Rights, poverty linked to bully developing nations

By Bharat Jhunjhunwala

NEW DELHI (JP): There appears to exist a consensus that poverty is a denial of human rights. United Nations Development Program administrator Speth once said: "Freedom from poverty is a basic human right."

A Geneva-based non-governmental organization, the Human Rights Research Center, said the "right to economic progress" is an essential element of human rights.

Dozens of new, Western-funded human rights NGOs have sprung up in developing countries like ours recently. They parrot much the same thing. They all apply pressure on our governments to use their limited monies for poverty-alleviation programs. They want to see that our national wealth is used for current consumption. In the process, investment suffers and, as a result, poverty is actually perpetuated.

In order to understand this vicious game, let us first restate some of the basics of economic development. Greater investment is a necessary condition for raising income levels. This investment has to necessarily come from reduced current consumption. Marx called this process "primitive accumulation".

Every industrial country has gone through this in one way or another. The United States had slavery. Human rights of people imported from Africa to work on cotton plantations were denied to promote investment.

England and most of Europe had their colonies. Again, human rights of the people living in the colonies were denied in order that the European industries could make huge profits. Russia had its gulags. Across the globe, we see that the industrial countries of today were the most violent oppressors of human rights during those eras they were engaged in primitive accumulation.

Unpleasant as it may seem, there really is no alternative. A people has no choice but to sacrifice current consumption, or current human rights, in order to secure future consumption, or future human rights. This is a choice that every people must make. As we use up more of our money to provide "relief measures", or to increase current consumption, we deny ourselves equivalent future consumption.

This is not to say that we must promote starvation and live with poverty. But how much poverty to tolerate has to be our sovereign political choice. Whether we want to consume more today and remain poor perpetually, or we want to invest more today and become rich tomorrow, is a decision that our people alone have to make. Foreign oppressors of the past have no locus standi, no say, in the matter.

It is strange that those who were the worst perpetrators of human rights violations on people of developing countries have become votaries of their human rights. They have suddenly begun to "feel" the pain of poverty.

Armed with their cushy UN and NGO pay packets, perks and travel allowances, they now want us to ensure that our governments do not violate the human rights of our people. Why this sudden change of heart?

The answer lies in Western capitalism. The need of the capital of industrial countries is to snuff out all competition from domestic capital of the developing countries. Human rights have become an integral part of this strategy. This is how it works.

Step 1: Launch a human rights harangue. Get the developing countries to tax their businesses and use the money for protecting the human rights of their people, for "poverty alleviation".

Step 2: The investment in the developing countries is a hit. The country is softly pressurized to increase current consumption and sacrifice investment and future consumption.

Step 3: Foreign investment steps in to fill in the vacuum. The UNDP, for example, is a also a great votary of global capital flows. There is growth for some time (China is in this situation today).

Step 4: All good things come to an end one day. As soon as fresh foreign investment ebbs, the growth rates collapse since profits from foreign investment are repatriated continually, the situation of most East Asian countries now.

Step 5: The developing country is by now "hooked" to public welfare systems. It cannot easily reverse its policies and move back from current consumption to investment. It is left perpetually spending its little money in poverty alleviation programs. Indonesia faces this today as people riot for economic relief.

Step 6: Economic growth is elusive in absence of investment. The country remains "poor" perpetually; Latin American countries are experiencing this difficulty, and the 1980s are now known as a "lost decade".

Step 7: The developing country is in a vicious grip of the pincer of human rights. The harangue of low income as a denial of human rights will not allow consumption to be cut for investment. The long-term goal of human rights is denied in the name of securing them in the short term. This is the situation is Ghana and other African countries which had high doses of foreign investment in the past.

This is, then, the game plan. The real objective is economic hegemony. Poverty-as-human rights is merely an instrument in the strategy. The vicious game becomes yet clearer when we analyze the actions of the Western votaries of human rights.

The West wants developing countries to remove poverty and ensure the human rights of their people, right? After all, isn't this a global "human" problem which transcends national boundaries?

Then, why not allow poor people from these countries to migrate to the West in search of income? That, too, would secure them their human rights as much as increasing the expenditures of the developing countries' governments.

Why the insistence that this global problem be solved within national boundaries alone?

The developing countries are criticized for not making adequate income available to their people. It is said that human rights are violated because there are inadequate relief measures.

Then why aren't the governments of the West not criticized for preventing the same people from immigrating to their lands in search of the same income?

Why does the West not act positively to secure these "human rights"? The West is pained indeed by our poverty but the pain stops, and the concern evaporates, the moment a developing nation's citizen lodges an application for an immigrant visa.

Be that as it may, the problem of our poverty remains. The simple solution is to link investment and relief. Let all those who want relief come and work in building dams and roads. That will take care of their short-term human rights by providing immediate wages.

It will also promote their long-term human rights by creating infrastructure for our businesses to build upon. Western agents like the UNDP cannot be blamed.

They are merely using the human rights stick to beat our governments into submission. Foreign-funded human rights NGOs cannot be blamed, either. Where else would they get their dining tables and sedans? The least we can do, however, is be watchful and not simply toe the line.

The writer is a New Delhi-based columnist.