the peace movement as a whole . (rajaona andriamananj ... · an analytical, cognitive women's...

international foundation for development alternatives

fundacion internacional para alternativas de desarrollo

fondation internationale pour un autre developpement

ifda dossier 43 , september/october 1984

E D I T O R 1 AL : US vs UN? (Marc Nerf in)

B U I L D I N G BLOCKS/MATERIAUX . Women's peace movement as an innovative proponent of

the peace movement as a whole (Hilkka Pietila) . L'aide 6trangZre vue des pays 'receveurs'

(Rajaona Andriamananj ara) . Third World comes of age and faces new challenges (Chakravarthi Raghavan)

M A R K I N G S . The real challenge of '1984' (Shridath Ramphal)

. The grassroots of the future (Majid Rahnema)

. El despertar de 10s pobladores (Margarita Pacheco M.) . La dimension culturelle du dGveloppement (A.M. M'Bow)

. Dutch transnational corporations in India (K. Lieten) . Diffusion de technologie et idGologie de la modernisation (Michel Thiollent) . Letters

NEWS FROM THE THIRD SYSTEM . Asian Regional Exchange for New Alternatives (ARENA) . The International Centre for Ethnic Studies (ICES) . Les senices juridiques en milieu rural (CIJ) . Le centre JOSU~ de Castro . An outline of Japanese non-governmental organizations in

development cooperation . Association France-Asie du Sud (AEAS) . European IBEAN groups launch Milupa campaign . Earth construction technologies colloquium in Belgium

FOOTNOTES

M A T E R I A L S R E C E I V E D FOR P U B L I C A T I O N

executive cornmlHee 1sma11-sabr~ obdalla, ahrned ben soloh, p n rneller, rnarc nehn [pres~dent), md ontsur rohmon, lgnacy sochs, rnorle angel~que savane, rod~lfo stavenhagen, ,pan somavla, (nga thorsson, bernord woad

CO-cha~rrnen 1983.1984 loseph k~.zerbo, thowald staltenberg

secretar~al 2, place du marche, ch-l260 nyon sw~tzerland, telephone 41 [221 61 82 82, telex 28840 ildo ch rame ofltce 207 vla pontsperna W l E t rome, ~taly

IFDA DOSSIER SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 1984 EDITORIAL

US vs UN?

1984 started with the annoucement of the US withdrawal from UNESCO! which "no longer serves US national interests". Later in January! there were press reports from Washington about the US considering to quit IF?iD. In March started the attacks against UNCTAD. In Mayl the US opposed the convening of a WHO expert meeting to discuss the rational use of drugs and their marketing in the Third World. In Junel the US invited UNDP to act as a sheriff enforcing the US conception of development.

The US campaign against the UN centers on three accusations: politicization; statism; poor budget management. 'Politici- zation' was never mentioned as long as the US exercized hegemony over the UN system and its secretariats. F'urther- morel the much talked-about 'politicization' of UNESCO results largely from a 1954 US-inspired resolution which re- placedl on the governing body of the agency, eminent intellectuals acting in their personal capacity by government representatives ... Statism seems to refer to the discussion and/or adoption of codes of conduct for transnationals! technologyl baby foodl or the law of the sea and the exploitation of the seabed" As far as budget management is concerned! while not forgetting that the total annual cost of the UN system is still below one day of world military expenditures, one has to recognize that overall management is lndeed deficientl but it remains to be seen whether that of national governments or transnational corporations is more efficient. However! the re-structuring and streamlining of the UN system is long overdue - but would make sense only as part of an effort to strengthen it.

And the fact is that the Reagan administration wants to weaken the system. This seems to be motivated by three US internal factors: difficulty in accepting that due to the awakening of the Third World and the role of smaller industrialized countries, the US has lost its hegemony; determination of public policy by private economic interests; and the links of the President with the fundamentalist right. There is nothing new but an increased acuteness in the first two factors! and their interaction with the interests of other members of the intergovernmental community could be accommodated within the existing institutional framework. The third is more difficult to handle since it escapes rational discussion. There is no common ground with the integ- rist 'Heritage Foundation' which masterminds the anti-UN campaign and has colonized the International Organization unit of the State Department including! among others, the US

(continued on page 36)

IFDA DOSSIER 43 SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 1984 BUILDING BLOCKS

WOMEN'S PEACE MOVEMENT AS AN INNOVATIVE PROPONENT OF THE PEACE MOVEMENT AS A WHOLE

by Hilkka Pietila Jussaarenkuja 5 N. 00840 Helsinki, Finland

Original language: English

Abstract: It is characteristic of the present-day peace movement that it is not any single-issue movement as the traditional peace movements were. Today the peace movement brings together and unites several different movements which all perceive the arms race and nuclear weapons as a common threat. This perception is shared by conservationists, various green movements, movements for a new life style, opponents of nuclear energy, activists for Third World countries and first of all the new women's movement. The most interesting and the most original of these movements is the women's movement. It is the most comprehensive and the least prejudiced of the movements which have started and developed their activity over recent years. It receives substance and enhancement from widening and diversifying women research, which opens up new perspectives for equality between men and women as well as for social transformation altogether. An analytical, cognitive women's movement as such is a peace movement. Here it differs decisively from the so-called equal rights movement, which has not questioned the basic structures and values of the present social order, and which pursued equality for women in men's world mainly on male terms.

LE MOVEMENT PACIFISTE DES FEMMES COMME MOTEUR INNOVATEUR DU MOUVEMENT PACIFISTE DANS SON ENSEMBLE

R6sum6: Une des caractgristiques du mouvement pacifiste actuel est qu'il n'est plus, come ses prGd6cesseurs traditionnels, unidimensionnel. Le mouvement pacifiste d'aujourd'hui rassemble et unit une varigt6 de mouvements qui percoivent la course aux armements et les armes nucl6aires come une menace commune. Cette perception est partag6e par ceux qui veulent prot6ger la nature, par les mouvements verts, par ceux qui sont i la recherche d'un autre style de vie, par les opposants 2 l'gnergie nuclgaire, par les militants de la coop6ration avec le Tiers Monde et, en premier lieu, par le nouveau mouvement fgministe. Le mouvement fgministe est le plus original de ces mouvements parce qu'il est plus global et moins marqu6 par des prGjug6s. I1 se nourrit d'une recherche Elargie et diversifi6e sur les femmes, ouvrant de nouvelles perspectives pour l'ggalit6 des sexes autant que pour la transformation sociale. Un mouvement fgministe analytique est, en tant que tel. pacifiste.

( s u i t e 6 Za page 1 2 )

Hilkka PietilS

WOMEN'S PEACE MOVEMENT AS AN INNOVATIVE PROPONENT OF THE PEACE MOVEMENT AS A WHOLE

Women's perspective

Pesce research has been carried on for quite a long time mainly on the basis of masculine thinking and the realm of masculine values. To a great degreel it has been based only on social sciences and political researchl, using the theories and methods of these sciences.

At its beginningl in the l96Ots, peace research had a strongly creative and stimulating approach. At the General Conference of the International Peace Research Associationl IPRAl held last autumnl there was a feel of repetition. A good many of the analysesl patterns and suggestions introduced by researchersl gave an impression of being heard several times before. One was waiting for new ideas and suggestions from researchersl particularly with the view to the current absurd situation in today's world.

Women are bringing something new also into peace research. They are creating new hypotheses and posing new questions. So far, it is women who have brought along most results from other branches of science. They have used the interdisciplinary methods which peace research was supposed to apply from the very beginning. In addition to social sciencesl women peace researchers represent also pedagogyl anthropology, nutrition sciencesl agriculturel medicinel etc.

By means of social sciences and political researchl it is not possible to tackle for instance the myths and cultural factors underlying the present-day competitive and power gamesl nor the biological and psychic basic structures of being a male. These factors and structures are penetrated by the analysis made by women's movement and women's research. The observation of an American peace researcher is characteristic of the inadequacy of the methods used in social sciences to evaluate and survey the activities and achievements of women's peace movementl because it is so different from any other social process.

What do women perceive?

It is essential that, in peace research and peace workl women perceive things from a different point of view than men. As a matter of factl women perceive things that men do not (at least not most men) who have internalized the prevailing masculine role and who usually have had to parti- cipate also in the obligatory military training of their respective countries.

The idea of killing another human being is extremely alien to women. Because women are the ones who give birth# care for, nurture and bring up life! it would be literally contrary to their naturer if they couldr in some situationsr consider it justified to kill another human being. Every human being is a child of a mother. "We don't know whether this characteristic remains in her brain through evolutionr for no other animal but man kills its own species# or whether it is a by-produciof their allegedly universal subjugation", says Celina Garciar a Costa Rican peace researcher.

It is true that in certain situations in history also women have had to resort to force when defending themselves and their children against aggressors. Aggressors have always been men# for# not one situation is known in which women would have set out to conquer other people's homes and lands. Women have never institutionalized violence# never have they created systems or institutions which use violence on a planned basisr says Garcia.

Men's apparatus

But all military apparatus are typically masculine systems. In them is also accentuated the way, characteristic of men, to organize themselves always as a hierarchyr a system which subjugates one human being to another. And also a specific understanding of power and of its use is realized in them: power means a right to command othersr to demand others to obey and to do what one wants them to do. As long as hierarchalf leader-dominated systems are accepted# no real equality between people can be achieved. All discussions about equality as a social goal have to be seen in this light.

