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| Sunday, 3 April 2005 |
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Features |  |
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The right column Of beggars and robbers For those who are perpetually poor there are three ways to make ends meet - beg, borrow or steal. None of these options is risk free. Begging demeans one. Borrowing has its limits. Stealing can only be at grave risk including physical harm or punitive punishment. What is true of individuals seems to suit nations too. Just as all individuals do not beg, borrow or steal all nations do not practice these three skills. While the poor nations are more prone to begging and borrowing, stealing is often the prerogative of the rich or powerful nations. From whom does the rich steal? Ironically enough, from the poor. Consider capital flows between nations. Export of profits and dividends, interest on loans etc, from the Third World to the First exceeds the capital inflows as investment, grants etc. For example during 1946-67, for every dollar that entered Latin America $2.70 left it. They steal not only capital but also labour or rather labour power, if one is to make the scientific distinction first made by Karl Marx. Compare the international migration of labour or even the brain drain. Brain drain concerns mental labour while the rest concerns manual labour. Rich nations relish employing expatriate labour from the Third World for it is dirt-cheap. It costs only a fraction of the cost of native labour for those countries. There are also other ways of stealing. One method is through unequal terms of trade in the global economy. There is no level playing field. While farmers and industrialists enjoy subsidies in the West, Third World countries are advised to abolish all subsidies. Like cheating in a game of cards the poor nations are always cheated in world trade. In the good old days there were sea pirates. Marine loot provided handsome part of the primitive accumulation for the birth of capitalism. The rest came from expropriation of the farmlands. Now we have bio-piracy. Once again piracy affects the biodiversity rich poor nations. In this age of knowledge society there is also another theft by the same robbers. It is the theft of traditional knowledge and patenting them as their own. Even in the case of borrowing, the lending nations or agencies act like Shylock- the Merchant of Venice, demanding nothing less than the pound of flesh. Perhaps the old bard knew all this much earlier than all economists. That is why he said: "neither a lender nor a borrower be." Yet beggars are not choosers. They have to beg to live and having got used to it they even live to beg. In the community of beggars leadership goes to the one that could reap the best fortune from begging. That is why politicians usually brag about their abilities to beg more than their counterparts in the rival camp. - the Sceptic |
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