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SATYAGRAHA & SARVODAYA AS KEYS TO GOOD GOVERNANCE & CORPORATE MANAGEMENT (Text of Ambassador (Retd) Alan Nazareth’s lecture at the ‘Gandhi, Governance and the Corporation’ Colloquium at IIMB on October 2nd, 2008)

  India today has the world’s largest middle class, its second largest technically trained manpower, over 50 billionaires, many millionaires and most of its destitutes, illiterates, mal-nourished children and leprosy and aids patients.  Its finance minister often flaunts the country’s high economic growth rate and occasionally speaks about “Reforms with a human face”. The big question is whose “face”? That of the fat corporate cat or “the poorest and most helpless man” Gandhi spoke about. His remark that “Speed is irrelevant if you are going in the wrong direction” also applies to economic growth rates that bring greater hardships to the multitude, and more wealth and comfort to a few. Who will benefit from the much hyped Indo-US Nuclear Cooperation Agreement - India’s poor or those with air conditioned homes, microwave ovens, dishwashers etc and the foreign/Indian corporates scurrying around for a share in this “multibillion dollar nuclear pie”?  A well known Indian corporate was very noticeable at its formal signing in Washington on October 10th. Of much greater concern however is that this agreement is capstone of a new US-India “strategic architecture”, and “assured fuel supplies” for nuclear power plants are deeply anchored in the “signing statement” of the most untruthful, untrustworthy, lame duck President in US history. Only a few days earlier he had written to Congress that the 123 agreement’s fuel supply assurances were “political” and “not legally binding”. Considering all this and the enormous costs of imported nuclear plants, would not solar and wind energy have been more viable and eco-friendly for India? It has both these energy sources in abundance and some Indian companies have already made a good start with them. Gandhi would certainly have prefered such energies. Narinder Pani, in his ‘Inclusive Economics’ writes “It is Gandhi’s skepticism about grand theories that makes him relevant to the challenges faced by economists at the beginning of the 21st century. He emphasized the need to go beyond theories to understanding society. The method he developed was inclusive enough to deal with both the known and the unknown while reducing scope for expediency. …. There is a tendency to believe that the Gandhian method is relevant only to those who accept his ascetic lifestyle. But once we recognize that the method is equally consistent with a variety of moral frameworks, it gains wider relevance”

  Gandhi’s emphasis on simple living was considered antideluvian by many during his day, but perhaps less so today. The present global food crisis highlights the tragic irony of food grains being used as animal feed, and biofuels for ever increasing numbers of automobiles   His affirmation the “Earth provides enough to satisfy every man’s need but not for every man’s greed” is now the prime slogan of United Nations Environmental Programme. Ernst Schumacher perceived his ecological wisdom many decades ago and wrote “Gandhi had always known, and rich countries are now reluctantly beginning to realize, that their affluence was stripping the world. The USA with 5.6% of world population is consuming upto 40% of the world’s resources, most of them non renewable….Enough is now known about the basic facts of space ship earth to realize that its first class passengers are making demands which cannot be sustained very much longer without destroying the space ship”. Sadly, since 1991, India’s governments have adopted the same “first class passenger”, eco-destructive approach.
  
  Among the prime causes of global warming is extensive deforestations in India, Brazil, Indonesia and elsewhere. As long ago as 1925 Gandhi had written “It is a well established scientific fact that where forests are denuded of trees rains cease, where trees are planted rains are attracted and the volume of water received increases with the increase of vegetation …..The real conflict is not between environment and development but between environment and the reckless exploitation of the earth by man. The wars of our times spring from greed.” ,Petra Kelly, founder of the German Green Party agreed and declared :” In one particular area of our political work we have been greatly inspired by Mahatma Gandhi. That is in our belief that a life style and method of production which rely on an endless supply and a lavish use of raw materials generates the motive for the violent appropriation of these raw materials from other countries. In contrast, a responsible use of raw materials, as part of an ecologically oriented life style and economy, reduces the risk that policies of violence will be pursued in our name”. The recent and ongoing wars in the Balkans, Afghanistan, Iraq and Georgia have much to do with securing control of oil and gas resources and territories through which their pipelines will be laid..             
  
   Gandhi had declared that “Peace will come where Truth is pursued and Truth implies Justice”. What the world needs today much more than a “war on terror” is a war on untruth, injustice, oppression and war itself.

    Terrorism which now plagues many countries needs of course to be confronted with full state vigour. But it is as much a symptom of anger and thirst for revenge as it is of distorted minds. It is essential therefore to fathom the motivations for terrorism. Samuel Huntington in his ‘Clash of Civilizations’ gives an inkling of this. He writes “The West’s efforts to universalize its values and institutions, to maintain its military and economic superiority, and to intervene in conflicts in the Muslim world generate intense resentment among Muslims. During the fifteen years between 1980 and 1995,the US engaged in 17 military operations in the Middle East, all of them directed against Muslim states. No comparable pattern of US military operations occurred against the people of any other civilization.” This was written in 1997. Since then Afghanistan and Iraq have been attacked and Sudan invaded ( by Ethiopia, a US ally) !

