THE CHARADE of development seems to me to be an apt description for what is happening at the local and international level, in terms of development options. With multiple problems of large and rising budget deficits, foreign exchange instability, intractable debt burdens and declining investment levels, three seem to be more problems by countries, in coping with economic stability than at any other decade in the past.
For many developing countries the 200s seems to be a challenging decade to sustain past gains when compared to the optimistic future many believed they were poised to inherit on attaining political independence in the 1950s or 1960s or 1970s, for so many countries in Africa, Asia and the Caribbean.
Today, there is lip-service paid to development, as our leaders appear fatigued by the enormous challenge it presents. Once it was through specific and strategic government policies that the country could start to transform itself. At another time it was by relying on market-oriented polices to achieve change. In recent times it has been by turning to democracy that countries would prosper. The challenge faced by globalisation has swept developed and developing countries along like a tidal wave and many are finding it difficult to manage the changes necessary to deal with the multiple challenges of unprotected markets, intense competition, global spread of disease and terrorism and declining prices for key commodities (especially primary products). It would be a brave leader, regardless of whether they are in Jamaica, Germany, France, USA or the UK that could confidently assert that three will be five years of high economic growth for their country in the decade that we are in.
At the recent international Summit of major world leaders, in Evian, France (yes, the place where the famous bottled water comes from), there was the usual repetitive promises to fight poverty, AIDS and any other current topical issue (pick one, say terrorism or SARS). Two years from now we will observe yet another summit with the same leaders (or new ones) making the same speeches about arresting environmental degradation in Rio, and helping the poorest countries of the world in Italy and Switzerland a few years ago. Today, the world gap between the richest nations and poorest nations has widened; the environment is even more polluted (with many major nations refusing to sign the Rio Accord) and the poorest countries are in even more dire straits.
This is what I mean by the charade of development. While anti-globalisation protesters fight with the police on the streets these meeting places and the various leaders inside the plush hotels and venues of these summits promise to do more to create development, we all know that the policies that they will pursue, will hasten the pollution of the world, increase the arms race (especially by the poorest countries) and create more refugees in the world, that we cannot assimilate.
