Missing: Leaders of developing countries

People were queuing up to see Fidel Castro’s ashes even though his body had already been cremated. A man who faced many death threats lived up to 90. Clearly he was a popular leader who stood till his end by his principles. Even though his pronouncement on the death of capitalism did not come true, his own death marked the end of an era in which India and Cuba played an important role in Non Aligned Movement (NAM). While NAM is still alive, all the founding leaders are dead. It has lost its relevance today somewhat because it was the first international body to support struggle against colonialism and the apartheid in South Africa. By the 1990s, with most of the colonies having become independent and the apartheid being dismantled in South Africa, the focal points of NAM got diluted.  Even so, the last NAM meeting was held in Venezuela in September 2016 and Vice President Hamid Ansari went to attend it. Castro attended the first NAM meeting in Belgrade in 1959 along with Nehru, Nassar, Tito, Sukarno and Nkruma. The world has changed but the more things change the more they stay the same, (as the French say plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose!). Now the world’s problems seem to be focused on terrorism and refugees. But even after various cataclysmic changes in the last five-six decades, the problems of inequality of incomes and poverty, disease and deprivation in the world remain.   And Asia remains one of the poorest regions in the world. If all the countries of South Asia could jointly cooperate to eradicate poverty and disease, it would have been a utopian situation. SAARC, which was started in 1985 to work out a joint agenda of cooperation for development, unfortunately is also dead if not in a comatose stage. All members are poor developing countries yet there are so many political interferences, cross border terrorism and bad blood among immediate neighbours in the region that today it is impossible to think of SAARC as coming close to becoming another EU. Nehru, like Castro, also had an idea of a new global order in which developing countries would express solidarity against the rich capitalist nations. He wanted India as strong and prosperous and seeing the example of Russia he chose to have a mixed economy in which the state would control the means of production and light industries would remain in the hands of the private sector. Today the big PSU industries are still important and most are profitable. There has been a policy taken by past governments and also the NDA that sick PSUs will be sold off. This has to be done. Then there was G77 group of nations that continued with the idea of a new world order but after the global financial crisis, G20 became most important and in many ways fortified the old international financial architecture in which the rich group of nations (G7) dominated.  Globalisation, privatisation and liberalisation became the order of the day except perhaps in Cuba. Today strangely enough even US President elect Donald Trump is turning against globalisation and is wishing to impose punitive tariffs on China because China is taking jobs away from US. He is also very likely to clamp down on outsourcing of services in which India will be affected. India has globalised rapidly but it has turned some people off whose businesses have been affected adversely. People criticise the Nehruvian era for the license permit raj but the idea behind it was to control the outflow of foreign exchange and to control monopolies and to use precious foreign exchange to build infrastructure. The controls led to many monstrosities. Dismantling it was a good idea in 1991 but now we are faced with tax evasion and black money as well as huge income inequalities which can never make India a safe and secure country. The rich have to protect themselves all the time from the ‘have-nots’. In a similar vein the rich countries in EU are trying to protect themselves from unwanted immigrants. They themselves got rich through exploitation of the colonies however. But the inflow of migrants continues. The world is divided in many ways today with ferocious and destructive fighting going on in the Middle East. Watching the devastation on TV itself gives one goose-bumps but we are unable to do anything and hope the world leaders and the UN will resolve the problems. Across the world, one can notice despots at the helm of power and the people remain helpless. There is no world leader who can speak strongly on behalf of the aggrieved people. The developing countries are not united anymore it seems. Even the BRICS seem to have run into deep trouble. People like Castro are missing from the world scene who had the guts to liberate his country from the despotic Batista regime. He educated all Cubans and gave access to medical care to one and all free of charge. He boasted that ‘even the prostitutes are college graduates’. As India becomes richer universal healthcare should become a prominent feature and our education system needs a complete overhaul. It was due to Nehru’s vision that we have so many IITs and our scientists and engineers are to be found all over the world. Mr. Modi’s quest for financial inclusion through opening bank accounts for the poor is also a laudatory move and could in the future usher in a cashless economy. Thus more leaders dedicated to the people of their countries, specially a developing country are needed. But we also need strong leaders championing the cause of developing countries. It would be important to have such leaders to counter the protectionist policies that the rich countries of the west are adopting gradually which will put controls on the free movement of labour and capital. This will be harmful for the poor countries which need new technologies to combat climate change and pandemics. They need foreign capital and knowhow urgently. But who will fight for them? Castro aimed at self-sufficiency and succeeded. India with a huge population should also aim at self-sufficiency in a protectionist, unequal and increasingly racist world order.  

• Privacy & Data Protection
• America
• Bhutan
• The Pacific
• East and Southeast Asia
• East Asia
• Castro
• Global Order
• NAM

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