  Soon after “9/11” Paul Kennedy wrote “At 8:45 a.m. Tuesday, Sept. 11, 2001, and not the first day of the year 2000,America fully entered the 21st century. The millennial celebrations in New York’s Times Square were ephemeral acts. The devastation of World Trade Center, only a mile to the south, was an epic, transforming event….. America is our modern-day Colossus, bestriding the world with aircraft-carriers, communications systems, giant corporations and cultural impress. Yet this Colossus has an Achilles’ heel that is, to a great extent, of its own making” He pointed out that its cultural, commercial and military dominance are seen as a threat to many  traditional societies and  “Its powerful corporations are viewed by America’s critics as having an undue and powerful influence in blocking international climate control agreements, opening up restricted markets, and overawing weak Third World governments.“

  Globalization has been strenuously promoted since the mid 80’s as the magic wand for eliminating poverty by stimulating domestic production and world trade.  What it has actually resulted in is extensive corporatization of global trade rather than poverty alleviation. In most countries the rich have got richer, the poor poorer and corporations more “mega”. In the United States today 5% of its people own 54% of its wealth !
 
  Noam Chomsky decries globalization as “extension of transnational corporate tyranny”. and transnationals as “tyrannical, totalitarian institutions….huge command economies, run from the top, relatively unaccountable and interlinked in various ways, whose prime interest is profit”.  Their enormous economic power, close linkages with power elites of most countries and diverse nefarious activities, has brought into vogue the term ‘“Corporate Predator State”
 
  The World Social Forum (WSF) has emerged as a global “people’s resistance” movement against the “Corporate Predator State”. It was born in Puerto Allegre, Brazil, through the efforts of the Brazilian Workers Party.  Its first three annual conclaves were held here in 2001, 2002 and 2003, with the participant numbers rising from 12,000 in 2001 to 66,000 in 2003, by which time it had established regional chapters in Europe, Asia and Africa. Its Asian chapter met in Hyderabad, the European Chapter in Florence and the African chapter at Addis Ababa in early 2003.  The 2004 WSF, held at Mumbai January 16 -21 2004, was attended by 85,000 activists from over 100 countries. Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz was key note speaker ( Naom Chomsky was keynote speaker at WSF 2003). At WSF 2005 in Puerto Allegre, the participant number reached 155,000. WSF 2006 was therefore “polycentric” with separate meets in Caracas (Venezuela), Bamako (Mali), and Karachi (Pakistan). WSF 2007 at Nairobi, Kenya had 66,000 “delegates”, representing 1,400 NGOs from 110 countries, making it the most impressive WSF so far. At all WSFs the focus has been on the means for creating a global non-capitalist, non-communist,  social, political, economic, and communication order. About these activists David Hardiman writes “They stand for a human spirit that refuses to be crushed by the ‘Leviathan’ of the modern system of violence, oppression and exploitation. They aspire for a better, more equitable and non-violent future. In them, Gandhi – their model - still lives.”

   Satyagraha and Sarvodaya are more imperative to national and corporate governance today than during Gandhi’s life time.  Even a cursory survey of the global scenario in the last ten years reveals that the major problems the world, many nations, corporations and communities suffer today are because their leaders deserted the path of Truth, justice and non-violent conflict resolution in pursuit of national, corporate, religious or personal agendas. The impeachment of a US President, conviction of an Indian Prime Minister, indictment of the Chilean and Peruvian presidents and bankruptcies of Enron, World Com, Marconi, Tyco, Parmalat, Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Washington Mutual & AIG are all evidence of this. The most shocking instance is the Iraq war which was vigorously promoted with blatant falsehoods. Estimated to last only three weeks, it is already in its sixth year. It has destroyed most of Iraq’s cities, infrastruture and millennial cultural treasures, killed over a million Iraqis, displaced 4 million of them, and cost almost US$ 1 trillion. The present US$ 3 trillion global financial meltdown, which Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz has rued as “the fruit of a pattern of dishonesty on the part of financial institutions”, is further glaring proof of this. In greedy pursuit of maximum profit Investment banks and hedge funds  have ventured into sub-prime, high risk areas and then “spread the risk” to others with well packaged, seemingly attractive  “derivatives”. Warren Buffet has described them as “financial weapons of Mass Destruction”. The enormous US$ 700 million rescue package which the US Congress has approved and which New York Times columnist Paul Krugman has castigated as “cash for trash” clearly exposes the mammoth dimensions of the crisis. Ironically, a former Wall Street senior executive is now the surgeon  responsible for excising the cancer he, along with others, gestated !.  The highly  “privatized” Iraq and Afghan wars have greatly enriched corporates well connected to high state officials. Former Portugese Prime Minister Mario Soares, in an article in International Herald Tribune, critiqued this “promiscuous intermingling of politics and business” and wrote “Capitalism has to be rethought. It must be moved past this phase of speculation, past the “casino economy” to a form of ethical capitalism that respects the environment and the concerns of society”. The same paper also carried a cartoon showing Hurricane Ike striking Texas and Hurricane Greed striking New York and Washington !