Wordfall, by Kaleem Omar

If one were to ask economists about global risks at the moment, they would most likely talk about soaring energy prices or the possibility of a growing trend towards more trade protectionism in the wake of the failure of the WTO ministerial trade talks in Hong Kong last December. Some might even discuss Iran’s nuclear programme or the possibility of bird flu turning into a global pandemic. Few would dwell on currency risk, because over the past four years too many economists have cried wolf over exchange rates. Read the rest of this entry »

Illiteracy is generally reckoned to be one of the key factors holding back this country’s economic development. A nation where more than half the people are illiterate, and many of the other half are semi-literate at best, cannot become a prosperous country – not unless we discover oil in huge quantities and can sit back watching the money roll in.

In the absence of any such discovery, however, the question is: what are we to do? In other words, how do we go about transforming ourselves from a nation of impoverished illiterates into a nation where everybody not only knows how to read and write but is a college graduate to boot?

Read the rest of this entry »

US President George W. Bush has signed a much-ballyhooed nuclear deal with India. Reams have been written on the subject, both in this country and India, and more will doubtless be written about it in the weeks ahead. What I’d like to know, however, is whether Bush even knew what he was saying when he made the deal?

I ask this question because when it comes to Bush and the English language, anything is possible. For one thing, he doesn’t even know how to pronounce the word ‘nuclear’. He says ‘nucular’. But is ‘nucular’ an acceptable pronunciation? No, it isn’t – not even in Bush’s home state of Texas.

Changing “nu-clee-ar” into “nu-cu-lar” is an example of what linguists call metathesis, which is the switching of two adjacent sounds. Think of it this way: our “nu-clee-ar” becomes the Americans’ “nook-le-yer,” which, in turn, becomes Bush’s “nook-ye-ler.”

Metathesis is common in English pronunciation, especially in America. Some Americans pronounce “iron” as “eye-yern” rather than “eye-ron.” Why do they do it? One reason, offered in a usage note in the “American Heritage Dictionary,” is that the “ular” ending is extremely common in English, and much more common that “lear.” Consider “particular,” “circular,” “spectacular,” and many science-related words like “molecular,” “ocular” and “muscular.”

Bush isn’t the only American president to lose the ‘nucular” war. Besides Bush, at least three other presidents – Eisenhower, Carter and Clinton – have mangled the word. In fact, Bush’s usage is so common that it appears in at least one American dictionary. Webster’s, by far the most liberal dictionary, includes the pronunciation, though with a note identifying it as “a pronunciation variant that occurs in educated speech but that is considered by some to be questionable or unacceptable.”

A 1961 edition of Webster’s was the first to include “nucular.” The editors received so many indignant letters that they added a usage note in the 1983 edition, pointing out its “widespread use among educated speakers including scientists, lawyers, professors, congressmen, US cabinet members, and at least one US president and one vice-president.” They even noted its prominence among British and Canadian speakers.

These days, Webster’s sends every reader who fusses about “nucular” a defensive, 400-word response letter.

The letter says (in part): “We do not list the pronunciation of ‘nuclear’ as ‘nucular’ as an ‘acceptable’ alternative. We merely list it as an alternative. It is clearly preceded by an obelus mark. This mark indicates ‘a pronunciation variant that occurs in educated speech but that is considered by some to be questionable or unacceptable…We are definitely not advocating that anyone should use the pronunciation ‘nucular’.”

Even in the United States, some critics think Webster is cutting people too much slack in this letter, allowing Bush to get away with saying “nucular” instead of “nuclear.”

Which brings us back to Bush’s deal with India. Is it a nuclear deal or a ‘nucular’ deal? Surely, somebody who has his finger on the nuclear button should at least know how to pronounce the word ‘nuclear’ correctly.

The dependency theory of economic development is based on the perceived exploitative relationship between the developed countries on the one hand and underdeveloped countries on the other. Surpluses from the underdeveloped countries, also described as “peripheral states,” are siphoned off to the “hegemonic centres,” that is, the developed countries. This lopsided development is not just a basic characteristic of but also a basic cause of global capitalist development and underdevelopment.

During colonial days, the ruling colonial powers exploited their colonies by transferring the surpluses from their colonies to the hegemonic centres. This was colonial dependency. It explained the underdevelopment of the colonies on the one hand, and the high levels of development of the colonising powers on the other. Britain, for instance, grew rich at the expense of India and its other colonies, while India – which under the Mughals had been one of the richest countries in the world – sank deeper and deeper into poverty.

