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| NAM still relevant | | Needed to fight domination by the North | |
Devaki Jain
IS the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) relevant today? We can perhaps expect an answer to this haunting question from the 14th Summit of the 192 nations that belong to this political club founded 50 years ago, that is taking place in Havana.
The phrase ‘non-aligned’ suggests a political space of neutrality, – a definition by negation – between two powerful blocs, East and West; socialist and capitalist to put it starkly. But the club’s purpose, domain and actions were far greater than the literal interpretation. The key word was “movement”. The club became a movement for claiming sovereignty for the newly liberated nations from super powers, as also the independence to design their future from their own history, culture and economic landscapes. Sovereignty and liberation were the key words.
The key issues that make for its relevance today are that the multilateral spaces – even the UN as well as related agencies such as the WTO, and the International Financial Institutions (IFIs) set up as level playing fields to negotiate “fair play” – have once again become aggressive and the East-West confrontation has reluctantly became a North-South one.
The breakdown of the Doha Round is the most recent illustration. But this is only the most visible. Other methods of domination include military invasion and other forms of intervention without abiding by any international covenants.
In the last 15 years, as countries of the South such as India, China, South Africa and Brazil among others, have shown the vitality of their economies in their growth rates and the value of their trade., there is greater counter offensive initiatives now from the North, or greater anxiety in the North and therefore stronger pressures on the countries of the South.
NAM can provide the political umbrella now, at this juncture in our history, for us to forge that solidarity in the economic arena, and outside of the currently unequal international systems.
But for NAM in the 21st Century, while the nuts and bolts would be trade, and the goal economic strength, this is not a sufficient match to light the fire of solidarity in a club of such disparate members. Disparate not only in the level of their economic condition, but also in their political stances, and internal situations.
The agenda has to be shifted from what is au-courant in the world just now, that is, engaging with the WTO, pushing market frontiers at all costs, inducing foreign capital, and investment, into identifying the reasons for the enormous crisis that continents are facing, in terms of shortages – food , energy, fuel, justice, peace – and thinking afresh on what kind of economics would deal with these crises, rather than postulating an economics and asking the ground to fit it self in.
So NAM is indeed relevant, in fact crucial, if we want to show even a minimal respect for the condition of our peoples right now, and not play ad-hoc cards into a stop- go game. But it has to go back, not forward, to bring in the idealism of the past, the struggle-driven leadership and language.
Otherwise, a mere agenda of one more set of commitments on trade and terror, which would seem not the same to all the members and groups, will not bind it into what it can, and needs, to become. The end in sight – people’s liberation from hunger, deprivation, the cruelty of local wars, the ground realities in which our countries less privileged live – needs to be talked about more.
Here Gandhi’s notion of the second freedom gives us a clue. He said in 1947 “The Congress has won political freedom, but it has yet to win economic freedom, social and moral freedom.”
What made it happen, in the past, was the spirit of the leadership and the push of groundswell movements. The language of the leaders stressed identity with what could be called their peoples. However blemished the leaders, the liberation language – evoking removal of oppression, inclusive of the oppression of poverty and exclusion – covered up those blemishes.
Today our leaders and our countries have got factored into or trapped into one or a single-minded macro purpose, driven by global power. The words, “of the people” do not appear, nor does the word equity. In fact, these terms are mocked as rhetoric. The only reality that is accepted as smart and realistic, is growth, and that too export-led. Locked into this quest, NAM has lost its identity – and let me clarify that the identity I talk about is not civilisational, nor cultural, but a movement-oriented identity, the anti-domination identity.
The summit being held in Cuba is propitious, as the place resonates with this kind of talk. But while it may be rhetorical, it provides the aura for big ideas and big leadership. India can reclaim her place only if she puts her self out, imagines a Nehru and a Sukarno, and even a Gandhi , and argues that political solidarity to affirm collective economic bargaining power, through regional and other trade arrangements, are for the masses to win their second freedom, bread, water and salt as Nelson Mandela asked for in his inaugural speech, in 1994, expressing the yearning of his people after being liberated from the apartheid regime.
The writer is a former member, South Commission and Member of the special committee set up by the Ministry of External Affairs in August 2006 to prepare some notes and documents for the NAM Summi in Havanat.
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