The Political Will to Make a "Real Dent in Poverty"
H. Kharas & A. Malik, Wolfensohn Center for Development | April 15, 2008
Political pressures are preventing the structural problems of the aid system from being solved rapidly. ++ Achieving the development goals set for 2015 requires immediate action, the political will of official donors, and the contribution of non-profit organizations. ++ Even if aid is in short supply, a system which coordinates donors, projects and priorities can deliver quality assistance.
Sun, Apr 20th 2008, 18:28
Amarjyoti Acharya
The Idea:
The economy of politics and the politics of economy are intertwined issues that
lead to Milton Friedman’s assertion that “the free market is the only
mechanism that has ever been discovered for achieving participatory
democracy” in Kathleen M. Connell’s engaging article titled “Deepening
Democracy And Space Policy” in the Space Review (dated Monday December
31, 2007).
While Kathleen M. Connell’s article is immediately engaging with its title and
its contents, one cannot help but feel compelled to raise a couple of the issues
and problems that form the backdrop to her article. It can only be a prefix to
her article, in a suffix.
The limitations of a lobby-based decision making process, whose motions have
overshadowed the objectives behind envisioning such a system point inevitably
to the shortcomings that a Space Programme would face in such a scenario. It
is here that the politics of economy overshadows and overtakes the economy of
politics – understood as a power game held captive to populism (the nemesis of
any notion of politics). Alternatively, understood as a capacity-for-change
‘enability’, it immediately solves quite a few problems including a few ironies.
The Ironies:
Perception as a reality, in politics, is a truism in two senses. First, the negative
sense: it emerges as the child of backdoor and underhand manipulation that
speaks volumes over the state of politics and its subsequent activity of
policymaking and/or policy structuration. The health of the former would often
dictate the health of the latter. The larger the area involved in the sphere of
influence, of any policy decision, the more severe are the consequences and
the play of it over a larger span of time.
Perception as a reality in politics, in its positive sense, is an accepted fact that
goes beyond politics and engages almost every sphere of human life. It always
has been about perceptions and their strength to engage and retain the
imagination of people. Just like Milton Friedman’s quoted opinion in Kathleen’s
article, and many other notables in almost every field. That is where physical
science, as being acceptable in its largely physical human experience of
confirmations (in its immediacy of functional results), steals the march.
Ironically, in its higher applications that any space endeavour would require, it
suffers from the natural lag of majority- fatigorance (the fatigue that comes
from the constant process of internalizations of changes) – a condition that
afflicts many mechanized societies. I use the term mechanized in lieu of the
term industrial, to indicate the rather ‘local’ nature of the issue here that is
also highly specialized.
The point of contention is not whether Milton Friedman’s observation or
opinion is correct or false, but rather the enquiry into what would be the
conditions that would support his assertion. Those conditions automatically
bring us back to the issue of perception as a reality and the determination of
whether it exists in its positive or negative attribute, in the decision-making
realm. The philosophy of science produces the space industry and the
philosophy of political thought produces Milton Friedman’s assertions. The crux
of the matter would be in the determination of the natural confluence between
the two, before we can really talk of the deepening of democracy within the
context of the space. By answering that and as again, by determining the
conditions of its existence, we would know why there are varied societies and
states and nations and communities.
The idea of the state and the civil society, in a confrontational mode, is typical
of many societies that carry the burden of the memory of state repression.
Such tendencies usually are ironical in any democracy. There yet are many
societies – especially the Nordic societies – that do not ‘perceive’ the
relationship between the state and its populace to be antagonistical. Somehow
such societies appear more true to the conditions of democracy, than societies
that envision an antagonistical relationship, between the state and its
population. Given the basic fact that the state is an expression of its populace,
or supposed to be so, in a democracy. The idea of free franchise as the
democratic state’s first condition is much bigger and a serious statement than
merely going through the motions of it, every now and then.
The Expression:
After looking at the notion of principles that lie behind any perception in
politics, in its two conditions; i.e. one of adherence to and in other the
ignorance of such principles behind perceptual matters, it is time to look at
some of the other serious issues that Kathleen has broached in her article.
The issue of global warming and democratic Space Voyages and Space
exploration may seem a little far removed, but do take us back to the search
for the discovery of the natural confluence between the philosophy of science
and the philosophy of thought. And of course the necessary conditions that
undergird each scenario without taking a flight of fancy back to
authoritarianism and/or dictatorships, as a solution.
The idea of global warming (as a problem) and Space Explorations again point
to a disjuncture that is eloquent in its contrast. It is almost akin to having a
rave party at Christmas time and moving on to the next house for New Year’s
celebration, without having cleaned the house – and to which one would need
to return to, in any case. But apart from that discomfort of thought, it points
to a lack of mechanism and technology to turn it into a global issue, while its
theatre of operations remain within nation-states or state-nations or merely
states, in all its gradient of existence. That gradient, while making the world of
‘perceptive reality’ of politics a more colourful one, also makes the
atmospheric mapping more colourful and hence the task of addressing such
areas more difficult.
Kathleen’s evocative article talks of Space as an area that needs additional
funding. It does. Long before there was something as exotic as actual Space
exploration (i.e. by putting earth life forms out in the space), there was airflying
that was as exotic in the times of the Wright brothers, as it is a necessity
now that does require, and gets the attention of the bread and butter thesis.
The only problem is, does one clean the house after the rave party or merely
moves away, with barely anywhere else to go?! Given that perception of
reality, it is quite humbling to note the rather global nature of everything
around.
This happily brings us back to Carl Sagan’s observation that when humans look
at the space and wonder, one is a natural convert to cosmopolitanism. And
equally happily, this article does not answer any question except serve as a
platform for reflection. Upon the principles behind perceptual realities of
politics and some ironies that everyone is better off, without. It is almost like a
New Year wish. Perhaps it might help to look more at the stars above, as an
international practice, and wonder. It may help improve conditions on planet
earth.
But then matters of birds and bees and bread and butter happily keeps
everyone occupied, and rooted to planet earth. Those two remain the bedrock
of the global community’s perceptual functional unity, amongst practically all
life forms: alongwith dictating practically all aspects of the politics of
economy, to the economy of politics, with or without its ironies. The ironies do
make for the colourful Doppler effect mapping of the states (with the Nordic
states preferably occupying the observer’s position within contemporary
context), in their gradients.