Neo-liberalism: Gathering challenges
Both the global and national socio-economic orders are indeed iniquitous and unfair and needless to say that the poor and disadvantaged are at the wrong end. The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) were adopted in 2000 to eradicate poverty which still afflicts a large proportion of the world's population, mostly in the developing countries. In terms of income, about 1.2 billion people are extremely poor, having to make do with PPP US$1 (which is equivalent to Tk.16 or 20 in Bangladeshi currency) per day per person and 2.8 billion people (i.e. just under half the total world population) live on less than PPP US$2 per person/day. But, the MDG programs are not going anywhere much, given the lukewarm financial and technological support coming forth from the developed world directly or through international institutions. At the same time, the poor countries continue to suffer from access problems for their exports to developed economies; and their agriculture, in particular, suffers due to heavy subsidies being paid to agriculture in the developed countries. Thus, the disparity between the poor and the rich countries has been accentuating as has been the disparity between the poor and the rich people within nations in the wake of free market and globalization. The world of the poor is characterized by despair, haplessness, injustice and socio-political subjugation.
Thanks to information technology revolution, inequalities and injustices blazing in one part of the world are known to people in other parts in details directly or through activist networks on different issues. It is, therefore, now possible, as never before, for a global platform of the downtrodden to be established.
For all latest news, follow The Daily Star's Google News channel. Internationally participated protests organized over the past several years against the policies and programs developed and implemented within the framework of neo-liberalism by the World Bank, the IMF, and the WTO as well as the G8 countries are undoubtedly efforts to that end. The latest protests were organized in the recently held (December 2005) WTO Hong Kong Ministerial. Earlier, we have seen similarly huge, even larger gatherings of people from around the world protesting the inequitable policies of the World Bank, the IMF, and the G-8 in whatever places these organizations have met. Obviously, these demonstrations filter through to country levels around the world, encouraging the concerned people to raise their voices against poverty, injustice, and inequalities. Indeed, there are protests being held in many developing countries by or on behalf of the downtrodden. All these developments constitute a major challenge to the rich and privileged classes and ultimately to the global and national orders now evolving under the neo-liberal paradigm.
Thus, the genuine demands of the dispossessed under-classes against the usurping upper-classes have begun to find organized expressions globally and nationally. If, indeed, global and national power structures fail to recognize the forces that are emerging in response to their own selfish and greedy postures and action, the instability and tensions faced today around the world will continue to rage and heighten in future, rendering the world a very unsafe place for everybody including the rich and powerful. In rebelling, the poor, jobless, and socially marginalized people of the world will genuinely seek their equitable shares of economic growth and legitimate places in society and polity.
One may recall the anger of the poor and marginalized people, particularly youth, expressed in France recently through rebellious protests. They have been contained by the power-that-be but the problem has not been solved. The ruling classes have failed to respond appropriately to the deprived people's legitimate demands for equitable rehabilitation in the economy and society. The persistence of the problem and the way the deprived have been suppressed cannot but harden their (i.e. the deprived people's) resolve to re-group and re-surge again in future. The knowledge about what has happened in France and how the authorities have behaved to contain the rebellion has spread throughout the world through news networks, including information superhighway. Indeed, people in similar socio-economic conditions as those who rebelled in France preponderate in the metropolitan and rural areas throughout the world, who would surely find a lot of affinity with those who rebelled in France and may be encouraged to act to seek their own legitimate shares of benefits of development and rightful socio-political positions.
Attempts at suppressing such rebellious protests may succeed for a while but that is bound to backfire if the suffering people are suppressed by force without meeting their demands for the legitimate shares. These confrontations may lead to disastrous consequences for all, including the "high and mighty" who do not seem to see beyond their noses from their comfortable positions. What is happening currently around the world is that people belonging to the power structure (social, economic, political, military) support a policy of whatever it takes to contain the upsurge of even peaceful pretests, and certainly rebellious protests, of the poor and deprived people. But, only the establishment of new international and socio-economic orders based on equity, justice, and fairness for all can establish peace, security, and stability in the world.
Clearly History has not ended. Francis Fukuyama in his 1993 book The End of History and the Last Man claims that free markets and liberalism will last forever as the global paradigm of organizing economic relations and market operations on one hand and political governance on the other and no other principles of economics and forms of government will ever displace it. He is obviously wrong. Ingredients of another History are already gathering strength and momentum around the world.