-
making and in
civil, social and
cultural life. It
occurs in all
countries: as
mass poverty in
many
developing
countries,
pockets of
poverty amid
wealth in
developed
countries, loss
of livelihoods
as a result of
economic
recession,
sudden poverty
as a result of
disaster or
conflict, the
poverty of low-
wage workers,
and the utter
destitution of
people who fall
outside family
support
systems, social
institutions and
safety nets.
Women bear a
disproportionate
burden of
poverty, and

children
growing up in
poverty are
often
permanently
disadvantaged.
Older people,
people with
disabilities,
indigenous
people, refugees
and internally
displaced
persons are also
particularly
vulnerable to
poverty.
Furthermore,
poverty in its
various forms
represents a
barrier to
communication
and access to
services, as well
as a major
health risk, and
people living in
poverty are
particularly
vulnerable to
the
consequences
of disasters and
conflicts.
Absolute
poverty is a
condition
characterized
by severe
deprivation of
basic human

needs, including
food, safe
drinking water,
sanitation
facilities,
health, shelter,
education and
information. It
depends not
only on income,
but also on
access to social
services”.
The Beijing
Declaration, issued by
the largest world
gathering of women,
made radical
recommendations
which, if enforced, will
transform the status of
the neglected gender.
Empowerment of
women and special
attention to the child,
abolishing practices
like female infanticide
and the misuse of
technologies to
determine fetal sex
were advocated.
Nevertheless they
continue.
There is a flood of
global human rights
literature which, if
enforced even in part,
may transform our
universe. Even a High
Commissioner like an

ombudsman of human
rights - a new
functionary - is
overseeing the
operational reality of
these undertakings. But
poverty is aggravating,
terrorism by States and
rebels who receive
weapons from sources
and countries where
private arms industries
flourish is hyper-
active, the molested
and downgraded
gender and bonded
labour see no relief in
sight and marginalized
Third World peoples
and the Fourth World
of utter destitution are
in despair, with a Fifth
World of refugees
emerging everywhere
with nowhere to go,
despite Refugee Laws
and the Red Cross.
Why? A riddle
wrapped in a mystery?
No. The ‘haves’ of the
earth and their limpets
grab and the larger,
rightless, wretched
human sector, the lost
and the last, are
liquidated. Had the
United Nations lost its
elan, become the alter
ego of the Super Power
and wasted its energy
spreading illusion and
making sound and
fury?

John F. Kennedy
promised: “We seek to
strengthen the United
Nations, to help solve
its financial problems,
to make it a more
effective instrument for
peace, to develop it
into a genuine world
security system ...
capable of resolving
disputes on the basis of
law, of insuring the
security of the large
and the small, and of
creating conditions
under which arms can
finally be abolished ...
This will require a new
effort to achieve world
law”.
The Universal
Declaration spreads out
into a full spectrum of
fundamental freedoms
each one of which is
indefeasible. Freedoms
of conscience, of
religion and of
institutions to
safeguard and advance
the right to language,
culture, self-
determination and
equal protection of the
laws are non-
negotiable. Chauvinist
nationalism should not
smother individual and
group rights, ethnic

identities and innocent

aspirational autonomy
without secessionist
syndromes.
The right to life has

other dimensions -
environmental,
ecological,
informational, anti-
discriminatory, and
democratically
pluralist. Around a
hundred UN
instruments have
expanded on these
issues. Basic principles
of judicial
independence,
outrageously violated
in some countries,
freedom of the legal
profession, sometimes
precarious and prone to
pressure and punitive
tactics, deserve
emphasis. Where the
Bench and the Bar
genuflect before
authoritarian forces the
realization of human
rights becomes a soap
bubble transcience or
promise of unreality.
Under the pretext of
Emergency or alleged
judicial activism or
political allergy, the
judiciary has been
made submissive.
Buying the judges by
holding out post-retiral

carrots or high salaries

or gubernatorial offices
are strategems for
plasticizing ‘robed
brethren’. Boneless
wonders on the Bench
are doubly dangerous
vis-à-vis human rights
enforcement.
Is World Law dead? Is

the vision of humanity
vanitas et vanitatem?
Who is the villain of
the piece? Jesus’ voice
and vision was global.
So too were those of
the Vedas and the
Buddha and the
Prophet of Islam. What
then is the new
syndrome of
globalization which
contradicts and kills
the earlier glory? In
Wordsworth’s lines:
“Whither is fled the
visionary gleam?”
“Where is it now, the
glory and the dream?”
Shall we also repeat his
other verse?
And much it grieved

my heart to think.
What man has made of

man.
With all the billions of

words m the General
Assembly and millions

of words in the UN
instruments and
massive conferences,
are we worse off than
when the Universal
Declaration of 1948
was unanimously
acclaimed? India, for
instance, wails over
pollution in the
Preamble to its
Environment
Protection legislation. I
quote from the
Introduction itself:
“The protection and

improvement of the
human environment is
a major issue which
affects the well-being
of people and
economic development
throughout the world;
it is the urgent desire
of the people of the
whole world and the
duty of all
Governments.
“The gravity attached

to the environmental
problem is evident
from the fact that in all
advanced countries,
scientists, economists,
policy-makers and
administrators have
given serious thought
to such problems. The
Department of
Environment is vibrant

with activities in many

such advanced
countries. The
developing, and even
under-developed
nations, urgently need
to address themselves
to this devastating
problem.
“As rightly observed in

the article Overlapping
International and
European Laws:
“Environmental
protection has become
a fertile source of laws,
international, European
and national, since the
U.N. sponsored the
Stockholm Conference
of 1972 and its
Declaration on, and
Action Programme for
the Human
Environment.
Numerous conventions
between States which
turn out to be
geographically
interdependent have
been hammered out, a
few before, but most
since, that date,
covering such matters
as the prevention of the
pollution of the seas in
general, or of particular
seas, or common
rivers, the reduction of
air pollution and
latterly the

safeguarding of flora
and fauna”.
And yet, Delhi, is one

of the most polluted
cities in the world. So
also Bombay. Tens of
thousands of industries
are recklessly noxious;
and yet colossal
pollutive enterprises
get government
clearance. Public
interest litigation has
led to closure of such
factories as well as
prevention of coastal
waters, injurious aqua-
culture and damage to
river beds.
Deforestation, ‘rape
and run’ aqua-culture,
robbery of bio-
diversity, ecological
devastation, and other
contaminations make
life unlivable and
development a huge
hoax. Courts are
criticized for judicial
activism for preventing
foul chemical
discharges and
automobiles, toxic
effusions and for
enforcing measures to
secure clean water, air
and soil. It looks
almost as if politicians
in power and
bureaucrats ready to
abet are on the side of

the corporate polluters.

Rarely is the law
invoked against big or
influential companies
which unconscionably
make profit ignoring
harm to life. Is the
Prologue to “America
Inc.,” Ralph Nader
says: “It is almost
axiomatic that
irresponsibility toward
public interests
becomes
institutionalized
whenever the making
of decisions is so
estranged from any
accountability for their
discernible
consequences ...
Unsafely designed
automobiles, pollution,
harmful food additives,
and other contaminants
embody a silent kind of
violence with
unpredictable
incidence per victim”.
Corporate predations
play havoc in US itself.
Modern corporations
are juggernauts with
mindless, immense
power. Calvin
Coolidge said long ago
what is pathologically
and macro-
dimensionally true
today: “The business
of America is
business”. Business
means corporate Big

Business. Woodrow
Wilson while
campaigning for the
Presidency, said: “The
masters of the
Government of the
United States are the
combined capitalists
and manufacturers of
the United States”.
(P.29, America Inc.)
The situation is far
more grave today.
Thus we get track of
the problem of who
controls governments -
corrupt corporate
power. Capitalist states
and private corporates
stoop to conquer
markets and liberal
access and incarnate as
global Frankinstein’s
monsters. “Food First”,
a best-seller by Lape
and Collins, exposes
the myth of the World
Bank, the IMF and the
big corporations as
saviors. Food self-
reliance is overturned
and World Hunger as
Big Business is
promoted by cartels
operating like
vampires.
The World Bank is not

simply a provider of
development loans but
cutely shapes the
economic policies of

various countries to
suit US interests. The
IMF goes a shade
better and dictates
policies. The Fund-
Bank duo, in short, is
the real power in many
Third World countries,
and India is no
exception. Our
sovereignty is our
alloy. Devaluation is
only the most dramatic
measure in the World
Bank’s programme
which is accompanied
by other physical and
financial policy
changes. The loans
often go increasingly
to the world’s
repressive regimes or
the world’s democratic
governments willing to
genuflect before the
US and the IMF.
Indeed, “Food First”
argues ably that the
World Bank and the
United States so
strategize their
maneuvers as to deny
the majority of the
assisted countries the
Human Right to
survive. The US
corporations and
military interests are
the first priority in aid
and loan projects. The
Bank and the IMF are
in no sense a
democratic or globally

representative
institution. It is
accountable to no one
except, perhaps, to the
US and everything
around it is virtually
secret. The model of
development forced
upon countries by the
Bank-Fund bosses is
against the poor and
dispossessed.
Wealth begins with

land and people and
land reforms should be
the cynosure of food
self-sufficiency but the
Bank-Fund duo
demand cut in
subsidies, liberalization
of land ownership and
undemocratic measures
without any socialist
tinge. They promote
needless fertilizer and
deleterious pesticide
imports and, on the
whole, human rights
are in peril in the
economic, social and
political spheres when
the Bank-Fund
dependencies
syndrome afflicts the
borrowing countries. It
is not as if the
American people are
aware of all these. All
this hunger struggle of
the poorer of the earth
is exploited by the

Bretton Woods
institutions under the
hegemony of the US.
The struggle is against
a system of Corporate
Power profiting from
hunger to
pharmaceuticals for
disease and other
forms of human wants.
Let us identify the
enemy before
organizing the battle
for rehabilitation of
human rights.
The new mantra or cult

of privatization,
liberalization and
globalization is
fabricated in the
headquarters of
Corporate Power so
that they may claim to
enslave world market.
They come, they see,
they seize and strangle
and their profits soar.
Let me take the

instance of India to
illustrate Operation
Recolonization
Limited, not because of
idolatory of geography
but because, if India,
itself a great country in
its own right with a
socialistic public sector
and intellectual culture
were to be dominated,
other countries,

including even the

Asian Tigers and
China, may face the
same doom tomorrow
or the day after.
Do you realize that

India’s cultural
heritage, natural
wealth, including bio-
diversity, and human
reservoir and what you
make of it, are a golden
treasury, intangible
may be, but invaluable
as legacy? India can
advance, not by
borrowings from
abroad nor through
foreign direct
investments - an
economic boloney
spread by the New
Economic Policy - and
never by worshipping
the Fund-Bank or other
Bretton Woods deities
or MNCs who stride
the world like colossi.
On the contrary, our
spiritual attainments,
scientific discoveries,
peaks of performance
in several spheres
alone can make Bharat
(India) Mahan (great).
In this marvelous
odyssey, Youth Power
must be the spearhead.
Our vision of hope in a

New World Human

Order will meet with

fulfillment only if we
overcome the awesome
and ugly prospect of
becoming a mere
market of the
economic North.
Today, the economic
South, including India,
is under threat of
recolonization through
GATH WTO and what
not.
Dr. V. Kurien, in an
Address in 1991, had
warned about this new
imperialism: “It would
mean that one-fourth
of the world’s
population would
occupy three-fourths of
its area while the
remaining three-
fourths of the World’s
people must make do
on but one-fourth of its
land. This basic fact, I
would argue, is the
reason we are poor.
And, should we not ask
the question: how
much of this land was
the historical home of
its present population,
and how much was
forcibly occupied?”.
He was critical of the

hegemony of the US
whose then leader
defined the New World

Order as “What we say

goes”. Dr. Kurien
added: “This does not
seem a very elegant or
inspiring vision of a
New World. In fact, it
is no vision at all. Not
when a significant
portion of humanity
lives on the brink of
famine. Not when
hundreds of millions
go to sleep hungry
every night. Not when
they sleep on a cold
pavement, or in a
crumbling shanty. Not
when the clothes they
wear are tattered and
torn. Not when their
children are unable to
receive even the
simplest forms of
medical care and a
basic education. We
need - all of us - to ask
whether our New
World Order excludes
this part of humanity”.
The diffidence and

even disdain that
Indians are induced to
have about their own
socio-economic status
is pathetic. American
scholar Prof. Noam
Chomsky rightly
complained in a recent
interview about the
damage that
liberalization does to

the poor. In his own

words, “India (has
always) had very
advanced agricultural
research projects,
programmes and so on.
But they are being
destroyed, bought up
by multinationals. The
Indian scientists are
very good. They now
get five times more
salaries working for
multinationals. This is
an agrarian country. It
needs agricultural
research. Take
pharmaceuticals. India
has had quite an
effective
pharmaceutical
industry. Drugs in
India were much
cheaper than in
Pakistan because India
used to produce itself.
Now it has got to stop.
Neo-liberalism means
you destroy the
pharmaceutical
industry”.
The piracy of our rich

and rare resources in
bio-diversity,
manipulation of
genome, patent for
living organs and
selling back at fancy
prices should put us all
to shame. Patentization
of the process,

produce, and living

organisms, is
facilitation of
predatory operation by
foreign corporate
power. Our neem,
tulasi and other herbal
abundance, even
basmati rice, will soon
cease to be ours unless
the young scientists
and mature nationalists
arrest this sly strategy.
Otherwise, conquest of
India by patent is a
clear possibility. You
may reflect over these
traumatic thoughts and
if you feel convinced,
dedicate yourself to the
defence of economic
swaraj!
There is enough here

for you to find a career
provided our pro tern
political leaders will
transform themselves
into statesmen,
encourage indigenous
research, inhibit
consumerist hi-tech,
and put your talent to
developmental projects
based on appropriate
technology, not
multinational gluttony.
Why write off the
Mahatma and bury
Nehru and fall in lethal
love with
Manmohanomics

which is surrender to
Reaganomics!
To sum up, we need

today a daring
generation of young
intellectuals
determined to bend
their energies to raise
Bharat to its high status
justified by the human
and material resources
it possesses.
For nearly half a

century the nation has
sworn by self-reliance
and transfer of
technology only where
necessary. Emphasis
has always been on
India’s socio-economic
interests, not on
surrender to foreign
pressure and laying
bare our economic
space for MNC
occupation, subverting
our Constitutional
values, cultural
heritage and march
towards a self-
confident future. You,
as young persons with
intellectual integrity,
conscientized
nationalism and
commitment to the
thousand million
humans making up
India’s demography,
must interrogate why a

“U-turn” in economic
policy now - export
promotion as against
import substitution,
reliance on xeno-philic
private sector instead
of dominance by the
public sector, open
sesame to the
international economy
and to foreign capital
rather than accent on
protected domestic
activities and
employment.
Even if international
links must be forged
for the Indian economy
to rise, we need
transparency in
dealings, glasnost in
Governmental policies
and public debate on
what affects the
people. Almighty
Corruption, often
foreign, has invaded
Development and
mayhemed human
rights. Great Prophets
of history and pre-
history, the sages and
saints of Asia and
elsewhere have put the
human being at the
centre-stage of
development. Our
commitments to human
rights, if it is beyond
verbomania, must be
the semi-centennial

celebration of the
Universal Declaration
as of Indian
Independence. Our
commitment must be
deep and steeped in the
Universal soul, not in
consumerist gluttony
and sexomania.
Youth power has a

great task before it and
that needs a united
movement regardless
of parties and regions
to drive home the
imperative that the first
and foremost goal is
not to manufacture
glittering cars and
other glamorous items,
but to give drinking
water, not Scotch
Whisky; to give food,
not Kentucky fried
chicken; to provide
basic needs, not fast
food addiction. The
desiderated depth of
commitment to your
brothers and sisters in
poverty and hunger is
best brought out by a
dialogue between
Tagore and the
Mahatma which I
reproduce here for
your edification:
“Once Gurudev
Rabindranath Tagore
asked Gandhi,

“Gandhi, are you so

unromantic? When in
the early dawn, the
morning sun rises, does
it not fill your heart
with joy to see its
reddish glow? When
the birds sing does not
your heart thrill with
its divine music? When
the rose opens its
petals and blooms in
the garden does its
sights not bring cheer
to your heart?”
The Mahatma replied,

“Gurudev, I am not so
dumb or insensitive as
not to be moved by the
beauty of the rose or
the morning rays of the
sun or the divine music
of the birds. But what
can I do? My one
desire, my one anxiety,
my one ambition is
when shall I see the red
tint of the rose on the
cheeks of hungry
naked millions of my
people? When shall I
hear the sweet and
melodious song of the
birds in place of their
agonizing sighs? When
will such music come
out of their soul and
when will that day
come when the light of
the morning sun will
illumine the heart of

the common man in

India? When will I see
its lustre and
brightness on his
face?”
Fifty years after, the

Indian human lot is
still harrowing. Deep
concern for humans
everywhere, not golf
courses and multi-
storeyed posh
apartments - that is the
sign of the Cross, the
Crescent and Dhamma.
A vibrant heart culture,

a profound feeling for
the forsaken and
famishing sector of
humanity is the first
step our educated
youth must take.
Corporate Powers the

world over are uniting
to maximize profits
and minimize human
rights. If we must win
the war against the
traumatic corporate
tornado, then we as the
Asian Community,
must unite and wage a
resistance movement
with conscience and
conviction, with the
masses of the largest
Continent being roused
for counter-attack.

The discourse on
human rights should
not allow itself to be
misappropriated by
ventriloquists of the
Establishment who are
opponents of
progressive forces
branding them as
terrorists when they
demand statehood and
power to the dalits, the
women, the indigenous
tribals. In the Indian
and like contexts (Shia
Vs Sunni or Ahamadia
or Bahai), caste and
communal violence are
violative of human
rights and cannot be
condoned. Any
creative theory of
people’s rights should
develop a
conceptualization of
multidimensional
liberation of human
beings from all forms
of repression,
including
excommunication (a la
Fr. Balasurya). The
struggle against
chauvinist Hindutva,
against hegemonic
attack on minority
sects in all religions
and a plea for an
integrated package of
total human
personhood, including
right to development
(not imposed but

chosen, not mega-size

involving mass
eviction, but human
mini-model) and
acceptance of self-
determination sans
extreme demand for
secession - these and
other conceptual
cousins must be woven
into the larger fabric of
progressive human
rights.
No to Privatization
‘red in tooth and claw’;
yes to Public Sector
without political
corruption; no to
Liberalization, with
market exploitation;
yes to Liberation from
exploitative coercion;
no to globalization as
domination of world
market with
deprivation of the
developmental
directive of ‘Small is
Beautiful’; yes to
Universalism in
sharing and caring for
the suffering humanity
and Good Samaritan
ethic - these should be
evolved and situated in
Third World conditions
and perspectives. The
elite boast of stability
as perpetuation of
status quo and
surrender to Big Power

pressure must be
rejected. No to
Mammonomics and
yes to Humanomics
with growth sans
monopoly, even of
intellectual rights, but
with distributive justice
enforceable by easy
access and inexpensive
facilities. GATT
treaties are GAPT
astrophic and
recolonizing in future,
unless we arrest the
Evil Corporate Empire
by united action.
Beware, if you are
human rights sensitive:
“After World War II, a

sense of global
Manifest Destiny came
to dominate United
States policies.
Between 1945 and the
late 1980s, the United
States militarily
intervened more than
200 times into the
internal, sovereign
affairs of well over 100
“third world”
countries, causing
directly or indirectly
the murders of 20-25
million human beings
and the maimings of at
least that many”.
If we wait longer, we
will behold global

economic occupation
through one-sided
treaties.
“Now as
through this
world I ramble,
I have seen lots
of funny men,
Some will rob
you with a six-
gun,
And some with
a fountain pen..
The last lurid

paragraph of my
address is of Gandhi
about India of 1927,
but India of 1997, so
far as Bihar, Orissa,
Madhya Pradesh rural
areas are concerned,
remain the same, and
so I quote and
conclude:
“Don’t be dazzled by
the splendour that
comes to you from the
West. Do not be
thrown off your feet by
this passing show”.
(M.K. Gandhi,
“Socialism of My
Conception”).
“I do not believe that

multiplication of wants
and machinery
contrived to supply

them is taking the

world a single step
nearer its goal... I
whole-heartedly detest
this mad desire to
destroy distance and
time, to increase
animal appetites and
go to the ends of the
earth in search of their
satisfaction. If modern
civilization stands for
all this, and I have
understood it to do so,
I call it Satanic”.
(Young India, March
17, 1927).
“Come with me to
Orissa, to Puri - a holy
place and a sanatorium,
where you will find
soldiers and the
Governor’s residence
during summer
months. Within ten
miles’ radius of Puri,
you will see skin and
bone. With this very
hand I have collected
soiled pies from them
tied tightly in their
rags, and their hands
were more paralyzed
than mine were at
Kolhapur. Talk to them
of modern progress.
Insult them by taking
the name of God
before them in vain”.
(M. K. Gandhi,
“Socialism of My

Conception”.)
“The poor sisters of

Orissa have no saris;
they are in rags. Yet
they have not lost all
sense of decency; but, I
assure you, we have.
We are naked in spite
of our clothing and
they are clothed in
spite of their
nakedness” (Ibid).
Most Third World

countries are variants
of Orissa in poverty,
tribal tribulations and
bonded women and
children. In human
rights terms, we must
hang together or will
be hanged separately.
The age of humanism

is approaching the
vanishing point. ‘That
of sophisters,
economists, and
calculators has
succeeded’. The glory
of a New Human Order
is gory with the blood
of over 20 million
casualties after 1946!
For human rights
future and culture, is
there hope or despair?
What once required

wars has now been
accomplished with

words. The nation-state

which emerged as the
central political and
economic construct in
the post-World War II
and post-colonial era
of the mid-twentieth
century, has become
irrelevant as an integral
unit. The locus of
economic decision-
making has been
transferred from
national governments
to transnational
corporations of the rich
nations of North
America, Europe and
Far East Asia, backed
by the authority of a
new World Trade
Organization (WTO).
Mammon, incarnating
as MNCs, must be
slain if common people
are to be safe in their
human rights. That is a
big task but must be
undertaken if the
World Order is to
become spiritually
conscientized and
materially equitable.
War must be abolished

if life is to be safe. The
UN has failed but
cannot be written off
since that is the only
cornucopia of farewell
to armies and welcome

to peace.
Treaties, with potential

for Big Powers and
Corporate Might a la
GATT and WTO, must
be restructured with
approval by the United
Nations nem con so
that world opinion may
be mobilized in
support of just treaties
and against unjust
impositions.
MNCs, with the

support of military
might, should not
freely enter other
countries and indulge
in exploitation of
natural resources and
national interests to
their own benefit.
Sovereignty should not
be diluted by ‘East
India Companies’
multiplied by a million.
Green Revolution has a
glamour for agriculture
but is a treachery
because of heavy
inputs of fertilizers and
pesticides which, after
a time, will sap the soil
of its nutritive value.
Indeed, this is a
chemical trap of the
MNCs sweetly
accepted by Third
World countries
through propaganda.

Moreover, mono-
culture will create
‘new slaves’ in
agriculture and give
price control to giant
corporations with
monopoly hold. The
Banana Republics and
many other instances
elsewhere prove the
economic depletion
and human rights
subversion operated by
advanced countries and
their TNCs. Therefore
a new debate must
begin on human rights-
oriented economic
policies where every
person and his dignity
matters.
We may recall what

Dr. B. R. Ambedkar
told the Constituent
Assembly of India in
November 1949 as this
applies to most
decolonized countries:
“The third thing we

must do is not to be
content with mere
political democracy.
We must make our
political democracy a
social democracy as
well. Political
democracy cannot last
unless there lies at the
base of it social
democracy. What does

social democracy
mean? It means a way
of life which
recognizes liberty,
equality and fraternity
as the principles of life.
These principles of
liberty, equality and
fraternity are not to be
treated as separate
items in a trinity. They
form a union of trinity
in the sense that to
divorce one from the
other is to defeat the
very purpose of
democracy.
“We must begin by

acknowledging the fact
that there is complete
absence of two things
in Indian society. One
of these is equality. On
the social plane, we
have in India a society
based on the principle
of graded inequality
which means elevation
for some and
degradation for others.
On the economic
plane, we have a
society in which there
are some who have
immense wealth as
against many who live
in abject poverty. On
the 26th January 1950,
we are going to enter
into a life of
contradictions.

