Source:Yahoo News!

Sen declared himself to be ‘anti-anti-globalisation,’ saying that drive against globalisation was ‘a slogan, only a campaign’ that should be countered.

At the same time, he said, the pros and cons of globalisation needs to be weighed in the context of each society and there was nothing wrong with a comprehensive analysis and criticism of the process.

Referring to China, Sen said despite being a communist country China has accepted market economy to some extent. He said although he does not support the market economy strongly, it could be introduced depending on a country’s necessity.

Both Sen and fellow Bangladesh Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus pitched for the poor of the world, stressing that the process should help them and not merely the rich.

It was important that potential of the process was utilized to eradicate poverty and lift countless have-nots above the poverty line, they said at a dialogue, ‘Towards an Inclusive Globalisation’, organised by Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD), Bangladesh’s premier think tank on economic affairs.

Sen, Yunus and global financier George Soros, however, appeared at different wavelengths on the need to police the globalisation process and the role of the media.

Soros called globalisation ‘a market fundamentalist project’, which is putting the ultimate reliance on market forces.

However, Yunus said globalisation is moving in the wrong direction, arguing that the majority of those receiving the benefits of globalisation were the strongest in the society while the poorest have no say in the process.

Highlighting the fact that two percent of the people possessed 50 percent of the world’s total assets, he stressed on the need for ‘free assets free for all’ policy.

As globalisation is something that cannot be stopped, Yunus said the relevant question centres on ‘right globalisation versus wrong globalisation’. Comparing globalisation to a highway, Yunus said: ‘Vehicles of the big countries are plying on this highway while rickshaws have no place here’.

Yunus pointed out that 60-70 percent of the world’s population has no access to information technology (IT) and emphasised the need for equal access to IT for all people.

‘If the IT is brought to the people at the bottom level, they will at least be able to know whether globalisation is wrong or right,’ he said.

Yunus said he is trying to introduce an idea of business with entrepreneurs setting up non-profit companies for the well-being of humanity.

With regard to the role of the media in the globalisation process, Soros partly blamed the media for failing to raise sufficient debate on the issue as most media houses were owned by big companies.

Sen, however, argued that the media is doing its job.

Sen was against the need to create another agency to monitor the globalisation process, as there were organisations like the UN, World Bank, World Trade Organisation and the International Monetary Fund to do the job.

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“Major NGOs in Bangladesh began with the same kind of background as I did — they were educated, middle-class Bengalis, left of the centre, interested in equality and untrusting of the markets. However, they realized that they had to play the market economy not kick it, yet not rely on it. The West Bengal

government is doing exactly the same,’’ Sen said today.

The flowering of NGOs in Bangladesh illustrates the same — market friendly not market dependent. Microcredit, according to Sen, is both pro and anti-market. Microcredit is not capital producing, yet to use the credit somewhere, they need the market. According to him, this is exactly where the reforms in Bengal are going.

“People often ask me if I am pro or anti-market? I can be anti-market if all of us agree to grow everything for ourselves. It is like asking should conversation be banned just because there is hate-speech?’’ he said.

Sen was speaking at the launch of a book Locked Homes and Empty Schools: The impact of distress seasonal migration of the rural poor brought out by the America India Foundation. It documents the plight of 30 million people who are forced to migrate annually. He admitted he was shocked by the scale of movement and intensity of problems. It was even more startling for him as in his seminal work on the Bengal famine, he said he found that people were “sedentary in distress”’ with few families migrating to Orissa and Bihar.

Taking forward the point on market economy, Sen said: “The market economy will not be interested in running hostels and schools for these migrants. They have nothing to gain. Yet, they will gain by addressing issues of poverty in rural areas,’’ he said.

The problem lies not with microcredit but rather with microenterprises. The United Nations’ declaration that microentrepreneurs use loans to grow thriving businesses leading to flourishing economies is hype. A client of microcredit is an entrepreneur in the literal sense: she raises the capital, manages the business and is the residual claimant of the earnings.

But the vast majority of microcredit clients are caught in subsistence activities with no prospect of competitive advantage.

Moreover self-employed poor usually have no specialised skills and often practise multiple occupations. Many of these businesses operate at too small a scale. The median business operated by the poor has no paid staff; most of these businesses have very few assets as well. With low skills, little capital and no scale economies, these businesses operate in arenas with low entry barriers and too much competition; they have low productivity and lead to meager earnings that cannot lift their owners out of poverty.

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Consequently, NGOs and other organizations have come up with roundabout routes to overcome the legalities of this business - such as forming of federations registered with nationalized bank, or all individuals coming together in a credit society and opening a group account in the name of one or two elected individuals.

In this environment many more organizations that were not set up primarily to work on microfinance and credit want to get into the sector because they look at it this way to source funds internally and move towards self sustainability.

At this point some questions strike my mind…

• Is it really fair to be so critical of the process?
• The question of the right’s perspective : a few Fellows felt that it was missing from the whole model, which seemed totally focused on profit making
• What are the existing legal frameworks for these organizations to work in ? Why are they considered not legal?
• Are the banks an financial institutions wanting to link with the non-profits and on what terms?

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