In the post-colonial era, the lopsided exploitative relationship continued and took the form of not only the exorbitant interests charged on loans from the developed countries, and the deteriorating terms of trade for the primary products of the peripheral nations, but also of the transfer of monopoly profits obtained from the exploitation of the working classes from their investments in the peripheral states, as Lim Chong-Yah, professor of economics at the National University of Singapore, notes in his study “Development and Underdevelopment”.

As in imperialistic times, there were insurmountable forces and obstacles preventing the peripheral nations from industrialising. If they were to continue to produce primary exports, these dependent nations would suffer from deteriorating terms of trade, as primary exports have a low elasticity of demand. The exporters of industrial products from the hegemonic centres have the advantage of having high income elasticity of demand for their manufacturing exports.

The way out of this problem for the dependent nations was to industrialise through import-substitution policies and programmes. However, increasing foreign investments would only enlarge the outflow of exploitative profits. Besides, more capitalist enclaves would be created in the dependent nations, accentuating the gulf between the rich and the poor in the dependent states themselves.

As Chong-Yah notes, the dependency theory extends the exploitative relationship between the rich capitalistic states and the poor dependent states. External financing, too, was frowned upon in the theory, as it was assumed – correctly in many cases – that exploitative interest rates would have to be paid.

Other than industrialisation through import substitution, the dependency school also advocates South-South cooperation, that is, cooperation between the dependent states. In part, this will enhance their bargaining position with the North. In part, the market for each state could be enlarged through a larger regional market.

This was the rationale behind the creation of such regional groupings as the Association for South-East Asian Nations, which has proved to be one of the most successful examples of South-South cooperation. SAARC, on the other hand, has proved to be one of the least successful.

There are many ways of looking at the future. One is to think of it as something that never turns up, because by the time tomorrow arrives, it’s no longer tomorrow – having, in the meantime, through some mysterious process, become today.

Another way is to think of the future as something that doesn’t exist. I mean, has anybody actually seen the future? If they haven’t, how do they know that its out there somewhere? So is there a key that can unlock the door to the future? If so, where might we find it?

Nasruddin tells a story about a man who was looking on the ground for his lost key. When his neighbour asked him where he had lost it, he pointed to a different place. “Then why aren’t you looking there?” asked the neighbour. The man replied, “Because the light is better here.”

Much like the man in the Nasruddin story, we waste time when we use inappropriate models simply because they are available. The alternatives that futurologists like Boston-based business consultant Stan Davis offer, however, are not just theoretical solutions for a hypothetical and distant future.

“Today, holistic logic and transformations of time, space and mass are affecting businesses, organisations, and the people in them,” says Davis in his book “Future Perfect.”

Davis argues that the economic shift that is occurring today is producing an economy of ambiguity and paradox, called, variously, a “post-industrial economy, a “service” economy, and an “information” economy, yet none of these descriptive terms does justice to the full complexity of what is happening.

Says Davis, “The advent of this new economy – however post-industrial – certainly does not mean the end of industry, any more than the industrial revolution meant the end of agriculture. Agriculture, service, and industry are merely sectors coexisting within the same complex and interactive system.”

Davis argues that the true shift in this or any economy occurs when we adopt a new all-encompassing model. The industrial revolution occurred when we stopped using agrarian models to run the agrarian and industrial sectors.

“The shift that must occur now is to stop using mechanistic, industrial models to run today’s complex agricultural-industrial-service economy,” says Davis.

Einstein said that new frameworks are like climbing a mountain – the larger view encompasses, rather than restricts, the earlier, more restricted view.

“What we face today,” says Davis, “is an agrarian sector in which we have farmers who sit at computer terminals and never go near a tractor. In the industrial sector the car companies have become major banks.”

Banks in the new economy, meanwhile, are finding that they can be more profitable as brokers than as intermediaries. By documenting loans at the time of origination to be liquid and packaged for resale, they can move them off the books at a profit and free up capital for other uses.

As the line between commercial and investment banking blurs, commercial relationship managers, corporate finance experts, and capital market traders become very interrelated jobs.

There is no way to make people like change. You can only make them feel less threatened by it. Norwegian anthropologist Thor Heyerdahl, author of the best selling book “The Kon-Tiki Expedition”, once observed: “Progress is man’s ability to complicate simplicity.” But is it progress if a cannibal uses a fork?

Back in 1957, the American writer Henry Miller observed: “What have we achieved in mowing down mountain ranges, or moving whole populations about like chess pieces, if we ourselves remain the same restless, miserable, frustrated creatures we were before. To call such activity progress is utter delusion.”

On his return from a tour of Africa in June 2002, then-US Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill, told reporters the continent was making economic progress, but it still had a long way to go. He said aid programmes were improving people’s living standards, but in the long-term entrepreneurial flair, trade and foreign investment would be far more important in promoting economic growth.

O’Neill went to Africa to help devise policies for spending US development aid, which President George W. Bush has promised to increase by 50 per cent to $ 15 billion a year by the end of 2006. O’Neill highlighted three key development needs in Africa: safe drinking water, primary education and combating Aids.

For all the talk about combating Aids, however, the fact is that Aids has been spreading at a highly alarming rate in Africa, with some 28 million people in sub-Saharan Africa already affected.

One of the problems, of course, is that the new drugs developed by Western pharmaceutical companies to combat Aids are so expensive that most people in the sub-Saharan African countries cannot afford them.

O’Neill, for his part, had nothing to say about providing these drugs to sub-Saharan African countries at affordable prices. Nor has the current US treasury secretary, John Snow, had anything to say about it.

Meanwhile, back in the United States, wealth and progress were the subject of debate at a forum held in Oakland, California. Did the US economic boom of the 1990s represent progress? What does the unchecked growth of speculative wealth, income polarisation, and disgruntled politics mean for the US?

These were some of the questions addressed at the “Is Wealth Progress? The Politics of America’s Economic Boom,” forum in Oakland. The event was sponsored by “Redefining Progress” – a non-profit public policy organisation.

Redefining Progress joined more than 30 US environmental groups on February 22, 2002 in a call for action urging President Bush to attend the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg, South Africa in August that year and “ensure that the US plays a leadership role on a range of critical environmental issues including climate change, toxics and the oceans.”

Far from playing a leadership role on these issues, however, the United States – under Bush – rejected the Kyoto Protocol on toxic emissions and global warming, to the fury of the US’s European allies and other countries around the world.

Many Asian countries are restructuring their defence firms and opening them to foreign investment to build equity and market links with Western nations. But China and Japan, see things differently, preferring to plough their own furrow, as it were, and not become dependent on the West for defence technology.

However, China has concluded several major defence deals with Russia in recent years. One such deal is a $ 1.4 billion contract for a Chinese aircraft manufacturer – the Shenyang Aircraft Making Factory, in Shenyang, Liaoning province – to assemble Russian Su-27SK jet fighters for the Chinese air force. But the contract bans the Chinese from exporting any of the jets.

Under another deal, Russia is supplying high-tech torpedoes to the Chinese navy. Using a revolutionary new “super-cavitation” technology, the torpedoes can travel underwater at 300 miles an hour and can be equipped with nuclear warheads.

According to some American military analysts, the super-cavitation torpedoes could “alter the global balance of power” since only half-a-dozen such torpedoes armed with nuclear warheads could take out a whole US aircraft carrier battle group. Russia has reportedly supplied more than 50 of the new torpedoes to China, with an undisclosed additional number to be supplied over the next two years.

Russia’s own navy is strapped for cash and not in a position to acquire the new torpedoes. China, by contrast, with its booming economy and soaring exports, is awash with foreign exchange (its forex reserves now stand at $ 795 billion), and is thus a ready customer for the latest Russian weapons systems, including “Sunburst” missiles.

Japan’s defence firms have a big in-country market for their products. Twenty Japanese firms account for 75 per cent of the Japan Defence Agency (JDA) procurement of about $ 15 billion a year.

Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd., Tokyo, remains Japan’s biggest defence supplier, accounting for nearly 25 per cent of total JDA procurement. Items procured from the company in recent years include Type-90 main battle tanks and F-2 support fighters.

Unlike Japanese firms, defence firms in other East Asian countries cannot do enough business domestically. “So they have to cooperate with foreign companies,” according to Juang Gwo-chang, secretary-general of the Taiwan Aerospace Industry Association. “The focus now is on survival,” he said.

Many Asian defence firms are seeking foreign investment and technology that would allow them to engage in more commercial aerospace work and limit reliance on defence. Reduced defence budgets in many cases, and increased interest in buying foreign defence products in others, are leading to sweeping changes in many Asian nations.

Defence firms in South Korea, Malaysia, Indonesia and Taiwan are looking for equity partners that can give them access to foreign capital, technology and markets.

The process of finding a foreign partner is furthest along in South Korea, where the lure of achieving an inside track on the country’s planned purchase of attack helicopters and fighter aircraft acts as a strong impetus for interest in the newly formed Korean Aerospace Industries.