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| Sunday, 14 September 2003 |
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Editor, Sunday Observer. E-mail: [email protected] Snail mail : Sunday Observer, 35, D.R.Wijewardana Mawatha, Colombo, Sri Lanka. Telephone : 94 1 429239 / 331181 Fax : 94 1 429230 Kangkung To our readers, Kangkung is that leafy vegetable that is increasingly common these days in take-out dinner menus with, or without, dollops of mono-sodium glutamate. At least to some readers, Kangkung also rhymes funnily with Cancun, Mexico, where an international meeting most crucial to world trade is taking place. The World Trade Organisation (WTO) is currently holding a conference of trade ministers of all its 146 member countries to try to push negotiations among the world's nations to improve trade relations and, thereby, enhance productivity and prosperity especially for the large number of poor countries at the receiving end of the post-colonial world system. The principal reason that many ordinary people are unaware of the import of this meeting in Cancun is that it is difficult to draw a direct link between mass poverty and social injustice on the one hand, and international trade laws, national-level economic policies, productivity and socio-economic security, on the other. One of the most contentious issues up for negotiation and decision in Cancun is the pressure by rich, industrialised countries for the 'developing' countries to open up national markets for their exports, while these 'developing' countries are demanding that the rich countries reduce their own domestic trade barriers that protect local industry and agriculture. Indeed, while most 'developing' countries, under World Bank and IMF conditionality, are already busy dismantling state subsidies for local producers, the rich countries are happily protecting their farmers with billions of dollars in state subsidies. Removal of these subsidies would increase production costs which, in turn, would mean that prices of their products would rise. This would enable the agricultural exports of the 'developing' nations to become more competitive in the markets of the rich nations. Another contentious issue is the attempt by some rich nations to get 'developing' countries to privatise everything under the sun, including vital social infrastructure such as health and education. Attempts are being made to declare education a 'service' and therefore liable to come under World Bank/IMF conditionality for complete privatisation for purely commercial purposes. Yet another issue is the question of international copyright and property law and the ongoing appropriation by rich-country-based multi-national corporations of the botanical products of unsuspecting poor nations. Poor nations are demanding that more regulations be brought into curb the 'bio-piracy' of indigenous medicinal plants and numerous other biological resources by multi-national corporations who then deprive local producers of their right to use these resources. What is going on in Cancun is a power struggle, pure and simple, with the rich nations largely pushing an agenda socially and economically advantageous to them, while the poor nations, most of whom are yet struggling to recover from the ravages of centuries of colonial rule, are fighting a similar agenda that is socially and economically advantageous to their populations. While the underlying motives seem similar, for the rich nations, it is a question of sustaining or even enhancing the existing affluence of their populations and guaranteeing this by ensuring their continued domination of world trade. For the poor countries, it is not even a question of reaching prosperity, but of fighting starvation and extreme poverty for, especially, their rural populations economically disadvantaged by this world trade system that looks as if it has hardly progressed beyond the imbalances of the old colonial world system. The rich countries already have their food in over abundance. For the poor countries, food security is a desperately sought goal. That is why even the humble kangkung plant, the product of the world's teeming rural poor, is not simply a funnily rhyming word but symbolic of the livelihood and physical survival of much of the world's population. That is what is at stake in Cancun. |
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