ASIA: CHALLENGES, OPPORTUNITIES AND THREATS
One of the greatest challenges for a large part of Asia including India and China is to alleviate the poverty of a large mass of their over 2 billion people. For centuries, Asia has been the victim of invasions and colonialism. Not only was its wealth plundered but its millenary cultural continuity was also disrupted. Its religious traditions of tolerance, spiritual realisation and transcendence were scorned and subjected to less advanced, more ritualistic processes.
That dismantled its social structure and inserted conflicts into its harmonious functioning, which had both economic and social consequences. Because of the retreat of the Soviet Union, Asia’s options for a mixed or socialist economy were no longer sustainable and the free market consumerist model of development, with the United States and the former colonial powers as role models became a compulsory choice. The technological structure that evolved from the middle of the twentieth century was asymmetric with what the developed countries had reached at the end of the Second World War. The high energy, high technology imported machinery completed the processes of destroying local crafts, leaving millions unemployed. So Asia first moved from importing cheap products to importing high technology machines. The increase in production and GDP created an illusion of prosperity for some, which spawned a new middle class and a far greater commitment to rapidly rising energy intensities in the production processes.
Therefore, on one side, there is an increasing number of billionaires and millionaires and on the other, large differentials in income have further intensified poverty and deprivation while the elites are adopting the lifestyles and techniques of role-models and the values of consumerist societies. This entire process is moving towards “armament protected consumerism”. Arms are also required to protect the power elites. Vast media networks enhance their visibility and increase their power and wealth.
Young people are being lured into becoming a part of the consumerist system, while economic and political tensions are rising internally and are being imported from the world outside. To all this has now been added food and energy scarcity and rising inflation. This is bankrupting one nation after another, both developed and developing. The dreams of freedom from hunger have been lost in the battle for power and pelf. How to extricate national policies from the sinking consumerist paradigm and its supporting infrastructure and how to re-order priorities towards meeting the minimum basic needs of all people within their own cultures of frugality and restraint, is Asia’s greatest challenge. However, before Asia can even begin to approach this problem, it has to free itself from the illusion that what is happening around the world is real progress.
OPPORTUNITIES
The slogan “workers of the world unite you have nothing to lose but your chains” became a sign of hope for the colonies and the suppressed working classes of the colonial powers. Yet, before the role-model the USSR could fulfill its objective of building an equitable welfare state, it was caught in the rat race of violent military competition imposed by colonial neo-colonial states. The demise of the Soviet system in the 1990s, was hailed as the “End of History” by some academics from the West.
It has taken less than two decades to remind us that history as a whole does not end but we are now witnessing the end of another history, that is the “armament protected consumerist” paradigm. This violence-based process of economic control and domination over others has become self destructive to the point of no return. But the tiger is in search of a new skin, to keep its victim in terror. This is a period of great opportunity for the countries of Asia, to collectively strive for a new human order of peace, justice, harmony and sustainability.
The slogan of the globalising “armament-protected consumerist system” is ‘elites of the world unite to protect your common interests”. The breakdown of the ethical and moral order is due to the separation of the inseparable physical and metaphysical, material and spiritual realms. These must be brought together in a new set of “universal values” within which diverse cultural entities can create their own structures, in keeping with their needs, resources and traditions. This paradigm can be built around a controlled and ethically disciplined market economy through spiritualised socialism. These together could release human innovative capacities and protect nations from human greed and the lust for power while creating a new
social order, which will benefit all people. This could be Asia’s greatest contribution to human future.
THREATS
To institute a new paradigm in the present world environment of terrorism and mega-violence will not be a simple process. Historically, every time nations have attempted to realise new possibilities or make substantial progress, the unipolar system has unilaterally endeavoured to crush such attempts. We have the examples of the downsizing of Japan in the nineteen eighties and the breakdown of Soviet Russia in the nineteen nineties and the manner in which that was brought about.
From the colonial period, diverse techniques have been employed to acquire and retain power and to this have now been added, Pink, Orange or Yellow revolutions and depleted Uranium bombing and, of course personality and regime demolition through controlled media, and insurgencies and acts of terrorism. Insurgencies, a worldwide phenomena, are being instigated in an endeavour to interfere with the operations of countries remaining at least partly outside the system and to direct their economic policies in ways desired by the international financial controllers.
The manipulation of stock exchanges, and commodity markets and arm trading techniques are getting more and more aggressive. As Asia develops, it so happens that the most significant progress at this time is being made in China, India and
Russia. Clearly a close relationship between these three is not considered by the unilateral power system to be in its interest. Therefore, there will be repeated attempts to intervene overtly and covertly to secure hegemonic interests and derail the plans of potential or real rivals. Hence, while Asia dreams of a better future, it must also guard against the visible threats that cast a long shadow over these prospects.
New Delhi JC KAPUR
Spring 2008