Politics, Morality, Identity: An Intimate Quest

Reform of the BWIs and curtailment of their role in the world policy formulation which by and large runs counter to democratisation at world governance, are indeed urgent and desirable goals. In this context Waldon Bello’s proposals are important for getting out of the ‘TINA’ syndrome (Bello W., 2002). They offer directions for concrete action in terms of strengthening countervailing structures. However, in the present global political environment, these structures (UNCTAD, SAARC, SADCC and ASEAN) are unlikely to realize their potential role of performing as countervailing forces to hegemonic global governance. In fact they promote the BWI perspective of globalization.

BWIs, with absolute commitment to the principle of dollar power, cannot be reformed by civil society campaigns alone. Their present structure of adaptation for survival has been developed through expert initiatives from within the institutions. The experts, in fact, have helped the BWIs to adapt to the movements’ critique of the growing negative impacts of the BWI initiatives. And this has often been achieved by appropriating the language of movements at one level and by co-opting a section of movement activists at another. Hence the changes effected by the BWIs in their organizational functioning and rhetoric have been more cosmetic than representing an actual shift in their approach. It is only the combined energy of comprehensive political movements, the will of the political leadership of nation states and consonant expert knowledge that can reform them. Thus seen, the reform initiative has to be reconceived in transformative terms. Perhaps, global democracy needs something like a world-level gramin-bank, a world co-operative where every recipient is also a participant in the decision making and a contributor to the corpus, albeit in a degree of his share in world income.

For both the potential roles of the Tobin Tax initiative, some questions however need to be addressed from the perspective of the low-income countries and the marginalised majority of these countries. While several first world countries (Canada, France, UK, Finland and US) have been able to inaugurate what looks like effective campaigns for the Tobin Tax initiative, the activist groups and people’s movements of low income countries have been apprehensive about the initiative. For acquiring a globally democratic character particularly in raising and using the funds generated, it is important that participation of the presumed recipients of the funds are involved in the decision making about holding and using such funds. The questions involved are who shall be the recipients? States or the civil society organisations in recipient countries. Who shall decide priorities for using the funds. These are not just administrative questions but articulate issues of democratisation. It is in this context that it has become a crying need for the movements in the countries of the South to understand operations of global finance capital and be actively engaged in devising new tools of analysis and action to ensure that global finance capital serves the interests of citizens and democratic states and not the avarice of owners and managers of capital (Kawaljit, 2000). At national levels institutions of a Securities Transaction Tax (STT) on equity transactions could help stabilise markets in individual countries, besides several other benefits (Kawaljit, 2002).

For democratising global governance the proposal is exciting because of its potential to create multiple centres of power at global level and thus promote democratisation of the international political system. However, it is important to ensure that the international tax administration structures and processes which would come into existence with the implementation of the proposal would counter the present unipolar and monopolistic system of global governance and give due space to the poorer economies. Conducive norms of functioning are essential from the start and can, in fact, become triggers for democratisation of existing institutions particularly the UN system. Thus an institution such as the proposed Tobin Tax Organisation is likely to be more responsive to ‘other visions’ of social development than the existing institutions.

It would be crucial for the TT to evolve institutional mechanisms ensuring that it does not have negative impact for democratisation processes in the low-income countries. This is possible only when those working on such single issue initiatives link with the other issues of economic democracy in absence of which and their effort may become another distraction and a de-politicising tool, sometimes even legitimising the present hegemonic structures.

Similarly, the proposed environment/carbon tax is a double edged tool. If the tax funds are used to coax the South to buy so-called eco-friendly technologies without bringing in issues of non-sustainability of Northern lifestyles, the environmental tax will be negative for ecological democracy. The environmental tax must contribute to and legitimise the debate on redefining ‘development’ and ‘progress’. There is insufficient critical mass in terms of Green movements that can ensure such a result. The Green Parties, unlike the Green Movement, follow the compulsions of competitive populism and may not always take a stand against unsustainable lifestyles.

A discussion on democratising global processes has to inevitably include the UN institutions very centrally. As Major General Vinod Saighal rightly observes (Saighal, 1998) – "it has been artificially constrained from carrying out its mandate by the US and its allies. Russia (the erstwhile Soviet Union) and China have also contributed to its loss of authority.

The first priority before the UN is, therefore, to start learning to live as an organisation which has a legitimate right over resources of nation-states albeit in proportion to surpluses they generate.