From the woman's point of viewf many phenomena in the man's world of today are completely incomprehensible. It is impossible to comprehendr for instance# how any one human being can be motivated to plan and develop arms of mass destruction# which have no other purpose but to destroy human life. What kind of state of mind and system of values does one have who devotes all of his talents and energy on developing more and more efficient and murderous weapons?

It is very difficult to understand what happened in the PLO when differences concerning policies and leadership arose, when men - who had been fighting for the same common cause tor years - suddenly started killing each other. And the man in charge still wanted to retain his power in spite of the fact that it was his personality and policy which lead to civil war. Perhaps the only explanation for this is that even among one's own people conflicts can only be solved by resorting to violencer if no other means than "to speak with arms" has ever been learned. And of course the PLO is not the only example in history of so-called civil wars. A planned, deliberate mass violence among a people, among men

who know each other, is always an incomprehensible mystery. It offers quite a cruel picture of the mutual world of men, of their mutual relations.

Violence in the family, rape, war

Women's movement and women's peace movement do not perceive any difference between one violence and another. They perceive a direct association between the violence in the family, the violence in streets, rape and militarism, which all stem from the same origin, manifestations of the culture of violence created by men among themselves.

"Our NOT TO WAR coincides with the struggle for our liberation. Never have we seen so clearly as now the connection between nuclear escalation and the Culture of Muscleman, between the violence of war and the violence of rape. Such is in fact the historical memory that women have about all wars, always and everywhere. But this is our daily experience in peacetime as well, and in this respect women are always at war. It is not by chance that the gruesome game of war ... goes through the same stages as the traditional sex relationship: Aggression, Conquest, Possession, Control, of a woman or a land makes no difference."

This quotation from the Sicilian women's declaration in 1981 crystallizes how different degrees of violence are connected with each other in women's minds if they only have the courage to cognise the world on the basis of their own experiences as women.

It is partly on this basis that women's mutual feeling of sisterhood rises, because women have to face the same forms of violence in all societies, only the degree and frequence of violence vary. Therefore, this new cognitive women's movement/women's peace movement is universal by its nature, entirely transnational, because women's experiences do not stop at national borders. One can come across the rapist in one's neighbourhood as well as on a tourist trip. Consequently, doctrines of national security and national defence are not of the same importance to women as to men. In general, women's worldview does not consist of states and governments, military alliances and power blocks in the same way as the men's does. To women peace means safeguarding children, home and life, not maintaining power, position, country, wealth, let alone conquests and consolidating economic interests and power bases. Completely absurd is an idea of endangering human lives and, in the worst case, sacrificing them, for the reasons that capital investments are threatened somewhere.

There is no enemy

From the very beginning, the women's peace movement has refused to think that some people are enemies just because they happen to live beyond a certain border or because they

may have different ideas of politics and economics. The Con- ference organized by the Nordic Women for Peace jointly with American and Soviet women in the summer of 1983, was unanimous that military-political blocks do not concern women. Women had no say when the blocks were established, thus, women need not be loyal to their respective governments in these matters either.

In fact, the new peace movement as a whole is international by its basic nature. Nuclear weapons are menacing all people, irrespective of border lines, and thus, they also lessen the importance of national borders and unite people across them. Paradoxically enough, the development of the arms technology has lessened the importance of national defence systems everywhere. No country can any more defend herself by national means. This fact is generally accepted in theory, but in practice it is blocked by the military institutions in every country.

"At the moment, there are no foreign troops waiting in am- bush at our borders that would constitute a concrete threat to us; our daily safety is threatened by increasing violence in homes and in the streets and by the oppression of women in its various forms. The future of our children is threatened by nuclear weapons and by disturbance of the ecological balance."

This quotation from the declaration of the Finnish women who camped in front of the General Staff during the Disarmament Week in 1983 is a concrete expression of the views which have matured in women's peace movement. Against these threats the Finnish Army can offer no security, noted these same women.

Strange thinking

In the light of this kind of thinking, it is natural that the women's peace movement is not very interested in ideas of alternative defence or in armaments suitable for defen- sive purposes only. These doctrines, too, are based on the ideas of military thinking, about the subversive animosity between individuals and peoples, against which one has to arm and defend oneself.

The mixed peace movement has reflected at length upon possibility of unilateral disarmament, which has gained some support. This so-called unilateralism is entirely based on a national pattern of thinking and, therefore, that too is ditticult to combine with the transnational peace thinking.

The doctrines of alternative defence as well as those of unilateral disarmament, developed by men with their structures of thought as a whole, are strange to women. After all, they do not imply any new analysis, nor do they tackle the threats which are the topmost in women's minds. Women's security policy seeks solutions against the violence of

men's culture and sex role as such, the violence which does not constitute a threat only to women but also to men among themselves.

This thinking is illustrated for instance by the understanding of Peace Links movement, acting in Arkansas, USA, that t h e reason for the nuclear crisis is not just that militaristic, patriarchal men control militaristic, patriarchal structures which oppress women and threaten the planet. The reason is also a failure of women to build and maintain the social norms which would protect men from their own folly. The arms race is seen as a consequence of the failure of US and Soviet women to build the networks and webs of relationships and community which would be strong enough to resist the strains of competition. The US role in Central America is seen as a result of the failure of women of the two regions to develop authentic relationships."

It seems that this thinking has already gained wider support in the USA. At the end of 1983, the peace movement there launched an operation, within which people in hundreds of American cities have contacted, with parcels, letters and greetings, people in the corresponding Soviet cities, so as to create local and direct relationships between people, beyond the respective governments. The aim is that these contacts would lead to reciprocal visits. Thus, they would offer people opportunities to experience personally that ''there is no enemy".

The right definition of power

Women's movement can also see through the prevailing notion of power. Wilma Scott Heide from USA says about power as tollows: "Patriarchy defines power as power over others, the capacity for getting others to do what one wants. So long as that kind of power exists, there will continue to be power struggles as the relatively less powerful seek more power to protect themselves and to control others and as the relatively more powerful seek to maintain and even increase their power.

As we think about that understanding of power, however, we can begin to see its inherent flawedness and weakness. 'Power' that must constantly be struggled over and backed up with force, including violence, is not power. That is a contradiction in terms. Power is potency - the capacity to act, to implement. In so far as one's capacity to act must be suppoorted by force, one is, to that degree, powerless, not powerful. One is relying on something other than power."

Wilma Scott Heide refers to Hannah Arendt, who distinguishes power from violence in the following way: "Power corresponds to the human ability.. . to act in concert. The moment the group, from which the power originated to begin with... dis- appears, 'his (sic) power' also vanishes... Violence appears where power is in jeopardy, but left to its own course, it

ends in power's disappearance ... Violence can destroy power; it is utterly incapable of creating it."

Power, both politically and personally, is not an either-or phenomenon, much less a destructive one. In the personal realm, one's power is potential in the process of actualization.

As Jean Baker Miller writes: "The greater the development of each individual, the more able, more effective, and less needy of limiting or restricting others she or he will be."

This definition of power is in fact what democracy literally means. So far it has not been genuinely realized in any country. It also includes the most original form of the use of power, influencing through one's work, capacity and skills, which has been women's most important way to influence within their respective cultures. In commercialized and industrialized societies, a great part of this power, too, has passed from the hands of women, as the tasks and jobs which women are specifically able to perform and which are always needed in the human community, have been transferred to factories and public institutions. This right definition of power helps us to perceive what is wrong in the present power structures and thus, to look for means by which we could change men's hierarchal structures.

Women's education is peace education

The women's movement has been reflecting upon at length how girls and boys, men and women, are brought up in a different way, and consequently, also sex roles diverge and one ends in inequality. In the discussion on equality, women have sometimes been even blamed for their "fear of success".

At the peace researchers' meeting, mentioned above, Barbara Stanford from the USA reflected upon this issue in her paper, to which she had given a characteristic heading: Fear of Success and Hope for Survival".

Over recent years, the consequences of American "success" have become increasingly more visible in the escalating arms race, pollution, waste and social disintegration. Perhaps women's "fear of success" indicates a perception of the other side of competitive success, that is, "the great emotional costs at which success achieved through competition is often gained". This perhaps indicates that one begins to perceive that "something is rotten in the state in which success is defined as having better grades than anyone else" says Barbara Stanford.

Stanford refers to Carol Gilligan's research on women's psy- chology, in which Gilligan states that women's "fear of success" is not a pathological failure to meet male standards, but an indication that women have a different perspective on life and different priorities of values. Women perceive the

world as a web of relationships, in which also the individual can be identified by his/her relationships to the larger whole and to other parts of the whole. Ethical considerations are based on issues of caring and maintenance of relationship. Judgements are based on empathy and compas- sion, not on an outside code of moral law.

The female ethic emphasizes unselfishness, responsibility, giving and caring for others. At a certain stage of its development, the ethic based on these values might lead to self-sacrificing and to devaluing of the self, to maintaining relationships even at a cost of personal integrity and personal needs. This partly explains the stereotype of the submissive woman who adapts to patriarchal society.

However, Gilligan found that emotionally mature women had reached a stage where the independence is realized within the web of the whole and the integrity and consciousness of the individual is recognized as necessary for an authentic relationship. Truth and integrity as well as caring and responsibility constitute criteria for moral choices. Ethic development necessitates that the individual has a clear picture of his/her value as a human being.