“In our social and

economic life, we
shall, by reason of our
social and economic
structure, continue to
deny the principle of
‘one man, one value’.
How long shall we
continue to live this
life of contradictions?
“. . .If we continue to
deny it for long, we
will do so only by
putting our political
democracy in peril. We
must remove this
contradiction at the
earliest possible
moment or else those
who suffer from
inequality will blow up
the structure of
political democracy
which this Assembly
has so laboriously built
up”.
Let me wind up with

the need for NGO
Ombudsmen armed
with legal powers to
take action wherever
human rights are
vulnerable and violated
and also to recommend
cancellation of treaties
entered into with
oblique motives by
suspect national
leaders. The signatures
of Ministers to the

GATT Final Act must

be reconsidered
because it is hostile to
human rights.
Alas, we have
scientific advances
which outdistance our
spiritual maturity; we
have missiles but
misguided
commanders.
15


Chunakara (ed.)
Chapter 2: Globalization and Working

Towards Alternative Development
Paradigms, by M. A. Oomen
Professor, Dr. Oommen is an

economist and Senior Fellow of
the Institute of Social Sciences,
New Delhi, India.
Globalization: definition,
magnitude and trends
Globalization means different

things to different people. For the
economist, sociologist, politician,
businessperson, journalist,
environmentalist and lay person,
it means different things. The
dominant issue may range from
genocide to drug trafficking, to
child prostitution, to integration
with global market. I will confine
this paper essentially to the
economic dimension which really
is the most prominent aspect of

globalization. From an
economists perspective
globalization is:
transnationalization of production
and capital, standardization of
consumer tastes, legitimization of
global capitalism through
transformation/creation of
international institutions.
Transnationalization can happen
only in a borderless world. Tariff
walls, quota restrictions regarding
the movement of goods and
services, opening up of financial
services, removal of foreign
exchange restrictions, and
regulations - in brief all
hindrances to free trade and
transactions have to be done away
with to facilitate a borderless
world market. Truly the end of
geography! Goods are produced
in not one country, but in several
countries. Ford-Escorts are
produced in 18 countries, but
assembled in London or in
Chennai. In such a world,
consumers have to be globalized.
Coca cola is consumed in 192
countries. There are Honda bikes
in every country. A good many
food items are standardized. No
wonder some people call
globalization Macdonaldization’.
Of the features of globalization,

the most important is the
transnationalization of capital.
The character of capital remains
the same, viz pursuit of profit and
accumulation. But the nature of
capital has undergone a sea

change. One important textbook

classification of capital is into
finance capital and productive
capital. In a money economy
production is organized with the
help of finance. So also is trade
and commerce. But today under
globalization accentuated by the
forces of technology, transport
and telecommunication,
productive capital is
comparatively insignificant, with
finance capital being more
dominant. Today the job of
finance capital is not just oiling
the wheels of production, more
pertinently it is to indulge in
speculation which includes
currency hedging.
There is a lot of currency hedging

and trade in futures. The most
sophisticated variety of futures is
called derivatives. Derivative
securities are contracts whose
values are derived from the values
underlying widely held and easily
marketable assets such as
commodities, foreign exchange,
bonds, equities, or even price
index, bond index etc. There is no
problem in characterizing all
these categories as fictitious
capital. These are hyper-mobile,
moving round the clock in jet
speed in search of profit.
Computerized dealing systems
dispatch huge sums across
national boundaries every
working day. Of course, this
includes foreign portfolio equity
investment which can contribute

to the financing of domestic

enterprises and is most direct
when investment is made in the
local national market for primary
issues or in the international
market through investment in
international equity offerings or
issues of depository receipts. On a
rough reckoning about 2 trillion
dollars worth of transactions in
foreign exchange and commercial
papers take place every day.
Assuming 300 working days a
year, the total transactions work
out to 600 trillion dollars. Look at
the volume of merchandise traded
(imports + exports). It is less than
11 trillion dollars and the world’s
total GDP is only 28 trillion
dollars. Clearly financial capital is
on a self-expanding path. There is
complete decoupling of finance
and productive capital. In this
process the world has been
reduced to a casino in which these
speculators play snakes and
ladders with the lives of millions
and millions of people. They
influence exchange rates, interest,
inflation and other variables that
directly influence the real life of
people. Here is a casino where the
stakes of the game go beyond that
of the players. Non-players are
affected much more than the few
players.
With transnational corporations

(TNCs) not requiring much
outside capital, large banking
funds will have to seek outlets on
a global scale. Also a large

number of non-banking financial

intermediaries like mutual funds,
pension funds, etc., have been
strong and active in national and
international portfolio investment
area. There is substantial
concentration of financial
resources in the hands of
institutional investors. During the
last three or four years big
financial institutions (FIIs) like
Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch,
Taurus, Fidelity, Jardine Fleming
etc. have become big actors in
India. Nearly 440 FIIs have
registered with SEBI. The Global
Depository Receipts (GDRs) of
India are popular in bourses
abroad. India, where there was no
FII in 1992, has today become
financially global, although full
convertibility of currency is still
awaited.
Turning to productive capital, in

1996 foreign direct investment
(FDI) stock was $ 3.2 trillion as
against $1 trillion in 1987. Its rate
of growth over the past decade
(1986-1995) was more than twice
that of gross fixed capital
formation indicating an increasing
internationalization of national
production systems. The
worldwide assets of foreign
affiliates is valued at $ 8.4 trillion
in 1994, or about 34 per cent of
the GNP of the world.
FDI flows to developing countries

is increasingly going up. FDI
flows set a new record level of

$350 billion in 1996. Out of this

$129 billion or 37 per cent was to
developing countries. It was 43
per cent more than in 1995.
An interesting aspect of the boom

in FDI is the increasing mergers
and acquisitions (M&As). The
value of M&As increased by 16
per cent in 1996 to $ 275 billion.
It was only $123 billion in 1989.
Complementing the increases in
M&As and FDI flows, the
number of cross border interfirm
agreements has increased. In 1995
nearly 4,600 such agreements
were concluded, compared to
1,760 in 1990. Most of them were
between firms in the developed
countries. Union is always
strength except for those who are
at the mercy of those who have
combined.
In spite of the tremendous growth

of FDI flows, technology sharing
is concentrated among a few
developed countries. In 1995,
United States firms received an
estimated $27 billion in royalties
and license fees accounting for
56% of global receipts.
“Technology exchanges in terms
of patents, royalties and license
fees between the US on the one
hand and Japan, Germany, the
UK, France and the Netherlands
on the other have been large and
increasing” (UNO, 1997, p. 2l).
Actually there is no technological
globalization. Technology
especially through TRIPS and

strategic alliances and agreements

has become an instrument of
power and profit accumulation.
The predominant actors in

globalization are TNCs. The
world’s 44,000 TNCs and their
280,000 affiliates now control 75
percent of all world trade in
commodities, manufactured goods
and services. One-third of this
trade is intra-firm -making it
difficult for governments or even
international trade organizations
to extend any control. Firms rely
increasingly on sales from
international production rather
than on exports to service foreign
markets. Actually only about 100
TNCs really matter. The turnover
of companies like Royal Dutch!
Shell, General Motors, IBM,
Ford, Toyota, etc., are larger than
that of the GDP of most countries
of the world. Their resources are
so large that through strategic
alliances they can control world
development the way they want.
Globalization certainly has been
the result of the activities of these
big juggernauts. The largest 100
TNCs ranked on the basis of size
of foreign assets own $1.7 trillion
in their foreign affiliates
controlling one-fifth of global
foreign assets. In the US, 25
TNCs are responsible for half of
that country’s outward stock, a
share that has remained almost
unchanged during the last four
decades. The Triad (EU, US and
Japan) is home to 87 per cent of

the top 100 TNCs. With foreign

sales amounting to $2 trillion and
foreign employment close to 6
million persons in 1995, the
largest 100 TNCs are prominent
actors in international production.
The process of
transnationalization has been
legitimized largely through three
international organizations, viz
the IMF, the World Bank, and the
WTO. IMF and World Bank also
provide the theoretical
underpinning and policy package
called stabilization and structural
adjustment. WTO contributes to
the regulatory framework to
facilitate free trade and discipline
detractors. The politics that
followed has created a world of
dependence and domination.
Two important purposes of IMF

were exchange stability and
providing resources to tide over
balance of payments
disequilibrium. Since 1973
through a conspiracy of
circumstances and US self-
interest this arrangement was
thrown overboard. America
entered the floating exchange rate
system and compelled the world
to follow suit. Drawings above 50
percent of quota are associated
with conditionalities. Today they
are not called drawing rights but
credit. There are different types of
credit called facilities. The
borrowing country has to enter
into a standby agreement every

time credit is taken to implement

a package of programmes called
stabilization. Stabilization to
restore external balance of
payments equilibrium by
promoting exports through
devaluation and internal balance
through reducing fiscal deficit by
reducing expenditure and
borrowings (except probably from
IMF, World Bank, etc. and with
their approval from foreign
commercial markets). The basic
idea of the IMF-World Bank
package is to curb the level of
aggregate demand or purchasing
power in the economy, especially
the expenditure of governments
while promoting privatization and
competitive markets. Structural
adjustment is the name given to
the World Bank part of the reform
with an accent on the supplyside.
Very briefly, structural
adjustment means privatization,
liberalization of all regulations
governing trade, commerce
industry so that full play of
market forces is permitted and
promoted. ‘Set prices right’ on
market terms, everything else will
be added unto you! The main
thrust of the package of the Bank-
IME duo is to shift resources from
the government, or public sector,
to the private sector from import
competing activities to export. In
brief, the policy packages are
meant to promote the
untrammeled assertion of market
forces in a global setting on the
explicit assumption that this will
lead to efficient utilization of the

worlds resources.
IMF, which was conceived as a

conservative ‘stabilizer”, has
emerged as the strongest protector
of metropolitan capital in strong
alliance with its sister institution,
the World Bank. Through a
process of protracted negotiations
called the Uruguay Round the
GATE was virtually transformed
into an organization called the
WTO. This trinity now presides
over the management of the
world’s resources.
WTO is a self-executing treaty

with the institutional mechanism
to enforce it. It is comprehensive
as it covers almost every aspect of
human life, agriculture, industry,
investment, insurance, banking,
property ownership, trade,
services, intellectual property,
health, environment, media, etc.
Many agreements such as the one
on subsidies (these are
“actionable subsidies”) TRIMS,
TRIPS and GAIT are against the
letter and spirit of the Indian
Constitution, especially Part IV
which seeks to ensure “Justice
with Freedom”.
TRIMS is the most powerful

measure that protects the interests,
income and wealth of foreign
investors against all actions
including restrictive trade
practices such as market
allocation, collusive tendering,
differential pricing, predatory

pricing, transfer pricing, etc.

GATT seeks to provide,
“immediately and
unconditionally”, Most-Favored-
Nation-Treatment (MFN) to
services such as banking,
insurance, telecommunications,
air transport, etc. For all practical
purposes it will be difficult for a
state to have monopoly service of
its own within its borders.
TRIPS seeks to change the entire

concept of patenting by drawing
into the realm of patentability not
only inventions but naturally
occurring life forms as well. This
is dangerous for countries like
India which has one of the highest
bio-diversity potential of the
world.
Why Search for Alternative

Paradigms?
Quite often it is held that

globalization is a natural and
inevitable outcome of the
evolution of human history.
Francis Fukuyama saw ‘the end of
history as such: that is the end
point of mankind’s ideological
evolution and the universalization
of Western liberal democracy as
the final form of human
government” (Francis Fukuyama,
The End of History”, The
National Interest, Summer, 1989,
p. 4). It is not only the affirmation
of Western liberal governments, it
is also the affirmation of global
capitalism. Can we accept

unchallenged the neoclassical

worldview of development and
governance? To quote the telling
words of Partha Chatterjee
(1994), “If there is one great
moment that turns the provincial
thought of Europe to universal
history, it is the moment of capital
- capital that is global in its
territorial reach and universal in
its conceptual domain. It is the
narrative of capital that can turn
the violence of mercantilist trade,
war, genocide, conquest and
colonialism into a story of
universal progress, development,
modernization and freedom”. We
probably have to start from here
in our quest for alternative
paradigms”.
Globalization is not an outcome

of natural evolution. It is shaped
and continuously being shaped
from the days of colonization.
Even science, technology and the
whole knowledge systems got
shaped in the process.
Unfortunately, science and
technology have never been
designed to serve the larger
interests of humanity. Several
social science disciplines, notably
economics, have also failed to go
beyond the phenomenal form of
commodity flow. No wonder it
has provided the rationalization
for the most iniquitous
distribution of income and wealth.
The dominant technological

choices have come to be decided

by the needs of the military and

the resource endowment of the
West which have controlled
science and technology from the
days of the Industrial Revolution.
They suit the population growth
rate of the West, which is
declining but not the 86 per cent
of the youth of the world who
inhabit the developing countries.
Capital, naturally, hated labour,

especially trade unionization. The
chosen technological paradigm
suited it as technology tirelessly
strove to eliminate labour.
Globalization is now seeking
social paradises free from
unionizations. This is easy under
the free borderless world of today.
Since 20 percent of the world’s

population commands 85 percent
of worlds income, the market will
respond only to the wants of these
people. The production structure
and pattern, resource use and
technological choices will
naturally have a bearing on the
interests of these categories.
The economic governance of the

world today is virtually in the
hands of G-7 countries, the IMF,
the World Bank the World Trade
Organization, the G-Thirty and
the World Economic Forum.
People call this Washington
Consensus. By Washington
Consensus is meant not only the
US government but the network
of opinion leaders centred in the

World’s de facto capital - the

IMF, the World Bank and the
WTO think tanks, politically
sophisticated investment bankers
and worldly finance ministers,
and all those who meet in
Washington and collectively
define the conventional wisdom
of the moment (Paul Krugman:
pp. 28-29). The political
management of the world is done
by the G-7 through the United
Nations Organization. Is this
political globalization leading to a
just society or a desirable
development paradigm?
Before we go into outlining some

important specific reasons for
exploring alternatives to market-
mediated growth strategies one
other aspect also needs to be
noted. In the development
literature as well as in the
language touted by all
international institutions, the term
developed, developing and less
developed economies / countries
is used. Implicit in this
terminology is the assumption
that the less developed or
developing countries have a
model to be faithfully followed,
viz the developed countries of the
world. Even the former Soviet
Union and China could not be
considered to have been free from
this. This tadpole-frog
development paradigm is a
questionable paradigm although it
is so well entrenched and
formidable to be attacked, let

alone dislodged. Can we attain

global civilization by following
the global capitalist paradigm or
escaping from it? This monolithic,
homogenizing paradigm does not
provide for any alternative.
There is a profound spiritual

emptiness in the market-mediated
development paradigm. This, to
my mind, is its Achilles’ heel
although it is seldom recognized,
quite understandably so, because
the neoclassical economic
postulates are basically value
neutral. The critique given in the
rest of this section seeks to bring
home the spiritual / moral
weaknesses of this paradigm.
Market-mediated development is
a system that excludes the so-
called poor, or less endowed, the
property less or any one without
exchange entitlements from
participating in the market.
Therefore they who have the
purchasing power decide the
pattern of production. It has
created the impression and the
value premise that the generation
of exchange values is the
legitimate goal of the organization
of any economy. Production of
use-values assumes importance
when they command exchange
values only.
The basic principle underlying the

organization of society is profit-
making through competitive
pricing. This leads to the

exploitation of labour and

continuous technological
innovation that makes labour or
human beings redundant.
Exclusion becomes an inevitable
part of progress. Expansion and
exclusion happen in the same
breath under this regime.
Resource power rules over labour
power in this culture of
development. We have seen how,
thanks to globalization, a few
TNCs control and manage the
resources of the world to make
profit. They also indulge in a
series of mergers and acquisitions.
Technology is monopolized and
manipulated for the military
(production of military hardware
is the most lucrative business) or
production of consumer goods for
the rich. Plenty, economic growth
and poverty co-exist and is being
legitimized.
The worst and probably most

inhuman dimension of the market-
mediated development paradigm
is the justification of growing
inequality in income and wealth.
All these and globalization are
justified on the basis of micro-
level efficiency of resource use.
Not only IMF and World Bank,
even UNCTAD has pressed into
service neoclassical textbook
economic theory to justify
globalization using the long
discarded Pareto optimality logic
of efficiency under competitive
equilibrium. According to the
World Investment Report, 1997,

“Economic efficiency refers to a

situation in which participants of
an economy make economic
choices that accurately reflect the
relative scarcities of goods,
services and resources available
for consumption and production.
When production and
consumption take place efficiently
the economic welfare of a society
(the consumers and producers
taken together) is maximized, in
the sense that it is not possible to
make any member of the
economy better off without
making someone else worse off’
(UNO, 1997, p.124). For one,
polarizing society into consumers
and producers however
‘economically” neat it may be, it
is incorrect. Secondly, will the
poor be made better off without
making the rich a little worse off,
especially in an extremely
unequal society? Given theories
like this no one need be surprised
at the lack of horror at the
growing misery along with filthy
affluence. Thirdly, perfect
competition exists only in
economic textbooks and never in
reality. It is built on extreme
unrealistic assumptions. Some
Marxists argue and correctly so
that the so-called Pareto
optimality or efficiency serves an
ideological purpose by presenting
a picture of capitalism as a
harmonious system and
distracting attention from its
exploitative nature. This is exactly
why the protagonists of
globalization try pressing into

service neoclassical economics.

Fourthly, it is probably not wide
of the mark to recall here John
Rawl’s famous contention that
inequalities that are not to the
benefit of all is injustice.
Globalization is rooted not only in

neoclassical economics, it is as
much grounded on the
neoclassical liberal ideology of
individualism. The Universal
Declaration of Human Rights
affirms the right to property as
fundamental individual human
right (Article 17). While
recognizing that no one shall be
arbitrarily deprived of his
property (somewhat in Pareto
fashion), the Declaration does not
uphold the community’s right to
common property which is a
traditional right of many countries
in the East, very much so of India.
Indeed, property does provide self-
respect, dignity and exchange
entitlements. But the inhumanity
and havoc involved in denying
property to millions of people
even as growth rate may reach a
two-digit level under global
capitalism nowhere finds serious
mention except probably in the
UNDP’s human development
reports. Those who are denied
property are not only below the
poverty line, but they are as much
below the power line and, in the
case of India, below the pollution
line! Equally important to focus is
the invisibility of the rights of
women in the Universal

Declaration. Women by virtue of

Nature’s division of labor are
responsible for the continuation of
the human species and definitely
concerned with the protection of
life (How many women
murderers are there in human
history?)
Global capitalism, which is but

globalization is to be resisted
because it promotes these
inhuman activities. Uncaging the
tiger in man is good only if it is
explicitly recognized that pursuit
of profit, property and power can
brutally endanger the common
good.
Although a lot of political

management of the world today is
done by the G-7 through the UN
and the Washington Consensus
and national sovereignty in
several countries is seriously
threatened by globalization,
nation-states are still alive and are
likely to play important roles in
world affairs in the years to come.
Samuel P. Huntington argues that
the behavior of nation-states in
the post-Cold War era is
increasingly influenced by their
cultural identity along with the
pursuit of power and wealth, so
that “the rivalry of superpowers is
replaced by the clash of
civilization” (Huntington P.
Samuel p.28). Briefly, his
argument is that as the power and
self-confidence of non-Western
societies / civilizations (like

Islam, Sinic, African, Hindu,

Latin American, Japanese, etc.)
increase, they will assert their
own cultural values and reject
those imposed by the West
through colonialism and capital.
While I do not agree with
Huntington’s contention that the
critical factor in the post-Cold
War world is not ideological or
economic, but cultural, I venture
to hypothesize that the ongoing
struggle for cultural identity
including religious
fundamentalism is due to the
moral and cultural emptiness of
the neo-classical paradigm of
development.
It is high time we recognize that

global capitalism is an
unsustainable paradigm of
development for a variety of
reasons. First, based on the
untenable postulate of unlimited
wants or consumerism, it has
violently interfered with the
ecosystem and environment. It is
now fairly well documented that
Green House Gases (GHGs) like
carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide and
methane blanket the earth and
warm up the atmosphere with
disastrous consequences to
sustainable living (See Oommen,
1997). Although the Rio
Conference and several Climate
Conferences addressed the
problem, precious little has
happened on the ground to arrest
the rot. Unless the consumerist
lifestyle is reserved, how can we

stem the tide? The two quotations

from a Dutch economist, Thifs
dela Court, are cited to show the
unsustainability of globalization
and the development paradigm
underlying it. “The population of
the United States has used more
energy in the past fifty years than
humanity has burned up in its
entire history. If everyone were to
consume as many resources as the
American citizen, the World’s
annual production would have to
be 130 times higher than it was in
1979!” (Court, p.111). The
poignancy of this overuse and
misuse of resources in the name
of efficiency of global resources
is heightened by the fact that a
sizeable proportion of the opulent
lifestyle of the North is made
possible through a regular reverse
flow of resources (through
unequal terms of trade, debt-
servicing etc.) from the South. To
quote Court again: “Development
defined as material growth has
become the doctrine of
colonialism. As the problems
associated with this doctrine
become more urgent - the
difference between rich and poor
is skyrocketing violence is on the
rise and the environment faces
destruction - the doctrine itself is
being questioned’. (Court, p.109).
Search for alternative

development paradigms
The search for alternate

development models that would

avoid the evils and

unsustainability of global
capitalism is no easy task. We do
not bother to outline even vaguely
any blueprint on a conceptual or
operational domain. What is
attempted below is to indicate
certain broad contours that should
govern any search for a humane
world order.
To start with, it is important to

recognize that the present
international division of labor is
unjust and must therefore be
restructured. This can only be
achieved through an intense
struggle to reform those
institutions like the World Bank
and the IMF which have imposed
their “surveillance” and
domination over the so-called
developing countries. These and
the UN are institutions formed
during the colonial days and are
built on the most undemocratic
principles of management and
governance. Vital issues like
global accumulation without
accountability to the global
society, drug trafficking and
money laundering, global arms
trade, rampant sex tourism, global
gambling and endemic currency
crises, the lack of a global
currency, unequal exchange,
growing inequalities in income
and wealth along with growing
poverty do not find a place in the
agenda of global institutions. The
World Bank and the IMF are
preoccupied with structural

adjustment asking developing

countries to stay in sack cloth and
ashes for their sins of the past.
Campaigning for a new
Constitutional Assembly that will
spell out the details of the new
institutions may have to start
along with worldwide discussions
on the nature and character of the
new institutions to be formed in
1998 which marks 500 years of
the arrival of Vasco da Gama in
India.
Development has to be culturally

rooted. There is tremendous need
to build counter cultures which
could pose a threat to aggressive
consumerism. The middle class
all the world is are compulsively
consumerist and in conquering
their mind lies the way to
developing alternative
development paradigms. Non-
hegemonic and equal
relationships between cultures has
to be accepted while building
counter cultures. There is much to
learn from each other. Unlike
what Huntington thinks the West
too has to learn from other
cultures. Cultural ponds are
dangerous places. Any culture
that perceives nation-states as
markets has to be challenged.
Such cultures can treat nature
only as raw materials to be
plundered for profit. Homo
sapiens have to line in continuous
harmony with nature for they get
their life-supporting werewithals
from nature. We hear so much

about the “emerging markets” of

Asia, but very little about the
peoples and their well being.
The dominant technological

paradigm of development that
dominates global capitalism has
to be challenged in a more
meaningful way. A technological
paradigm that continuously
renders human beings obsolete in
the process of social production is
hailed as modern, advanced and
rational. That more than 1.5
billion people of the world have
to struggle for survival despite the
extension of the Western cultural
and technological model of
development (this includes the
people of the land of Dacca
muslin and Kashmir shawls fame)
during the last two centuries of
Industrial Revolution is an
uncomfortable fact of history. It
suits well the strategy of
“industrialization for war” and the
industry-military-politician nexus
of the USA and other military
powers. We have already noted
how science and technology has
been manipulated by the big
military powers and TNCs for
power and for profit. The
movement towards the promotion
of appropriate technology and
durable peace will have to be
promoted as part of the process of
building counter cultures
throughout the world. The need to
rediscover the spirit and message
of Gandhi is felt today more than
ever before to fill the yawning

moral vacuum in the world. If

Gandhi’s ideas of autonomy and
empowerment of each individual,
village, state or country is pursued
along with his ideas of living in
symbiotic relationship with
nature, it will be difficult to have
an exploitative world order of the
type which obtains today.
Any new development paradigm

should work towards an inclusive
society. Even the most stratified
and oppressive caste system of
India was not an exclusive
arrangement. Everyone had some
claim on the social product. The
problem of exclusion cannot be
permanently addressed unless the
structures of exploitation -
economic, cultural, social and
political - that seek to exclude
large sections from the resources
of the nation are identified and
attacked. Amartya Sen’s
treatment of the collapse of
exchange entitlements and the
UNDP’s Human Development
Reports emphasis on building
capabilities and widening the
choices of all (UNDP definitely
has great intellectual indebtedness
to Sen on this) are definitely
positive steps towards this,
although they do not go far in
addressing the malady of
development and under-
development coexisting under the
market-mediated paradigm. Of
course, the capability building
approach is any day better than
the so called basic needs or

minimum needs approach. As Sen

points out, needs is a more
passive concept than capability
and it is arguable that the
perspective of positive freedom
links naturally with capabilities
(what can the person do) rather
than with the fulfillment of their
needs (what can be done for
them?). The ‘BJP’s plea for
economic nationalism or Swaraj
mentioned in its 1998 election
manifesto is but empty rhetoric, a
ploy to capture vote and power. It
could be dangerous in the extreme
and detrimental to the
dispossessed if implemented.
While still on the question of

‘inclusion’, the alternative
paradigm will have to recognize
the rights of the community to
own property and participate in
the governance of their lives.
Most importantly, this relates to
building the rights of women in
the society (Of course, this can be
effective only through building
their capabilities via knowledge,
skills, health, dignity and self-
confidence). We can only reiterate
here our criticisms against the
Declaration of Human Rights
already made. In a world of stark
economic deprivations, what is
the meaning of the fundamental
rights to property, except as an
instrument of further exploitation
and class polarization? Then the
question is, whose rule of law the
Declaration upholds.

The state obviously has failed to

promote equity and participation.
In promoting globalization, the
state is increasingly retreating
from its socio-economic function
of promoting equity and building
the capabilities of the people who
are excluded from the exchange
regime. Herein comes the role of
genuine voluntary organizations.
They have to be actively
promoted in the pursuit of any
alternative development order.
Incidentally, why cannot the
innumer-able parish outreaches
function as micro-local agencies
of equity, participation and
democracy?
To conclude, our critique of

globalization as well as the
outline of alternatives which
follows from it are only meant to
stimulate research and action
towards a better society. Not with
standing the colossal failure of the
historical experimentation of
socialism there is great need to
rediscover socialism. Genuine
socialism has a humane face only.
An appropriate mix of Marx and
Gandhi has both theoretical
appeal and pragmatic relevance.
Only a participatory democracy
can work towards a truly socialist
society. India’s panchayati raj
system has immense potential for
building institutions of self-
government at the local level.
This is one important way to
enhance the capabilities of the
disadvantaged. Decentralized

governance is something that is to

be kept in the pursuit of
alternative paradigms.
Notes:
Dela Court Thijs (1992) Different

Worlds: Environment and
Development beyond the Nineties,
International Books.
Fukuyama, Francis (1989) “The

End of History”, The National
Interest, Summer, 1989.
Huntington, Sammuel P. (1996)

The Clash of Civilizations and the
Remaking of World Order,
Viking/Penguine
Krugman, Paul (1995) “Dutch

Tulips and the Emerging markets”
Foreign Affairs, July-August
Oommen, MA, (1997) “Climate

Change and the Quest for
Sustainable Development”,
Mainstream Annual, December
1997
Rawis, John (1973) A Theory of

Justice, Oxford University Press.
Sen, Amartya (1981), Poverty and

Famines: An Essay on
Entitlements and Deprivations,
Clarendon Press Oxford.
Sen, Amartya (1984) Resources,

Values and Development, Oxford
University Press, Delhi, World
Investment Report 1997, New

York.
15


Chunakara (ed.)
Chapter 3: Development and Human

Rights, by T. Rajamoorthy
Mr. Rajamoorthy is a Specialist

on International Law, Third
World Net Work, Malaysia.
“Globalization” has become the

buzzword of our times. More
importantly, globalization is being
held out by its advocates as the
panacea for all our economic
woes. The only path to prosperity,
we are constantly told, is by
adherence to free-market
principles. The nations of the
South, in particular, are being
urged to deregulate and open up
their economies to free trade and
foreign investment to ensure their
speedy transition to the status of
developed economies. In a word,
globalization has become

synonymous with “development”.
Taking this logic to its

conclusion, any attempt to resist
the process of globalization is, by
definition, reactionary and
constitutes an anti-development
response. In any case, according
to the proponents of globalization,
resistance is futile. Globalization
is being portrayed as an
inexorable and almost divinely
ordained process. Like the 19th-
century proponent of free trade,
Sir John Bowring, who is reputed
to have remarked “Jesus Christ is
free trade, free trade is Jesus
Christ”, the proponents of
globalization appear sometimes to
invest the whole process of
globalization with a quasi-
religious status.
Its more sober advocates have,

however, attempted to provide a
mundane explanation as to why
globalization is an inexorable and
inevitable process. Globalization,
they contend, is the result of the
inexorable march of science and
technology. This claim, however,
will not bear any real scrutiny.
Scientific and technological
development may have facilitated
the process of globalization, but
no one (other than an extreme
technological determinist) will
seriously suggest that it has
propelled us, against our will, into
the process.
The simple truth is that the

process of globalization is being

pushed by the governments of the
North. In so doing, these
governments are merely
responding to the pressures of
their corporations, in particular,
the TNCs. To appreciate this
point, one need only recall that
during the Uruguay Round
negotiations of the GATr,
representatives of the TNCs
chaired and staffed all the 15
advisory groups set up by the
Reagan administration to draw up
the US negotiating position. It
was these corporations that were
instrumental in shaping and
determining the US policy and
stance at these crucial
negotiations which have
accelerated the whole
globalization process.l
If it is clear that it is the Northern

governments, responding to the
pressures of corporations and
businesses, that are pushing the
process of globalization, it is
equally clear that they are doing
so through certain agencies and
organizations. In the words of
James Petras, globalization is “the
product of state policies linked to
international economic
institutions”2. The most important
of these institutions are the IMF,
the World Bank, and most
crucially, the WTO.
So far as the IMF and the World

Bank are concerned, the loans
granted by them are always

conditioned by the requirement

that the debtor country comply
with certain policy conditions (i.e.
conditionalities). In practice, what
this means is that the debtor
country must strictly adhere to a
Structural Adjustment Programme
(SAP) drawn up by the
IMP/World Bank. A standard and
regular component in such an
economic programme is that the
country in question must
liberalize and deregulate its
economy.
With the advent of the Asian

financial crisis, the condition that
the debtor country must open up
its economy to foreign investors
has now become an even more
significant element in IMF
economic adjustment
programmes. The case of South
Korea is particularly significant.
Before the crisis, there were strict
limits on the extent of foreign
ownership in the Korean
economy. Thus, before the IMF
deal, the shareholding limit for
foreign individuals in a Korean
company was 7% while the
aggregate foreign ownership in a
Korean company was limited to
26%. Under pressure from the
IMF, South Korea has now agreed
to abolish nearly all restrictions
on foreign investments in its
financial markets and banking
sector. It also agreed to allow
foreign investors to acquire 55%
of listed companies from
December 31, 1997 onwards and

100% by the end of 1998. What

was particularly astonishing about
this economic programme for
South Korea was the fact that
there was little attempt by the US
to hide its hand in the drafting of
the programme. According to a
report in The International
Herald Tribune (December 19,
1997), some of the toughest
conditions (particularly those
pertaining to the opening up of
the economy) were the handiwork
of Robert Rubin, the US Treasury
Secretary.
While the IMP and the World

Bank have played an important
role in pushing the process of
globalization, it is the WTO that
is today playing the leading role
in this process. While the power
of the IMP (and the World Bank)
to impose economic liberalization
programmes is limited to only
those impecunious states which
seek financial relief from it, all
the WTO members are
committed, by virtue of their
membership of the organization,
to its goal of a world free of tariff
barriers. With a potential
membership of 152 states, its
capacity to push forward the
process of globalization is
enormous.
When a country Joins the WTO, it

enters into a contractual
obligation to honor its
commitments to the goals of the
organization. There is a provision

for periodical review by the body

of the trade policies of individual
countries. The organization has
the power to enforce its will and
decisions by a variety of means,
ranging from expulsion (and thus
loss of MFN status), to “cross-
sectoral retaliation’. There is also
a dispute settlement mechanism.
In all these respects, it is a far
more comprehensive and unique
body than the Bretton Woods
‘twins’.
What has made the WTO even

more formidable is the fact that,
notwithstanding its name, its
jurisdiction now extends beyond
the domain of trade proper. This
extension of its areas of concern
was the result of the Uruguay
Round talks held under the
GATT, the predecessor of the
WTO. The talks concluded on
December 15, 1994 and, as a
result, the WTO was established
on January 1,1995 to replace the
GATT.
While the GATT was mandated to

deal solely with trade in
merchandise goods, the scope of
its successor body, the WTO, was
enlarged as a result of these talks
to include four new areas: trade in
agriculture, trade and investment
in services, intellectual property
fights and investment measures.
As a consequence of this
enlargement of its mandate, the
conduct and decisions of the
WTO are bound to have far-

reaching repercussions upon the

people of the South.
To take one example: while

agriculture employs less than 5%
of the people of the North, it is a
sector that employs more than
half the population of many
developing countries. By bringing
“trade in agriculture” within the
ambit of the WTO and giving the
latter the authority to dictate the
policies that should govern in this
crucial sector, the power to
determine the life and death of
many communities in the South
is, in effect, being vested in the
WTO. The crucial question of
global food security will be
determined and shaped largely by
this single body’s deliberations.
The choice of agriculture for

inclusion within the framework of
the WTO was not fortuitous.
Northern governments are
plagued by huge surpluses which
their highly subsidized
agricultural sectors generate. The
opening up of the agricultural
sector of Third World countries
affords an opportunity to dispose
of these huge surpluses. The real
beneficiaries will be the small
number of TNCs (such as Cargill)
which, between them, control
over three-quarters of the world
trade in cereals. These companies
will now be able to have access to
the subsidized agricultural
surpluses in the North and export
them to the South.

Strictly speaking, the

liberalization of the agricultural
sector in the North should have
resulted in an end to the huge
subsidies paid to the European
farmers. Under the GATT rules,
governments in the industrialized
world are required to reduce their
“trade-distorting” subsidies by
20% and to lower export subsidies
by 36% in value terms and 21% in
volume terms.
However, during the GATT

negotiations, by an act of legal
sophistry, the North managed to
retain almost intact most of its
subsidies to its farmers. The US
and the EU, the two dominant
players at the negotiations, made
a deal between themselves and
determined, to their satisfaction,
that “direct payments” to farmers
(e.g. “set-aside payments” where
farmers are paid for withdrawing
land from production) are not
‘‘trade-distorting’’ subsidies since
they are not paid to promote
agricultural production. Hence,
both the EU and the US claimed
that such payments should be
exempted from the agreed subsidy
cuts.
The upshot of this is that while

Southern countries will be obliged
to bring down their subsidies to
their farmers, Northern
agriculture will continue to be
subsidized 3. The dumping by
TNCs of this highly subsidized
food into Southern markets is

bound to destroy Southern

agriculture, as farmers in the
South will be unable to compete.
The whole problem of food
security is bound to become a
serious problem. The move to
include trade in services within
the mandate of the WTO was
again not fortuitous. This is a
sector of the world economy in
which the North is dominant.
Here again, the pressure exerted
on Northern governments by their
corporations was clearly decisive.
This can be illustrated by the case
of telecommunications. Very soon
after the conclusion of the
Uruguay Round talks, and the
inclusion of services within the
ambit of the WTO, there was
pressure from the North to treat
the liberalization of
telecommunications as a
“priority”. The country which
exerted the most pressure in this
regard was the USA where, as a
result of the policies of
deregulation in the 80s, there had
emerged a string of wealthy
regional telecoms operators
(known as “Baby Bells”.) As the
US market became saturated,
these companies began to put
pressure on the US government to
press for the international
liberalization of the
telecommunications sector.
Northern pressure at the WTO

finally resulted in the
liberalization accord of February
1997. A total 69 countries

controlling more than 80% of the

world’s telecommunications
signed a binding agreement at the
WTO. This accord commits these
countries to open up most of their
local markets to competition from
1998 onwards.
Even as these moves were

proceeding, Northern
telecommunication companies
began to position themselves to
take advantage of the rich
pickings by a series of mergers
and acquisitions. Among the
global alliances that have
emerged as a result are Concert
(which brings together British
Telecom and the US company
MCI), Global One (consisting of
Deutsche Telekom, France
Telecom and Sprint of the USA)
and World Partners, a coalition of
a number of companies, including
the US mega-corporation, AT&T.
In a briefing paper, the NGO,
Panos, warns: “The danger is that
liberalization, far from heralding a
new era of cheaper, more
accessible communications, could
foreshadow the emergence of a
handful of monolithic,
unaccountable, multi-sectoral
communications transnational Big
Brothers who will control the bulk
of communications traffic from
telecoms to television and a shift
in resources from the poor to the
rich”4. For the nations of the
South, there is the added fear of a
loss of their sovereignty as
Northern-based corporations gain

control of this crucial and vital

sector of the economy.
As in the case of agriculture and

services, the push for the
inclusion of intellectual property
rights (a move legitimized by the
use of the term “Trade-Related
Intellectual Property Rights” or
TRIPs) also betrays the desire of
Northern and TNC interests to
consolidate and expand their
dominant position in the world
economy. While the idea of a
patent as a legal protective device
designed to reward and safeguard
an investor’s ingenuity is highly
attractive, the point to note is that
the regime of intellectual property
rights which WTO members are
all being pushed to legislate and
adopt is designed more to confer
monopoly rights upon TNCs and
corporations rather than to protect
any inventor. The extension of
patent protection to cover the
product, rather than the process
by which it was produced, is
calculated to serve the interest of
corporations which seek to retain
monopoly control of their
products. By entrenching such an
intellectual property rights regime
worldwide, the WTO will, in
effect, be freezing the North-
South technology gap. There can
be little hope of technology
transfer under such a regime and
TNCs are bound to insist on
higher licensing fees and tighter
conditions of licensing. The new
patent regime will make drugs

and medicines even more

expensive and place them beyond
the reach of many of the poorer
people of the South. Moreover,
the extension of the scope of what
is patentable to include genetic
material and seeds poses a threat
to agriculture. If peasants are
compelled to pay royalties for the
use of seeds, the threat to social
stability will be very real.
While the North has pushed to

incorporate into the WTO those
economic areas that are beneficial
to it and has pushed some of
these, e.g. telecoms, on to the
“fast track” to ensure that it reaps
the benefits speedily, it has done
everything to slow down, delay or
stagger the liberalization in those
sectors in which it will have to
bring down its own tariff walls
and quotas. The most glaring
example of this is textiles, which
is of crucial importance to many
Third World countries. According
to an estimate by the 1994 GATT
Secretariat, liberalization of
textiles under the WTO would
increase the value of the clothes
trade by as much as 69% and
would result in a 14-37% increase
in exports, much of which was
calculated to accrue to developing
and transitional economies.
However, when the Agreement on
Textiles and Clothing which
integrates textiles into the WTO
framework was finally concluded,
it emerged that these benefits
would be spread over a 10-year

period (1995-2005) and 49% of

the products to be liberalized
would only be liberalized in the
year 2005 (or more precisely
January 1,2005). In other words,
the North is scheduled to remove
its quotas and tariffs on nearly
half the textile items only at the
very end of a 10-year phased-out
period.
While the present enlarged

mandate of the WTO threatens to
have serious repercussions for the
South, there appear to be new
attempts by the North to extend
its mandate even further. The
most serious of these is the
attempt to incorporate within the
framework of the WTO a foreign-
investment treaty. Known as the
Multilateral Investment
Agreement (MIA), the proposal
amounts to bringing within the
framework of the WTO the whole
issue of investment policy - a
further radical departure from the
original concept of the WTO. If
the proposed treaty is adopted, all
its signatories would be obliged to
grant unfettered access to foreign
investment with 100% equity in
all sectors of the economy (other
than those relating to security).
They would also be obliged to
confer “national treatment” to
foreign investors, granting the
same rights to foreign capital as
local capital. They will also have
to take all “accompanying
measures” to facilitate such
investment by permitting full

profit repatriation, and changing

tax and other laws which hinder
the entry and operation of such
capital.
The implications of this proposal

are very disturbing for the
countries of the South. The power
to regulate the entry,
establishment and operation of
foreign investment has been a
useful tool in domestic capacity-
building and to ensure balanced
development. In Malaysia, for
example, it was skilful regulation
of foreign investment that enabled
the equity share ownership of
Malaysians in the modern sector
to increase from 30% in 1970 to
nearly 70% in 1990. Further,
given the multi-ethnic make-up of
the society, it was also desirable
to ensure that the share capital
ownership was equitably spread
out among the different
communities. This was made
possible by the power vested in
the government to regulate and
impose conditions on foreign
investment to ensure that the
growth generated by it accrues to
all the communities. More
importantly, the need to regulate
such investment stems from the
belief that political independence
is meaningless if it is not backed
by economic independence.
Having experienced the full
horrors of colonialism, the
countries of the South are
naturally apprehensive in opening
up all sectors of their economy to

the unfettered entry and operation

of foreign investment. If the
crucial and commanding sectors
of the economy are all in foreign
hands, the very sovereignty and
hard-fought independence of
these countries will be at stake.
Because of the resistance of

countries of the South at the
INTO Ministerial Conference in
Singapore in December 1996, the
issue of the foreign-investment
treaty was assigned to a working
group “to examine the
relationship between trade and
investment”.
However, even as the working

group was being assigned to study
this question, moves were already
afoot to force this issue and
present it as a fait accompli upon
Third World countries. It has now
emerged that since May 1995, the
trade ministries of the OECD
countries have been secretly
negotiating the text of a treaty
designed to achieve the same ends
as the MIA, known as the MAI
(Multilateral Agreement on
Investment). This treaty has been
dubbed variously as a “Bill of
Rights for Corporations”, “a
Corporate Rule Treaty” and “a
Capitalists’ Charter” in view of
the far-reaching powers it seeks to
confer upon corporations.
Like the MAI, this treaty has

some very disturbing
implications. Under its terms, a

foreign corporation will be

empowered to establish itself in
any sector of a host government’s
economy and be entitled to
receive “national treatment” from
its hosts. Any policy or regulation
which seeks to promote local
enterprises at the expense of
foreign investors or provide them
with preferential treatment will be
illegal. By the same token, any
regulation which seeks, on any
grounds other than national
security, to reserve any sector of
the economy for local investors
will be a violation of the treaty.
The treaty will also bar any

government from pursuing any
policy which will constitute a
threat to foreign investors or
merely hinder their free and
unfettered business operations.
This rules out not only the classic
nationalist response of
nationalization or expropriation
without compensation, but also,
given the broad and elastic
definition of “expropriation”
under the treaty, any measure
having an equivalent effect. This
includes any move that results in
an investor “suffering a lost
opportunity to profit from a
planned investment”. As for the
bar on restrictions that hinder
businesses, this effectively
abolishes the right of
governments to regulate capital
flows, including the speculative
flows which have wreaked so
much havoc in the financial crisis

that has gripped Asia and some

other parts of the world.
The treaty seeks not only to

confer power to corporations at
the expense of governments and
communities, but also to secure
such power by providing a new
and unique avenue for legal
redress. Foreign corporations will
now be entitled not only to sue
governments in domestic courts,
but also to seek legal relief in
international tribunals for alleged
violations of the MAI. Given the
wide ramifications of some of the
treaty provisions, the
opportunities for foreign
corporations to hold Southern
governments to ransom, by
instituting multi-million dollar
legal claims against them, are
enormous. Clearly, the MAI is
designed to wrest power from
states, governments and
communities and to empower
corporations. While some of the
governments and NGOs in the
South which viewed the MAI as
another battering ram to open up
their national economies to
Northern corporations were the
first to express concern at this
treaty, the protests against it have
now become worldwide. The
realization that it is a threat not
only to the South but to
communities and citizens
everywhere has given rise to an
international campaign against it.
As protests by citizens’ groups,

environmental groups and other

NGOs against the treaty mount,
some help has come from an
unexpected quarter. The US has,
for reasons of its own (including
fears that the treaty can pose a
challenge to such laws as the
Helms-Burton law and the
D’Amato law which seek to
penalize foreign corporations
which trade with or invest in
Cuba, Iran or Libya), declared
that it would not accept the treaty
in its present form. As a result,
although the treaty was scheduled
to be completed by the end of
April, 1998, the OECD Ministers
meeting in Paris on April 28, in
effect, admitted that because of
the widespread opposition, the
work has yet to be completed. It
directed the negotiators “to
continue their work with the aim
of reaching a successful and
timely conclusion of the MAI”
but specified no deadline for the
work to be completed.
Human rights violations
Globalization has brought in its

train, great inequities, mass
impoverishment and despair. It
has fractured society along the
existing fault lines of class,
gender and community while,
almost irreversibly, widening the
gap internationally between the
rich and the poor nations. While it
has enriched a small minority of
persons and corporations within
nations and within the

international system, it has

marginalized and violated the
basic human rights of millions.
Globalization has resulted in

gross human rights violations for
millions of workers (particularly
women workers), peasants and
farmers, and indigenous
communities. It has also resulted
in serious impairment of the Right
to Development of countries and
peoples of the South.
(a) (i) So far as workers are

concerned, globalization has
resulted in the violation of the
fundamental right to work. In
their drive for profits, companies,
in particular TNCs, have been
restructuring their operations on a
global scale. The result has been
massive unemployment. In 1995,
the ILO announced that one-third
of .the world’s willing-to-work
population was either
underemployed or unemployed,
the worst situation since the
1930s. In its latest available report
(1996/97), the ILO notes that the
world unemployment situation
still remains “grim”5. The goal of
full employment, which was one
of the pillars of the social
consensus that prevailed after the
Second World War, has been
jettisoned by nearly all
governments.
(ii) Globalization has also

engendered or accentuated the
process of the casualization of

labor and the informalization of

labor. Employers are increasingly
resorting to employing workers
on part-time, short-term,
contracts. They are also resorting
to the informal economy by
farming out or sub-contracting
work, e.g. in textiles and
electronics. More ominously,
many factories which were
previously part of the formal
economy have moved their
operations entirely to non-
unionized workforces in new
locations and/or sub-contracted
units. Here, not only are the
wages low, but the legal
protection of workers is minimal.
To obtain some idea of the size

and scale involved in this process
of informalization, we need only
turn to India. A mere 8% of the
labor force is in the formal
economy while over 90% work in
the informal economy. The latter
are not unionized, have little or no
legal protection or security and
are subject to ruthless
exploitation. Significantly, more
than 50% of the workers in this
sector are women.
When the Indian Government

adopted a policy of economic
liberalization in 1991, many
companies (including TNCs) with
factories in the high-wage city of
Mumbai (formerly Bombay), got
rid of their unionized labor force
(mostly male workers) by a
variety of insidious means and

moved their operations to low-

wage and depressed areas to avail
themselves of the large supply of
unorganized and unprotected,
mainly female, labor.
This trend is not peculiar to

Bombay but is a fact of life under
globalization in all the major
industrial areas in India. Amrita
Chhachhi, an activist, describes
the problems of women workers
in the electronics industry in
Delhi thus: “As a result of the
current economic policy, even
well known TV firms [are] sub-
contracting industrial work. This
has resulted in a large number of
small ancillary units where
women are employed at below
minimum wages. These units are
so flexible that they can close
down operations and relocate
them at short notice. As a result,
all attempts at organizing women
laborers have been failures. It has
become extremely difficult to
even trace the movement of these
units from location to location.
Unionization is impossible in this
scenario”6.
(iii) Globalization, with its

demand for “flexible” labor, has
resulted in the “feminization of
labor”. The point is that the
overwhelming majority of female
labor in the South is concentrated
in low-wage industries such as
textile, clothing and footwear
production. Workers in such
industries are not only

inadequately protected as regards

health and safety, but they also do
not enjoy security of employment
in view of the tendency of such
investors to move offshore to cut
costs. Thus, textile workers in
South Korea have been retrenched
as a result of the relocation of
their factories to countries such as
Bangladesh and Vietnam.
(iv) Mention must also be made

here of the fact that the impact of
globalization on traditional
cottage industries has also
adversely affected women
workers. Thus, cheap imports
have resulted in the closure of a
number of such industries in India
and Pakistan and the retrenchment
of their largely women workers.
(v) Finally, globalization has, by

intensifying the tendencies
towards uneven development
within countries and within
regions, intensified the
development of the phenomenon
of migrant workers. Such workers
(especially those who cross
national frontiers) are subject to a
whole range of human rights
violations - discrimination,
absence of labor protection, low
wages, and physical and (in the
case of women) sexual abuse.
(b) Globalization poses a serious

threat to the right of livelihood of
millions of traditional farmers in
the South. As the hitherto
protected agricultural sector of the

South is, in compliance with the

requirements of the GATT Final
Act, opened up to imports (mainly
from the North) and as land laws
are revised to facilitate corporate
farming, there will inevitably be
large-scale displacement of such
communities. Fears have also
been expressed that the patenting
of seeds by multinationals such as
Cargill will result in traditional
farmers being displaced. This
concern has given rise to massive
demonstrations by farmers,
particularly in India.
All these developments, and in

particular the drive under the
WTO regime to make access to
food mainly dependent upon
market mechanisms, are a threat
to food security - the most
fundamental of all human rights.
(c) Globalization has provided a

new impetus to the destruction of
the habitat and livelihood of
indigenous communities in many
countries of the South. The
continuing displacement of such
communities as a consequence of
the intensification of such
economic activities as mining and
logging is a grim reminder of
such violations of human rights.
(d) Where the mechanism for

promoting globalization has been
the IMP/World Bank SAP, it has
resulted in a massive violation of
human rights. Analyzing the
impact of such programmes on

the realization and enjoyment of

selected economic, social and
cultural rights. Danilo Turk, a
Special Rapporteur for the
Commission on Human Rights, in
a report prepared for the UN,
pointed out that these
programmes had resulted in a
violation of the right to work, the
right to food, the right to adequate
housing, the right to health, the
right to education and the right to
development 7. The combined
effect of the violation of the right
to food and the right to health has
had devastating consequences.
According to Davison Budhoo, an
economist who had worked with
both the World Bank and the IMP
before he quit the latter in protest
against its policies, on the basis of
the figures released by UNICEF,
it is estimated that those policies
led directly to the death of 70
million children under 5 years in
the Third World between the
years 1982-1990 and indirectly to
the destitution and
impoverishment of several
hundred millions more 8.
As for the violation of the

Declaration on the Right to
Development, which was adopted
at the UN General Assembly in
1986, the Report of the UN
Global Consultation on the
Realization of the Right to
Development as a Human Right
observes:
Failure to take into

account the principles of

the right to development in
agreements between states
and the World Bank, IMP
and commercial banks
with regard to external
debt repayment and
structural adjustment
frustrates the realization of
the right to development
and of all human rights.
The prevailing terms of
trade, monetary policy,
and certain conditions tied
to bilateral and multilateral
aid, which are all
perpetuated by the non-
democratic decision-
making processes of
international economic,
financial and trade
institutions, also frustrate
the full realization of the
right to development9.
If the proposal by the EU for an

MIA within the framework of the
WTO or the proposal for an MAI
by the OECD is adopted, then the
Right to Development, so far as
countries of the South are
concerned, will be further
whittled away.
The Right to Development

“implies the full realization of the
right of peoples to self-
determination”, which includes
“the exercise of their inalienable
right to full sovereignty over all
their natural wealth and
resources”. The same right also

includes the right of peoples and

nations “to freely pursue their
economic, social and cultural
development.” As the adoption of
the MIA or the MAI will result in
the loss of countries’ right to
regulate the entry, behavior and
operations of foreign investment
in the interests of their own
people, it is not difficult to
appreciate why it is bound to
result in an impairment of the
Right to Development.
Conclusion
It is clear that, more than ever, the

cards are stacked against the
South. When these countries
attained political independence in
the 50s and 60s, the whole
question of the path of
development open to them came
into question. After some fitful
starts, it became evident that it
was not possible for the countries
of the South to embark on the
path of industrialization (which
was perceived as the only way to
escape from the blight of
underdevelopment) by integrating
themselves into the international
capitalist system. The only
alternative open to them was to
opt for the path of independent
self-sustained development, with
the state taking the leading role.
This whole thesis was, however,

challenged by the recent phase of
globalization when a small
number of countries in East Asia

began to display dramatic

economic results by opening up
and deregulating their economies
and integrating them with the
international capitalist system.
The North paraded these countries
as models which the rest of the
countries of the South should
emulate. As a result, country after
country began to queue up in the
quest for “Tigerhood”.
With the onset of the financial

crisis in Asia, the illusion that
globalization is the way out for
the countries of the South is now
being laid to rest. Clearly, the
whole question of the path of
development which nations of the
South should opt for is as open as
ever. It is hoped that this crisis
will provide an opportunity for
some re-thinking, debate and hard
decisions.
Notes:
1. Watkins, K.: “Global Myths”,

Red Pepper, June 1996, p.14.
2. Petras, J.: “The Process of

Globalization”, Links, No. 7.
3. Watkins, K.: “Free Trade and

Farm Fallacies: From the
Uruguay Round to the World
Food Summit”, The Ecologist,
Vol. 26, No. 6, Nov/Dec 1996,
p.244.
4. Deane, J. and A. Opoku-

Mensah: “Telecommunications:

Development and the market: The

promises and problems”, Panos
Briefing No. 23, March 1997.
5. It is only fair to add that the

ILO Report does not attribute this
“grim” unemployment situation
solely or even mainly to
globalization, arguing that
“economic liberalization” will
bring far greater gains as
compared to the alternative of
protectionism. While conceding
that there is “some basis” for
concerns about “the negative
social effects of globalization”, it
contends that it is “not true that
globalization is an overwhelming
supra-national force that has
largely usurped national policy
autonomy ...” It asserts that
“national policies can, and should,
give priority to mitigating
negative effects on globalization”
of financial markets), and the
desperate and helpless attempts
by the national regimes to come
to grips with the soaring
unemployment situation in the
face of the continuing onslaught
of the “supra-national” financial
markets, the above bland assertion
about “national policies” has an
air of unreality about it.
6. Hensman, R.: “Minimum Labor

Standards and Trade Agreements:
An Overview of the Debate”,
Economic & Political Weekly, 20-
27 April, 1996.
7. Cited in Danilo Turk, “How

World Bank - IMF policies

adversely affect human rights”,
Third World Resurgence, May
1993, p.23.
8. Budhoo, D.: “IMF-World Bank

wreak havoc on Third World”,
Third World Resurgence, July
1992, p.17.
9. Cited in Turk, ibid.
15


Chunakara (ed.)
Chapter 4: The Emerging Global

Scenario and the East Asian
Perspective on Human Rights, by
Michael C. Davis
Professor Dr. Davis teaches

Constitutional Law at Chinese
University, Hong Kong.
Introduction
This essay aims to consider

various claims about “Asian
values” made in relation to the
East Asian human rights debate. I
divide this discussion into two
parts: In the first part I consider
and challenge the claims for
exception from important
international human right
standards made in the name of
“Asian values”. I believe these
claims fail to capture the full

richness of Asian values

discourse, are tautological and are
excessively deterministic. In this
regard, I set aside presentation of
the related economic development
argument, which is the subject of
another recent article (Davis,
1998). In the second part, I will
offer a special version of liberal
constitutionalism as a proper
domestic venue for contemporary
human rights and values discourse
in East Asia. I believe liberal
constitutionalism with substantial
fundamental commitments to
democracy, human rights, and the
rule of law and sufficient attention
to local indigenous concerns -
what I call indigenization - can be
appropriately responsive to local
concerns with the development
and maintenance of fundamental
political values.
Claims about culture
Turning first to the Asian values

claims, I offer a four-fold critique
of the these culture-based claims:
first, I will briefly address the
Asian values claim on a
substantive level; second, I will
address a related cultural
prerequisites argument which
seeks to disqualify some societies
from realization of democracy
and human rights; third, I will
consider claims made on behalf of
community or communitarian
values in the East Asian context;
and fourth, a recent shift to
concern with institutions and their

role in social transformation will

be considered as a prelude to the
constitutionalist argument
addressed in the second half of
this essay.
The Asian Values debate
Taking up the first of these, the

substantive content of the Asian
values claim, here I focus on
political values and particularly
address this claim in the
Confucian context. The
substantive claim is that
Confucian values are anti-
democratic; Asian societies,
according to Samuel Huntington,
are said to favor authority over
liberty, the group over the
individual, duties over rights and
such values as harmony,
cooperation, order and respect for
hierarchy (Huntington, 1993). In
this view, East Asian societies are
argued to be unsuited to
democracy and human rights.
That these claims are usually
made on behalf of authoritarian
leaders raises suspicion about
their honesty.
In practical terms these claims are

challenged both by the rapid
recent development of democracy
and human rights in several East
Asian societies and by social
activist and scholarly discourses
which challenge these claims
directly. The growing
consolidation of democracy in
East Asia speaks for itself. A

direct attack on the intellectual

foundations of the Asian values
claim has also been launched by
activists and analysts. They have
challenged several of its
components. Regarding the
association of Confucianism with
authoritarianism, Chinese scholars
of the Confucian classics have
noted that Confucianism did not
embrace unquestioning
acceptance of misguided rulership
and that it shares with liberalism
the commitment to higher norms.
Confucian scholar Chang Weijen
especially points out the
prominent position of the golden
rule in Confucian ethics (Chang,
1995).
Other scholars have challenged

the motives of those who advance
the above noted stereotypes of
Asian values. Edward Said long
ago noted that Western
orientalism offered up its
conception of Asia as the other in
part to justify Western dominance
(Said, 1979). More recently other
Asian scholars have noted the
tendency of East Asian leaders
and scholars to adopt orientalism
as a self-defining discourse
(Chua, 1995). The same
conception that aimed at Western
dominance now, in East Asian
authoritarian hands, aims at
creating East Asian
exceptionalism.
A third line of reasoning would

have us believe that East Asian

intellectuals did not understand

Western liberalism and
democracy when first confronted
with it in the early modern period.
In the Chinese context this was
said to produce a perverse
reinterpretation which saw
democracy as merely good
government or social welfare, in
line with the Chinese minben
(people as a basis) tradition.
There is no doubt that
authoritarian reinterpretations did
occur and that Chinese
nationalism, following the May 4
Movement, did distort. But recent
studies of early modern Chinese
writings witness a great deal of
understanding of leading Western
liberal thinkers (Svensson, 1996).
Other Asian scholars and

specialists have pointed out that
much of what is done in the name
of so-called authoritarian Asian
values can be explained more
often than not by expediency.
Frequently this expediency is
accompanied by other ideological
constructs, such as Marxism, that
have little to do with Asian
traditions. Francis Fukuyama
argues that the only neo-
Confucian authoritarian system
evident in recent East Asian
experience was the government of
pre-war Japan (Fukuyama, 1995).
Cultural prerequisites
The second major argument,

originally not intended as a

cultural relativist argument, is the

claim that societies which lack
certain cultural prerequisites are
not suited for democracy and
human rights. This notion arose
initially from studies that sought
to examine the characteristics of
civic culture were not likely to be
successful at democratization
(Perry, 1994). It was as if
societies had to pass a test for
democracy. This scholarship
could lend further support for
authoritarian Asian values
reasoning.
The problems with this reasoning

are apparent. The most obvious is
its tautological character. To
suggest that a society that lacks
democracy could somehow
develop democratic culture is a
questionable proposition. The fact
of the matter is that many
societies in East Asia proceeded
with democratization, with or
without cultural prerequisites.
With democratic institutions in
place, the emphasis has shifted to
consolidation and to creating the
institutions to make it work (Linz
and Stepan, 1996). Nevertheless,
scholars and politicians in East
Asia have clung tenaciously to
this claim concerning
prerequisites (Perry, 1994, points
out this problem). The tasks of
documenting the presence of civic
culture in Asia still contributes to
a mindset that appears to conceive
of. a test for democratization. This
has spawned a persistent

argument that East Asians are not

yet ready for democracy.
Claims about community
My third critique considers a

more directly cultural relativist
argument, and one that is to some
extent more credible. This is the
one made on behalf of
community. While I feel this
argument fails to justify the denial
of democracy and human rights it
does raise concerns that I argue in
the second half must be addressed
by societies hoping to better
secure human rights.
There are essentially three

community-based arguments
addressed here. The first is the
romantization of community. The
Vietnamese village has been
described as “anchored to the soil
at the dawn of History ... behind it
bamboo hedge, the anonymous
and unseizable retreat where the
national spirit is concentrated”.
The Russian mir was to save
Russians from the “abhorrent
changes being wrought in the
West by individualism and
industrialization” (Popkin, 1986).
Many have questioned just how
liberating the traditional village
was and many escaped when they
had the chance. Few in East
Asia’s tiger economies have the
option of unmolested village life
today.
Another community-based claim

emphasizing republican
government and civic virtue has
both ancient roots and is of
contemporary interest. In many
East Asian societies civic virtue is
seen as the key to good
government. Others are less
confident of the persistence of
such virtue and seek to craft a
democracy that, in James
Madison’s terms, is safe for the
unvirtuous (Putnum, 1993). The
debate between Vaclav Havel, the
anti-Communist idealist who
emphasizes civic virtue, and
Vaclav Havel Clause, the
pragmatic post-communist
politician who is concerned with
interest representation (Simon,
1996) is likely to be rehearsed in
post-communist and post-
authoritarian East Asia.
The debate between Western and

East Asian communitarians is the
most challenging contemporary
discourse about community.
While Western communitarians
are apt to see community as a
venue for discourse and
liberation, the neo-conservative
brand of so-called
communitarianism evident in
Singapore is hardly a venue for
liberation (Chua, 1995). Western
communitarians have ultimately
had to commit to some liberal
values to preserve their discourse,
while the Asian neo-conservative
variety has also had to deal with
increased demands for
liberalization.

The role of institutions
The fourth and final critique

under this topic of culture is to
raise questions as to the path for
solution. Scholars who are
confronted with claims about
culture and cultural prerequisites
have increasingly had to consider
precisely what avenues are
available to meet increased
demands for democratization and
rights, to ensure participation.
This has caused an increased
attention to institutions. This new
institutionalism has sought to
determine how institutions can
serve the purposes of social
transformation that adhere to the
democratization and human rights
processes (Thelen and Steinmo,
1992). This new institutional
project is less sanguine about
merely transplanting ready-made
Western institutions that the
earlier efforts of modernization
theorists. In considering what
institutions can do I will now turn
our attention to constitutionalism,
the topic of the remainder of this
presentation.
Constitutionalism
Constitutionalism offers a venue

to respond to the various claims
underlying the Asian values
debate and a response to those
who advance authoritarianism. As
noted in the introduction, for me
constitutionalism should include
the fundamental elements of

democracy, rights and the rule of

law and elements of local
institutional embodiment, what I
call indigenization. In the late
twentieth century the discussion
of constitutionalism has become a
global conversation, a
conversation that is productive of
the processes of universalizing
human rights. Constitutionalism
serves both as a conduit for
shared international and local
human rights and political values
and the embodiment of those
values. In this regard I emphasize
three things: first, the empowering
role of constitutionalism, in
contrast to the usual view that
emphasizes constraint; second, a
more careful look at the content
of the constitutive process; and
third, indigenization of
constitutionalism, as an avenue to
hook it up to the local condition.
The Empowering Role of

Constitutionalism
Taking up the first of these, it is

important to emphasize the
positive empowering role of
constitutionalism (Holmes, 1988).
I worry that constitutionalists
place too much emphasis on the
constraints of constitutionalism,
always using language of
“checking, restraining or
blocking”. This is important
because under this constraint
paradigm, newly elected
democratic leaders may view it as
part of their mandate to override

constraint to “get the job done’.

This results in a plebiscitarian,
rather than a constitutional
democracy (O’Donnell, 1996).
Some may characterize this result
as an illiberal democracy, as some
scholars have advocated in East
Asia (Bell, Brown, Jayasuriya and
Jones, 1995).
Extra-constitutional action should

more properly be understood as
not just overriding constraint but
as overriding democracy itself.
Such extra-constitutional action
does not just ‘get the job done”
but, in fact deprives the people of
democratic power.
Constitutionalist should vigilantly
seek to engender discourse and
empowerment. In a modern
complex society this is the
contemporary venue for values
discourse. To better understand
this claim we must consider the
constitutive process.
The Constitutive Process
It is in the constitutive process

that constitutionalism’s discourse
engendering and empowering
roles come to fruition. This can be
considered at two levels: the
constitution-making process and
constitutional implementation.
Constitution-making is where the
constitutional conversion begins.
A constitutional assembly is a
powerful venue for discourse
about basic political values. In
recent decades the East Asian

landscape has been riddled with

constitution-making exercises. In
the 1980s and 1990s constitution
writing in the Philippines and
Hong Kong have offered
prominent seemingly successful
examples (Davis, 1996).
In describing the constitution-

making process, Jon Elster
describes a venue where both
passion and interest operate
(Elster, 1995). There are both
upstream and downstream
constraints, as well as processes
for consensus-building and
broadening bases of support.
Upstream constraints consider
political settlements and may also
protect members of the former
regime. For the Hong Kong Basic
Law, as with the earlier Japanese
Constitution, the upstream
constraints were all but
overwhelming. Downstream
constraints look to ratification or
acceptance. In the Philippines,
after the people power revolution,
downstream acceptance was the
substantial constraint.
After a constitutional founding,

successful implementation of
constitutional government
depends on appreciation of the
discursive architecture in the
ongoing processes of governance.
More commonly appreciated here
are the institutions for checks and
balances. These institutions
include institutions to control the
purse-strings in regimes ranging

from medieval estates to modern

parliaments, and veto and
administrative control in the
modern executive. At present,
nearly every constitutional
government in East Asia manifest
some elements of this.
Less appreciated is the positive

discursive machinery of
constitutional judicial review, the
power whereby courts review
laws enacted by the elected
branches of government for
conformity to the constitution. In
both Asia and the West this
judicial role has sometimes been
attacked as an affront to efficient
and effective government and
sometimes as an affront to
democracy. One should be
suspicious of the efficiency
motives of such attacks.
Constitutional judicial review has
become the premier institution for
securing human rights. More
importantly, constitutional
judicial review also serves as the
engine for the basic constitutional
conversation about political
values and commitments (Bickel,
1986). This constitutional
conversation proceeds as
legislatures pass laws and courts
respond and legislatures pass new
laws. While much of East Asia
has adopted Western civil and
common law legal systems, only a
few countries have fully
functioning systems of
constitutional judicial review. At
present Japan, the Philippines and

Hong Kong are prominent

examples where this power is
vested in the ordinary courts, as is
more commonly done in common
law systems. A Civil Law style
constitutional court has existed in
Taiwan for decades but only
recently begun to function
effectively. For the authoritarian
regimes of the region, both
historically and at present, no or
little judicial constraint is the
norm. Under such circumstances
the positive discourse
engendering role argued for here
is out of the question.
Constitutional theorists have

come to recognize, however, that
constitutional judicial review is
not the sole discursive engine for
crafting political values and
solutions. At moments of crisis,
what Stephen Krasner calls
punctuated equilibrium (Krasner,
1984), the entire people may be
mobilized to civic action. In
normal times the people may be
content with representation and
constitutional judicial review,
while they largely focus on
private affairs; while at times of
what Bruce Ackerman calls
constitutional politics the level of
civic action may become
extraordinary (Ackerman, 1991).
Ackerman identifies three
republics in American history,
before and after the civil war and
in the modern regulatory social
welfare state initiated in the 1930s
by the New Deal. There is

evidence of such mobilization in

the recent South Korean
constitutional politics of reform
and in the Japanese politics of
resistance to corruption.
Indigenization of
Constitutionalism
With a commitment to the

constitutional fundamentals in
place, a premier concern is that
constitutionalism finds roots in
the local soil. It is through
indigenization that
constitutionalism responds to the
above noted concerns with values
and community. Aung Sang Suu
Kyi characterizes this indigenous
quality as local institutional
embodiment (Aung Sang, 1995).
For indigenous institutions to
work, however, the constitutional
fundamentals of democracy,
human rights and the rule of law
must be in place. Otherwise, the
local community is left with a
implanted hegemonic discourse
constructive of authoritarian
power and destructive of genuine
community values discourse.
Beyond the fundamentals that

preserve the discourse there is
considerable room for local
variation to achieve
representation, both symbolic and
real. If constitutionalism is
understood to engender discourse
then constitutionalists should
consider the ways in which local
culture and traditions may

facilitate such discourse.

Representation may be achieved
through contemporary institutions
which secure autonomy or
minority rights, or through
recognition of traditional ethnic or
religious groups.
Legal structures may also embody

these local distinctions. This may
include, for example, allowing for
the application of religious or
tribal laws. In societies with long
traditions of citizens petitioning
leaders, a mechanism for
petitioning elected officials could
be employed or, perhaps, a
modem version thereof, the
ombudsman. Even a traditional
monarch, who may retain
symbolic and ceremonial
functions, may take on the
ombudsman role in a post-
monarchical democratic society.
Even when contemporary
institutions are employed, in
practice they may be expected to
take on indigenous characteristics.
The goal in all cases is orderly
processes of discursive
engagement or empowerment.
In a recent article I contrast the

constitutional paths of modern
Japan and China (Davis, 1998).
While post-war Japan has a liberal
constitutional system, there has
been substantial indigenization in
practice (Ford, 1996). Yet, with
the fundamentals in place, the
constitution does seem to work to
encourage a core discussion on

fundamental political
commitments. Even the processes
of reform of the former one-party
dominance proceeded in an
orderly fashion and has
engendered renewed public
concern with corruption and
enforcement of legal norms.
China, on the other hand, has
rejected a commitment to the
fundamentals. China’s public
discourse has tended to advance a
hegemonic view which people
challenge at their peril. The public
order situation is an explosive one
in which the Public Security
Bureau and the military must play
a central role. While engaging in
economic reform the regime has
engendered increased
diversification of interest for
which inadequate representation
is secured. The rule of law is
shaky at best, encouraging
increased corruption as the
economic reform process goes
forward. This has produced a
value vacuum which the society is
hard placed to deal with. There is
growing evidence of concern to
open up democratic and legal
channels for representation of
diverse interest. Opening up such
channels will not create automatic
solutions but such moves may
offer hope for crafting orderly
solutions.
Conclusion
The form of argument in this

presentation has emphasized

several specific points: first, that

the Asian values argument, as a
challenge to the implementation
of constitutional democracy, is
exaggerated and fails to account
for the richness of values
discourse in the East Asian region
-local values do not provide a
justification for harsh
authoritarian practices; second,
that the cultural prerequisites
arguments fail because they
ignore the discursive processes
for value development and they
are tautological, excessively
deterministic and ignore the
importance of human agency it,
therefore, makes little sense to
take an entry test for
constitutional democracy; third,
the difficulties of importing
Western communitarian ideas into
an East Asian authoritarian
environment without adequate
liberal constitutional safeguards;
fourth, the positive role of
constitutionalism in constructing
empowering conversations in
modern democratic development
and as a venue for values
discourse; fifth, the importance,
especially in a cross-cultural
context, of indigenization of
constitutionalism through local
institutional embodiment; and
sixth, the value of extending
research focused on the positive
engendering or enabling function
of constitutionalism to the
developmental context in general
and East Asia in particular. I
would hope this discussion
attracts further cross-disciplinary

interest in this evolving global

constitutional project.
Notes:
Ackerman, Bruce, We The People

(Cambridge: The Belknap Press,
1991).
Almond, Gabriel A. and Verba,

Sidney, The Civic Culture,
Political Attitudes and Democracy
in Five Nations, (Newbury Park:
Sage Publications, 1989) (first
published 1963).
Aung San Suu Kyi,

“Transcending the Clash of
Cultures, Freedom, Development
and Human Worth”, Journal of
Democracy, Vol. 6/2, 1995, at 11.
Bell, Daniel A, Brown, David,

Jayasuriya, Kanishky and Jones,
David Martin, Towards Illiberal
Democracy in Pacific Asia,
(London: Macmillian Press,
1995).
Bickel, Alexander M., The Least

Dangerous Branch, The Supreme
Court at the Bar of Politics (New
Haven: Yale University Press,
2nd Ed., 1986).
Chang, Wejen, “The Individual

and the Authorities in Traditional
Chinese Legal Thought”, paper
presented for the
Constitutionalism and China
Workshop, Columbia University,
February 24, 1995.

Chua, Beng-Huat, Communitarian

Ideology and Democracy in
Singapore, (London: Routledge,
1995).
Davis, Michael C., “Human

Rights and the Founding of the
Hong Kong Special
Administrative Region: A
Framework for Analysis”,
Columbia Journal of
Transnational Law, Vol. 34,
1996, at 301.
Davis, Michael, C., “The

Globalization of
Constitutionalism: Democracy,
Rights and Relativism”, Harvard
Human Rights Journal, Vol. 11,
Winter, 1998.
David, Michael, C., “The Price of

Rights: Constitutationalism and
East Asian Economic
Development”, Human Rights
Quarterly, Vol. 20, Winter 1998.
Elster, Jon, “Forces and

Mechanisms in the Constitution-
Making Process”, Duke Law
Journal, Vol. 45, 1995, at 364.
Ford, Christopher A., “The

Indigenization of
Constitutionalism in the Japanese
Experience”, Case Western
Reserve Journal of International
Law, Vol. 28, 1996, at 3.
Fukuyama, Francis,
“Confucianism and Democracy”,

Journal of Democracy, Vol. 6/2,

1995, at 20.
Holmes, Stephen,
“Precommitment and the Paradox
of Democracy”, in Elster, Jon and
Slagstad, Rune, eds.,
Constitutionalism and Democracy
(Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1988), at 195-
240.
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“Democracy’s Third Wave”, in
Diamond, Larry, Platner, Marc F.,
eds., The Global Resurgence of
Democracy (Baltimore: Johns
Hopkins University Press, 1993)
at 3.
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“Approaches to the State,
Alternative Conceptions and
Historical Dynamics”,
Comparative Politics, Vol. 26/ 2,
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“Toward Consolidated
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About Consolidation”, Journal of
Democracy, Vol. 7,2, 1996, at 34-
51.
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Chinese Political Culture
Revisited”, in Wasserstrom,
Jeffrey and Perry, Elizabeth,
editors, Popular Protest &

Political Culture in China

(Boulder: Westview Press, 1994)
at 1.
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Economy of Peasant Society”, in
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(Oxford: Blackwell, 1986) at 197.
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Democracy Work: Civic
Traditions in Modern Italy
(Princeton: Princeton University
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York: Vintage Books, 1979).
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Opposition to Atomization”,
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Conception of Human Rights, The
Debate on Human Rights in
China, 1898-1949 (Lund:
Department of East Asian
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Sven, “Historical Institutionalism
in Comparative Politics”, in
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Longstreth, Frank, Structuring
Politics, Historical
Institutionalism in Comparative
Analysis (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1992) at 1.

31


Chunakara (ed.)
Chapter 5: Globalization and its

Impact on Human Rights, by Mathews
George Chunakara
Dr. Chunakara is Asia Secretary

of the World Council of Churches,
Geneva, Switzerland.
The word ‘globalization’ is now

used widely to sum up today’s
world order. It means they
increasingly integrate the world
into one capitalist political
economy operating under a neo-
liberal free market ideology.
Economic globalization as
witnessed in the world today is
not a new phenomenon. It has
been evolving for the past several
years and gaining momentum day
by day. The trend, at present, is a
shift from a world economy based
on national market economies to a

borderless global market economy

increasingly governed by one set
of rules. In this context,
globalization means global
economic liberalization,
developing a global financial
system and a transnational
production system which is based
on a homogenized worldwide law
of value1. The demise of the Cold
War helped the emergence of a
new aggressive competitive
global economic order. This was
possible mainly due to the
integration of the newly
industrialized countries and much
of the developing nations.
Although globalization and
market liberalization have made
some progress in terms of
economic growth in certain
countries, it has also had many
negative impacts in developing
societies.
Richard Barnet of the Institute of

Policy Studies describes
globalization in terms of four
increasing webs of global
commercial activity: global
cultural bazaar, the global
shopping mall; the global
financial network; the global
workplace2. The global cultural
bazaar promotes the notion of
uniform cultural values
and products across the world.
This idea influenced billions of
people, shaping their goals and
homogenizing their tastes and
attitudes towards a desired fantasy
lifestyle. The unprecedented

increase in global trade -- the

buying and selling of goods and
services among countries -- has
created a planetary supermarket.
The cultural bazaar and shopping
mall intersect through the vehicle
of advertising. Media has become
a powerful player in the
globalization process. In fact,
globalization of economies has
also led to the globalization of
media. Media is used to impose
the culture and power of the
wealthy nations from the global
North. The global financial
market has created a new
atmosphere to search for quick
profits. The foreign exchange
market is mainly dealing with
currency speculation, bet for or
against foreign currencies. The
increasing mobility of jobs has
created global workplaces and
this has boosted international
labor migration. In other words,
the globalization and market-
oriented economic reforms helped
transnational companies shift their
manufacturing units to developing
countries. Because of this more
people are crossing borders in
search of jobs and in most
conditions people are forced to
work in inhuman conditions for
lower wages. All these proved the
fact that globalization is not a
simple but a very complex set of
process that operates at multiple
levels -- political, economic and
cultural. Nicaraguan scholar
Xabier Gorostiaga argues that in
this era of globalization humanity
is perceived as fundamentally

one, with a common destiny that

is the result of a technological
revolution in information and
communication and the awareness
of the unsustainability of the
current way of life3.
In an article titled “The Human

Rights Debate in an Era of
Globalization: Hegemony of
Discourse”4, Nikhil Aziz
describes two kinds of
globalization based on Richard
Falks theory on the making of
Global Citizenship. He argues that
we can see globalization in
different perspectives:
Globalization from Above (GA)
and Globalization from Below
(GB). At the political level, GA
manifests itself in its action of the
Western countries, particularly
the United States of America, and
global financial institutions in
pressuring countries of the South
to democratize. This translates as
the adoption of a Western-style
liberal democratic system of
governance. They closely tie
economic Globalization from
Above to the political aspect in
that (1) the source of pressure for
change is the same, and (2) close
links are alleged between the
ideologies of free markets and
free societies. Economic
Globalization from Above entails
countries of the South to accept -
within the parameters of the
dominant World capitalist system -
the imposition of structural
adjustment programs, neo-liberal

economic policies, including the

wholesale liberalization of
domestic economies, to allow
unrestricted entry to transnational
capital. On a cultural level, GA
arises from the control of the
global information and
communication networks by
Western media corporations; and
the spread of modern technologies
of a consumerist culture, and
Western cultural expressions as
the global culture.
The transnational companies are

the spearheads of globalization
and have become the dominant
economic and political force in
the world economy. Increasing
competition and pressure on
transnational companies to
increase profits leads to a
relentless search for cheap labor
markets. Many of the companies
from the developed and the
Newly Industrialized Countries
(NIC) have shifted their
manufacturing and service
industries to developing countries.
For example, several major
airlines now have their global
accounting done in India. A large
number of computer software
companies from the United States
are developing software in
Bangalore, India, at less than one-
fifth of the price in other
countries. The German car
manufacturing company BMW
and Lorean car manufacturers like
Daewoo and Hyundai have
already established their

manufacturing units in Vietnam.

The Export Processing Zones of
many developing countries are
catering to the needs of the
transnational companies by way
of providing cheap labor. The
International Labor Resource and
Information Group based at the
University of Cape Town has
described these phenomena a race
downhill in which countries
underbid each other. Because they
cannot see an alternative, workers
also end up underbidding one
another. The main arguments are
competitiveness and the need to
survive. But for workers it is a
race to the bottom, and the bottom
means slave like conditions.
When work moves to less
developed countries, the shift
does not automatically bring
Western levels of employment
and prosperity to the host
countries.. What it does bring are
very profitable high-tech islands
and Export processing Zones
where they protect transnational
capital, with the help of the state,
from social responsibility5. There
may be short-term advances in the
living standards of a small group
of workers. Nevertheless, when
some workers elsewhere lead the
race to the bottom, those jobs may
disappear. A report by UNCTAD
notes that transnational companies
encroach on areas over which
sovereign responsibilities have
traditionally been reserved for
national governments. A situation
has arisen where many

governments of developing
countries no longer control the
flow of financial capital; so they
can no longer control their own
economies.
Globalization has substantially

contributed to the intensification
of debt, poverty and economic
crisis in the developing world.
The Structural Adjustment
Programs (SAP) designed and
imposed by the global creditor
institutions is a typical instrument
to create a favorable atmosphere
for globalization, which
ultimately affects developing
countries. In order to meet the
mandates set by the SAP, a
country spends less by cutting
back government expenditures,
social services, and economic
investments so that resources can
be placed elsewhere. More money
is being spent on export
orientation, which results in local
economies becoming dependent
on the integration with the world
economy. The international
lenders demand poor economies
to divert substantial resources
away from sectors serving
domestic needs: withdraw all
subsidies for poor people,
privatize the state sector,
deregulate the market, and
decrease wages. In effect, this
process opens up countries to
globalization. Thus structural
adjustment programs and import-
export-led strategies of
industralization. were part of a

political and economic

restructuring process, a prelude to
globalization. The advocates of
globalization give philosophical
justifications to accept export-led
growth, lower wages and living
standards for workers, shrinking
government budgets, and
extremely high interest rates.
They say “There Is No
Alternative” - TINA, the phrase
coined by British Prime Minister
Margaret Thatcher in 1980s.
Powerful institutions like the
International Monetary Fund, the
World Bank and the World Trade
Organization raise the TINA,
argument to persuade the
developing nations to qualify
themselves to borrow money. The
developing countries are left into
no option but to accept the
liberalization and market-oriented
reforms. Under this liberalization
policy production tends to be
export-oriented. Meeting the basic
needs of the people becomes less
important. State-run factories or
enterprises are often privatized to
suit the needs of foreign investors.
Free trade and liberalization lead
to competition and local
producers, like farmers, have to
suffer the consequences.
Globalization has created a

situation where the role and
importance of nation-state is
becoming irrelevant. Kenichi
Ohmae, widely recognized as one
of today’s top business gurus,
asks, in a world where economic

borders are disappearing and

money flows around the globe
beyond the reach of governments,
‘who, indeed needs the nation-
state?” He argues that 4 Is-
Investment (sic), Industry,
Information technology and
Individual consumers6 - make the
traditional middleman function of
nation-states, and of their
governments, largely
unnecessary. Because, the global
markets for all the Is work just
fine on their own, nation-states no
longer have to play a market-
making role. In this situation
multinational corporations are
becoming the actors even in
international politics. A growing
trend to promote the idea of
recapturing the capitalist frontier
and its lost values is more visible
through the globalization and
market liberalization in the
developing countries. It is true
that a few rich or middle class
people have emerged in societies
where transition to market system
has been introduced. China and
Vietnam are typical examples. In
these countries a newly rich class
has emerged as a result of
globalization and market reforms.
Several other Asian countries are
also witnessing the emergence of
a few - rich and middle class
people at the expenses of many
poor. These new-rich and middle
class are really the products of
globalization and they provide the
market for imported products and
further strengthening the economy

of the developed countries. While

analyzing the economic
development, social status and
political consciousness of the new-
rich in Asia, Richard Robinson
and David S. G. Goodman
observe that it is as consumers
that the new-rich of Asia have
attracted an interest of almost
cargo-cult proportions in the
West. They constitute the new
markets for Western products:
processed foods, computer
software, educational services and
films and television soaps. They
are the new tourists, bringing
foreign exchange in hard times.
What has helped such an
enthusiastic embrace of the Asian
new-rich is that they are emerging
at a time when prolonged
recession and low growth rates
have depressed home markets in
the West7. The emergence of the
new middle class and their wealth
manifest themselves in the society
in several ways. This is more
visible through a new emerging
culture which Robinson and
Goodman describe as Mobile
phones, McDonalds and middle-
class revolution. It is estimated
that 55,000 people a day regularly
pass through the McDonalds
restaurant in central Beijing
(China’s first, opened in 1992) -
to pay for a hamburger much
more than the most Chinese will
earn in a fortnight. It was reported
that in 1993 a mobile telephone
number 58888 containing four
lucky eights - was auctioned for

1,30,000 RMB. An ordinary

mobile phone itself costs about
25,000 RMB in China to buy,
install and register, and there are
monthly service and user fees to
pay8. This McDonald and Mobile
phone culture has already spread
among the new-rich in many
developing countries because of
the globalization of markets. Even
Cambodia and Bangladesh the
world’s most poverty stricken
countries, are affected. A
globalization of taste has occurred
in every field of the developing
world. Consumer goods like Levis
Jeans, Nike athletic shoes, and
Hermes scarves are visible all
over the world now. A decade ago
Kenichi Ohmae described this
process9, driven by global
exposure to the same information,
the same cultural icons, and the
same advertisements, as the
“Californiazation” of taste. He
now argues that, today, however,
the process of convergence goes
faster and deeper. It reaches well
beyond taste to much more
fundamental dimensions of world-
view, mind-set. There are now,
for example, tens of millions of
teenagers around the world who,
having been raised in a
multimedia-rich environment,
have a lot more in common with
each other than they do with
members of older generations in
their own cultures10. Well, one
group is considering this an
achievement of globalization. On
the other hand, the reality is that,

“globalization requires the

humiliation of hundreds of
millions of people keeping them
in constant insecurity, pitting
them against one another in a
competitive struggle for
survival”11.The Human
Development Report of 1997
says; Globalization can also shift
patterns of consumption. Luxury
cars and soft drinks can rapidly
become a part of daily life,
heightening relative deprivation.
The pattern can increase absolute
poverty by undermining the
production of goods on which
poor people rely. A flood of
imported wheat can shift
consumption away from sorghum
or cassava, making them scarcer
in loyal markets.
Roberto Verzola12, a social

activist of the Philippines,
comments that in the same way
that colonization was the trend
one hundred years ago,
globalization is, today. Today
global corporations have replaced
the colonial powers. In
developing countries, global
corporations are allowed to feast
on natural resources, human
resources, and national wealth.
they displace farmers from their
land, workers from their jobs, and
communities from their roots.
They are responsible for the
breaking up of communities and
the destruction of the environment
to serve the human and raw
material requirements of global

production for the global market.

The consequence is the collapse
of food security and the
emergence of global
environmental crises, which in the
end may turn out to be even worse
than colonization. Even the
peoples of developed countries
suffer from the profit-hungry
rules of global corporations today,
which virtually rule the world.
Globalization and market-oriented
economic reforms have been
designed for the benefit of these
groups. In reality, globalization
means the rule of global
corporations. It means decision
about lives are being made in
corporate boardrooms in the USA,
Europe and Japan, instead of in
local community councils or at
the national level. National
governments are becoming the
implementers of orders received
from the international actors. This
has created a situation of
powerlessness and suffering for
many in developing countries
which results in violation of rights
of millions of people.
Globalization, Development and

Human Rights
The relation between

globalization, development and
human rights raises policy and
legal questions. One such
question is whether globalization
of market-oriented economic
system is essential for
development and protection of

human rights? While searching

for an answer to this question we
should analyze how we perceive
the concept of development and
human rights, especially in the
context of developing countries.
Human rights have become an
integral part of the process of
globalization in many ways. The
Western countries are
increasingly using their view of
human rights concept as a
yardstick to judge developing
countries and to deal with
economic and trade relations to
extend development assistance.
At the same time globalization
intensifies impoverishment by
increasing the poverty, insecurity,
fragmentation of society and thus
violates human rights and human
dignity of millions of people.
Development or economic
development is widely perceived
as a historical process that takes
place in almost all societies
characterized by economic growth
and increased production and
consumption of goods and
services. Development is also
often used in a normative sense as
a multi-valued social goal
covering such diverse spheres as
better material well-being, living
standards, education, health care,
wider opportunities for work and
leisure, and in essence the whole
gamut of desirable social and
material welfare. But, in today’s
globalization, the concept of
development itself is interpreted

differently and the concept of

right to development is not taken
seriously.
The Preamble of the Declaration

of the Right to Development,
adopted by the UN General
Assembly in 1986, describes
“development as a comprehensive
economic, social, cultural and
political process that aims at the
constant improvement of the well-
being of the entire population and
of all individuals on the basis of
their active, free and meaningful
participation in development and
in the fair distribution of resulting
benefits”. The 1990 UN Global
Consultation on the Right to
Development as a Human Right,
stated that the right to
development is an inalienable
human right with the human being
as the central subject to the right
and that all the aspects of the right
to development set forth in the
Declaration of the Right to
Development are indivisible and
interdependent, and these include
civil, political, economic, social,
and cultural rights. It was further
maintained that the right to
development is the right of
individuals, groups and peoples to
participate in, contribute to, and
enjoy continuous economic,
social, cultural and political
development, in which all human
rights and fundamental freedoms
can be fully realized. A
development strategy that
disregards or interferes with

human rights is the very negation

of development.
The aims and objectives of the so-

called development models
promoted by different
governments or international
development agencies are not
compatible with human rights
standards. A new model of
development ideology is being
promoted that is based on the
market and its logic. Several
decades of discussion on
alternative development model is
withering away and a dominant
model of market-oriented
development taking roots in that
place. As a result of the
globalization process, more
negative effects are visible now.
Global integration of the
structures, processes, and
ideologies produce injustice,
oppression, exploitation and mal-
development in society. The
systematic integration of the
forces that are dominant in the
globalization process intensifies
human rights violations.
Development Aid and Human

Rights
It has long been accepted by the

United Nations and in most
international forums that
“developed” countries should
provide aid in the form of grants
and loans to the developing
countries. The General Assembly
has, by consensus resolutions,

called for such development aid to

reach 0.7 per cent of the GNP of
developed countries. Actually less
than half of that target has been
attained. For example, the United
States gives only less than 0.2 per
cent, instead of 0.7 per cent.
Overseas Development Aid

(ODA) presents debatable issues
from the perspective of human
rights. For example, it raises the
question whether aid should be
directed mainly to reducing
poverty and providing social
services to the needy or whether
priority should be given to
economic growth and
strengthening infrastructure.
Another key question of a legal
political characteristic is whether
the recipient government or the
donor state should have a decisive
voice. The developing states
emphasize their primary
responsibility for development of
the country and their right to self-
determination in respect of the
economy and resources. Donor
countries tend to emphasize their
narrow concepts of human rights
as a prerequisite to sanction
development assistance. They
also emphasize the pragmatic
political fact that aid is not likely
to be provided if the beneficiary
states violated basic human rights.
According to Mikhail Assize,
human rights have become
another arsenal of Western
countries in their bid to bring
recalcitrant Third World nations

to heel in their New World Order.
The question whether aid should

be given to countries where
human rights are substantially or
systematically violated has been
analyzed by Katherine
Tomasevski in the following
statement.
Donor governments and agencies

are continuously making
decisions which country to assist,
how much and what for, because
aid needs are much larger than
available aid. Human rights have
entered the already numerous
criteria for allocating aid fairly
recently. this entry has been
neither easy nor smooth because
no general criteria have been
developed by donors and
consequently decisions have been
made on case-to-case basis.
Moreover, these decisions have
been limited to some human rights
violations in some aid-receiving
countries. Thereby human rights
terminology has often been used
to justify decisions to provide aid
or to terminate it; while human
rights criteria - to the extent that
there is such a thing in the aid
policy of any donor - have been
confined to the search for those
human rights violations which
could justify cutting off aid.
Trade and Human Rights
Global trade is being liberalized

and opened up in this era of

globalization. A set of new rules

and regulations have been
promoted through international
firms like WTO and new
initiatives have been taken
through the formation of regional
economic trading blocs.
At the same time several

developed countries in the world
have been trying to inter-relate
trade policy with human rights
policy. Under mounting pressure
from the business lobby in the
irrespective countries, several
Western governments have
altered their policies depending
up on their business interests.
Under the Generalized System of
Preferences (GSP) which provides
for trade benefits for developing
countries, the USA has withdrawn
or threatened to withdraw
preferences from some countries
that violate human rights. The
case of China has been
controversial, with opinion in the
United States sharply divided on
the desirability of conditioning
trade preferences on compliance
with specified human rights.
There has been strong pressure
from US business lobby against
use of the Jackson-Vanik Trade
Act of 1974 for denying MFN
status to China. It held that talking
about “political freedom is not a
sound argument for attempting to
use the blunt instrument of trade
sanctions to win democratic rule
for China. Keeping millions of
Chinese in poverty by restricting

their right to trade, in the hope of

promoting human rights, is
neither logical nor moral.
Likewise, depriving Americans of
the freedom to trade and invest in
China violates their rights to
liberty and property”13. This is a
case of shift in policy based on
convenience rather than on
ideological convictions or moral
principles. On the other hand,
some developed countries are
pressing for trade sanctions
against states found to violate
human rights, especially human
rights standards that are generally
based on the Conventions and
Recommendations of the
International Labor Organization.
They have tended on the whole to
oppose trade liberalization treaties
such as NAFTA and currently
WTO. The developing countries
have generally objected to such
measures since they would reduce
their comparative advantage
through cheap labor and
constitute a major barrier to their
industrialization. From their point
of view, workers rights enforced
by trade barriers would contribute
to greater poverty in their
countries.
Drawing on the experience of the

“Sullivan Principles” applied by
foreign companies operating in
South Africa, some activists and
scholars have proposed imposing
international human rights
standards, particularly labor
standards, directly on private

companies engaged in
transnational activity. Guidelines
for Multinational Enterprises
adopted by the Organization of
Economically Developed
Countries in 1976 provided for
observance of standards of labor
relations by transnational
companies. A UN Commission on
Transnational Corporations
devoted about 15 years of study
and negotiation on a draft Code of
Conduct for Transnational
Corporations that included a
general provision requiring
transnational corporations to
respect human rights and
fundamental freedoms in the
countries where they operate and
more detailed provisions on
observance of laws on labor
relations and involvement of trade
unions. Objections of the USA
and a few other countries have
prevented its adoption. These are
some of the examples of the
double standards adopted by the
developed countries that profess
concern for human rights. The fad
is that the economically
developed countries are in a better
position than others to take the
advantage of globalization and at
the same item dictate policies and
guidelines to increase their
bargaining power.
The TNCs which have gained

strength in the post-globalization
era is the main actor in several
developed countries in
formulating new foreign policies

to shape a new global order. This

trend has been highlighted in a
recent study that the emerging
global order is spearheaded by a
few hundred corporate giants,
many of them bigger than most
sovereign nations. By acquiring
earth-spanning technologies, by
developing products that can be
produced anywhere and sold
everywhere, by spreading credit
around the world, and by
connecting global channels of
communication that can penetrate
any village or neighborhood,
these institutions we normally
think of as economic rather than
political. private rather than
public, are becoming the world
empires of the twenty-first
century.
The impact of these global giant’s

operations have negative impact
on human rights. Virtually all
developing countries at the
present time seek private foreign
investment for development. Such
investment now greatly exceeds
loans or grants from official
sources. The growth of
Transnational corporations - now
numbering about 35,000 with
1,50,000 foreign affiliates - is
evidence of the increased role of
the private sector and of market
economies in developing
countries. New technologies have
transformed the nature of
production and facilitated re-
location of firms. Nationalization,
once the centre of debate, has now

virtually disappeared from the

agenda of developing countries.
The human rights implications of

these trends are outlined by an
economist, David Korten in the
following terms:
Today the most intense

competition in the globally
integrated market is not between
the gigantic Transnational
Corporations, but it is between
governments that find themselves
competing with one another for
investors by offering the cheapest
and most compliant labor; the
weakest environmental, health,
and safety standards, the lowest
taxes; and the most fully
developed infrastructure. Often
governments must borrow to
finance the social and physical
infrastructure needed to attract
private investors. Having pushed
almost the entire social and
environmental costs of production
onto the community, many firms
are able to turn a handsome
profit. Having bargained away
their tax base and accepted low
wages for their labor, many
communities reap relatively few
benefits from the foreign
investment, however, and are left
with no evident way to repay the
loans contracted on the .firms
behalf14
Impact of Globalization on
Human Rights

Globalization has its winners and

losers. With the expansion of
trade, market, foreign investment,
developing countries have seen
the gaps among themselves
widen. The imperative to
liberalize has demanded a
shrinking of state involvement in
national life, producing a wave of
privatization, cutting jobs,
slashing health, education and
food subsidies, etc. affecting the
poor people in society. In many
cases, liberalization has been
accompanied by greater inequality
and people are left trapped in utter
poverty. Meanwhile, in many
industrialized countries
unemployment has soared to
levels not seen for many years
and income disparity to levels not
recorded since last century. The
collapse of the economies of the
Asian Tigers are examples of this.
The Human Development Report
of 1997 revealed that poor
countries and poor people too
often find their interests neglected
as a result of globalization.
Although globalization of the
economy has been characterized
as a locomotive for productivity,
opportunity, technological
progress, and uniting the world, it
ultimately causes increased
impoverishment, social disparities
and violations of human rights.
That is what we see today.
Notes:
1. Mohameden Ould-Mey, Global

Adjustment; Implications for

Peripheral States, Third World
Quarterly, 15:2, 1994.
2. Cited in Carole, Collins, A

World in Mutation. WSCF
Journal, December 1995.
3. Xabier, Gorostiga, Latin

America in the New World Order,
in Global Visions: Beyond the
New World Order, Jeremy
Brecher, (ed).(Boston, MA :South
end Press, 1993), p.67.
4. Nikhil Aziz, “The Human

Rights Debate in an Era of
Globalization: Hegemony of
Discourse.” Bulletin of Concerned
Asian Scholars, Vol. 27, No.4,
Oct-Dec., 1995.
5. International Labour Resource

and Information Group, “Getting
to Grips with Globalization”,
Workers World, No.3-4, January-
February, 1996.
6. Kenichi Ohmae: The End of the

Nation State, New York: The
Press, 1995. p.2-5.
7. Robinson Richard and

Goodman David S.G. (eds). “The
New rich in Asia: Economic
Development, Social Status and
Political Consciousness”, The
New Rich in Asia, London:
Routledge.1996.p.1.
8. Ibid. p.226

9. Ohame, op.cit, p.15.
10. Ibid.
11. Seabrooke Jermey,

“Internationalism versus
Globalization”, Asia-APEC
internet message, Sept. 11 1996.
12. Verzola Robert, Asia-APEC

internet message, August 16,
1996.
13. Dow James A, Trade and

Human Rights in China, Journal
of Commerce, November 15,
1996.
14. Korten David, Sustainable

Development: A Review Essay,
World Policy Journal, vol 9,
p.157-190.
16


Chunakara (ed.)
Chapter 6: Globalization and Asian

Women, by Matsui Yayori
Ms. Yayori is Director of Asia-

Japan Women’s Centre, Tokyo,
Japan.
Globalization promotes mega-

competition among giants
Globalization of market economy

has spread all over the world in
the last decade of the 20th century
after the collapse of socialist
planned economy in Eastern
Europe. Globalization, which
integrates the world economy
through liberalization of trade and
investment and deregulation and
privatization of business so that
the world transnational
corporations (TNCs) can operate
freely across national boundaries.

Besides, the three pillars of the

international economy: the IMF,
the World Bank and the WTO
consolidate their powers.
Electronic information technology
such as computers and internet is
playing a key role in promoting
globalization.
Globalization is the era of mega-

competition, in other words, the
competition among giant TNCs
which accelerates the race for the
bottom to make TNCs acquire
more profit by further exploitation
of labor including lowering the
wages, cutting the welfare
benefits, laying off employees,
depriving workers of their labor
rights, using cheap labor such as
casual and even child labor, and
also by further destruction of
environment. It is the competition
in which participants aren’t equal
and the winner and the loser are
predetermined, because TNCs and
international financial institutions
in the North have such power as
the weaker nations in the South
can hardly compete.
Under globalization, developing

countries have to open up their
economy to the more advanced
industrialized countries.
Liberalization and deregulation
under globalized world economy
minimize the role of nation states
to regulate and control TNCs for
the interests of their own people;
on the contrary, governments of
developing countries in the South

are forced to serve TNCs from the

North by providing various
benefits to them. They are also
dictated to by the IMF and other
powerful international agencies
which impose them structural
adjustment programme (SAP) at
the sacrifice of people.
Women workers deaths caused

by fire in toy factories
It is poor women who suffer most

the impact of globalization
because competition among big
corporations cause unemployment
and casualization of female labor.
Women workers who are still

employed face worsening
conditions including extremely
low wage, long working hours
and labor accidents. They are
treated like sub-humans without
even minimum labour rights
written in the ILO conventions.
At the International Tribunal on

Workers’ Human Rights, held at
the Peoples Summit on APEC in
Vancouver in November 1997, a
young researcher from Hong
Kong testified about the Zhili toy
factory fire which killed 87
workers and injured 47 in 1993. It
is a Hong Kong-Chinese joint
venture located in Shenzhen,
southern China producing stuffed
toys for the Italian brand name
Chicco. According to her
testimony, there was no alarm, no
sprinklers or fire escapes in the

factory and only unqualified

electricians were employed. Three
hundred workers, mostly young
women, couldn’t get out of the
factory, because the management
put steel bars on windows and
kept the doors locked in order to
prevent them from stealing or
leaving the work site early. Even
those who survived with heavy
burns didn’t get proper medical
treatment, nor due compensation
from the company.
The toll of industrial accidents,

according to the state statistics of
China, amounted 20,000 in 1994
and the majority of these tragic
cases happened in the coastal
regions where foreign investments
were concentrated under the
socialist market economy. As
many as 93 died and 49 were
injured by fire in a dyeing factory
Zhuhai in 1994; 23 died and 49
were injured by the fire in a
lighter factory in Shunda in 1995,
and 32 died and 4 were injured by
fire in a shoe factory in Fujian in
1997. Most of the victims were
young female workers who
migrated from rural areas of the
interior.
After China opened up to the

global market economy and
joined the global competition, its
most useful weapon is cheap
labour, factory owners are trying
to minimize any cost including
that of workers’ safety, due to
lack of safety regulation in

foreign investments. In the

industrial zones for foreign capital
in China, like in other countries,
workers are deprived of the right
to organize themselves in order to
improve their working conditions.
Cheap products made in China
flooding the global market are
manufactured by foreign joint
ventures at the sacrifice of
numerous women workers. This is
the reality of workers behind the
strong international competitive
performance of China.
However, it is not only in China

that blood-stained toys are
produced by young women. In
May 1993, only a half-year before
the Zhili fire, a fire in Kader Toy
Factory in Thailand claimed 189
workers’ lives and 469 workers
were injured.
In Vietnam, Keyhinge Toys, a

100% foreign-owned plant (Hong
Kong company), produces
giveaway toys for McDonald’s
fast-food multinational, over
1,000 workers, 90% of whom are
young women, have been
struggling for their rights to the
minimum wage, legal working
hours, overtime pay, health and
safety measures and the right to
organize themselves. However,
they haven’t got any success; on
the contrary, hundreds of workers
were dismissed. Moreover, in
February 1997, 220 workers
became seriously ill as a result of
acetone poisoning.

M-B Sales, a US-based supplier

of toys to McDonald’s, has two
factories in China. The working
conditions there are so poor that
at the factory in Zhuhai, 23
workers were hospitalized due to
benzene poisoning and three had
died in January 1992. At two
other McDonald’s toy producing
factories in China, several
workers were victimized by
chemical poisoning, but they were
not compensated.
In Thailand, women workers,

including child workers, are
extremely maltreated at Eden
Factory, a European joint venture,
which manufacture world-
renowned Mickey Mouse toys for
Disneyland.
The plight of women workers of

toy factories is only the tip of the
iceberg. It is caused by
competitive market economy
without regulation for the
protection of workers. It is always
the weakest sector of society that
is most severely affected by
global forces.
Facing such extreme form of

inhumane treatment and
exploitation of workers who
produce world-brand toys for the
global market, independent labour
unions, human rights, women’s
and religious groups in Hong
Kong have launched Toy
Campaign with the slogan “Stop
Toying with Human Lives!”;

people in the industrialized

countries in the North joined the
campaign in various forms.
Global march against child

labour
On the 17th of January 1998, the

streets surrounding Quezon
Memorial Circle in Quezon City
of Metro Manila, the Philippines,
were filled with 15,000 child
workers and their supporters from
all over the Philippines, and also
children from India, Nepal,
Indonesia, Thailand and
Cambodia in their ethnic clothing
were also marching together,
shouting “Stop child labor!” ‘Go
Go Global March!”. It was a kick-
off of the Global March against
Child Labor which will last for
six months involving over 700
organizations in 97 countries of
five continents. It is the largest
social mobilization ever organized
on behalf of the 250 million child
laborers around the world who are
forced to work for survival.
In the Philippines, according to a

1995 survey, 3.6 million children
between the ages 5-17 are
working, which is 15.9% of the
child population. Nearly two-
thirds of the working children are
in farms. There are 216,000
young child workers between the
ages 5-9 who are working in order
to help their parents cope and
survive, and among them 2.2
million children are in hazardous

and exploitative forms of work,

including mining, quarrying,
fireworks production, deep sea
fishing, domestic work,
commercial sexual exploitation,
scavenging, stevedoring in ports,
and sub-contractual labor.
Abrelia Pablo, 13 years old,

works from 6:30 in the morning
till 9:00 p.m. at a factory in
Cotabato, southern Mindanao.
While new at work, the tips of her
fingers were cut by machines in
the factory which had no machine
guards. She receives Pesos 600
(US $15) per month with free
meals and housing. Joseph
Jalmon, 7 years old, fetched water
from a nearby spring filling four
to five gallons which he would
load to a waiting small fishing
boat. He earns Pesos 2.00 per
gallon and tips.
Children have to work because of

various reasons. The Philippine
organizers of the Global March
mention following: widespread
poverty and social inequality
resulting in the erosion of the
family’s capacity to nurture and
protect children, the rise of
informal economy requiring
simple skills and technologies,
globalization of capitalism where
underdeveloped nations provide
the rich with cheap labor,
disrupted family patterns due to
migration, AIDS, etc. and
inadequate basic services from
government, including education,

due to cut of the state budget of

non-profit sectors to follow
structural adjustment programme
dictated by the IMF and the
World Bank. The increase of
child labour in Asia is apparently
caused by globalization.
“Only global pressure on

governments, employers and
communities can begin to turn the
tide against exploitative child
labor. When I see the tremendous
support the Global March has
received, it becomes certain that
the 21st century is not going to
flourish at the cost of the sweat
and blood of children, said Mr.
Kailash Satyarthi, of India, the
inter-national coordinator of the
Global March, who had originally
conceived the idea and proposed
it to NGOs worldwide working on
children’s human rights. There is
another serious issue of children:
the increase of street children
which is also an impact of
globalization. Many of them are
also working children in one way
or another. Globalization, which
causes the aggravation of poverty,
forces millions of children to live
in streets, because their families
cannot feed or support them.
Feminization of international
labor migration
Globalized capital which moves

freely across national borders to
optimize profits requires, cheap,
controllable and expendable

“global workforce”. Thus,

migrant labor has become an
essential part of the global free
market system. It is said the
number of overseas migrant labor
has reached almost 1 billion, the
largest number in history. People
in such huge numbers have to
leave their countries for survival.
Among increasing migrant

workers, the percentage of women
is growing remarkably: in case of
the Philippines, the largest
migrant labor exporting country,
some 65% of overseas migrant
laborers are women. In Hong
Kong, some 100,000 Filipino
women are working as domestic
workers, in Singapore some
60,000 Filipino women. They
often have to face non- or under-
payment, physical or sexual
violence by employers or their
families.
The case of Sara Barabagan, 16-

year-old Moro (Muslim minority)
woman from Mindanao,
illustrates the plight of female
migrant workers. She was
sentenced to death for the murder
of her employer in a Middle East
country in 1995. It was reported
that she was threatened with a
knife and raped by her aged
employer; then she wrested the
knife from him and stabbed him
many times. Her case drew the
attention of the whole world,
voices of protest and support
arose in many countries, Filipino

women demonstrated at home and

in Hong Kong as well. As a result,
Sara’s death sentence was
reduced and finally she was
released to return home. Sara is
only one of the many victims of
abuse of Asian female migrant
workers.
The number of Indonesian

domestic workers in Hong Kong
has been increasing as well.
Consequently, more and more
Indonesian women come to the
Asian Migrant Centre to seek
help. The booklet “No Other
Place to Go”, published by the
Centre introduced the results of
interviews with Indonesian and
other foreign domestic workers,
pointing out that, in addition to
the problems shared with male
workers such as unpaid wages,
overwork, no days off and
passport confiscation, women
workers face unique problems,
such as sexual violence at the
hands of male employers and
family members and other human
rights violations. The
globalization of migration is
accompanied by feminization of
migration especially in Asia.
Japan is a recipient country of

migrant workers but most Filipino
women migrate to Japan as
entertainers, because the Japanese
government sticks to the policy
refusing to accept any unskilled
foreign labor. Filipino women
began to come to work since the

early 80s and its number

increased dramatically. According
to Immigration statistics, the
number of Filipino women who
have been to Japan holding
entertainers’ visa in the last
twelve years (1985-1996) was
over 400,000. Even though they
are supposed to work as
entertainers such as singers or
dancers, many of them are forced
to work as hostess in bars or even
to do prostitution in the expanding
sex industry all over Japan. They
face all kinds of violence and
exploitation.
Since the early 90s, the new issue

has been highlighted, that is the
sudden increase of Japanese
Filipino Children (JFC). A large
number of JFC, abandoned by
Japanese fathers live in the
Philippines with their mothers in
poverty and with hardship.
Citizens’ Network for Japanese
Filipino Children was formed in
1994 and it opened its Manila
office “Maligaya House” in
January 1998 for helping JFC,
and their mothers to solve legal
and other problems. This is the
problem of the second generation
of female migrant workers; an
unavoidable result of feminization
of migration.
Sex trafficking of women
In August 1997, I visited Thailand

as a member of Women’s Study
Tour organized by Asia-Japan

Women’s Resource Centre and in

September, Myanmar (Burma) as
a resource person of a human
rights training course. The main
objective of our study tour was to
see the background of growing
sex trafficking of Thai women
into Japan and other countries. It
was shocking to see the sheer
poverty in the villages, especially
hilltribe areas, which showed
dramatic contrast to accumulation
of wealth and prosperity in
Bangkok.
The economic growth of Thailand

on macro level has been
remarkable with more than ten
percent annual GNP growth since
the late 1980’s until the sudden
currency crisis which started in
July 1997. However, in the rural
areas in the northeast and the
north, there is a totally different
world where people suffer from
economic deprivation and
environmental destruction - in
other words, all kinds of human
rights violations.
It should be mentioned that

Thailand has developed its
economy under globalization,
adopting quite a liberal trade and
investment policy without
regulation and inviting huge
foreign capital to produce goods
for export to the global market.
As a result, it has been seen as a
model economy promoting the
world growth centre of East Asia.

However, the Thai government

has hardly implemented any
social policy towards rural and
hilltribe people for equitable
distribution of the wealth
accumulated by its quite liberal
economic development policy.
The type of economic
development in Thailand has
widened the gap between the rich
and the poor and the urban and
the rural. The income gap
between the capital and the Isaan,
northeastern region, is reported to
be ten to one, and that between
Bangkok and the north eight to
one.
As a result, poor farmers and

hilltribe people have to sell their
young daughters to the sex
industry; the age of these girls are
getting younger and younger,
because the fear of AIDS has
increased the demand for
younger, safer girls not yet
infected with HIV. However, it is
reported some 70% of these girls
get HIV within one year after they
are put into brothels. The total
number of people infected with
HIV has reached more than one
million in Thailand. Girls are
dying from AIDS every day in
many villages and many AIDS
orphans are left due to the spread
of HIV to mothers.
In recent years, transborder sex

trafficking has been accelerated,
and more and more Thai women
are sent abroad by trafficking

organizations: Japan is the

country receiving the largest
number of trafficked women from
neighboring Asian countries and
they are treated as sex slaves. As
a matter of fact, the sex industry
is the most deregulated industry
without any rule or much less
code of conduct whatsoever
which can use anything as
commodities, even women’s
bodies, just as British slave
merchants did to African people
in the 18th century.
In the market economy based on

competition, everything is
commodified including human
beings, and women’s sexuality is
traded as the most profitable
commodity. Actually, these
victimized Thai women are
bought and sold at a price of 4
million yen in Japan.
It is not only Thai women but also

young girls of neighboring
countries that are trafficked into
Thailand. According to a Thai
NGO working on children’s
rights, some 40,000 to 50,000
Burmese girls have been sent to
Thailand and even more brutally
abused than Thai girls at the
bottom of the prostitution
industry. Some 80 to 90% of them
got HIV, due to their extremely
weak, low status and little
knowledge of self protection in
brothels. Those Burmese girls
who got AIDS and became
useless for brothel owners were

sent back to Thai-Burmese and

Thai-Chinese border towns by
garbage trucks and just dumped
there and left to die. Even if they
managed to reach their families,
they were often left outside their
houses to be fed like dogs until
they die, because of ignorance of
and fear for AIDS on the part of
family.
Girls of southern China,

Cambodia and Laos have been
also victimized by growing sex
trafficking in Asia. As soon as
their countries opened up the
economy to the outside world,
poor women and girls were
targeted as the easiest means to
make profit at the growing global
sex market. For the young girls
who are used as sex objects and
infected with HIV to die so
young, globalization of the market
economy is really violence
against them.
Globalization is threat to food

security and environment
Farmers, fisherfolk and

indigenous people, especially
women producers of food and
other primary products suffer
from the globalization in most
Asian countries.
According to the World Bank

report, some 2 million people
were forced to leave from their
land because of huge
infrastructure development

projects funded by World Bank

from 1986 to 1993. As many as
80% of those displaced were in
Asia.
Those mega projects which take

land from people include dams,
seaports, airports, highways,
bridges, industrial estates, golf
courses and other types of resort,
prawn farming and all kinds of
plantation. All these gigantic
development projects have been
promoted by TNCs in
collaboration with local
governments. The Asian region,
the growth centre of the world,
has been the main target of such
mega development projects.
The issue of displacement is

getting to be more and more
serious. People have to fight
against land grabbing. It is often
women who are in the forefront of
such struggle to protect their land,
because they are the main
producers of food and other daily
necessities and they have to
defend their livelihood.
In Batangas, some 100 km from

Manila, the Philippines, more
than 1,500 houses were
demolished in 1994 for the
Batangas Port Development
Project funded by Japan and other
international financial agencies.
The aim of expanding the
Batangas port into an
international port is to facilitate
establishment of TNC factories in

the nearby industrial estate.
The people there, led by a woman

mayor, resisted for years but
finally an armed police force
came to destroy the community.
She questioned, “Such
development project is for whom?
It is development invasion, isn’t
it?” However, she didn’t give up.
She organized several hundred
families who refused to resettle in
the far away area provided by the
government. They are now
building a new town nearer their
workplace.
In Isaan, the northeastern region

of Thailand, was converted from
an agricultural area that produced
food for self-consumption to a
cash crop producing area under
the government policy of
promoting export of agricultural
products to the world market. As
a result, the vast area of tropical
forests has been destroyed to
develop huge plantation of corn,
tapioca, cotton and other
commercial products. Farmers are
indebted and forced to even sell
their daughters for brothels,
because of the decline of the
international price of primary
products.
On top of that, the Government

started the greening policy by
planting eucalyptus trees. It is the
kind of tree which grow very fast
and can be used as pulp chip to
make paper. It is an export

product to developed countries

which consume more and more
paper. Therefore, the vast farm
land was taken from farmers to
open up eucalyptus plantations.
Facing such reality, farmers

organized a struggle to protect
their land. In many villages, it is
women who fight in the forefront
and confront the military and the
police. One woman leader of a
village near Royet in southern
Isaan questioned, ‘We never stop
fighting until we get back our
land. We want to grow trees by
ourselves for our own use, for
example fruit trees. We need
basic food to live on. Why do we
have to cultivate which we cannot
eat for export to the rich country?’
In southern Thailand, the vast

coastal zones are now used for
prawn and shrimp cultivation for
export. Fisherwomen are resisting
such development projects
because their fish catch has
decreased due to the cutting down
of mangrove trees and the
pollution of the sea by chemicals
discharged from prawn farms. A
woman in a beautiful fishing
village near Trang, in the southern
border area, was trying to recover
the coastal environment and said,
‘Don’t eat too much shrimp,
please. Why do we have to lose
our traditional peaceful life in
such a way?’
Actually, prawn cultivation has

spread all over the coastal zones

in Asia. It is not only fisherfolk
but also farmers that are affected,
because their farmlands are taken
away and used as prawn and fish
ponds. In Bangladesh, tragic
incidents have taken place in last
several years in the coastal areas
in the south. According to a
testimony at the Asian Women’s
Tribunal held in Bangkok in
1994, a group of women farmers
had taken out a protest march to
the developer of prawn farms,
shouting “Don’t take our land!”
The developer sent a team of
armed men and they fired at the
demonstrating women. One
woman was killed and several
were injured.
The tragedy was caused because

the Bangladesh government
promoted prawn cultivation
together with the World Bank and
the IMF as a part of the structural
adjustment programme to earn
foreign currency. In one of the
poorest countries where the
malnutrition rate of children is
very high, due to lack of enough
food, people are not allowed to
produce their own food. Instead
they are forced to cultivate food
for export. Women and children
are losing their lives by both
starvation and violence in the
name of development.
Thus, globalization threatens food

security and destroy the
environment and causes people

extreme pains and agony.
Asian Women resist globalization

and search for an alternative
economic system.
No matter how powerful the force

of globalization, women should
not surrender and accept it. It is
the hidden intention of global
forces such as TNCs and
international agencies to make the
people feel that globalization is
inevitable and there is no
alternative to it and it was of no
use to resist it. They try to make
the people feel powerless.
However, ironically, the
unprecedented scale of human
suffering and misery caused by
harsh mega competition,
liberalization of trade and
investment, in the era of
globalization motivates millions
of victimized people to resist and
fight back for survival and human
dignity.
It is women who are taking the

lead in this global struggle,
because feminization of poverty,
violence against women,
dehumanizing treatment of
women and all other forms of
pains imposed on women drive
them to fight back.
The negative impacts of

globalization such as deregulation
policy are also felt by women in
developed countries. In Japan,
women workers are put into even

more disadvantageous position

due to deregulation policy to
deprive protective measures and
make more casual labor. In the
competitive business world,
women’s reproductive function is
considered a burden, and, as a
result, gender discrimination in
workplace is perpetuated.
Therefore, Japanese women have
formed a coalition against such
deregulation policy.
In many countries in Asia, the

women’s movement is getting
stronger and stronger. Their
power was clearly shown in the
World Women’s Conference at
Beijing. Many women have
broken silence and begun to take
action. It is vitally important to
strengthen the global women’s
movement based on local action
and with perspective for the 21st
century in order to confront and
break through global force.
The growing women’s movement

in Asia has to take up many
challenges. One of the most
important tasks is to achieve true
participatory democracy in order
to force nation-states to accept
more accountability vis-à-vis
global forces for the interests of
their people. Women should be
empowered to democratize the
state, society, workplace and
family.
Secondly, women have to change

the global consumer culture such

as “McDonaldization” and
recover diversity of lifestyle and
values. Consumer goods traded by
TNCs are causing pains to
millions of women and children
who produce them, like toys. It is
so important to create feminized
culture based on caring, nurturing
mutual help and change the
prevailing masculine culture of
competition, efficiency and power
greed, which is the culture of
globalization.
Thirdly, women’s groups in Asia

should work close together in
searching for a new vision for
future, because it is apparent that
the world in the 21st century
should not be like the one we live
in now. We need to create an
alternative society based on
gender justice, ecological
sustainability and local-global
democracy. Asian women should
have the confidence to change
their own daily lives and the
world by supporting one another.
Only global women’s force can
overcome global market force.
16


Chunakara (ed.)
Chapter 7: Some Ethical and

Theological Reflections and
Considerations, by Feliciano V. Carino
Dr. Carino is General Secretary

of the Christian Conference of
Asia, Hong Kong.
Introduction
Some disclaimers and

clarifications are appropriate at
the outset. I have in fact tried to
get myself out of the assignment
of preparing this paper.
Unfortunately for me, and perhaps
for you, by the time I came about
to doing this, it was too late to
look for alternatives. Apart from
the pressures on my time, which
have been quite heavy as we
prepared for the various events in
the life of CCA, one of the

reasons for this is the fact that

there has been a tendency,
perhaps even the assumption, that
by virtue of my position in the
Christian Conference of Asia
(CCA), what I say on any given
topic indicates official position.
This, of course, is not so, and I
want to make it clear from the
beginning, in this context. That
what I say on this subject does not
represent official position or even
any sense of consensus in the
CCA or m the ecumenical
movement. It is important to note
this because of the fact of the
matter is that while there have
been strong positions indicated by
many about ‘globalization’, I do
not think that there is yet either a
consensus or agreed position
about it, specially on the ethical
and theological plane. On the
contrary, ‘globalization is
something that is yet unfolding in
various ways and myriad forms so
that I fund it both presumptuous
and premature to be making final
theological or ethical judgments
about as a whole.
I underscore as a whole. I do not

in fact like the term
‘globalization’. It is an
abstraction, the frame of reference
of which, I have noticed in
reading some of the literature,
changes depending on who uses
it, what intellectual tendencies he
or she represents, what academic
discipline he or she comes from,
and specially what political

persuasion, inclination or group

he or she belongs to. I note this
with particular importance
because one of the dangers,
which, I hope, the ecumenical
movement and the churches
should avoid, is that of being
“sucked” into the glib use of this
word as part of the rhetoric of
“political advocacy”, or as a
euphemism for things we do not
like or have been opposed to in
the past. This, you will note that I
put the word in quotation marks,
although for the purpose of
facilitating writing, I will
withdraw the quotation marks
from hereon.
What I present, in this light, are

personal reflection and
considerations; personal, although
I do not think they are private.
There are, I am certain, many who
share some of what I have to say.
It is important, however, to note
that they hold no institutional,
certainly no ecclesial, imprimatur.
I present them as a “student” and
as in interested observer and
participant in the life of
contemporary church and society.
I myself do not give them
‘finality”. They are only
“reflections” and
“considerations”, contributions
for our common endeavor in
understanding ‘our” world, and
what it means to be a part of the
Church of Jesus Christ in such a
world. “Understanding our world”
and “what it means to be a part of

the Church of Jesus Christ”: these

to me constitute what is involved
in “ethical and theological”
considerations so that I hope that
as I try to “understand”, and to
share the life of the Church I
know and experience it, I am
doing “ethical’ and “theological”
considerations. Ethics and
theology, in this sense, are not
outside of analysis and
understanding; they are within it.
In understanding our world in
whatever way we do it, we are
engaging in the first, and, in my
view, the most important, step of
ethical and theological reflection.
I will say some more on this at a
later point of this paper.
Some basic considerations and

observations from an ecumenical
perspective I proceed then with
what I consider to be some basic
considerations and observations
about globalization, which are
gleaned from the ecumenical
“perch” on which I stand.
Globalization has become one of

the “in-words” of ecumenical
discussion and concern in recent
times. There are not very many
ecumenical events that take place
nowadays that do not touch, in
some way, on this issue. Within
the CCA, there have already been
numerous references to this
subject in activities of various
Program Units. In the projections
of “joint work” with the World
Council of Churches (WCC)

which has begun to be set up,

another Consultation is scheduled,
perhaps wider in participation and
scope than this one, to be held in
New Delhi in September, in
connection with the celebration of
the “jubilee” of the founding of
the WCC. I know of so many
other insinuations of all kinds of
meetings and consultations on this
subject that are being floated
around in various ecumenical
circles, specially those within the
ambit of the work of the WCC.
The Federation of Asian Bishops’
Conferences (FABC) held a
Colloquium recently on “Being
Church in the 21st Century” and
placed this within “the context of
globalization”. Whether these
various events are saying
particularly new or with any
significant impact, or are only
being redundant is a matter about
which I withhold comment. It is
nevertheless important to note the
sudden burst of attention that is
being given to this subject.
When used in the historical terms

with which I prefer to use it,
globalization in so many ways
sums up the dominant and
encompassing reality (note that I
underscore this word) of the
collective life of people and
nations in our time, so potent and
full of issues and questions for or
against human development, so
that it presses upon everyone who
wants to make sense of the times
in which we live, or who wants to

be concerned about “keeping and

making life more human”. It is in
this sense that it is an issue of
ethical and theological
consideration and concern. It is
also in this sense that I consider it
the key and critical reality and
component of the “turn” and
transition to the 21st century and
the new millennium that we need
to approximate and deal with.
I am tempted to refer to it as “the

great new fact of our time”, the
words that, some of you might
recall, William Temple used to
refer to the birth of the WCC in
1948. I have demurred in doing so
precisely because I really do not
think it is “new” even when I
think that it is indeed one of the
dominant “facts” of our lives.
Globalization is not new. It is not
something that has come about
only in the last few years, for
examples, as if it came about only
after the “end” of the so-called
“Cold War”, or the so-called
“collapse” of the Soviet Union
and the other Eastern European
socialist societies. It is in fact a
process that has been doing one
for centuries, a process I might
add that involves the incessant
unfolding, with all its creativity
and contradictions, of the human
spirit into the wider horizon of
history. It is a process that has
involved various levels of human
invention, expressing itself
mainly in the development of
technology and various other

fields of human knowledge and

endeavor, and I should add
emphatically the various stages of
human hubris that has expressed
itself in the oppression and
conquest of peoples by other
peoples. Thus, as Robert
Heilroner has noted (see The
Future as History), it is a process
that has been involved in and
accelerated by the expansion of
the West and what has emerged as
a result as “world history”.
All of these, as I have already

noted, are ethical and theological
in themselves. If particular
theological consideration,
however, is the fact that in this
emergence of what Heilbroner
refers to as “world history”.
Christianity and the Christian
Church, and in particular,
Christian mission, have been a
significant part. Christianity is
inherently global”. The first
“ecumenical council” that met in
Jerusalem dealt as you might
recall with what is known as the
“Jewish question”. It decided
categorically that Christianity is
not a wing of the Jewish faith so
that one has to be a “Jew” in order
to be a Christian. Christianity is
“universal”, it is about and for all
people. It is not ethnic or nation-
bound. Its disciples are to “go into
all parts of the world” in order to
“make disciples of all nations”.
All the creeds of the Church are
“global oriented”. They are about
“one, holy, catholic and

apostolic” faith. In the modern

period, the pioneers of the modern
ecumenical movement were part
of the modern missionary
movement that spoke of going to
“all the regions beyond”. Nearly a
hundred years ago, at the end of
the 19th century, John R. Mott,
one of the “fathers” of the modern
ecumenical movement, looked at
the world and of the coming 20th
century and confidently spoke of
the “evangelization of the world
in the present generation”. Until
now, the United Methodist
Church in the USA has a “Board
of Global Ministries” from which
some of us receive money or
apply for scholarships. The
United Church of Canada has a
“Division of World Outreach”.
Until recently, the WCC had a
‘Commission on World Mission
and Evangelism’. The CCA is a
regional body that is part of the
“one, worldwide ecumenical
movement”. In short, Christianity
and the ecumenical movement
which is part of it are “global” in
nature and scope and they are
“global-bound” and “global-
oriented”. I do not mean to “rub
this in” too much, I have,
however, been theologically
amused and intrigued by those in
the ecumenical movement who
have so negatively and critically
spoken of “globalization”, when
all of the time they exude and
embody all of the elements -
intellectual, cultural, ideological,
economic and religious - of a
“global mentality’ and a “global

outreach”. Both Christian ethics

and Christian theology are “global
bound” and, therefore, are neither
strangers to nor should be
intimidated by the process of
globalization that is now part of
the common life of the world. We
have been part of the making of
this world, and if globalization,
after all, is something which
should not be going on, then our
first theological act is that of
“metanoia”, of “turning around”
what we ourselves helped to
create or “turning around” what
we have in fact already become
and which many of us, I think,
enjoy.
Globalization strikes us now so

strongly as we come to the end of
the century and the millennium,
not because it is new, or
something that suddenly crept on
us in some sinister way (like some
people in the United States used
to speak of “creeping
socialism”!). Many of us are now
jumpy, if not panicky, because of
the astounding and dramatic form
and pace in which it has
accelerated and come upon us in
the last few decades, and because
of the manner in which it has
taken place under auspices other
than ourselves and outside our
political, ideological, and
religious control. It has startled us
in so many ways, and while some
of us are quick to make moral and
other judgments, I suspect that
above all it is something that

frustrates and overwhelms

because it seems to go on no
matter what we say or do, and
because of the overpowering and
almost inexorable way it has
already swept and will continue to
sweep over various parts of our
lives. How do we live in a world
where neither our faith nor our
visions control the things that go
on? As I see it, this question is
one of the key theological
considerations we have to face in
this context.
It is in this context that I have said

before and I say again that
globalization has become
irreversible. In fact, it is not only
irreversible; its pace of
acceleration is astounding. Its
technology is now in place and
has settled in; it is developing
very fast, much faster than we can
both image and use, and in a
manner that has been both
amazing and perhaps
unprecedented, it has become so
accessible in a way that in so
short a time it is in the hands of so
many people in so many places.
This is specially true in its
technology of communication and
instruction. People now
communicate and convey
information globally, and there is
a generation of people who will
soon assume responsibilities in a
world that to them has always
been global, people in short who
have known no other world than
this new world of global outreach.

Thus, its institutions are growing

everyday as well. The geography
of mind and life has simply
expanded beyond our
anticipation, and control. In short,
globalization is reality; it is fact.
Like industrialization, once it has
began to settle in, it moves and
becomes “fact of life”. As Msgr.
Darmuid Martin of the Pontifical
Council for Justice and Peace has
rightly put it, the emergency of
worldwide webs of rapid and
inexpensive communication in its
various forms is as
“revolutionary” and definitive in
its impact as the emergence in the
past of the proverbial “wheel” or
what used to be the astounding
steam engine. Once it is
discovered, invented and put in
play, that is that. Beyond its use,
it brings consequences in the way
we live, the way we think, and the
way we work. A new outlook
begins to develop and form a new
phase” in the life of the world. It
is in this sense that I consider
globalization as one of the major
parts of the reality of our lives and
of the common context m which
we journey together towards the
new century and millennium.
There is no question in my mind
that this reality and this process
will grow and intensify at a pace
even faster than we have already
seen as we move further into the
next century.
That it is irreversible does not

mean that it is simple or can be

dealt with simplistically, or that it

is unambiguously creative and
positive in its manifestations. Like
any new and significant
development in the life of the
world, globalization is a process
that brings in its trail equally
unprecedented and new
dimensions of human suffering.
There is much in current
ecumenical thinking that has
pointed rightly to its dangers and
negative consequences. Some, for
example, have noted that far from
being inclusive, globalization has
in fact instituted new and firmer
lines of exclusion,
marginalization and
differentiation. Many in this
context have pointed very
strongly to the “growing gap
between the rich and the poor that
has ensued whether this is
experienced locally, nationally or
internationally, and how the
“open and borderless world of
economics” that has emerged has
destroyed local and national
economies and created conditions
for the untold new sufferings of
people. Others have noted that
globalization has underscored and
strengthened global control by old
and new centers of power,
economically, politically or even
culturally and religiously. Still
others have noted the impact of
globalization on the environment
and have raised in more pointed
ways issues related to
sustainability and ecological
health. Many also have raised in
more pointed ways issues related

to sustainability and ecological

health. Many also have raised
questions about the impact of
globalization on the condition of
women, on gender issues, on
questions of migration, and as we
are going to be discussing in this
Consultation on the situation of
human rights. The issues are
familiar, I am certain, to all of us.
I do not mean to exhaustively list
them here or even to try to deal
with them in substance. Suffice it
here for me to indicate that these
provide further ingredients to
what clearly is an overwhelming
but certainly not a simple
historical reality.
Some ethical and theological

considerations and reflections
What ethical and theological

considerations may be offered in
this context and in the light of this
reality which we call
globalization?
I start with what I do not want to

do and what I think must be
avoided. In so many instances and
in so many places in which I have
been involved or shared in the
discussions of globalization, I
have noted that globalization has
been converted by some into
some kind of a “morality play”.
Here, we are dealing with what is
“good” and “evil” and the
question we need to answer is
whether or not globalization is
“good” or “bad”, something that

people or the churches should be

for or against. There are no
ambiguities, no gray areas, only
either categorical expressions of
its goodness or direct allusions to
its sinfulness, and the actions that
must follow from either. There is
a suspicion, or maybe an
ideological hangover on the part
of some that like many other
phenomena in the past,
globalization is a sinister effort of
ensuring that the rich stay rich, or
indeed get richer, and the poor
stay poor or poorer, and therefore
to maintain the present centers of
hegemonic interests. That there is
something of this going on may
be true, in the same way that this
has been a factor in the
development of human history
and societies in all of history and
in all societies. Some have
suggested as a result that
Christians must “evangelize”
globalization, or stop and
dismantle it, or organize a
“revolution” to counter it. I
should say at the outset that I am
averse to these perceptions, and to
use the words of one of the
Encyclicals, I consider these as
futile efforts. In my ethical and
theological perspective, futility
like hubris is ethically and
theologically unacceptable.
I start from another point of

enquiry. What I have been
suggesting in what I have said so
far is that far from being a simple
or simplistic “moral” or

“ideological” play, globalization

is a very complex and still rapidly
evolving historical process and
reality. Like any such significant
new historical reality that has
come into motion now and in the
past, globalization embodies and
confronts us with benefits,
opportunities, challenges, risks,
dangers and oppressions not just
for some but for all sides
involved. Globalization in fact has
unleashed a social revolution the
significance and impact of which
is at least as much as those that
the Industrial Revolution which
took place in the last century
brought about. It is affecting not
just economies and nations, but
also lives and human
relationships. It is changing and
will change the nature of work
and leisure. It will have its
winners and losers. It will bring
integration and marginalization. It
could make the world a village, it
could bring every village into the
world. Some will, of course,
suffer more than others, or benefit
more than others, but all will be
affected in some way. Much in
fact will depend on how it will
evolve and how it will be
channeled, although there is also a
sense that globalization will take a
course if its own, following as it
were its own rules.
It is for this reason that I consider

it the first and primal act of
ethical and theological
consideration what the well-

known theologian of the

“phenomenon of man”, Pierre
Teilhard de Chardin, refers to as
the responsibility of “seeing”, of
being able to “understand” the
“phenomenon” and the “facts” of
history and human development
that are taking place within the
wider spectrum of the movement
of the human spirit to move
beyond where it currently stands
into a different and perhaps higher
level of its manifestation. This is
what I was referring to earlier
when I noted that “understanding”
is at the heart of ethical and
theological consideration. It is not
moral prescription or advice, but
what Teilhard notes as the
“elaboration of ever more perfect
eyes within a cosmos (and world)
in which there is always
something more to be seen”. This
“elaboration of more perfect
eyes” include in Teilhard’s view a
sense of spatial immensity, of
depth, of “number” and of
proportion, of quality, of
movement, and lastly of linkage
and solidarity. These take on such
significance in a world where we
are overwhelmed by an
incredulous array of new
knowledge and discoveries, of
new comforts but also of new
misery and suffering, and where
we are confronted by incalculable
demands upon our commitment
and goodwill. Here, I think, the
ecumenical movement has much
to undertake and to do. In my
assessment of the ecumenical
agenda which I presented in

Bangkok in 1996, I already

alluded to the need of deepening
and increasing “analytical
capability”’ as one of the
primordial necessities of social
witness in our time, and how this
is so important at a time when
ecumenical social thought seems
to have reached a “dry spell”,
where it has become in fact thin
and redundant, and therefore a
point where it has lost much
respect.
The issues upon which this

“elaboration of seeing” needs to
be focused are vast, challenging
and crucial. They include the
challenges of modernization and
tradition, of political community
and plurality and the nation-state,
of markets, wealth and human
development, of religion and
society, of technology and
science, of the economy in a “
borderless world”, of the
instruments of international
justice and governance, of war
and peace of human dignity and
human relations, of economic
growth and sustainability, and
many more - some new, some
with new nuances, and some that
are holdovers from our common
past. What in fact do we expect to
happen as a result of our
involvement and participation in
economic, social and political
life? What new dimensions of
economic, social and political
thinking are we contributing or
are we stuck with the old

prescriptions and formulations

that may have become moribund
and stale? Are there in fact
adequate ethical, theological or
Biblical resources that can give
“light” to the critical issues that
face us?
All of these pose to us something

that for quite some time in the
ecumenical spectrum we have not
talked about, namely, what one of
the prominent theologians and
social analysts of our time refer to
as ‘the ironies of history’. As I
have noted above, what does it
mean for us to live as a
community of faith in a world that
is not within our control, and in a
history that is not of our making?
The fact of the matter is history is
not in our hands, certainly not
entirely or primarily in our hands.
It is made elsewhere often by
multifarious forces and agents
that may be hostile to us, alien to
our concerns or even contrary to
the directions where we want to
go. “The road to hell”, as the
saying goes, “is paved with good
intentions”. And we know too
well that history is not always the
result of “good people” exercising
“goodwill” but often of “evil
people” producing deeds of good
results. What does it mean for us
to witness to the realities of our
faith, to the universality of our
fellowship and of the human
family in such a context of
historical ambiguity? I consider
this important because as a

religious community we are not

now, and I doubt very much,
specially as we move to the next
century, that we will ever be a
major actor in the emerging major
streams of historical development.
Here, as it has been at many other
major “turning points” of history,
we need that “openness” and
humility of heart and mind this is
capable of discovering and
recognizing “Divine presence” in
forms and guises we have not
expected, and in places we have
not anticipated and foreseen.
Whether we agree with it or not,
we need to hear, I think, once
more the words of a prayer
uttered by one of the outstanding
Christian social thinkers of our
time, “O Lord, give me the
courage to change the things that
can be changed; the serenity of
heart to accept the things that
cannot be changed; and the
wisdom to distinguish one from
the other”. Our tasks should be
understood more humbly, and
more as servants rather than as
ideological taskmasters of a
presumed misoriented world.
This leads to a corollary point that

is often equally difficult for us to
assume. Globalization as a
historical process and reality pose
in very strong terms the challenge
of mobility and plurality. First,
globalization expands the
horizons and ingredients of
choice. It increases the pace and
broadens the areas of human

knowledge, know-how and

capability by making available a
wider variety of human
experiences whether social,
technological or religious.
Globalization breaks
parochialism. Second,
globalization requires a greater
degree of adaptability to the larger
variety of human possibilities and
capabilities that is made available.
Third, globalization increases the
pressures which the impact of this
broadening of choice brings upon
the institutions of any given
economic, social or political
order. Such pressures are patently
part of our contemporary world,
for examples, the pressure for
innovation, for mobility and
adaptability, for accessibility and
communicability, and for a
greater pace of decision-making.
Plurality, not singularity, whether
of perspective, of products, or of
methodologies of performance, is
its hallmark. It is for this reason
that globalization is socially,
culturally, religiously threatening
and has engendered what one
sociologist calls “ethnic and
cultural protectionism”.
Having all of these, I end with

what I consider to be the central
and decisive word that must be
said theologically about
globalization. It is to me one of
the basic affirmations of our faith,
namely, the universal and global
character of the human family that
is created by God. Again, as

Msgr. Martin has noted rightly.

“the fundamental global reality is
the human family”; the reality of
men and women around the
world, beyond national,
confessional, ideological, racial
and religious boundaries who we
believe are created in the image of
God, redeemed by God’s grace in
Jesus Christ, and to whom the
task of making and keeping the
harmony of all creation has been
entrusted. From this decisive
affirmation, we can receive some
of its positive ingredients as a
new possibility for human
improvement, without
romanticizing it as the apex of all
good. From this affirmation, also,
we can note its debilitating effects
and inequities without
demonizing it, as if it was the new
expression of “satanic” intentions.
It is neither the paragon of
economic development and
human progress nor the epitome
of evil. As I have already noted,
there is, to me, a sense in which
the Gospel is “globalization
oriented” and the Church is a
natural actor and native resident
in the global theatre. Indeed, by
its own affirmations, the Church
is sign and symbol, seal and
sacrament of the unity of all
humankind, in each place and in
every place. It is for this reason
that in the Church’s teachings and
highest traditions we find that I
consider to be our meaningful
contribution to the emergence and
foundation of a global
community: the dignity of the

human, the unity and universality

of the human family, and the
common human responsibility for
all of creation.
16


Chunakara (ed.)
Chapter 8: Globalization and

Liberative Solidarity, by K. C.
Abraham
The Rev. Dr. Abraham is Professor of Ethics and

Director of SATHRI, Bangalore, India
Globalization is the magic word today. Economic

development in the Third World countries, we are told,
is possible only if they link up with the global economy
through the global market. Globalization is also a
cultural as well as political reality for many. Ecological
crisis, information technology and other aspects of
modern life know no boundaries. They are global
issues. Therefore it is not surprising that theological
thinking and mission praxis in recent years is influenced
by globalization. The euphoria with which it was,
greeted by many theological colleges in the USA

indicated its importance for theological education. This

paper is an attempt to analyze the phenomenon of
globalization and to raise some issues that are pertinent
in facing its challenges. It suggests a model of Christian
response, liberative solidarity, that is rooted in the
experience and spirituality of the poor and the message
of the cross.
I. Globalization an analysis of the phenomenon
Modern communication has converted the world into a

“global village”. Television brings into your living
room events in far-off lands, drawing you closer to the
gruesome war in Bosnia or the tribal massacre in
Rwanda. Air travel is fast. You have your breakfast in
one continent and lunch in another. And there is hardly
a major city in the world which cannot provide you with
a Chinese restaurant, a hamburger or a Japanese motor
car.
Political and economic changes that take place in one

corner of the world affect the life of people far away.
Seldom do we realize that a drop of a few cents in the
stock market in New York has drastic effects on the
economy of major cities in the Third World. A decision
of the USA not to purchase raw rubber can unsettle the
economy of Malaysia, for example.
We may briefly mention three aspects of this process as

they are pertinent for our discussion:
(a) The process is an inevitable consequence of certain

historical as well as structural factors at work in the last
300 or 400 years. Travel across the sea provided
opportunity for closer relations between countries.

Travel was not for pleasure or adventure alone, but also
for trade. Spices, minerals and other commodities of
Asia and Africa created new trade routes from the West
to the East. Soon they needed to be protected from
competition from rival powers. Slowly colonial powers
began to exert military and political control over most
of the countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America. This
colonial rule, as is well known, provided the cheap raw
material for the industrial expansion in the countries of
Europe and a ready market for their furnished goods.
(b) The process of globalization from the beginning was

fraught with competition, conflict, domination and
exploitation. Certainly there has been exchange off
ideas and customs between peoples of different
countries. And this has been mutually beneficial. But
the ambiguous character of the process of globalization
is quite obvious.
Colonialism is perhaps the most blatant form of

exploitation during this period of globalization. Several
consequences of colonial rule are now well-known. It is
now evident that the industrial development of the West
would not have been possible without the cheap raw
materials and labour from the colonies. Cotton, iron,
gold and minerals of all kinds were taken out of the
country, sometimes arbitrarily with the use of force or at
other times with the enthusiastic support of the local
elites. Not only did the colonies provide cheap materials
but they also became ready markets for products
manufactured in the West. The textile industry is a case
in point1. Built into this practice is a process of double

exploitation. And the historical roots of poverty in the

Third World can be traced to this colonial exploitation.
Colonialism has inflicted more serious damage on the

colonized people. Frantz Fanon, in his famous analysis
of colonialism, has brought out the condition of
colonized minds. “Those who internalize the colonial
mentality”, wrote Fanon, “suffer a systematic negation
of personhood. Colonialism forces the people it
dominated to ask themselves the question constantly, ‘in
reality who am I? The defensive attitudes created by this
violent bringing together of the colonized man and the
colonial system form themselves into a structure which
then reveals the colonized personality.”2 Perhaps many
erstwhile colonies have not recovered from this.
Science and technology have accelerated the process of

globalization. For one thing, it has created “rising
expectations” about development, faster economic
growth. While it has promised opportunities for
expansion of human potential, it has also unleashed new
forces of destruction. Ecological crisis is the most
serious crisis brought about by modern technology.
(c) Today there is a sense of urgency when we talk

about global realities. Nuclear threat raised the
possibility of a total annihilation of the world. This
threat has drawn us together. Ecological crisis has
brought to our awareness the need for preserving this
fragile earth which is our common home. Life is
endangered and we need all resources to preserve it.3
Any consideration of globalization therefore should

keep in mind these three aspects: inevitable, ambiguous

and urgent.
II. Globalization and the Third World
The global village has provided new opportunities for

the enhancement of life of our people. No doubt we
need to affirm the positive side of this development. But
many in the Third World look at this process with
apprehension. They look at the global village as an
order or mechanism for greater exploitation and
political oppression. In this discussion we enter into the
modern period of globalization.
When the Third World nations become independent of

colonialism after long periods of freedom struggle, they
embarked on massive efforts to develop their reserves
and to eliminate poverty. Development by economic
growth based on rapid industrialization was the magic
word. Three ingredients of this programme were, local
elite (rulers), external resources (aid from the developed
world, multinationals) and trade. The goal was not only
to eliminate poverty but also catch up with the First
World in modernization. But the net results of the past
few decades of development have been well
summarized in the cliché, ‘the poor becoming poorer,
the rich becoming richer’.
On the global level the gap between the rich nations and
the poor nations has increased. The average per capita
income of the developed world is $2,400 and that of the
developing countries $180. The gap is widening. The U.
N. tried to change this trend, but failed. In 1970 the U.

N. suggested that 7% of 1% of the total GNP of rich

nations should be made available for the development
assistance. But actual help declined from 52% of 1% in
1975 to 32% of 1% in 1976. This downward trend
continues and what is more distressing is that the First
world countries confirm that they have increased their
military expenditure. The existing trade patterns are
inimical to the well-being of developing nations. The
aid that supposedly helps the growth of the Third World
is always with “strings” attached, and used as a tool for
continuing the First World dominance over the
economic growth of the Third World.
C.T. Kurien points out that the countries of the Third

World regard the 1980s as a “lost decade in terms of
their development opportunities.” He writes,
The prices of many of the goods they export came

down, the richer countries kept them out of their
markets and the terms of trade turned against
them. As is well known, many of them have come
to be caught in the ‘debt trap’. Less well known is
that the decade came to be one of net resource
transfers from the South to the North. And the gap
between the rich and the poor countries (measured
by per capita income) widened.
Kurien further notes:
The integration of the global economy has brought

to the fore a new set of actors who have played an
increasingly important role in it: the transnational
or multinational corporations (TNCs or MNCs).
These first attracted comment in the 1960s, grew
rapidly in the 1970s and emerged as powers to be

reckoned with in the 1980s. Some even argue that
by the dawn of the next century they rather than
national economies, will be the principal actors in
the emerging global economy and that we are
already well into the ‘transnational stage’ in the
development of capitalism.4
The TNCs role in the Third World has now been

subjected to serious analysis by economists. These large
corporations know no national boundaries and their
products find a way to the remotest corner of the world.
Between 300 and 500 TNCs control an enormous
portion of world’s production, distribution and
marketing process.
The sales of an individual corporation is bigger than the

GNP of many developing countries. According to the
figures supplied by the UN in 1981, EXXON has sales
of $63,896 million and General Motors, 63,211 million,
whereas the GNP of Nigeria is $48,000 million, of Chile
$15,770 and of Kenya $15,307.
The power of the global corporations is derived from

their unique capacity to use finance, technology, and
advanced marketing skills to integrate production on a
global scale in order to form the world into one
economic unit and a “global shopping centre.”
They do not bring large capital to the host countries but

they take out huge profits. They do not generate more
employment as their technology is not labour intensive.
Profit maximization is their goal, not development.

They decide where people should live, what they should

eat, drink or wear and what kind of society their
children should inherit.
Their primary goal is to safeguard the interests of

developed countries and not the developing countries.
In the recent discussion on conserving the world’s
biological diversity5 the behavior of MNCs has again
been criticized by the Third World leaders. The
Malaysian delegate to the UN General Assembly, 1990,
made the following pertinent observation:
There are various instances where transnational

corporations have exploited the rich genetic
diversity of developing countries as a free
resource for research and development. The
products of such research are then patented and
sold back to the developing countries at
excessively high prices. This must cease. We must
formulate mechanisms for effective cooperation
with reciprocal benefits between bio-
technologically rich developing countries and the
gene-rich developing countries.6
The local elites are also agents of globalization. Their

role in the development should be recognized. When the
countries became independent the leadership was
naturally transferred to the local elites. They have
developed interlocking interests with the Western
industrial elite. The development model which the
newly independent countries accepted has helped them
and they exert considerable pressure on the policy
decisions of the Third World countries on globalization.

The priorities are determined by the demand of the

market. Often greed, and not need, becomes the
controlling factor.
TV was considered a great symbol of modern

development. But in an informal survey conducted by a
sociologist it was revealed that the people who benefit
most by TV are our industrialists. They have increased
the sales of their products such as Maggi Instant
Noodles and many kinds of junk food which are not
essential to the life of ordinary people.
The growing inequality between the rich nations and

poor and between the rich and the poor in each nation is
a fundamental threat to global harmony. Globalization
and marginalization go together. This contradiction
needs special attention. This can be illustrated with the
economic situation in India.
III. Globalization and the Indian Economy
In 1991 the Government of India introduced drastic

reforms in its economic policies which have far-
reaching implications for the life of the country. The
involvement of the World Bank and the IMF was
acknowledged as crucial in structural adjustment. It was
a deliberate move to take the country right into the
process of globalization. MNCs are allowed to come
into the country in a big way by liberalization of the
earlier stringent regulations with regard to the type of
industry and the profits that they are allowed to take out
of the country. It is perhaps early to evaluate the full
impact of these policy changes. These reforms have

helped to revive the sluggish economy and to discard

some of the unproductive bureaucratic controls. But
some of the inevitable consequences of these reforms
are quite alarming. The indebtedness of the country
(internal and external) has now reached a staggering
figure of $90.6 billion. C.T. Kurien, who has made a
careful analysis of the trends in the present economy,
has observed thus:
If the economic reform measures in India have

therefore been sponsored by a tiny, though
exceptionally powerful and influential, minority
which is pursuing them to safeguard and promote
its own narrow interests, they are unlikely to be of
benefit to the bulk of the people, in spite of claims
that they are not only necessary and inevitable, but
also in the national interest. The impact of the
reforms on the lives of sections of the peoples
beyond this narrow minority, can already be seen.
One estimate shows that in the first year of
reforms, “nearly 6 to 7 million people went below
the ‘poverty line’ in contrast to an annual
improvement of nearly 10 to 15 million moving
above the poverty line over the last decade.” In
overall terms “it makes a difference in terms of
setback in poverty alleviation pace by nearly 20
millions.”7
Kurien and other economists are not saying that Indian

economy is not in need of reforms, but they point out
that the “thrust of any alternative reform measures must
be towards the welfare of the largest segments of our
society.”8 At present these segments are excluded from

the process of decision that affect their lives and their

condition is deteriorating. These sectors are the
marginalized working class, unorganized laborers and
the landless. They are the Dalits and tribals.
Increasing marginalization of Dalits, women and other

sectors continues to be a problem. Our hope that their
lot would improve is now shattered. No doubt the
movement of the marginalized for justice and
participation will be stronger. But resistance to them
will be on the increase.
As we have seen, marginalization is linked with

globalization. The advanced sectors have achieved
considerably more expansion and led to the
improvement of the traditional sector. As one report
correctly observes, “much of rural development has
simply been extension of urban development.” There is
an urgent need for an alternative form of development
that meets the basic needs of the rural people.
Among the marginalized groups struggling for justice,

women are the largest. They are fighting many issues.
Cultural prejudices, structures of patriarchy, economic
exploitation and unjust laws and traditions are some of
them. Organized movements of women are beginning to
make some impact but they need to be strengthened.
The church is also of male dominated structure. Rich
resources and contribution that women can make to the
life and ministry of the church are seldom made use of.
Unfortunately prejudice against women is nurtured in
our families. We tend to foster double standards in
sexual morals. Female feticide, dowry deaths and other

glaring incidents are symptoms of deep-seated

prejudices and discriminatory practices and customs.
IV. Globalization has Become the Vehicle of

