Arshid Malik
Free Trade is the haute couture of the modern world, the catch phrase, the order of the day, but for the people of the world who are “dying” making a living every day it hardly means a better life. Free Trade is the ambitious project of the United States, the most powerful country in the world today, and basically a capitalist agenda that thrives on sucking the very blood of the average individual. Free Trade is the brand new face of capitalism and steers finances and funds into the private coffers of the cr?me de la cr?me, a parasitical infatuation of the western world with power and money.
The packaging of this “rich getting richer and the poor, poorer” project is such that the developing as well as the under developed nations of the world are falling for it without considering the mass drains it is leading to. India, for instance, is one developing country with a population of around 645 million people or 55 per cent of the total having been categorized as poor on the indices of a composite indicator made up of ten markers of years of schooling and child enrolment (education); child mortality and nutrition (health); and electricity, flooring, drinking water, sanitation, cooking fuel and assets (standard of living), by the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI) for the United Nations Development Programmes (UNDP) in the 2010 Human Development Report. Leaving the poor to poverty, India is a champion athlete in the Free Trade regime today.
The question is that should countries like India, under its novel banner of “India Shining”, partake the “rich getting richer and the poor, poorer” agenda of the western world when more than half its population is reeling under abject conditions of poverty.
Some experts opine that countries which do not take advantage of the Free Trade regime today would be left far behind in the “rat race” propagated by the regime. To counter this, more sensible countries across the world have dealt with India-like problems internally, by implementing social security policies and a safety net that seek to guarantee certain basic needs and minimum levels of wellbeing for their people rather than jump-starting into Free Trade agreements. Without such safety nets, quotas and provisions Free Trade will project a hollow but fast growth for India while impoverishing the actual basis of the economy.
India, which was the colony of the British for more than 3 centuries, has not been able to divest of the “colonial mentality” that crept into its political, social and economic veins during the British Raj. This country, seemingly, has stepped into the shoes of its colonizers and has kept its own population captive. India’s senseless interpolation into the Free Trade regime compliments this fact. Rather than opting for Free Trade, India and all other developing and developed countries should pay heed to the Fair Trade Shopping Movement, which is focused on an agreement among those wishing to act for the world’s poorest food producers, to commit to a policy of making trade fair.
The fair trade system effectuates a guarantee to food producers of a fair price for their product while shielding them from the dangers of commodity markets. They are offered a price that integrates sustainable growth while maintaining a basic standard of living.
India should focus on internal freedoms rather than Free Trade.
