Beyond the rhetoric

Sudanese children attending class at an outdoor makeshift school on the outskirts of Nyala in southern Darfur. On Africa, Manmohan Singh said in his address: "The NAM initiative would focus on human resource and agricultural development.... I believe this is an opportune time for us to take a major NAM initiative on Africa." - JOSE CENDON/AFP

To make NAM a vehicle of South-South cooperation, what is needed is not mere joint statements but their follow-ups in letter and spirit.

IN the early days of the Cold War, when the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) was still in its formative phase, Pakistan's first Foreign Minister, Chaudhry Sir Muhammad Zafarullah Khan (1947-54), who was then looking for an alliance with the United States, was reported to have sneered at the idea by saying 0+0+0+0=0. One does not know whether he was familiar with the somewhat similar cryptic remark made by that doyen of political science, Harold Laski, who had remarked: 0+0+0+0=4. Zafarullah Khan was talking about diplomacy and the alliance system in the context of the U.S.-Soviet divide and Laski about the day-to-day calculations in domestic politics.

NAM being a combination of both domestic politics and diplomacy, one may ingeniously work out a median equation: +0+ +0=2. The harmonising of global political constraints with domestic compulsions is actually the challenge that NAM is always called upon to tackle and in the present world it has become even more so. Does the 14th NAM Summit that took place in Havana on September 15-16 hold any promise to that end?

The gloss of the Manmohan-Musharraf summit that took place on the sidelines of the NAM meeting, in which 55 heads of state participated, dazzled the vision of most commentators to such an extent that newspaper reports in general failed to appreciate the basic fact that it was after all NAM that had contributed to making such bilateral summits possible. The importance of NAM or for that matter other such groupings as the Commonwealth and the G-77 should be measured in terms of not merely what they actually achieve but what they are potentially capable of achieving in building bridges. Herein lies the relevance of NAM in today's highly stratified world.

During the First World War the American slogan was that the "world must be made safe for democracy". But in the aftermath of the war the world became so unsafe that neither the Holocaust nor the Second World War could be prevented. In the post-Cold War era we now hear of the "end of history" as if global threats to peace are buried forever. But what really has happened is that the threats to peace have multiplied manifold with both state and non-state actors engaging themselves in a no-holds-barred war, which shows no indication of ending. At this juncture, NAM, which is another name for South-South cooperation, has no option but to gear up to meeting the challenges ahead in harmony with the North.

It is not tautology to remind oneself that politics and economics are closely interrelated. In the developing world it may be true that politics often gets primacy over economics but it is increasingly realised that hard economic realities warrant a change of tack and a widening of the network of cooperation. Economic well-being through mutual cooperation works exactly the way CBMs (confidence-building measures) work in improving relations between conflicting nations. The best way, therefore, to achieve a political coalition among developing nations is by revamping economic exchanges among them. Already 43 per cent of the South's global trade is accounted for by intra-South trade. The South holds more than $2 trillion as foreign exchange reserves, which if intelligently utilised through a South Investment Treaty or NAM Business Forum could be beneficial to all its partners.

Besides the importance that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh attached to the concerted and unequivocal commitment of NAM to tackle terrorism and find a solution to the West Asian problem, the three points that he emphasised within the framework of South-South cooperation were equitable distribution of development across the world, global energy security and more active engagement for Africa's uplift. He remarked: "In economic affairs, the biblical saying `to him that hath shall be given' has wide applicability. Globalisation must be accompanied by a more balanced and equitable distribution of its benefits. Otherwise, the global response to challenges will remain uneven and partial at best."

The unprecedented growth of the world economy has pushed the issue of energy security to centre stage in international politics as never before. The potential danger of an impending depletion of oil has not only made nations invest more in R&D (research and development) to find alternative energy sources, but also forced them to cooperate for conservation and exploration.

The September 2005 World Summit held under the auspices of the United Nations General Assembly underscored the necessity to promote innovation, clean energy and energy efficiency and conservation. It pleaded for establishing regulatory and financing frameworks to enhance private investment, transfer of technologies and capacity-building in developing countries, as recommended by the Johannesburg Plan of Implementation.

Echoing similar sentiments, India committed itself to serving as a group coordinator should NAM establish a working group on energy security to draw up a NAM Action Plan for Energy Security, aimed at addressing the energy challenges of the future.

In the domain of multilateral economic cooperation, NAM can pave the way for a joint negotiating strategy at the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and other such global economic fora. There is no escaping the truth that some sort of global trade unionism is necessary to deal with the bulldozing attitudes of a few global bullies. The 116-member-strong NAM can play that role quite well.

