Mohammed Shahid Saleem
An innocent Syrian Kid, hit by bullet on his chest, while having his last breath said “I will be narrating everything to God”.An injured Iraqi girl, seconds before her death, asks a journalist not to video graph her as she is having no scarf on her head.A kid in Gaza strip due to deep hunger was praying for death with a wish to eat in paradise without any limit.A mother in Latin America, due to extreme poverty, decided to kill two of her two children as she was not having enough to feed them.The decision was to save at least one child otherwise all three would die.What would have been thoughts of Alyan Kurdi in the ferocious waves of Mediterranean Sea, only angle of death knows. Similar is death of an infant Nitin Kumar in Samba, Jammu and Kashmir, killed by a bullet from across the border.But the traders of blood bath continue with their business playing bad politics, ill intended policies and fake slogans.
This all blood, bloody wars and blood-stained humanity has created a madding ruckus around the world.What the hell is going on? What type of politics we are playing?Why the humanity still lives with the ideology of conflict, separatism, religious and racial supremacy and so on? Why the blood bath on one pretext or other is sermonized for glory and peace? Why the word ‘peace’ is being misused as end and word ‘war’ used practically as means? What lessons we learnt from World War I and II and continuous killings going on? Why we always speak of war or fight as a solution and understand to have peace only after the fracas?
Humanity has learnt nothing especially those of it in the commanding position. All these slogans of development, peace, tranquility and world order are shallow and hollow. The arrival of Corona or COVID 19 has made the mighty powers tremble and right now they all are on their knees. More than arrangements for tackling this deadly disease or other social problems and evils,we have arms, ammunition, missiles and nuclear arsenals to usher peace and serenity. Yes, peace will only prevail when we are armed enough with nuclear arsenals, bombs, fighter jets and huge human armies-what nonsense. The horrific and gory death counts, caused due to COVID, swelling and positive cases sky rocketing has made around eight billion hearts tremor in distress, sorrow and agony. The mighty decision makers in their five cornered mansions or other huge so-called temples for establishing and administering rules for ushering peace and development, are on their knees. Still economy is being preferred over humanity as the destruction and obliteration of former is threat to existence of these machine hearted global masters. What and where these so called global political magnates went wrong?
With the advent of booming information technology, the blue planet, once considered mighty and gigantic place for life, was declared a global village. Yes, a tiny village. Thanks for not declaring it a hamlet-village is still big. Is the terminology used perfect as the modern man with modern technology and scientific adventures and misadventures is ruling the roost?The chief and wise creation of God has done and created so many scientific wonders which as per him are enough to turn this planet into a paradise. The human journey towards development and prosperity, under the command of developed nations-mostly in global north, has seen many upheavals be it financial crisis, terrorism or emergence of different events putting a challenge to established systems and institutions. But despite all odds and limitations, the humanity found an escape route every time without learning a lesson. Let’s evaluate the forceful slogans of development, serenity, prosperity and glory and the ground position, especially in erstwhile colonized global south.
As is clear all the policies be it political, economic or for any other purpose are drafted in such a way that the billionaires discussed above, in any circumstance, acquire more and more. The results are obvious- at present around two third of the planet’s population has source of livelihood less than ten dollars per day with every tenth person living on less than 1.90 dollar per day. With this we can imagine the status of welfare of one tenth population of the globe. Every day one in nine people goes hungry and thus food security still continues a biggest threat to the humanity despite the big and charming slogans of liberty, equality and development.
Not only this, around forty million people are trapped in modern day slavery and around 42 million selling their bodies/flesh trade, out of which eighty percent are female aged between thirteen to twenty-five years-the age for schooling and learning. With 750 million illiterates around the world we are championing the education for all with gender equality. Wait-two third of illiterates are women.The quality of education-Aah-around 600 million children are not mastering the basic mathematics while at school. Thanks to the structural adjustment programme and Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers- the Neo Liberal charters for pushing the poor, destitute and downtrodden to further misery and wretchedness.Yes, the aid given by the developed nations to underdeveloped or least developed nations as part of ‘Big Push’ policy has not shown positive results. Thanks to same SAPs and PRSPs which are made just to keep a window to intervene, at the time of balance of payment crisis, and devastate the already ailing economies in global south. That’s why it is said that what matters is intention, whether its crime or philanthropy. If intention is bad how can the action taken on its basis will generate positive and fruitful result.
We, developed global north, preferred to be traders of arms rather than actually working for pulling the world population out of poverty and desolation. We just wanted them to be markets for us and never wanted us to be markets for them. We continued as masters and wished for them to continue as slaves-after all we were colonial masters. We waged the wars to devastate and derail them. We used and misused them.We tried every policy to keep them in debt trap and never industrialize and develop. We stopped knowledge transfer to keep them away from development path and started deglobalization when globalization started hitting us. We pushed them to adopt the free trade, liberalization and produce as per their comparative advantage so that they always remain raw material producers for us. But yes, when we wanted real development, successful story of ‘Marshal Plan’ for Europe after World War II, development of Japan, Vietnam and South Korea to keep Communist China pushed to wall are real and live example. But same aid fails in other parts of global south, and the cause is obvious and clear.
But now we, the developed industrial masters in global north, are in the trap. An unintended issue has hit ‘COVID’ challenging us and simultaneously challenging those poor nations in global south as well which are already starving. Now a hard and crude test arises for developed nations. How we, the declared world bosses ‘developed nations’, are going to behave and lend every type of required help to poor nations be it financial, moral, physical or knowledge, in this tough and bad time to curb ‘COVID’ while fighting the same in our own countries. Another test will be reshaping of our intentions to actually help them develop and pull them out of poverty trap. The first and foremost action, therefore, on our part should be by lending them the agreed amount of aid in untied condition for infrastructure and industrial development as we developed by this method only. Positive, quick and timely action on these two resolves will be our tribute, in case we have vision and understanding, to those young buds which hadnot been allowed to blossom due to our faulty and greedy policies and who, I am sure, have complained everything in the court of almighty ‘the supreme power’.Also, this is the best remedy to be adopted forever by the developed nations in addition to timely social distancing to avoid the COVID led catastrophe. The social distancing is the solution to be followed in global south as well irrespective of the fact whether the global north falls in line or not.
(The author is a KAS officer)
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