[governance] Re: SECOND DRAFT statement on enhanced cooperation

Sat Nov 6 11:08:57 EDT 2010

On Saturday 06 November 2010 08:01 PM, Milton L Mueller wrote:
>
> Parminder:
>
> A bit tendentious, as usual.
>

I am happy to return the compliment :). You pulled this graph from the 
wikipedia site, but did not give the link to the whole page where the 
picture is much more mixed. ( 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_India )
>
> While the overall number of poor in India is very large, as a 
> percentage of the total population it has halved since the 1970s and 
> the slope of the downward line seems to have increased since economic 
> liberalization.
>

Things have been improving no doubt slowly  over long periods. But it is 
hardly satisfactory. And absolute numbers do count, dont they? Some 
indicators like malnutritions and other health related statistics may 
even be stagnant. Indian incidently is called the hunger capital of the 
world with mal-nutrition stats worse then that of Sub Saharan africa.

 From the same wikipedia article you saw

    The World Bank <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Bank>, citing
    estimates made by the World Health Organization
    <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Health_Organization>, states
    "that about 49 per cent of the world's underweight children, 34 per
    cent of the world's stunted children and 46 per cent of the world's
    wasted children, live in India." The World Bank also noted that
    "[w]hile poverty is often the underlying cause of malnutrition in
    children, the superior economic growth experienced by South Asian
    countries compared to those in Sub-Saharan Africa, has not
    translated into superior nutritional status for the South Asian
    child."^[57]
    <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_India#cite_note-56> 

> Tell me if this statistical graph is incorrect: 
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:BPL_Data_GOI.png
>
As mentioned above, If you read the same wikipedia entry  from where you 
took this graph you will see that the picture is much more complex and 
contested. To see more about these contestations about India's poverty 
statistics see http://www.prb.org/Articles/2010/indiapoverty.aspx .

I am not selling India's poverty, but the widespread notions about 
resurgent India breaking away all barriers need to be taken with some 
salt, as they say. And so is the IT revolution. There is this tendency 
to see everything IT automatically and neutrally useful to all, an 
argument used to keep political stuff away from this arena. It is in 
this regard that the India's poverty argument was originally made. This 
argument is to that extent very relevant to the present discussion 
whether we need appropriate global Internet related public policies or not.

> Most sources I see, admittedly second-hand, indicate that the 
> bureaucratic "license Raj" in India stifled growth after the 1950s and 
> that poverty has decreased since the 1980s liberalizing reforms.
>
Yes, 'license raj' had become bad, and liberalisation has been useful. 
But things are not black and white. The more recent plunges into 
wholesale neoliberalism are leading to very uneven growth, and very 
unsatisfactory situation vis a vis general human development levels (see 
the UNDP HDR report) . Parminder

> *From:* parminder [mailto:parminder at itforchange.net]
> *Sent:* Saturday, November 06, 2010 9:20 AM
> *To:* McTim
> *Cc:* governance at lists.cpsr.org
> *Subject:* Re: [governance] Re: SECOND DRAFT statement on enhanced 
> cooperation
>
> McTim
>
> Rest of your responses to my proposal are a bit of a standard exchange 
> between us, and I may have not have much new to say, but I will like 
> to make a comment on the following.
>
> On Saturday 06 November 2010 01:26 PM, McTim wrote:
>
>     >  
>
>     >  And if we think there is a global vacuum vis a vis global IG policies, what
>
>     >  is our analysis about whose interests such a vacuum serves,
>
>          
>
> It seems to have served innovation quite well, built economies and
> eco-sytems.  Look at your own backyard to find the
>   
>    
>
> About my backyard, two things
>
> one, pl read this article about the recent 2010 UNDP HDR report, from 
> which I quote
>
> "India has failed to make any significant improvement in its poverty 
> figures,with over 400 million -- more than the total in the poorest 
> African nations -- still struck in poverty, the Human Development 
> Report 2010 said today, listing India at the 119th position on the 
> Human Development Index." ( some more details, that may be startling 
> to some, at 
> http://www.mydigitalfc.com/economy/indias-growth-fails-translate-poverty-alleviation-hdr-024 
> )
>
> One may wonder how in this time of ICTs and instant news from all over 
> the world, people seem to keep getting not too right a picture of 
> where and how things really may be in India. Any comments on this?
>
> Second thing about my backyard, I did share with the list a few weeks 
> back, mobile companies are colonizing the mobile Internet in India by 
> the day like nobody's business. Mobile Internet is facebook, google 
> and yahoo, not the neutral and open Internet we seem to be thinking 
> and talking about here. I have no doubt that, going this way, the 
> Internet would soon turn into an instrument of increased dependency of 
> the marginalised on outside forces and agents. Its potential for 
> empowering local, community based processes is being increasingly 
> compromised.
>
> So, yes, I do look at my backyard, and my comments and my proposal are 
> informed by it.
>
> Parminder
>
>
>
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