No wonder that India, keeping all these potentialities in mind, has never deviated from its track to encourage South-South cooperation. If it has failed to achieve much in this regard in its own backyard the reasons are much more complex and should not detain us here. What is important to remember is that prior to his landing in Havana, the Indian Prime Minister met his South African and Brazilian counterparts in Brasilia (Brazil has an observer status in NAM) to push further their trilateral economic cooperation, which was originally conceived in 2003. This cooperation accounted for a trade balance to the tune of $4.5 billion in 2003. It is expected to touch the $10-billion mark by 2007.

One significant area where cooperation among developing countries is crucial is that of addressing the multiple challenges of development that Africa's least developed countries face. The G-8 and the European Union have done their part to support Africa's efforts, including commitments that will lead to an increase of $25 billion in ODA (Official Development Assistance) by 2010. The September 2005 World Summit had addressed the special needs of Africa following the expressions of concern that it was probably the only continent that would not be able to meet the goals of the Millennium Declaration by 2015.

To bring Africa to the so-called global mainstream, the World Summit resolved, inter alia, to supplement Africa's efforts to increase agricultural productivity as set out in the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme of the New Partnership for Africa's Development as part of an African "Green Revolution".

Some of the member-countries of NAM, most notably India, which has considerable experience in agricultural development, can cooperate very effectively. Manmohan Singh's address at the NAM Summit did emphasise the point: "The NAM initiative would focus on human resource and agricultural development. It would involve setting up of a mechanism, in cooperation with the African Union, to pool our assets for investment in the future of Africa. I believe this is an opportune time for us to take a major NAM initiative on Africa."

Let me conclude this otherwise optimistic projection about the possibilities that NAM tends to exude with two nagging scepticisms. The first is that charity must begin at home. To make South-South cooperation click, regional cooperation is the first step. India has been a strong advocate of a South Asian common market since the days of Rajiv Gandhi. The Research and Information System for the Non-Aligned and Other Developing Countries (RIS), a government-funded research institute, has been pleading for years for more substantive cooperation among South Asian nations. The introduction to the RIS study `South Asia: Development and Cooperation Report, 2001/02', says:

"SAARC [South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation] is now entering its seventeenth year. Despite ups and downs in the course of its history, the broad trend path of the process of cooperation in South Asian region has been a smooth rising curve. There is now a growing realisation that there are significant advantages of cooperation and also that there are large costs of non-cooperation. This has indeed further strengthened the process of cooperation in trade, manufactures and services in the South Asian region. Many bilateral free trade arrangements have been launched as steps towards region-level free trade arrangement. Many schemes of coordination in the fields of manufactures and services are also taking shape. It is now explicitly advocated that economic cooperation in the region would be an effective modality for realising rapid economic development and also for improving welfare of the people in the region as a whole."

But six years have passed since the study was published and one is still not sure when SAARC will be like ASEAN (Association of South East Asian Nations). Both SAPTA (SAARC Preferential Trading Arrangement) and SAFTA (South Asian Free Trade Area) are mired in all kinds of bilateral and multilateral controversies, at the core of which is the India-Pakistan mistrust. Unless this bottleneck is overcome, many of the development schemes, most importantly the energy-related ones, would not fructify.

The other misgiving is more fundamental. A few years ago this writer conducted a research to find out what happens to the visits that are routinely exchanged between Indian and foreign dignitaries. The idea was to take stock of the follow-ups of the joint communiques and agreements signed at the conclusion of the visits.

To his dismay, the findings revealed that in the cases where the developed countries were involved, the follow-up record was in general excellent. But in the case of Third World nations the communiques remained largely dead letters with neither party showing much keenness to follow them up with concrete action.

Existential politics dominates the developing world to such an extent that everything boils down to the survival instinct of the leaders, leaving little time for them to indulge in perspective planning. One may recall the hope many of us had reposed in the establishment of NAMEDIA some 20 years ago and now we all know where that experiment stands.

To make NAM a vehicle of South-South cooperation, which is so much imperative against the juggernaut of globalisation, what is really needed is not mere joint statements and promises but their follow-ups in letter and spirit. Trade unionism works in domestic labour relations, but it requires more cerebral input in the global political arena. Is NAM determined to push for that or remain complacent with its present pace and wait for the next summit to announce another set of pious promises?

Partha S. Ghosh is Professor of South Asian Studies, Centre for South, Central, Southeast Asian and Southwest Pacific Studies in the School of International Studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi.