SATURDAY, APRIL 27, 2024
Diana Pinto
We fell asleep in an integrated world that promised to put well within our reach everything that our aspirational hearts could desire. We awoke however, to the grim reality of an apparently unstoppable pandemic ravaging country after country, fast tracked by the well connected, globalized world we had created. And neither artificial or human intelligence seemed to be a match for the wily virus that successfully stayed one step ahead through constant mutations.
The early 1980s saw the concept of globalisation being aggressively promoted as one that would facilitate creation of wealth through cross border trade and industrialisation. Advancements in information and communication technology along with a firm belief in the concept of market oriented liberalisation led to the need based movement of people across borders. It was an era of hope, optimism and confidence.
Today the global village is under siege. An invisible parasite has effortlessly decimated our carefully crafted economic systems and exposed the hollowness of our health infrastructure. Our much vaunted scientific and technological expertise cannot seem to keep up with the constant evolutionary prowess of this microscopic marvel as can be seen from the contradictory information and viewpoints that keep constantly emanating from the scientists, epidemiologists and doctors that we depend upon.
It is now clear that the many benefits brought along by worldwide integration, came with an exceedingly high cost. The compulsions of an integrated, international, booming economy were often at variance with perceptions of healthy development of different nations. Rather than the early excitement that envisaged the concept as world co-operation for the betterment of humankind, globalisation in effect, turned out to be a collaborative assembling of oligarchs, seeking to extend their wealth, reach and power by using each other’s influence to acquire natural resources and cheap labour, whilst identifying and penetrating new, emerging markets that could be exploited. Sustainability was given a quiet and discreet burial. Soaring GDP numbers and impressive, vibrant city skylines fuelled the push towards free trade and world interconnectedness.
As manufacturing processes moved from high wage countries to low wage emerging economies, it left behind an ever expanding pool of unemployed workers generating a toxic spirit of intense competitiveness that drove down wages and turned job security into an outdated concept. The unhealthy levels of anxiety and insecurity created by this volatile economic system crystallised in the shape of remarkable political shifts that translated into a backlash against globalization as UK’s Brexit vote stunned the world in 2016. Across the Big Pond, Donald Trump swept the USA Presidential elections on the slogan “Americanism, not globalism shall be our creed”.
From being the mantra of the 80s, globalisation today faces a rocky future. Economists who kept their blinkered vision firmly upon economies of scale through unfettered growth and competition, had failed to factor in the social costs this policy would engender. As Martin Wolf, British author of “Why Globalisation Works” now admits, “The policymaking business and financial elites are increasingly disliked. You need to make policy which brings people to think again that their societies are run in a decent and civilized way.”
And therein lies the crux of the problem. The evolution of a system with the ability to infiltrate and override national policy in its drive to push through the compulsions of a globalised vision left farmers dispossessed of their land and livelihood, even as people were moved around and discarded like pawns on a chess board. The dangers of a structure that handed over the entire manufacturing processes of the world to a single country, throwing the rest of the world into a state of pathetic dependency cannot be overemphasised. It is what probably motivated an Italian mayor to imperil the health of his own people, through his “hug a Chinese” campaign in the early days of the devastating pandemic. Credit Suisse Global Wealth Report, reveals that the world's richest 1%, own 44 percent of the world's wealth while adults with less than $10,000 or 56.6% of the world's population hold less than 2% of global wealth.
The COVID-19 pandemic, may turn out to be one of the watershed events in world history. But when the dust has settled, and we can finally return to some semblance of normality, it may well be time to rethink and redesign our world in consonance with the needs and rights of the other 99%, who are also stakeholders on this planet. This time, hopefully, we will choose a road that will lead us to a more stable and sustainable, if slower progression of economic growth. Perhaps we will deviate from the “one size fits all” concept and keep in mind the differing and particular needs of each nation and various sections of its society through considered and thoughtful protectionism and a system of fair taxation. After all, development, both economic as well as human, is essentially for the benefit of people, who are human beings and not merely human resources.