Stanford ends with the conclusion that women's and men's ethic is based on completely different perceptions of reality. Women's reality is a web of relationships, within which also the individual is defined. Men's worldview con- sists of separate individuals, and if any relationships are perceived they are seen as hierarchal.

it is natural that from the point of view of peace education goals, the relationship perspective is a far better starting-point than the individualistic perspective. Such goals as a global and comprehensive approach, cooperation, non-violent conflict resolution, peaceful change and awareness of alternatives are, in fact, various dimensions of the relationship perspective. But they are just the same goals as those set by experts for peace education.

Stanford concludes that a person with a mature relationship perspective on matters in general does not need any special peace education. Even without it, he/she sets his/her goals to the effect of peace education. In other words, the ethic and world-view formed on women's premises can be equated with peace education goals.

In addition to the above-mentioned principles, women's traditional education also includes education for obedience, submissiveness and adaptability. When this side of women's education is effectively realized, too, it has allowed masculine values and patriarchal understanding of power to dom- inate. Here lies the very core of the problem.

The American women's peace movement is now speaking of "empowerment" of women, of discovering one's own strength, of

teaching women how to exert their influence, i.e. of decentralization of power to women, "empowerment of women", so that they could use it in a different way than men and towards different goals.

Common interest

I already noted in the beginning, that it is impossible to separate the women's movement from the women's peace movement. The feminist movement is peace movement, because it aims at building such a realm of values and way of life where violence, oppression and inequality would be minimized. Thus, the women's peace movement means building a world of peace and bringing up peaceful human beings rather than struggling against the arms race, authoritarianism and militarism.

Developments in the world in recent years and the efforts by governments so far have shown that men themselves are powerless and perplexed with their own violence and their systems of violence. Without new measures men's institutions of power seem to have no idea - let alone means - of how to break out of this vicious cycle.

From women's point of view, the most important "defence force" is the one which would help them defend themselves against the violence of men's world, always and everywhere. But the situation must not, however, be developed into a battle between men and women or between men's and women's realms of values. That would only mean drawing the front line of men's mutual fight and competition between the two sexes, too. This would not contribute to promoting equality and decreasing violence.

But instead, it has to be possible to analyze honestly and without prejudice the cultural norms and sexual myths underlying the present ideal of being a male, men's need of performance, competition and desire for power and the structures established for carrying out all this. It is easier for women to carry out this analysis because they are not so "challengeable" as men are. Women have less inhibitions throughout these myths and values, although they themselves may also be confused by their vested interest to rid themselves of "the role of the victim and object" and to become an equal partner.

The success of this analysis is in the interest of men as well as women. Therefore it only can be wished for that there is enough maturity among men so that they could accept the results of the analysis made by the women's movement. For their own part, men should respond to the process and set themselves out to an equally unprejudiced analysis of their own culture and try to get rid of their own "masculine mystique". The interaction of these processes and the combined utilization of the results is a way which might lead out of the present impasse.

Celina Garcia has the courage to state: "We insist these are the issues that must be first confronted and systematically analyzed before developing cumbersome disarmament theories and agreements that usually do not transcend the conference rooms." And the women of the American Peace Links movement are of the opinion that "political changes without fundamental changes in moral and social norms remain temporary vic- tories" and that "no person in the Presidency will be able to actively pursue disarmament, non-military solutions to problems, and cooperative behaviour as long as the social norms of the country define such behaviour as 'weak', sissie' or 'communist'."

. Celina Garcia, Androgyny and Peace Education (Bulletin of Peace Proposals 211981). . Barbara Stanford, Fear of Success and Hope for Survival. An analysis of the Relationship Perspective in Three US Peace Education Projects (Paper presented at the Tenth General Conference of international Peace Research Association, Gyor, Hungary 1983). . Testimony of Eleanor Humes Haney and Wilma Scott Heide on Legisla- tion in 1978 that proposed a commission to consider whether or not to recommend a National Peace Academy. . Carol Gilligan, In a Different Voice (Harvard Univ. Press, 1982). . Hilkka Pietila, To Develop an Alternative Peace Policy of Women (Paper presented at the Tenth General Conference of International Peace Research Association, Gy8r, Hungary 1983).

( s u i t e de La page 31

C'est en quoi il diffsre des mouvements pour 1'6galitE des droits qui n'ont pas remis en cause les structures et les valeurs de l'ordre social actuel et qui recherchent 1'6galit6 des femmes dans un monde masculin, et essentiellement dans une prespective masculine.

EL MOVIMIENTO PACIFISTA FEMENINO COMO MOTOR INNOVADOR DEL MOVIMIENTO PACIFISTA EN SU TOTALIDAD

Resumen: Una de las caracteristicas del movimiento pacifista actual es la de no ser, como sus predecesores tradicionales, unidimensional. El movimiento de hoy agrupa y une una gran variedad de movimientos que con- sideran la carrera armamentista y las armas nucleares como una amenaza comiin. Este concept0 es compartido por aquellos que desean proteger la naturaleza, por 10s movimientos "verdes", por aquellos que buscan otro estilo de vida, por 10s opositores a la energia nuclear, por 10s parti- darios de la cooperaci6n con el Tercer Mundo y, en primer lugar, por el nuevo movimiento feminista. El movimiento feminista por ser m2s completo y menos marcado por prejuicios, es el mZs original de estos movimientos. El se nutre de una biisqueda amplia y diversificada sobre la mujer, abri- end0 nuevas perspectivas para la igualdad de sexos y para la transforma- ci6n social. Un movimiento feminista analitico es, por si mismo, pacifista. Es en esto que 61 difiere de 10s movimientos por la igualdad de derechos que no han puesto en causa las estructuras y 10s valores del orden social actual y que buscan la igualdad de la mujer en un mundo masculine y, sobre todo, dentro de una perspectiva masculina.

D O S S I E R F I P A D 43 sEPTEMBRE/ocTOBRE 1984 MATER I AUX

L'AIDE ETRANGERE VUE DES PAYS "RECEVEURS"

par Rajaona Andriamananjara Boite postale 4400 Antananarive 101 Madagascar

Original: francais

Resume: L'aide etrangere est-elle un mat necessaire? L'aide etrangere est-elle necessaire? Est-elle un mal? La presence note essaie de repondre 2 ces questions en prenant Ie point de vue du pays "receveur". L'auteur examine successivement (1) la notion d'aide - theorie et intentions; (11) la realit6 de l'aide - pratique, actions et effets; et notament l'impact sur l'affectation de ressources; les implications psychologiques et politiques de l'aide; les problsmes associes 2 l'assistance technique comme exemple particulier d'aide etrangere; et (iii) Ie futur de l'aide: bilan de l'aide etrangere et (Eventuelle) amelioration possible.

F O R E I G N A I D AS SEEN BY "RECIPIENT" COUNTRIES

Abstract: Is foreign aid a necessary evil? Is foreign aid necessary? Is it bad? The following note tries to answer such questions from the point of view of a "recipient" country. It examines first the concept of aid - theory and intentions; second the reality of aid - practices, actions, results and in particular the impact on resources allocation, the psychological and political implications and the problems linked with technical ssistance as a specific example of foreign aid; and, third, the future of aid: balance sheet of foreign aid and possible improvements - if at all possible.

L A AYUDA EXTRANJERA V I S T A POR LOS P A I S E S "RECEPTORES"

Resumen: LEs la ayuda extranjera un mal necesario? iEs ella necesaria? ;Es perjudicial? El analisis que se presents a continuaci6n trata de responder estas interrogantes teniendo en consideraci6n el punto de vista del pals "receptor". En primer lugar se hace un examen del concept0 de ayuda - teoria e intenciones. Luego se discute la realidad de la ayuda - prscticas, acciones y consecuencias, especialmente su impact0 sobre 10s recursos, sus efectos politicos y psicol6gicos, y 10s problemas relacionados con la asistencia tecnica como un ejemplo especffico de la ayuda extranjera. En tercer lugar se analiza el future de la ayuda: balance de la ayuda extranjera y un probable mejoramiento - si esto fuera posible.

Rajaona Andrianananjara

L ' A I D E ETRANGERE VUE DES PAYS "RECEVEURS"

Introduction

Developpement autocentre et aide etrangere sont-ils antinomiques? Tel est l'intitule qu'on aurait pu donner i la presente note. L'objet n'est cependant pas de considerer l'aide etrangere dans Ie cadre uniquement du developpement autocentre mais plut6t dans Ie contexte general du d6ve- loppement des pays du Tiers Monde. A ce titre, il semble plus utile d'examiner l'aide cornme un exercice entre deux groupes: les pays "donateurs" d'une part, et les pays "receveurs" de l'autre. De cette manisre, le sujet rentre dans les preoccupations plus larges que sont les problsmes du developpement.

Le role de l'aide aux pays du Tiers Monde en particulier, ou plus generalement Ie role d'un flux de ressources etrangeres dans Ie processus du developpement, est une des questions qui a et6 incessamment soulevee. Par Ie passe, l'on avait suppose que l'aide exterieure etait une condi- tion nkcessaire pour qu'il y ait developpement. Cette vue de l'aide exterieure cornme panacee a et6 2 maintes reprises dementie par la realite. En effet, nulle part, jusqu'2 present, l'aide etrangere n'a reussi 2 contrlbuer d'une manisre importante au developpement.

Heureusement, les discussions concernant l'aide au Tiers Monde ont 6vo- 1uE ces dix dernisres annges. Actuellement, en fait, les representants des "donateurs" reconnaissent qu'il existe des problemes lies 2 l'aide etrangere. De plus en plus frgquement, 2 mesure que les limites qualitative~ et quantitatives de l'aide sont atteintes, les "donateurs" posent aux "receveurs" la question suivante: considferez-vous l'aide etrangere come un mal necessaire?