Secondly, the structure and processes of decision making need to be examined. If we look at the present international organisations, three main systems of decision making can be distinguished (Sattu Hassi, 2001): there is the UN system based on the principle of one country - one vote, in the operations of Bretton Woods Institutions there is the rule of one dollar - one vote, and the practice in the World Trade Organisation (and many UN conventions) is that decisions are taken ‘by consensus’.

None of these arrangements fulfil the criteria that we set for democratic governance on national level. The UN practice is closest, but even there the demography is not taken into account. An idea of the present power relations can be obtained by looking how the representation from different countries would be in a ‘world parliament’ based on demography. In a parliament of 600 seats, representatives from the 10 major countries would be like this:

1. China 127

2. India 100

3. European Union 38

4. United States 27

5. Indonesia 21

6. Brazil 16

7. Pakistan 16

8. Russian Federation 15

9. Bangladesh 13

10. Japan 13

In this setting China would have five times more representation than the US, and India four times more. However the resistance to any proposal to this kind of structural democratisation is going to be strong.

The real life-world of international relations and institutions is so far away from democratic principles and practices, that increasingly the popular discourse about global democracy is becoming confined to constituencies having no direct influences on institutions of global governance. Since the global governors lack commitment to global democracy, the institutional structures do not only reflect the unjust power structures but strengthen them as well. Therefore it is of primary importance that the democratisation is nurtured and strengthened at the national and local level and that it does not remain confined merely to the global level.

The democracy deepened and strengthened at these levels can effectively counter anti-democratic forces at the global level. To put it in more concrete terms, the problem facing UN reforms is formidable. In fact it is not a simple problem of reforms. It involves nothing short of changing the worldview of the U.S.A. and the European Union. The latter, on account of its geographic contiguity with the continents of Asia and Africa, could take on a perspective different from that of the country across the Atlantic. It is only when the European nations begin to get used to independent policy formulations, that they would be the best poised to moderate the American viewpoint, and to help realign it with the aspirations of the rest of the world. Viewed in this perspective, the European Union may find a positive role to play in democratisation of global governance. The former, i.e. the U.S., has to acquire globally democratic ways of dealing with other nations of the world and, in the process, cease to use the U.N. as the handmaid of American power.

The UN Security Council reforms are crucial for any democratisation of global institutions. If the world is to be based on a moral and just order that the UN Charter envisages, the anachronism called the Security Council, which is neither justly composed nor based on a moral order, should be done away with and some other, more democratic, way will have to be found to carry out its functions. The minimum that is required is restructuring of the council to make it a democratically more representative and yet effective agency of world governance.

In this context the proposal for an Economic and Social Security Council is eminently apt as it would link the two dimensions and develop checks on the prevailing economism. However it will have real meaning only if it attains the role of a major arbitrator in decisions regarding transnational economic activities and development efforts. The crucial thing for the Council would be to develop a democratic structure and norms of functioning. Its executive must be constituted such that it has a proportionate number of members from the least-income, low income, middle income and high income countries. It must be able to institute formal and legal procedures superseding other transnational financial arrangements.

In recent years several development issues have been taken up by the UN agencies around which worldwide processes of consultation took place at various levels, from grassroots, sub-national, national, regional and global levels. The process leading up to the Beijing Conference on Women in 1995 is an excellent example of such a process. Furthering the pro-women development perspective of earlier conferences, it succeeded in galvanising debate, discussion and action at various levels and reflecting the diverse voices at the conference. Yet, as Virginia Vargas has reflected so well in her evaluation of the outcome of the Beijing Plan of Action, implementation of the commitments made was "partial, marginal, without enough resources, and without tackling the main issues of redistribution of power at all levels, in the context of neo-liberalism and democracies in difficult construction". This is the natural outcome of a fragmented discourse, the women’s agenda being viewed in isolation of the other social and economic dimensions by the dominant powers. Also, it needs to be acknowledged that the singular achievements of the ‘Beijing process’ were a result of the strength of the women’s movement world-wide. While all such initiatives may promote an overall democratic environment and ‘other visions’, their plan of action can not be implemented successfully because of the larger countervailing forces. The initiatives for wide consultation and civil society intervention within the UN system must be promoted but with the goal of moving towards an Economic and Social Security Council.

The idea of a People’s Assembly can have a populist appeal but can ossify the present hegemonic structures and power relations, drastically undermining popular sovereignties at the nation-state level and providing greater legitimacy to the use of coercive power against deviant states.

This initiative is conceived in a manner that a large number of people can be involved in the public hearings on inequality and injustice in contemporary societies, and can cover all dimensions of life. It involves a direct engagement of the North and South, addressing contentious issues in a framework of resolution. However this intervention is still embryonic, requiring refinement in conceptualisation and practice.

The North-South Truth Commission can have a very creative role if it is clear that it is not an exercise in opening up historical wounds for taking revenge or working out compensations for the past acts of injustice. It should be oriented to making a better future for the world. The past should therefore be understood from the perspective of improving the present and making the future. So the democratising role of the Truth Commission would be to work out North-South reconciliation through lessening of contemporary injustice albeit on the recognition that radical disjunctions need to be made in unjust international practices surviving from the past. The grid has to be shifted from revenge and compensation to justice and compassion.

In its present conception the kind of financial resources it requires will be executed by those in positions of power, primarily of the North. Institutional mechanisms will have to be consciously introduced with a view to check biases. This may involve ‘spot inquiries’, low expense accounts of the Commissions and financial inputs from the state and civil society of the South.

WSF has triggered off unprecedented hope and political energy for a much more lively, pluralist world. Even confirmed sceptics and cynics, now seem willing to suspend their adverse judgement and work for making ‘another world possible.’

The idea of an open space and other points in the WSF charter of principles clearly distance it from the idea of the vanguard in a revolution. For the first time, faith in ordinary workers and people is stated with a bang, where all those who believe that they could build a better world have a space. This freedom from top-down controlled revolution approach has provided a new framework where everyone has the opportunity to work out one’s individual or collective role or work out mutualities and complimentarities with other movement organisations or currents of change in the positive direction. This framework does not create unnecessary polarisations, confrontations or a false sense of boundaries.

The most distinctive feature of the forum is that it has made people to people contacts possible at the global level. In fact wherever possible, national chapters of WSF could further accentuate this process. In the process the WSF world enhance the possibility of South-South interaction on issues of vital concern for global democracy. Another important contribution it has been making is in influencing and formulating terms of discourse globally, such that democratic transformation of global governance has come centrally as the agenda of social movements the world over. A new, more egalitarian, democratic frame work to North-South relations at the civil-society and the people-to-people levels is being erected in parallel politics of movements intensifying the contradiction between processes of dominant globalisation and democratisation of global governance. This new politics for alternative global governance enables informed interactions among different civil society groups in different geo-political contexts.

The social activists have become more able to appreciate why they among themselves have different points-of-view on what could be the most desirable intervention to democratise globalisation. The ‘how and why’ of campaigns for UN reforms, global taxation, the truth commission or Tobin tax, the Jubilee campaigners, campaigners of landless agricultural workers, of the unemployed, … can all discover the interconnectivity and complimentarity. Misplaced priorities can be identified and left behind without generating a sense of failure.

There is only one danger – that it can artificially create over-optimism or a false hope of easy social change without sustained effort and sacrifice. These values are being eroded from public life in any case. In the WSF euphoria, we should be careful that we should not contribute to such a professionalisation of public work that volunteerism, austere work style, and taking risks, become museumised values of a bygone era.

The strength of the WSF lies in recognising the quantity, quality and diversity of the interventionist strivings on the ground rather than taking a vanguard role of initiating new processes. The coming together of such movement groups will inevitably trigger off new processes. This triggering off is born out of the respect for existing processes by the present networks and organisations and movements without competing with or threatening the existing processes. This innovation of recognising and giving space to existing strivings gives it a unique character over the earlier initiatives.

As Jai Sen writes – "The Forum – and all its participants – need to realise that the Forum could only be organised because the civil and political space for this was available at this point in time, in Brazil and globally. (Imagine, for instance, trying to organise this meeting – or anything like it – back in the late 70s or early 80s, when the military regime was still in place in Brazil; or trying to organise such a Forum in China as it is today.) We need urgently to recognise that democratic space is not a given, but has constantly to be struggled for and to be seen strategically. Seeing and seizing the opportunity of available space needs to be not just an assumed ‘natural’ character of the Forum but rather a conscious, strategic posture and stance."

Seen in this context, conception of WSF as an open-ended process is crucial for searching and expanding democratic spaces at all levels – global, national and local. As Franscisco Whitaker points out – "Actually, the biggest challenge for the World Social Forum organizers is the reassurance of the continuity of the Forum’s form, not the definition of the newest and best subjects that may lead to more concrete proposals. In this case, the environment determines the goals one wants to reach. The subjects will naturally come up during the process, if the form is respected, within humanity´s struggle for another world and also will necessarily be channeled into the several editions of the Forum, containing common questions in all of them, as well as specificities of each region of the world where it may take place. What matters is the reassurance that this new paradigm of transformative political action, created by the World Social Forum, is not put into ‘old bottles’."

Any initiative to strengthen the WSF must ensure that it keeps this perspective and does not impose upon it a structure in haste, pre-empting the inherent dynamics of the open process and the spirit of the Charter of Principles.

‘Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam’ (The Earth is a Family), a Coalition for Comprehensive Democracy, is about furthering, strengthening and consolidating ‘democracy’ simultaneously in economic, social, political, cultural and ecological dimensions of life, from local to global levels. Its basic premise is based on faith in fellow human beings; that selfishness and greed are only one part of the human journey and not the dominating, defining characteristic of human life. Wants can be fulfilled, and even indulged in, without being glorified.

We believe that it is very degrading to define human beings as entities with material wants only. They have moral, spiritual and cultural orientations as well. Qouting Prof. B.K.Roy Burman, a leading Indian anthropologist – "My understanding of anthropology impels me to accept the basically social nature of human nature.... Democracy is the other name of practice of companionate value oriented culture, it is a process in non-stop dialectical relationship with antinomous culture. Commitment to responsible democracy is commitment to the processual dimension and not to any pre-fabricated structure."

The task of building true democracy is now inextricably linked with the global struggle to reform or transform capitalism through making democracy more comprehensive in reach and radical in content. It is a new project, but much of it is based on perennial values of compassion, justice, equality and freedom and ideas of democracy developed by great political activists and thinkers of the world. Accordingly democracy is conceived as a continuous and multifarious process making it possible to nurture life in its most holistic sense in the contemporary context.

In the present phase of phenomenal upsurge of democratic aspirations, new norms have to be agreed upon through a process of participatory dialogues even with the adversary, at various levels of human collectivities. One has to recognise the complementarity of each other’s ‘truth’ and consciously avoid being judgmental regarding the other’s viewpoint. The critical evaluation of other viewpoints has to be in an idiom that encourages moderation. Such processes are unfolding and can consciously and actively be pursued today.

Democratic struggles are crucial to the initiative’s methodology. It is constituted of three aspects. One is ‘Dialogue’, basically to recognise the contours of the present times. Through dialogues we not only recognise our times but also understand the calling of our times. Dialogue at all levels, including with the adversary, is possible only if we do not believe in the conspiracy theory and believe in the willingness of the human spirit for struggle and self-sacrifice against injustice. However, grasping the essence of the times will be incomplete if we do not simultaneously fight the injustice. For this the second component is ‘Non-violent Civil Disobedience’. ‘Constructive action’ to create structures, activities and life styles in consonance with the vision of a democratic society is the third component of the method.

This evaluation exercise (in our understanding) has a two-fold purpose. The objectives flow from our shared commitment to the value of democracy at all levels, irrespective of our individual identities of being a researcher, activist or policy planner.

Evaluation in terms of ranking and grading is a reductionist exercise. One objective is to constantly update and renew our perspective on institutions of democracy, in this case primarily at the global level. We have tried to put forward our ideas at the intellectual plane as clearly and honestly as possible. We have not aimed at discerning out the areas of agreement or disagreement but participated in the intellectual debate by engaging with the issues and the framework presented by N.I.G.D.

We are aware that policy choices are made in practice taking a variety of considerations into account such as the local political priorities, contexts, availability of professional competence, right kind of partners and their preferences. We are not in a position to assess such variables in absence of field research and interactive dialogues. We can give suggestions in only a generalised manner based on data derived from secondary sources. For example, some organisational and strategic framework for North-South dialogues/research on issues of democracy in all its dimensions will be very enabling for the groups working on issues of human rights, democratic rights and values of equity, justice, non-violence and sustainability. Such dialogues can be organised under the auspices of N.I.G.D. If the programme is carried on intensively for 3 to 5 years, then it would spin-off into many programmes and may create enough of critical mass for a global-local university. This university will endlessly work for the renewal of the value of democracy, working out the interlinking of various levels and dimensions. Its sub-units can be located in South-Asia, Africa, Latin America,…Important and challenging things are happening in all these parts of the world, many of which have very creative potential and some very frightening implications as well.

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