Cultural Invasion
The idea of progress is decisively shaped by Western

lifestyle and its structures. Air travel, color TV, super
computers and space technology are the symbols of
progress. When a nation opts for TV not just the
technology but all the cultural and social life that
nurtures it also comes with it.
Technology is power, and the power is never neutral. It

becomes the carrier of those systems and ideologies
(values and cultures) within which it has been nurtured.
The tendency is to create a mono-culture. Prof.
Koyama, in his inimitable style, provides a sharp
critique to this in all his writings. By mono-culture we
mean the undermining of economic, cultural and
ecological diversity, the nearly universal acceptance of
technological culture as developed in the West and its
values. The indigenous culture and its potential for
human development is vastly ignored. The tendency is
to accept the efficiency with productivity without any
concern for compassion or justice. Ruthless exploitation
of nature without any reverence for nature which is an
integral value of the traditional culture.
M. M. Thomas, in his writings, reflected on the impacts

of modernization on the traditional culture. He writes,
The modernizing forces of technology, human

rights and secularism are today directed by a too
mechanical view of nature and humanity which

ignores the natural organic and the transcendental
spiritual dimensions of reality. No doubt,
traditional societies emphasize the organic and the
religious aspects of life in a manner that enslaves
human beings to natural forces and human
individuality to the group dicta. But modernization
based on a mechanical world-view, atomizes
society to permit the emergence of the individual
who soon becomes rootless and a law unto itself;
and since rootlessness is unbearable for long, the
pendulum swings to a collectivism which is a
mechanical bundling together of atomized
individuals into an equally rootless mass under
mechanical state control.9
There are groups that strive towards a critical approach

to Western values and technology. They want to retain
humane values of tradition. They see the need for a
holistic kind of development. They are for pluralism and
diversity in cultures. They are for science and
technology, but not for a neutral kind of scientism that
willingly allows itself to be used by the elite. They are
for industry, but not industry that destroys ecological
balance and causes pollution. In short, they are asking
for an alternative form of development that takes the
interest of the poor as central and allows room for their
culture and religion.
V. Globalization and Ecological Crisis
The pattern of development that is capital intensive and

the lifestyle propagated by the media together create a

situation where ecological balance and sustaining power

of the earth for nurturing life is being destroyed. The
problem is further aggravated by the process of
globalization. In fact, the ecological crisis is not merely
a Third World problem. The whole planet is affected
and perhaps this issue brings together concerned people
of the South and North.10 Perspectives on this question
differ.
The Third World perspective on ecological crisis raises

the question of justice as an overriding concern. The life
of the poor and the marginalized is further impoverished
by the crisis. Shortage of fuel and water adds peculiar
burdens to the life of women. It is said that tribals are
made environmental prisoners m their own land. Dalits,
who have been subjected to social and cultural
oppression for generations are facing new threats to
them by the wanton destruction of the natural
environment.
On a global level this concern about the gap in the

control over and use of natural resources should be
raised to gain a correct perspective on globalization.
The modern European person is the most expensive
human species in this world. Americans who constitute
about 6% of the earth’s population melt, burn or eat
over 50% of the worlds consumable resources each
year. Every 24 hours the citizens of the USA consume
2,250 heads of cattle in the form of MacDonald
hamburgers. Extend this style to the entire world, what
will be its consequences. it is such hard questions about

the nature of development, lifestyle and justice that have

to be raised. In order to pursue this kind of lifestyle we
need to have easy access to the mineral resources and
energy. Many a political conflict arises out of this need.
We try to put an ideological garb over such conflicts.
East/West conflict is now replaced by North/South
conflict. What is at stake is the sphere of political
dominance linked with control of resources. Global
peace is possible only if we can diffuse this by
establishment of a world order.
VI. A New look at the Global Village
What is the paradigm of the miracle of Global Village

we have in mind? People who write and talk about
global village are people who have never lived in a
village. It is, therefore, not surprising that their image of
the global village is born out of their references of a
technological, industrial culture. One of the prevailing
tendencies in such a culture is to put everything in
manageable, organized systems. There is very little
room for diversity. The clearly defined centre exercising
control over the periphery -- that is why “melting pot”
becomes a favorite image in the USA. But what we see
in the village is not a neatly organized, uniform
structure. A village is a small, separate unit connected to
other units. It is of different shape and diverse character.
It is a mosaic and not a neat uniform system. The global
is very much present in the local. Diversity, and not
uniformity, is its hallmark.
We simply assume that to gain an experience of the

global we used to travel to foreign countries: This is not

true. We may travel and see things but still miss the
essential values that keep our life human. But the
consciousness that our local life is bound up with
realities and relationships that go beyond the given time
and space is what makes us truly global. It is the basic
openness to the other. It is affirming the other who is
different but integral to our life. It is necessary to affirm
the local as something unique, that exists in the wider
network of relationships. In other words, plurality is an
essential aspect of the global. It provides the space for
different identities to grow in dialogue. When that space
is denied the marginal suffers the most. The struggle of
the marginal for identity is to be seen as a necessary
process to realize the global.
Within each nation there are measures, laws that

regulate the economic activity and distribution through
taxation, minimum wages, and so on. But in
international relations there is no regulative mechanism.
The UN is powerless. They have indeed talked about a
new economic order. Demands include reduction of
trade barriers, more stable commodity prices for raw
materials, easier access to foreign technologies, better
terms of aid and rapid expansion of industrialization.
Some of these demands are legitimate, although there is
very little hope anything will be changed. These
demands, however, do not challenge the existing
international system and its assumptions: they want a
greater share in the global economic pie. This is usually
the demand of the bureaucrats and elites. What the poor
people are telling us is that, unless we rethink the basic
questions of life-style, the use of natural resources and
the reaction between environment and development, we

cannot address the question of a new economic order.
Globalization is not a neutral process. An alliance

forged by the forces of domination for profit becomes
the driving force of much of globalization. The poor and
the marginal do not find protection and security under
it. But this process is inevitable and, therefore a blind
rejection of it seems to be unrealistic. How do we orient
the forces of globalization for the futherance of justice?
Can we seek a new global solidarity of the victims of
present system to build a just global order?
VII. The search for alternatives
The Third World perspectives on the global unity are

made clear. The present global order controlled by the
MNCs, neo-colonial forces and elites of the countries
does not ensure the values of justice and plurality. The
ecological crisis has further accentuated the problem of
global injustice. The search is for a global order where
life-affirming values are preserved and strengthened.
This would mean an economic system that is free of
oppression. Kurien, in the above study, points out that
today powerful and all- pervasive market has become “a
tool of oppression”. “What they (people) need,
therefore, is not greater market-friendliness but people
friendly-markets”. A people- friendly market, he further
states, is a social institution, used deliberately under
human direction and control; the dictum ‘leave it to the
market has no place here’.11
Speaking in cultural terms, M.M. Thomas argues that a

“post-modern humanism which recognizes the

integration of mechanical, organic and spiritual

dimensions, can develop creative reinterpretation of
traditions battling against fundamentalist traditionalism
and actualize the potential modernity to create a
dynamic fraternity of responsible persons and
people”.12
An alternative developmental paradigm should be

supported by an alternative vision of human bond to one
another and to the earth. It is important that this new
vision emerges from the experiences of the poor and the
marginalized. ‘It is our conviction that a new paradigm
for just development must emerge from the experiences
of the poor and the marginalized.’13
It is not our intention to give a blueprint for alternative

development. That can be evolved only by economists,
political leaders and scientists who are committed to
values that are necessary for human development. In
this task we should learn from the experiences of the
poor, for they are close to the earth and their techniques
of preserving the ecosystem should be taken seriously.
Those who live close to the land and the sea have
developed a way of using earthly resources without
destroying them. By polluting our water and destroying
our forests we cannot develop. More important is the
conviction that a set of values that are integral to human
survival can be learned from the life-style and the world
view of the marginal groups. They have lived in
solidarity with one another and with the earth. Their
communitarian value system is necessary for evolving a
just and sustainable form of development. This is the
global solidarity that we propose for the future, giving a

new direction to the process of globalization. ‘People-

friendly markets’, ‘enabling social changes’ and ‘post-
modern humanism’ are all attempts to give this
orientation to globalization.
VIII. Towards building a just Global Order:

theological consideration
Can theology be pressed into service towards building a

just global order? Does theology deepen our
commitment to a new global solidarity based on justice
and peace? The vision for theologizing should emerge
from the experiences and traditions of faith of the
people. Sometimes theologians turn such visions into
rigid systems and absolute ideals. But the emphasis on
contextual theology is an effort to ground theology in
the immediate experiences of oppression and suffering
of people.14
The faith articulation of women and indigenous groups

struggling for their dignity and freedom has helped us in
our search for a relevant theology. They are important
for our task of building a global solidarity. A holistic
view of reality and non-hierarchical form of community
are integral to their vision of life. This vision has to be
recaptured in our theology. Some of our feminist writers
and theologians who are committed to develop
ecological theology are beginning to articulate this new
vision of doing theology.
Holistic view of reality
Our perception of the structure of reality changes as we

become aware of new areas of human experience and
knowledge. The dualistic model of classical

understanding ---- spirit/matter, mind/body ---- is not
adequate to interpret our contemporary experience.
Moreover, our feminist thinkers rightly point out that
such a dualist view of reality is largely responsible for
maintaining a patriarchal and hierarchical model of
society. A holistic model is closer to our life
experiences, including our relation with nature. In fact,
theologians who write about ecological concerns are
united in their opinion that a holistic view of reality is
basic to a responsible relation between humans and
nature. An organic model of reality should replace a
mechanistic model in our times. An organic model can
interpret “the relation between God and world in ways
commensurate with an ecological context”. Sally
McFague, taking into consideration the insights from
contemporary cosmologists, has described the organic
model in the following words:
The organic model we are suggesting pictures

reality as composed of multitudes of embodied
beings who presently inhabit a planet that has
evolved over billions of years through a process of
dynamic change marked by law and novelty into
an intricate, diverse, complex, multi-leveled
reality, all radically interrelated and
interdependent. This organic whole that began
from an initial high bang and eventuated into the
present universe is distinguished by a form of
unity and diversity radical beyond all imagining:
infinite differences, and diversity that is marked
not by isolation but by shared atoms over
millennia as well as minute-by-minute exchanges

of oxygen and carbon dioxide between plants and

animal. All of us, living and non-living, are one
phenomenon stretching over billions of years and
containing untold numbers of strange, diverse, and
forms of matter -- including our own. The
universe is a body, to use a poor analogy from our
own experience, but it is not a human body; rather,
it is matter bodied forth seemingly infinitely,
diversely, endlessly, yet internally as one. 15
Radical inter-relatedness and interdependence of all

creation is of paramount significance as we perceive
reality. “By reality,’ writes Samual Rayan, “is meant
everything; the earth and all that it contains, with all the
surprises it holds for the future; people and their
creations; the conditions in which they live, their
experience of life as gift, their celebration of it, no less
than their experience of oppression and death, and their
struggles and hopes and wounds and songs’.16
Leonardo Boff goes further and affirms that “ecology

constitutes a complex set of relationships. It includes
everything, neglects nothing, values everything, is
linked together. Based on this we can recover
Christianity’s most early perception; its conception of
God.”17 For him, “world is a mirror of Trinity.”
This provides a new perspective on Christology. Our

tendency in modern theology to subsume all the new
questions of theology under a framework that may be
described as ‘Christocentric Universalism’ is perhaps
not the most helpful paradigm. Too much weight is put
on this. Christ-in-relation seems to be a better way of

affirming the Trinitarian concern of the process of

transformation and renewal. A spirit-filled theology that
responds to the pathos of people and their liberative
stirrings should be evolved. The characteristic posture
of the spirit is openness and an ability to transcend
limits. The affirmation of the solidarity of the poor is
the spirit’s creative activity. To discern the spirit’s
working, we need ‘Christic’ sensitivity, but it can never
be wholly interpreted by Christological formulations.
If radical interrelatedness is the characteristic of the

reality and therefore of the divine, then openness to the
other is the essential mode of response to God. The
openness becomes the seed for creating new
relationships and a new order.
The struggle today is for open communities. Again the

awareness of the need for the communities is not new.
But today we face a situation where the identity struggle
of different groups is projecting the shape of
communities as classed, each group defines its
boundaries over against the other. The question is how
can we build a global solidarity of open communities. A
community of communities that accepts a plurality of
identities in a non-threatening, but mutually affirming
way is the core of our vision.18 In fact, the Church is
meant to be this solidarity. Leonardo Boff writes:
The ecclesial community must consider itself part

of the human community which in turn must
consider itself part of the cosmic community. And
all together part of the Trinitarian Community of
the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.19

We have a long way to go if we take this vision

seriously. The churches are so introvert that they are
incapable of becoming a sacrament of this community
of open communities in this world.
Mission has to take seriously this task of recreating

communities. It means a critical awareness of the
process and structures that are inimical to an open
community. Forces that threaten life, practices that
seldom promote justice and love, and above all an
attitude of apathy towards change.
Liberative solidarity: A form of Global Mission
A holistic vision of reality is the basis for non-

hierarchical open communities. But this vision of
wholeness should have a concrete direction. In the
prophetic vision of a community, compassion is the
concrete dimension of it (Micah 6:5). It is solidarity that
is liberative and life-affirming.20 Justice and loving
mercy are the words used by the prophet. Together they
may be translated into liberative solidarity. The logic of
justice as developed in the West emphasizes rights and
rules, and respect for the other. It is a balancing of
duties and rights. But the prophet’s justice includes
caring. Justice expressing compassion is the biblical
emphasis. Prophets were not talking about balancing
interests and rights, but about caring, the defending of
the poor by the righteous God. This emphasis comes
with poignancy when we consider our responsibility to
the earth. It is a defenseless and weak partner of humans
in creation. Caring love comes from compassion by
standing at the place where the poor are and being in

solidarity with them. It is this solidarity that makes us

raise questions about the dominant models of
globalization.
It also points to a new direction for the global

community that celebrated sharing and hope. Jesus
rejected the imperial model of unity, which in his time
was represented by the Roman empire and the power-
wielders of Jerusalem temple. He turned to Galilee, to
the poor and the outcasts, women and the marginalized.
He identified with them. His own uncompromising
commitment to the values of the kingdom and his
solidarity with the victims of society made him an
enemy of the powers-that-be. Conflict was very much a
part of his ministry. It resulted in death. On the cross, he
cried aloud, “My God, my God, why have you forgotten
me?” It is a cry of desperation, a cry of loneliness. But it
is a moment of solidarity --- a moment when he
identified with the cries of all humanity.
In solidarity with the suffering, Jesus gave expression to

his hope in the liberating God who has his preference in
defending the poor and the dispossessed. It is in this
combination of total identification with the depth of
suffering and the hope that surpassed all experiences
that we see the clue to Jesus’ presence in our midst and
the future he offers us. New wine, a new logic of
community that comes from a solidarity culture was
projected against the old wine, the old culture.
The promise of God’s future in such a solidarity

culture is an invitation to struggle, advocacy for
the victims, and compassion. People who are

drawn to the side of the poor come into contact

with the foundation of all life. The Bible declares
that God encounters them in the poor. With this
step from unconsciousness to consciousness, from
apathetic hopelessness regarding ones fate to faith
in the liberating God of the poor, the quality of
poverty also changes because one’s relationship to
it changes.21
The solidarity culture is sustained by spirituality, not the

spirituality that is elitist and other-worldly, but that
which is dynamic and open.
In our struggle for a new global order we need to

mobilize the superior resources of all religious
traditions, not only the classical religions, but the primal
religious traditions as well. In fact, the classical
religions tend to project a type of spirituality that is
devoid of a commitment to social justice. There are,
however, notable exceptions. We begin to see a new
search for the liberational form of spirituality in these
religions. See, for example, the writings of Swami
Agnivesh and Asgar Ali Engineer.22 Tagore’s words
express this kind of spirituality:
Here is thy footstool, and there rest thy feet where

live the poorest, lowliest, and the lost.
When I try to bow to thee, my obeisance cannot

reach down to the depth where thy feet rest among
the poorest, the lowest and the lost. (Gitanjali).
But a distinct challenge comes from the Indian

spirituality tradition. Its focus upon inferiority is to be
considered important when we talk about a commitment

for action. Amolarpavadoss in all his writings
emphasized this. Freedom also means liberation from
pursuit, acquisition, accumulation and hoarding of
wealth (arta), unbridled enjoyment of pleasures comfort
(kama), without being regulated and governed by
righteousness and justice (dharma), without orientation
to the ultimate goal (moksha).23
Mention has already been made about the spirituality of

indigenous groups. Their holistic vision and
communitarian value systems are essential for the
emergence of a new global order. They are the signs of
freedom we long for. “Where the Spirit of the Lord is,
there is freedom” (Paul). Our longing for a free and
open order is a spiritual longing. Only when
communities live with mutual respect, when they
together eliminate all caste atrocities, when they
together remove and hunger, when all their religions
sing the song of harmony, when they together celebrate
God-given unity -then the Spirit is free. Towards that
global solidarity, let us commit ourselves.
This reflection on liberative solidarity can be concluded

by mentioning two concrete expressions of it.
One, the emergence of Dalit theology in India. Dalits

are the oppressed groups, marginalized for centuries by
the social and cultural systems. Today Dalit
consciousness based on a new found identity has
provided the impetus for a Dalit theology. Prof. A.P.
Nirmal describes the methodology as follows:

Dalit theology wants to assert that at the heart of

the Dalit people’s experience is pathos or
suffering. This pathos or suffering or pain is prior
to their involvement in any activist struggle for
liberation. Even before a praxis of theory and
practice happens, even before a praxis of thought
and action happens, they (the Dalits) know God in
and through their suffering. For Dalit theology
“Pain or Pathos is the beginning of knowledge.’
For the sufferer more certain than any principle,
more certain than any action is his or her pain-
pathos. Even before he or she thinks about pathos;
even before he or she acts to remove or redress or
overcome this pathos, pain-pathos is simply there.
It is in and through this pain-pathos that the
sufferer knows God. This is because the sufferer
in and through his or her pain-pathos knows that
God participates in human pain. This participation
of God in human pain is characterized by the New
Testament as the passion of Jesus symbolized in
his crucifixion.24
Two, a few months ago I visited a Buddhist monk in the

southern provinces of Sri Lanka. I had heard about his
intense involvement in the struggles of the people for
freedom and justice. Three of us, theologians, sat at his
feet listening in rapt attention to the stories of his
involvement - how at the risk of his own life he had to
defend young activists. He was constantly in clash with
the powers-that-be. At the end, one of the group asked
him, “Sir, how do you explain the motivating power that
sustains you in all these?” He thought for a moment and
then said, “I do not know, perhaps I am inspired by the

compassionate love of Buddha.” And then looking

intently on us he asked, “Don’t you think Jesus also
teaches us about compassion.” I ventured to say, “Yes,
but there is a big difference between the response of
some of us Christians to our Christ, and your response
to your Buddha.” I do not see the same intensity of
commitment to the passion of Jesus in our churches.
That is the crux of the problem. Can compassion,
another name for liberative solidarity, unite us?
Notes:
1. Mahatma Gandhi’s famous strategy for creating an

awareness of the evil of the colonial rule was the call to
boycott foreign-made clothes and to wear clothes made
from home-spun materials.
2. The Wretched of the Earth, (Harmandsworth:

Penguin Books), 1988, p.250).
3. Numerous writings are available from scientists and

ecologists. It is important to note that the church has
taken this up as an area of concern. World Council of
Churches materials are made available to the churches
for study and reflection. See Eco Theology (Ed. David
Hullmann, Geneva: WCC, 1994).
4. C. T. Kurien, Global Capitalism and the Indian

Economy, Tracts for the Times/6 (New Delhi: Orient
Longman, 1994), pp. 57-78.
5. It is recognized that the tropics hold a rich reserve of

the planet’s biological diversity. A variety of species
that exist here are being eliminated by destruction of

tropical forests. The UN has expressed concern over this

and efforts are underway to preserve them; through the
World Wildlife Fund, the World Bank and other
agencies. But many Third World leaders argue how
these efforts are neglecting the point of view of the
South. Bio-diversity, it is pointed out, is destroyed by
the pattern of developing adopted by MNCs and others
in the North. They further observe that the farmers’
wisdom and techniques of preserving the diversity
should be recognized and taken seriously. See Vandana
Shiva and others, Bio-diversity - Social and Ecological
Perspectives, World Rainforest Movement, Penang,
Malaysia, 1991.
6. Ibid., p.11.
7. C. T. Kurian, op. cit., p.120.
8. Ibid., p.123.
9. M. M. Thomas, The Nagas Towards A. D. 2000 and

other Selected Addresses and Writings, (Madras: Centre
for Research on New International Economic Order,
1992) p.27.
10. See the recent publication of W.C.C. Eco Theology

(Ed. David Hullmann,- 1994).
11.C. I. Kurien, op cit., p.123. Also see, Amartya Sen.

Beyond Liberalization: Social Opportunity and Human
Capability (New Delhi:Institute of Social Science,
1994). This eminent economist compares India’s policy
for liberalization with that of China and observes that
the force of China’s market economy rests of solid

foundations of social changes that has occurred earlier,

and India cannot simply jump on to that bandwagon
without paying attention to the enabling social changes -
in education, health care and land reforms - that made
the market function in the way it has in China (pp. 26-
27).
12. M. M. Thomas, op. Cit., p.27.
13. K. C. Abraham (Ed.) Spirituality of the Third

World, New York: Orbis Books, 1994, p.1.
14. Speaking to a group of German pastors the other day

I remarked that all theologies were contextual
theologies. Predictably my comment was that Barth had
rejected a kind of contextual theology found in the
liberal tradition. But they had to agree that Barth was
concerned about the word in the European situation
obtaining after the World War and the crisis of
liberalism. Further it was pointed out that his own
experience in his parish made a big difference in the
manner in which he theologized. Kosuke Koyama’s
contribution in developing contextual theology in Asia
should be acknowledged.
15. Sally McFague, The Body of God, (Fortress Press,

1993) special mention has to be made about Sally
McFague’s another Models of God (Fortress, 1987).
Also refer Jurgen Moltmann, God in Creation:A New
Theology of Creation and the Spirit of God; (San
Francisco: Harper and row, 1985). Elizabeth Schussler
Fiorenza, In Memory of Her: A Feminist Theological
Reconstruction of Christian Orgins, (New York: Cross

Roads) Felix Wilfred, From the Dusty Soil, (University

of Madras: Department of Christian Studies, 1995),
p.258f.
16. J. R. Chandran (Ed.) Third World Theologies in

Dialogue, Bangalore: EATWOT-INDIA, 1991, p.47.
17. Voices from the Third World, Vol. XVI, No. 1,

p.115.
18. 5. J. Samartha has expressed this concern in his

discussion on pluralism. “The new global context the
church has to define its identity and role in history in
relation to, rather than over against other communities.
What, for example, is the relationship between the
Buddhist saugha, the Christian ecclessia and the
Muslim ummah in the global community? When every
religion has within it a dimensions of university is it to
be understood as the extension of one’s universality
overcoming other particularities? In what sense can the
community we seek become a community of
communities’ that can hold together unity and diversity
in creative tension rather than in debilitating conflict?”
(Samartha, One Christ - Many Religions, Indian edition:
SATIARI, Bangalore, 1993, p.13)
19.Voice from the Third World, Vol. XVI No. 1, p.115.
20. Preferential option for the poor is the characteristic

mode of response in liberation theology. In some
situations it may be misconstrued as patronizing
attitude. Liberative solidarity has the advantage of
entering into a different relationship with the poor.
Their experience and their spirituality hold the key for a
future order. To acknowledge our indebtedness to the

poor is to seek a new future.
21. Dorothee Solle, On Earth as in Heaven, USA:

Westminster, p.16.
22. See especially Asghar Ali Engineer, Islam and

Liberation Theology:Essays on Liberative Elements in
Islam, (New Delhi: Sterling Publishers, 1990).Here the
influence of liberation theology cannot be ignored. All
the religions are challenged to take seriously the
emphasis on liberation. One may quote the stirring
words of Deane William Fern at the close of his essay
“Third World Liberation Theology: Challenge to World
Religions in Dan Cohn-Sherbok, World Religions and
Human Liberation, (New York: Orbis, 1992), p.19.
“Liberation theology issues a call not only to
Christianity, but to the other religions of the world as
well. Are these religions willing to show ‘a preferential
option’ for the poor? Can the communities of the poor
which are irrupting throughout the Third World be the
basis for a new “people’s theology” which seek to
liberate humanity from all forms of oppression: poverty,
servitude, racism, sexism, and the like? Can justice and
spirituality become partners in a world embracing
enterprise? Can the struggle for justice and belief in
God come to mean one and the same thing? Herein lies
the stirring challenge of Third World Christian
liberation theology”.
24. Theology of Development, (Bangalore: NBCLC,

1979), p.15.

25. A. P. Nirmal (Ed.) A Reader in Dalit theology,

U.E.L.C.I., Madras, 1990
16

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Globalization and Its Impact on Human Rights

Globalization and Its Impact on Human Rights by

(ENTIRE BOOK) A highlighting of globalization’s impact on human rights, assessing it in the

Chapter 1: Globalization Threatens Humanism, by V. R. Krishna Iyer

Chapter 2: Globalization and Working Towards Alternative

Chapter 3: Development and Human Rights, by T. Rajamoorthy

Chapter 4: The Emerging Global Scenario and the East Asian

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Chapter 5: Globalization and its Impact on Human Rights, by

Chapter 6: Globalization and Asian Women, by Matsui Yayori

Chapter 7: Some Ethical and Theological Reflections and

Chapter 8: Globalization and Liberative Solidarity, by K. C. Abraham

Viewed 2348 times.

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Globalization and Its Impact on

The advocates of ‘globalization’

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economic crises in many

Christian Council of Asia focused

The main objectives of this

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This book comprises edited

Mathews George Chunakara

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Globalization and Its Impact on Human

Chapter 1: Globalization Threatens

Justice Iyer is a former

What man is there of

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Today, more than at

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keeper? They believe,

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the Soviet bloc and the

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rights and a trickery of

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slowly hotting up, with

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is for industrial and

“Disraeli was one of

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“Even the increase of

“Then the Great

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Science, which was to

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generation that had

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“But today the state

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The West has been

“An ever decreasing

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and narrower every