1. Concept d'aide: theorie et intentions

I1 y a toujours eu des arguments sans fin concernant la nature de l'aide etrangere, concernant aussi ce qu'elle doit faire ou ce qu'elle peut faire. I1 convient dans un premier temps de definir la notion d'alde et ensuite d'examiner la place et le r5le que l'aide etrangere occupe, devrait occuper et pourrait occuper dans Ie processus du developpement.

1.1 Notion d'aide

Litteralement, Ie mot "aide" signifie secours, assistance. A l'origine, dans Ie domaine du developpement, on utilisait les mots "aide" ou "aide etrangere" pour designer un don ou liberalite: c'etait done un cadeau non remboursable present6 sous forme d'argent, de fonds ou de credit qui plus Card sont transformes en ressources reelles par l'intennediaire d'achat de marchandises ou de services. Bref, une aide veritable ou une aide etrangere veritable etait i l'origine un transfert unilateral de ressources. Avec le temps, cette notion relativement simple et directe s'est compliquee, de sorte que Ie mot "aide" soit a perdu toute signification, soit signifie touces choses 2 la fois. C'est par etape que la signification du mot aide s'est graduellement compliquee et obscurcie.

L'aide s'est de plus en plus encombree de restrictions, du moins du point de vue du pays "receveur". Actuellement, Ie "donateur" indique au 'receveur" quel produit acheter, de qui l'acheter, pour quel usage l'acheter, et quelles conditions il doit remplir avant de pouvoir enfin mettre la main sur les ressources. Tout se passe comme si le "donateur" n'a gusre confiance et veut s'assurer que l'aide lui profite, de sorte quen pretendant aider 1c "receveur" 11 s'aide, en fait, lui-meme. Ainsi, par le biais de restrictions successives, l'aide s'est reduite au point de devenir plus ou moins auto-assistance pour Ie pays "donateur" et peu ou pas d'aide pour Ie pays "receveur"; en effet, il est vrai que dans certains cas, les conditions rattachiies 2 i'a.i.de unL e t 6 telles que celle-ci a et6 au mieux une contrariete et au pire un obstacle au developpement. D'autre part, cependant, la notion d'aide s'est aussi elargie pour inclure toute une gamme d'articles qui sont plus ou moins inutiles.

La premiere extension a eu lieu lorsque l'aide a et6 definie de manisre 2 inclure les prets 2 tennes liberaux, c'est-2-dire des prets repayables mais dont les termes et conditions (taux d'interet, d6lai de grace, periode de remboursement) Gtaient jugiis plus favorables au pays "receveur" que ceux existant sur Ie march6 ou dans les transactions commer- dales normales. Et depuis, le pas a et6 franchi sans hesitation aucune pour faire egalement inclure dans Ie terme d'aide les przts "stricts" ou "durs": ce sont evidemment les prets contractes sur des marches mon6- taires divers; mais ils incluent aussi les credits-fournisseurs et les credits-acheteurs que les colporteurs et constructeurs d'equipement et autre materiel essaient avec persistance de faire avaler par les pays "receveurs". De sorte que toute la gamme des relations entre un pays 'receveur" et le reste du monde est inclue sous cette designation du teme aide ou coop6ration.

Ainsi, la notion d'aide est devenue 5 la fois plus restreinte et plus large en meme temps. Cet etat de choses cependant n'a pas Et6 adopt; par 1e pays "receveur" de son propre gr6. I1 lui a plut6t et6 impose collectivement par le "donateur". En effet, l'approche ordinaire du donateur - de tout donateur - envers le receveur est la meme: nous vous donnerons ceci ou vous assisterons ("aiderons") 2 faire cela si vous acceptez de faire ceci ou cela pour nous, ou si vous nous laissez faire cecl ou cela dans votre pays. Nous vous vendrons cette usine-ci ou celle-12 si vous nous laissez avoir un peu de votre cafe (ou du moins si vous acceptez de mettre de cot6 pour nous une partie de vos recettes de cafe) ou si vous nous laissez developper (c'est-2-dire exploiter) vos ressources minieres. Ceci nous amene au point suivant de la presente note. Jusqu'fi present, nous n'avons pas par16 de developpement. Mais si nous devons nous cantonner sur notre sujet - qui est "l'aide etrangere vue des pays receveurs" - nous devons demander quelle relation existe, s'il en existe une, entre l'aide etrangere et le d6veloppement.

1.2 Place et role de l'aide

L'aide etrangere a-t-elle une place dans Ie processus du developpement? Si cette place existe, quel role doit-elle jouer? La place et Ie role que l'on attribue il l'aide etrangere depend evidemment du point de vue que l'on prend. Du point de vue du donateur, l'on pourrait brievement rappeler qu'il est tout 2 fait concevable qu'octroyer de l'aide etrangere comprend sans doute un certain deer6 de philantropie. Mais plus raisonnablement, l'on peut dire que crest surtout un acte bien

pens6 d'auto-interet. Le but, en termes trss simples, est de promouvoir la stabilite ou Ie changement (selon Ie cas) pour assurer la s6curite ou le developpement des int6rets ou idees du donateur dans le pays 'receveur". I1 y a sans doute des variantes locales, mais au-deli des details, ce theme general demeure une constante bien que le langage pour habiller le mot "aide" peut varier.

Du point de vue du "receveur", la conception populaire (peut-Stre devrait-on dire l'espoir, Ie souhait ou le voeu pieux) veut que la place et Ie role de l'aide etrangere soient d'aider le pays 2 se developper. Quel est done le raisonnement derriere liaffinnation que l'aide etrangere pourraitldevrait aider ou aidera le pays receveur 2 se developper? En tenses simples, le d6veloppement est considere come un processus qui entralne certains resultats recherches (biens et services pour pourvoir aux besoins de la population, independance 6conomique, une soci6t6 juste et equitable - voila quelques-uns des buts les plus largement accept6s); mais pour ce faire. le processus doit etre aliment6 par les apports necessaires. L'aide etrangere aidera 2 mettre en marche la machine du processus du developpement en pourvoyant un ou plusieurs des ingredients manquants. Si l'aide etrangere arrive avec quelques exigences gznantes (les conditions ou les "liens" ou engagements) eh bien, aprss tout, oii est le problsme? C'est l2 le prix que le pays receveur doit payer!

C'est de cette manisre que l'aide etrangere est concue naivement par quelques-uns dans les pays receveurs come un apport neutre au processus du developpement. En effet, ce facteur est quelque fois consider6 sans reserve comae un element positif qui contribue aux efforts du developpement, meme s'il est defini pour inclure non seulement les dons et les prets 2 termes "liberaux" ainsi que les prets commerciaux, mais meme les credits-fournisseurs et les credits-acheteurs.

2. La realit6 de l'aide: pratique, actes, effets

La theorie, dit-on, est une chose; la pratique en est une autre. La notion et l'idee d'aide constituent la theorie: ce ne sont que des intentions. Et puisque les actes parlent plus fort que les mots, l'on peut se demander 2 juste titre comment ces intentions, une fois confron- tees aux realites, se sont manifestees dans les faits. En d'autres termes, quels ont 6t6, en pratique, les faits relatifs 2 l'aide 6tran- gere? Qu'est-ce qui a et6 accompli, grace 2 l'aide, ou en depit de l'aide? Quels sont les faits? Quels sont les actes? Quels sont les effets? Puisque les faits eux-mzmes sont souvent sujets 2 differences interpretations, nous essaierons de decrire ici quelques-uns des effets les plus 6vidents que l'aide etrangere a eus, surtout dans les pays receveurs: d'abord l'impact sur l'affectation de ressources sera consider6; ensuite, les implications psychologiques et politiques de l'aide seront examinees; et enfin, les problemes associes 2 l'assistance technique come exemple particulier dl"aide etrangere" seront brievement abordes.

2.1 Mauvaise affectation des ressources

Certaines consequences de l'aide etrangere ont directement contribue 2 des distorsions dans l'affectation des ressources dans Ie pays receveur. Panni les plus Gvidents, l'on peut particulierement indiquer trois resultats.

D'abord, dans certains cas, l'aide etrangere constitue la solution de facilite. Par exemple, pour acquerir un certain equipement, un departe- ment don& dans un pays receveur peut Etre tent6 d'accepter un projet qui foumit l'equipement en question; en meme temps, cependant, il n'est pas entisrement d'accord quant au projet lui-meme, lequel entralne des conditions qui, en temps normal, seraient inacceptables et qui, de plus, contient des obligations de contrepartie qui sont disproportionn6es par rapport au montant de l'aide elle-meme, mais que l'on est neanmoins tenu d'honorer. Un autre exemple serait 12 06 les choix de politiques 6cono- miques ou sociales nationales sont subrepticement inclus dans des petits projets d'aide etrangere: ceci evitera toute discussion concernant ies choix politiques dans les forums nationaux appropries et les choix sent imposes car l'on arguera alors qu'stant des engagements internationaux, ce sont des choix qui doivent Ztre obligatoirement respectes.

I1 est facile de prevoir que des politiques Gconomiques ou sociales retenues dans de telles conditions sont condamnees 2 echouer dans beaucoup de cas. De cette manisre indirecte - la manisre directe etant par le biais de l'assistance technique et/ou de pret programme ou pret d'ajustement structure! dont nous reparlerons plus tard - les donateurs d'aide Strangere reussissent 2 influencer la planification et 2 guider les choix de politiques economiques ou sociales.

Deuxismement, l'aide etrangere et les donateurs d'aide etrangere prosp6- rent souvent dans les situations de crise - c'est-2-dire de crises dans Ie pays receveur. Lorsque la situation est sur le point d'exploser, ou quand tout est dans les conditions les meilleurs d'apres leurs critsres, ils se mettent graduellement 2 imposer leurs exigences sur Ie pays: tout d'abord, en suggerant subtilement les critsres devant Ctre utilises dans Ie choix des managers ou des responsables; ensuite, en presentant directement les noms de ressortissants du pays favorables 2 leurs interets pour occuper divers postes strategiques; et enfin, en exigeant que des etrangers de leur choix soient nomm6s pour doubler les vrais managers cles en tant qu"'homo1ogues". De cette manisre, ils arrivent 2 mettre syst6matiquement le pays receveur en question sous la coupe ou la tutel- le directe d'un trust ou groupe international. Comment peut-on appeler autrement les cas recents - en Afrique et ailleurs - dans lesquels les ressortissants nationaux du pays ne peuvent rien decider sans l'accord ou l'autorisation des "homologues", lesquels sont, en fait, devenus les vrais detenteurs de pouvoir? Est-ce que ceci est de l'aide? Ou plutot est-ce l'aide poussee 2 l'extreme de sa logique et montrant ainsi son veritable visage?

CrGment, tout le but de l'aide est-il simplement de s'assurer que Ie pays donateur ait plus ou moins accss libre, sans entrave aucune, aux ressources du pays receveur? On est tent6 de se demander si parfois l'aide n'est qu'une "prime au silence" (de l'argent pour faire taire ceux qui pourraient essayer de proteger les int6rCts du pays receveur, et pourraient ainsi gZner certains groupes au sein des donateurs). Troisismement, un resultat d6coule directement de la corruption de la notion d'aide. Rappelons que la definition s'est elargie pour n'avoir plus aucun sens. En fait, Ie mot "aide" inclut maintenant toute la gamine des relations d'un pays receveur avec Ie monde exterieur. Cette corruption de la notion d'aide - dissimulee par exemple sous l'emploi de circonlocutions telles que "coop6ration" ou "solidarit6 internationale" - a et6 due 2 l'action combinee d'intergts etrangers (par exemple

banquiers et negotiants) et de groupes locaux motives soit par l1inter$t, soit une foi aveugle ou l'ideologie, soit enfin par la naivete pure et simple. Le resultat de cet elargissement du sens de l'aide a et6 que l'aide etrangere a "aide", mais elle a surtout "aide" pour produire trois resultats nggatifs:

. desorganiser le pays receveur;

. vider Ie pays receveur de ses ressources et

. produire une mauvaise affectation des ressources dans Ie pays receveur.

L'aide etrangere contribue 2 desorganiser Ie pays receveur ou,tout au moins, ne l'aide gugre 2 mieux s'organiser. D'une part, en imposant certaines firmes pour l'execution des projets - meme en recourant la procedure d'appel d'offre international, les adjudicataires sont la plupart du temps des firmes gtrangeres plut5t que des finnes locales - les donateurs n'encouragent pas beaucoup le d6veloppement des capacites locales 2 executer les projets. Bien que des encouragements symboliques existent - tels que l'acceptation d'une petite rnarge prefi5rentielle pour les firmes locales - ces encouragements ne vont pas loin pour promouvoir la capacite d'absorption du pays receveur. D'autre part, l'aide etrangere desorganise l'affectation des ressources dans Ie pays receveur: par exemple, il est fort possible qu'on n'ait pas mis Ie pays receveur au courant des implications d'une aide donnee en termes des exigences que cette aide imposera sur ses ressources interieures par Ie biais des contributions de contrepartie et des charges rgcurrentes. La consequence est que Ie pays receveur finit par immobiliser une proportion di5mesurCe de ses ressources pour executer des projets auxquels les donateurs sont interesses, au detriment d'autres projets plus urgents et plus importants pour le developpement du pays et de son peuple: tout ceci results non pas d'un choix dCliber6 de la part du pays receveur, mais 2 cause de l'effet de disorganisation de l'aide.

De plus, le pays doit immobiliser une part substantielle de ses ressources (humaines come financisres) pour faire face i la multiplicit6 des "donateurs" (bilateraux ou multilateraux, officiels ou non-officiels) et 2 la diversite des approches et conditions, chaque donateur exigeant que son approche et ses conditions soient scrupuleusement respectees. C'est ainsi que d'aprss un rapport publie recemment par 1'Unite Conjointe d'Inspection (Joint Inspection Unit ou JIU) des Nations Unies, dans le domains de l'aide, un gouvernement pent etre confront6 2 quelque 25 institutions des Nations Unies, 30 2 40 organisations et banques multilaterales, 30 ou plus donateurs d'aide bilaterale et plusieurs centaines d'organisations gouvernementales (ONG) qui ont des programmes actifs de di5veloppement/coop~ration international(e). Au has mot et en excluant les ONG, un pays "receveur" peut done avoir affaire 2 une centaine de partenaires bilateraux et multilat6raux, ce qui n'est pas une mince affaire. A ce sujet, 11 est evident que des differences existent vraiment d'un donateur 2 l'autre: dans les termes et conditions financiers aussi bien que dans l'importance relative donn6e aux diverses composantes de l'aide.

Mais des differences existent aussi au sein d'une meme institution dona- trice, par exemple entre departements. Ainsi, il s'est trouve que la meme institution donne des indications contradictoires au mEme pays receveur: augmentez le prix d e 1'6lectricite pour assurer la rentabilite

de la compagnie Electrique, mais en meme temps baissez le prix de 1'6lectricitE pour rendre tel ou tel projet viable! Si l'on replique que les "recommandations" s'appliquent 2 des categories differences de clients - ce qui peut etre ou non le cas - void encore un autre exemple vecu: vous ("le receveur") devez veiller 2 ce que l'indice du coGt de la vie n'augmente pas de plus de X%, mais en meme temps vous devez egalement augmenter le prix de presque tout (produits agricoles, eaux, elec- tricit6, gaz, carburant, services publics, etc.) de plus de deux ou trois fois X%. Quand les responsables dans le pays receveur essaient de voir clair dans de telles recommandations nettement incoherentes - qui sent en fait des exigences imposees par les donateurs - ils sont confrontes 2 de graves problsmes. 11s ne peuvent pas executer ces mesures contradictoires simultanement. Mais s'ils tentent de les mettre en oeuvre l'une aprss l'autre, c'est un miracle s'il ne s'ensuit pas Ie chaos le plus pur; dans de tels cas, l'on peut se demander si le but de ceux qui ont fait initialement les recommandations n'etait pas justement de creer le chaos. C'est precisement ce que nous voulons dire quand nous disons que l'aide Etrangere contribue 2 la disorganisation du pays receveur.

L'aide Etrangere "aide" aussi 2 vider davantage encore Ie pays de ses ressources - de ses vraies ressources. La raison en est que l'on veut deliber6ment faire croire que le commerce fait partie integrante de l'aide. Le commerce est alors present6 come une faveur consentie par Ie "donateur" d'aide au "receveur" d'aide: dans ce cas, le donateur s'at- tend 2 ce que Ie receveur accepte n'importe quel prix (elev6) qu'on lui demands pour ses importations et n'importe quel prix (bas) qu'on lui offre pour ses exportations.

En dernier lieu, l'aide etrangere "aide" aussi 2 produire une mauvaise utilisation et/ou une mauvaise affectation du peu de ressources qui res- tent disponibles pour de veritables efforts de developpement. Nous vou- Ions ici laisser de cote la question de savoir 2 qui profite l'aide (l'evidence recente 2 ce sujet montre que ce ne sont pas necessairement les plus pauvres, ni mSme la majorits, dans les pays receveurs qui en beneficient) pour considerer son impact global. Sur l'avis insistant et non sollicit6 de divers fournisseurs d'equipement plus ou moins hon- nztes, ll"aide" etrangere parvient 2 bouleverser les processus de planification et le choix politique et 2 faire fixer le choix de projets bien loin des priorites veritables. Le resultat en est que les ressources locales sont affectees 2 des entreprises hasardeuses et 2 des achats qui, au mieux, contribuent seulement marglnalement au developpement du pays: achat d'armes, depenses ostentatoires de natures diverses (publiques et privees), acquisition etlou construction d'unites mal concues - qui sont souvent des equipements de deuxieme ou troisieme main, repeints et vendus (come neufs) au pays receveur souvent trop nalvement confiant. De meme, les donateurs ont jusqu12 maintenant pre- fer6 financer Ie developpement des cultures de rente, en particulier des cultures d'exportation (dont les produits sent souvent destines 2 la consommation des donateurs eux-msmes) - et ce, au detriment des cultures vivrieres. Et ce n'est que tout recement, quand il n'est plus possible de nier les resultats catastrophiques d'une telle affectation de ressources, que les donateurs, bilateraux come multilat6raux. clament 2 cor et 2 cri que les pays du Tiers-Monde devraient accorder la priorit6 2 la culture des produits vivriers e t 2 la recherche de l'autosuffisance alimentaire.

2.2 CoUts psychologiques et politiques

Une conclusion partielle que l'on peut tirer de ces premiers resultats est assez simple. L'aide etrangere ne peut pas etre consideree comme un element is016 et neutre, ou comme un element dont les effets/resultats sent independants des relations entre donateur et receveur. Mais les effets de l'aide ne s'arrgtent pas avec ceux decrits plus haut. La liste des dolgances et griefs est longue, mais nous soulignerons les suivants a cause de leur caractere pernicieux et repandu.

Premierement, l'aide etrangere cree et perpetue des idees fausses parmi la population en general. Parmi celles-ci, la notion que rien ne peut se faire sans aide exterieure et que le monde exterieur sera toujours li pour alder.

Deuxiemement, l'aide etrangere encourage une competition et, meme plus, une veritable division parmi les responsables dans le pays receveur: chacun pense qu'il est jug6 ou sera jug6 selon la quantite de finance- ment stranger ou d'aide qu'il recoit pour l'ex6cution de ses projets. Dans de telles conditions, 11 n'est pas du tout surprenant d'observer que des conditions qui, dans des circonstances normales, seraient tout fait inacceptables deviennent souvent acceptables juste pour que le res- ponsable concern6 puisse dire que "j'ai accompli ceci ou j'ai fait cela". line telle attitude a inevitablement une consequence negative sur le developpement et ce, au detriment de la population en general.

Le resultat de ces deux attitudes de la grande masse de la population et des responsables qui ont le pouvoir de decision dans le pays receveur est la perpetuation de la dependance du pays sur le monde exterieur: dependance economique et materielle, mats aussi - et ceci est encore plus serieux - dependance incrustie dans l'esprit ou dependance intellectuelle. A cet egard, d'une part, les receveurs d'aide ne doivent pas se considerer come des personnes "aid6es1' qui attendent passivement que l'aide arrive et qui se soumettent passivement 2 n'importe quelles conditions exorbitantes et extravagances imposees par ceux qui "aident". D'autre part, les donateurs ne doivent pas s'attendre 2 ce qu'ils rea- gissent ainsi, sinon donner de l'aide pourrait simplement devenir un exercice de pur chantage.

2.3 Assistance technique

On peut done conclure des sections precedentes que l'aide etrangere peut 2 juste titre Etre blZimee pour la disorganisation qu'elle cause dans Ie pays receveur, car elle influence l'utilisation des ressources du pays vers une mauvaise affectation et aussi car elle perpgtue une attitude de dependance qui est anti-productive. Un element en particulier joue un r51e de plus en plus important dans le domaine de l'aide etrangere: c'est l'assistance technique. Come nous le verrons, elle non plus n'est pas exempte des caracteristiques mentionnees ci-dessus. En effet, de nos jours, l'acces i l'aide etrangere est de plus en plus conditionng par l'acceptation de la soi-disante assistance technique. Les donateurs, individuellement ou collectivement, requisrent obligatoirement la presence d'une assistance technique avant, pendant et apres l'exicution de tous les projets: pour preparer le travail de ceux qui prepareront les etudes de projets ou la documentation (c'est ce qu'on appelle definir les mandats de reference); pour preparer Egalement lesdites

etudes et documentation (ces dernisres sont les nombreuses - on est tent6 de dire innombrables - etudes: de pre-identification, d'identification, de pr6-faisabilite, de faisabilite, de rentabilite finan- citre, economique et sociale, d'ingenierie, etc...); pour surveiller et diriger l'execution de projets; pour executer les projets et pour controler la bonne marche des projets une fois qu'ils sont executes. Dans certains cas, des donateurs individuels fournissent aussi bien l'aide que l'assistance technique. En mSme temps, il semble exister une division de travail sur laquelle les donateurs se sont dej2 convenus au prealable: par exemple, certaines agences internationales ont et6 delib6rement creees pour fournir tout ce qu'on appelle assistance preparatoire, de telle sorte que les donateurs peuvent se concentrer sur l'affaire plus importante de vendre de l'equipement - souvent sur la base de travail accompli par l'assistance preparatoire. Et ainsi, l'histoire se r6pEte: aprss les nouveaux "missionnaires" viennent les negociantsl

Ainsi done, quel est Ie role veritable de l'assistance technique dans l'aide etrangere? On peut la considerer d'abord come une restriction de plus dans l'utilisation de l'aide Etrangere et, deuxiSmement, cornme un moyen pour Ie donateur d'intervenir encore plus profondement dans les affaires des pays receveurs.

D'une part, l'assistance technique est une restriction de plus car etant une exigence obligatoire, elle limite la liberte du receveur d'utiliser l'aide etrangere de la manisre qu'il pense Stre la plus adequate pour les besoins du pays; en fait, l'on suppose - implicitement ou explicitement - que l'assistant technique etranger connait mieux que Ie respon- sable local ou les instances nationales et les besoins de la population locale et la meilleure manisre d'utiliser l'aide etrangere.

D'autre part, l'assistance technique constitue une voie grande ouverte pour l'irnmixtion Etrangere dans les divers aspects des affaires interieures du pays receveur. Une fois que les assistants techniques ou conseillers sont install6s dans un pays - peut-Stre initialement avec de bonnes intentions - ils ont tendance 2 imposer leurs vues, ou tout au moins 2 influencer certaines decisions dans des affaires qui ne les con- cement pas, telles que les politiques 2 poursuivre dans divers domaines, Ie choix de projets et Ie choix de technologie. La plupart du temps, qu'ils viennent de la part de donateurs bilateraux ou multilateraux, ils ont un parti pris tout 2 fait comprehensible pour essayer de faconner Ie pays receveur 2 la manisre de leur pays d'origine.

L'assistance technique peut etre encore plus contestable sur differents autres aspects, en particulierdans la selection du personnel. En plus de l'existence de facto d'une confrerie internationale tres solidaire et auto-protectrice d'"expertsM et de "conseillers" - dont l'existence meme constitue une cause d'inquietude sur Ie phenomsne - l'on est tent6 de douter du bien-fond6 de toute l'affaire: comment une personne venant d'une metropole lointaine, qui n'a jamais etudi6 Ie riz et encore moins pratique la culture du riz, comment une telle personne peut-elle aller dans un autre pays et pretendre qu'elle peut enseigner des m6thodes meilleures 2 des paysans qui ont plant6 du riz pour assurer leur existence depuis dix generations ou plus? Et cependant, dans de nombreux cas, ceci constitue l'essence de l'assistance technique. De plus, on peut se demander si un "projet" - un projet d'assistance technique

consistant entisrement ou presque ii payer les salaires et autres depenses et coCts d'un personnel etranger - peut etre classifis sous la rubri- que "aide", du moins du point de vue du pays receveur. I1 est legitime de se demander si l'assistance technique n'est pas seulement un gnome systeme (combine) pour fournir de l'emploi 2 un segment specifique de la population non utilisee (inutilisable?) dans l'economie des pays receveurs. I1 est evident que l'assistance technique dont il est question ici est celle du type Nord-Sud; reste 5 esperer que, si elle se developpe, la cooperation technique Sud-Sud sera plus fructueuse et benefique.

Aussi, il n'est pas difficile de conclure que l'assistance technique est un moyen de plus pour le donateur de s'assurer que les ressources qu'il canalise vers le pays receveur sous le nom d'aide sont utilisees ii ses propres fins - ii lui. le donateur - de la maniere qu'il veut et de sorte qu'elles reviennent au pays donateur. L'assistance technique n'est done pratiquement d'aucune utilite au receveur et, ce qui est meme plus important pour le pays receveur, elle constitue une negation de son etat d'adulte: le donateur n'est pas convaincu que Ie receveur saura utiliser la moindre petite chose; de sorte que le pays receveur a besoin d'etre 'assist6" avant, pendant et aprss la reception de l'aide etrangere. Ce phenomsne est camoufle par des formulations bien pensantes telles que celle-cl: l'assistance technique aidera le pays receveur ii faire face ii l'insuffisance de main d'oeuvre qualifiee. Mais l'on ne doit pas etre mystifle par les mots, et en tout cas c'est un autre sujet que celui que nous discutons maintenant.

3. Le futur de l'aide

Un bref apercu de l'aide - ou plutot des problemes rattaches 5 l'aide - vient d'etre presence. L'on a pu voir que le concept de ce que l'aide aurait dG etre, est bien loin des faits et r6alitEs associ6s i la pratique de l'aide, et vice-versa. On peut alors se demander s'il y a un avenir pour l'aide et, s'il y en a, quel genre d'avenir. Les echecs pas- ses ne doivent toutefois pas Ctre une excuse pour ne pas agir dans le futur. C'est dans cet esprit que, dans la presence section, la communication essaiera d'abord de faire le bilan de l'aide et ensuite examinera les ameliorations qui, eventuellement, pourraient etre apportees.

3.1 Bilan de l'aide

L'aide, nous l'avons vu, n'est pas une panacee qui amenera le salut aux receveurs. I1 est des pays qui ont connu un developpement substantiel et continu sans qu'il y ait eu un flux important d'aide. I1 est aussi des pays qui ont recu de l'aide en dose massive mats qui presentent tres peu de signes de developpement veritable et durable. Ainsi, il est possible d'avancer qu'il existe des conditions dans lesquelles l'aide peut apporter des contributions positives aux efforts propres d'un pays pour atteindre un developpement independant et auto-entretenu. D'autre part, de peur que les remarques precedentes ne soient interpretees partialement, l'on doit egalement ajouter que l'aide n'est en aucun cas la cause de tout mat ou de tout ce qui est imparfait dans un pays receveur. En fait, une grande part de responsabilite dolt etre attribuee aux conditions internes ou crGes localement. Ce qu'on observe c'est que l'aide a une tendance fzcheuse ii renforcer certains aspects negatifs des problemes du developpernent. Ainsi done, c'est avec prudence que l'on doit parler du bilan de l'aide telle qu'on 1'a connue jusqu'2 present.

3.2 Ameliorations possibles de l'aide

Si l'on devait considerer uniquement les aspects negatifs de l'aide, dont seulement quelques-uns ont et6 mentionnes ici, on est tent6 d'en tirer la seule conclusion logique: les pays receveurs ne devraient plus accepter de recevoir de 1'"aide". Au lieu de cela, ils devraient insis- ter sur des liens commerciaux precis, de sorte que personne, ni Ie donateur ni Ie receveur, ne puisse etre prisonnier ou mystifie par des mots. La realit6 cependant ne se laisse pas facilement reduire a une simple question de devrait ou ne devrait pas. En ce qui concerne notre sujet, et pour Ie meilleur ou pour le pire, ll"aide" semble Etre destinee i exister pendant au moins un certain temps. I1 n'est done pas utile de se cantonner uniquement 5 demander si l'aide est un mal necessaire, ou si l'aide est necessaire, ou si c'est un mal. Limiter la reponse li ce genre de question a un simple "oui" ou "non" ou "ni out ni non" serait par trop simpliste et, pire, n'aboutirait 2 rien du tout. I1 serait plutot plus sense d'essayer, par la meme occasion, de trouver des solutions pour ameliorer Ie piteux etat des choses qui prevaut actuellement dans Ie domaine de l'aide etrangere.

L'aide etrangere, pour Ztre vraiment d'une certaine utilite au pays receveur, n'est pas seulement une question de montant, come quoi plus 11 y en a mieux ca vaut. En fait, l'on peut penser 2 des cas 05 plus i1 y a de l'aide, plus c'est nefaste - car une plus grande quantite d'une chose nefaste contribue i faire plus de rnal que de bien. L'efficacite de l'aide etrangere est une question d'approche. Tout doit etre clairement specific. I1 ne devrait pas y avoir d'ambigultk dans Ie genre de relations existant entre les parties en question de sorte que des deux cotes (donateur come receveur), tous savent 5 quoi s'en tenir. De cette manicre, il ne peut pas y avoir de mystification et, par consequent, pas de deception.

A cet egard, il n'est pas evident que de nouvelles approches telles les prets-programmes ou les prets d'ajustement structurel offrent necessairement de meilleures solutions que les approches du passe. I1 est vrai qu'en n'exigeant pas de projets sp6cifiques bien prepares, les donateurs ont peut-Stre l'intention de donner plus de liberte aux receveurs dans leur usage de l'aide. Mats peut-etre aussi, en meme temps, les conditions imposees deviennent-elles plus rigoureuses qu'auparavant: Ie donateur ne controlera pas seulement des variables individuelles et secto- rielles par Ie biais des projets individuels; il controlera egalement toute l'economie par les variables macro-economiques car les conditions gengralement imposees en retour pour un tel support general au budget ont trait aux politiques de prix, aux politiques budgetaires et fisca- les, aux politiques de balance commerciale et de balance des paiements, aux politiques de credit et monetaires, aux politiques d'investissement. Bref, en relevant Ie niveau de l'aide de celui de projet 5 celui de programme et/ou ajustement structurel, le donateur a en meme temps augment6 (ou a l'intention d'augmenter) son contrcle sur l'economie du pays receveur en passant d'un stade ponctuel et partiel 5 un niveau plus large et absolu (ou presque absolu). On doit done regarder de tres pres les sys- temes du genre prZts d'ajustement structurel ou prets par consortium ou par d'autres groupes assimiles pour apporter une aide 5 la balance de paiement. La tentation que peut representer une augmentation passagere Gventuelle de la quantite d'aide doit Etre temp6r6e par la multiplica- tion des conditions correspondantes et leur rigueur croissante. A ce

moment-12, la question n'est plus que la taille du poisson justifie la taille du hamecon, mais plutSt que la taille de l'appzt cache la taille de l'hameeon. Une fois de plus, nous pouvons done reconfirmer que l'aide est avant tout une question d'approche. C'est seulement lorsque toute la situation est claire pour tous que l'aide etrangere peut etre une question de quantite. Cette nouvelle approche necessite une adaptation et pour Ie donateur et pour Ie receveur.

Le donateur, lui, doit Etablir une separation claire et une distinction nette entre relations officielles et commerciales de sorte que les 'requins" qui colportent la pacotille soient reconnus comme tels par les receveurs. Car ce sont eux - les requins - qui donnent une mauvaise reputation 2 l'aide et aux donateurs. Dans presque tous les cas, les actions officielles dans l'octroi veritable d'aide proviennent des meilleures intentions. Mais lorsqu'elles s'encombrent d'affaires commerciales ou industrielles de nature plus ou molns douteuse, alors le capital de bonne volonte et d'aide veritable s'erode et se perd; et le receveur peut meme commencer 2 avoir de serieux doutes sur les vraies motivations du donateur.

Quant au pays receveur, ce dont 11 a besoin pour tirer un plus grand profit des possibilites offertes par l'aide etrangere et pour pallier 2 ses defauts, c'est seulement une meilleure organisation. I1 n'est pas logique, par exemple, qu'il existe des situations oii chaque haut respon- sable essaie d'introduire 2 tout prix des apports et influences etrangers en pensant que tout ce qui vient du monde exterieur est de l'aide et assistera l'effort de developpement du pays - en etant convaincu ou en craignant que sa performance sera jugee en fonction de la quantit6 d'aide qu'il peut rassembler. Au lieu d'une, deux, dix ou mZme cent ou mille personnes agissant individuellement, il doit exister un systsme par lequel on arrange que routes ces actions sGpar6es tirent dans la meme direction d'une manisre ordonnee. Les representants d'un pays receveur ne peuvent pas se permettre de considerer Ie domaine de l'aide etrangere comme un march6 libre oii ils peuvent faire concurrence individuellement: c'est probablement un cas oii la regle de la "main invisible" ne s'applique pas. C'est le pays receveur en tant qu'entite unifiee qui doit s'occuper de ses relations avec le monde ext6rieur - l'aide etrangere inclue - car c'est le pays tout entier qui doit en subir les consequences, bonnes ou mauvaises.

Bref, un pays beneficiera le plus de l'aide s'il commence par mettre de l'ordre dans ses propres affaires. Une fois qu'un consensus national est form6 et que 1'6conomie du pays a une bonne base - et alors seulement - Ie pays peut se permettre d'etre selectif face aux nombreuses offres d'aide etrangere qu'il souhaite obtenir. En effet, lorsque les conditions et les effets qui resultent des differentes sortes d'aide etrangere sent connus, la cl6 du succ6s dans son utilisation reside dans la selectivit6. Tout ce qui est etranger n'est pas necessairement bon; par consequent, l'on doit user de la plus grande prudence en introduisant tel ou tel projet dans le pays, si la seule justification est que le projet est support6 par un pays Stranger.

Chaque entreprise, chaque proposition doit etre examinee minutieusement et jugee selon un ensemble de criteres, parmi lesquels les plus importants sont les suivants: besoin de la population contre interet etranger, independance nationale contre dependance exterieure, d6veloppement

des capacites locales centre recours aux competences StrangereS. Le developpement economique et l'independance nationale vont de pair: on ne peut les separer et encore moins les presenter come alternatives oppo- sees entre lesquelles un pays doit choisir. En ce qui concerne l'aide etrangere, cet objectif double exige que le pays receveur ait la possibilite de choisir librement et puisse effectivement se prevaloir de cette possibilite: il doit pouvoir choisir et pas seulement se voir imposer par l'ext6rieur des conditions plus extravagantes les unes que les autres. C'est seulement lorsque Ie pays receveur peut choisir quoi accepter et quoi refuser, et seulement 2 ce moment li, qu'il sera en mesure de vraiment tirer profit des possibilites offertes par l'aide etrangere et, en meme temps, alleger quelques-uns des effets n6gatifs de l'aide Etrangere.

Panni les approches qui promettent d'etre fructueuses i l'avenir, l'on doit signaler le systeme de programmation par pays. Ce systeme est pratique depuis quelques annees d6j2 par certains donateurs multilat6raux. et semble actuellement attirer de plus en plus l'attention et l'interet des donateurs bilateraux. I1 comporte plusieurs traits qui representent des ameliorations certaines par rapport au systeme traditionnel d'octroi de l'aide. Ayant une idee assez precise des flux d'aide possibles sur un horizon de trois, quatre ou meme cinq ans, le pays "receveur peut mieux les integrer dans sa planification propre, et non plus vivre avec les incertitudes des allocations annee par annee. Ensuite, le programme par pays retenu de commun accord entre Ie donateur et le receveur pelmet, d'une part, au donateur d'avoir un ensemble d'operations coherentes pour ses interventions plutGt qu'une serie d'actions decousues ou de projets 6parpillCs sans grande relation les uns avec les autres; et, d'autre part, au 'receveur d'y inclure des projets, operations et actions qui s'inscrivent dans ses priorites et ses plans. Enfin, l'exercice meme de preparation du programme par pays fournit aux partenaires - donateur et receveur - l'occasion de mener un dialogue fructueux sur les principes et objectifs des activites 2 entreprendre, ainsi que sur les interzts, contraintes, possibilit6s et priorites de chaque partie.

Conclusion

Ayant commence par la question souvent posee: l'aide est-elle un mal necessaire, nous repondons maintenant que, peut-etre, c'est un mal; necessaire, peut-etre pas - mais ceci est une autre question; necessairement mal, certainement pas. En tout cas, l'aide existe maintenant et, d'apres les apparences, elle restera parmi nous pendant longtemps. La meilleure attitude pour le moment est ainsi d'essayer de voir comment prend're le meilleur parti de l'aide etrangere.

La presente note a essay6 de mettre en evidence les problemes les plus criants. Elle n'a present6 que quelques propositions d'amelioration d'ordre general - entre autres les suivantes: (i) necessite de clarifier autant que possible les relations entre les parties prenantes; (ii) necessite pour les donateurs de ne pas intentionnellement perpetuer une confusion nefaste entre aide et affaires (commerce); (iii) necessite pour les pays receveurs d'instaurer une meilleure organisation et coordination des actions, surtout dans leurs relations avec l'exterieur; (iv) necessite de recherche d'approches nouvelles plus positives en matiere d'aide, tel par exemple que le systeme de programmation par pays.

Ces idees peuvent constituer la base du debut d'une recherche pour de meilleurs moyens de faire face 2 l'aide etrangere du point de vue du receveur. C'est pour cette raison que la pr6sente note s'est retenue de nommer des cas particuliers de diverses aberrations - non pas par manque d'exemples concrets, nais parce que son but n'etait pas d'attaquer ce donateur-ci ou ce projet-1s; on a plutSt essay6 de commencer la definition de solutions ou d'ameliorations dont l'application serait beaucoup plus large que des bouche-trous au cas par cas.

S'il doit done y avoir de l'aide Etrangere, et puisque de l'aide etrangere il y en aura certainement, elle doit se developper pour devenir plus qu'une ingerence ou tentatives d1ing6rence dans les affaires internes des pays "receveurs"; et, d'une manicre tout aussi importante, on ne dolt pas l'imposer au "receveur". L'aide doit Etre librement acceptee, ou refuses, par Ie beneficiaire potentiel. C'est seulement 5 ce moment-l2 que l'aide cessera d'etre une manisre subtile pour Ie donateur d'imposer sa volonte sur Ie receveur sans defense; elle pourra alors devenir une veritable association constructive pour l'accomplisse- ment d'objectifs qui en valent la peine.

. The collected documents of the Group of 77 a 6-volume set edited by Karl Sauvant as part of the IFDA third system project

. Evolution, structure, organization: a monograph by Karl Sauvant

From Ooeana Publications, Dobbs Ferry, NY 10522, USA.

IFDA DOSSIER 43 sEPTEMBER/ocToBER 1984 BUILDING BLOCKS

THIRD WORLD COMES OF AGE AND FACES NEW CHALLENGES

by Chakravarthi Raghavan* Room C 504 Palais des Nations 1211 GenSve 10, Switzerland

Original language: English

Abstract: The Group of 77 and the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development are 20 years old this year. And as they observe the occasion, they are faced with some fundamental challenges. The United States is making a determined effort to reverse the processes of negotiations and cooperative efforts to a New World Order, even negating some ot the principles established after 1945 . The way the Third World understands and faces these challenges, mobilising its own forces and combining them with progressive forces in the North, will shape events for the rest ot this century and beyond.

NOUVEAUX DEFIS POUR LE TIERS MONDE Resume: Le groupe des 77 et la Conference des Nations Unies pour le commerce et Ie developpement (CNUCED) c6lCbrent cette ann6e leur 20e anniversaire, en meme temps qu'ils sont confrontes & des defis tondamentaux. Les Etats Unis s'efforcent de renverser Ie processus de negotiation et de cooperation, niant meme certains des principes htablis aprGs 1945 . La facon dont Ie Tiers Monde comprend et repond & ces dgfis, mobilisant see propres forces et s'alliant avec les forces progressistes du Nord, determiners le cours des choses jusqu'; la fin de ce siscle et au-del&.

NUEVOS DESAFfOS PARA EL TERCER MUNDO

Resumen: El Grupo de 10s 77 y la Conferencia de las Naciones Unidas para el comercio y el desarrollo (UNCTAD) celebran este aKo su vigesimo aniversario, a1 mismo tiempo que se encuentran enfrentados a desaflos fundamentales. Los Estados Unidos de N.A. se esfuerzan en cambiar el proceso de negociacion y de cooperaciOn, renegando de ciertos principios establecidos despues de 1945. La forma en la que el Tercer Mundo comprenda y responda a estos desaflos, movilizando sus propias fuerzas y unigndose a las fuerzas progresistas del Norte, determinars el curso de 10s acontecimientos hasta fines de este siglo y aGn mZs all5 de 61.

C . Raghavan i s t h e Chief Editor and Geneva correspondent o f the d a i l y ii'peczai- United Nations Service (SUNS) published by IFDA i n cooperation wi th IPS Third VorLd News Agency.

Chakravarthi Raghavan

THIRD WORLD COMES OF AGE AND FACES NEW CHALLENGES

The founding of the Group of 77 (which now has a membership of 126) and the United Nations Conference on Trade and De- velopment (UNCTAD), twenty years ago in Geneva, were not random coincidental but intertwined events. The founding of the Group of 77 is commonly traced to the joint declaration of the seventy seven countries (of Africa, Asia, Latin America and Caribbean, and Yugoslavia in Europe) on 15/16 June night at the conclusion of the first session of UNCTAD.

In that declaration, the 77 viewed UNCTAD I as a significant step towards creating 'a new and just world economic order'. The basic premises of that new order, they saw, as involving 'a new international division ot labour oriented towards accelerated industrialisation' in the Third World, requiring 'a new and dynamic international policy for trade and development' and establishing 'a new framework of international trade that is wholly consistent with the needs of accelerated development'. The 77 also underlined the singu- lar importance of the establishment of 'an international machinery in the field of trade and development'.

Viewing UNCTAD I as 'an event of historic significance' and their own unity as 'the outstanding feature of the Confer- ence', the 77 saw 'the vital need to maintain and further strengthen' this unity in the years ahead as an indispensable instrument for securing the adoption of 'new attitudes and approaches in the international economic field... for enlarging the area of cooperative endeavour in the international field and for securing mutually beneficient relationships with the rest ot the world... for cooperation among the developing countries themselves'.

The 77 also pledged themselves to maintain, foster and strengthen this unity, and agreed to adopt all means to increase contacts and consultations amongst themselves, and to study the specific arrangements tor this through their government representatives during the 19th session of the United Nations General Assembly I/. The objective ot a new international machinery in the field of trade and development was fulfilled when the General As- sembly in 1964 established UNCTAD as an organ of the General Assembly. UNCTAD was mandated among other things 'to review and facilitate the coordination of the activities of other institutions within the UN system in the field of trade and related problems ot economic development', and initiate actions tor negotiation of 'multilateral legal instruments' in the field ot trade 2 / .

And contrary to current arguments, UNCTAD was always in- tended to deal with a wide range of economic issues, including monetary and finance questions. Its rules of proce- aure tor conciliation, clearly envisage decisions by UNCTAD on economic plans, programmes or economic or social readjustments: trade, monetary or taritt policies, or balance ot payments: policies ot economic assistance or transfer ot resources: levels ot employment, income, revenues or investment: and rights or obligations under international agreements or treaties 3 / .

While the Third World efforts to create a new international organisation with tocus on development was effected in 1964, the specific arrangements ot the 77 towards unity became a reality only in 1967, in the preparations tor UNCTAD 11, at the Algiers Ministerial meeting. The Algiers Charter, adopted at that meeting, laid the framework for the functioning ot the Group in deciding that the group should meet at ministerial level as often as necessary, and in any event always prior to the convening of the sessions of UNCTAD 4/.

Prior to that, the 31 Third World country-members ot the UNCTAD Trade and Development Board (TDB) had been meeting together informally and had, in their preparations tor UNCTAD 11, suggested the convening of the Algiers Ministerial meeting. This group was given a continuing role, by the Algiers Charter, in between sessions of UNCTAD and the Ministerial meetings. And when the TDB was expanded to include the entire membership, the group of 31 expanded to include all the Third World members, and functioned as the Group of 77 in Geneva at UNCTAD. The group had no formal structure or constitution, but functioned on the basis of precedents and decisions. Soon it expanded to UNIDO, then to the UN in New York and other parts of the UN system 5 / .

It was not taken seriously in the beginning, and even now is often described derisively in Western media as a 'caucus' and its breakup often prophesied. But the basic commonality of the group was succinctly summed up by President Nyerere ot Tanzania when he addressed the Fourth Ministerial meeting of the group at Arusha in 1979.

'What we have i n common', Mualimu Jul ius Nyerere said ' i s that we are a l l i n re la t ion t o the developed world developed world dependent - not interdependent - nations. Each of our economies has developed as a byproduct and a subsidiary of development i n the industrzalised North, and it i s e x t e m L L y oriented. We are not prime movers i n our ow. des- tzny. We are ashamed t o a h z t it. But economically we are dependencies - semi-colonies a t best - not sovereign s ta tes ' g/.

It was the Group of 77 (or the 75 earlier at New York) that was primarily responsible for bringing UNCTAD into being, though even in this, the strivings began much earlier at the Bandung Afroasian Conference, 1955, and the Belgrade Non-Aligned Summit, 1961, which initiated the 1962 Cairo Conference of Developing Countries on the problems of

economic development. At Bandung, at a time when 'development' and 'planning' were dirty words in the UN, the Afroasians made the terms respectable, and gave the call for mutual cooperation in the tasks of development. At Belgrade, the Non-Aligned saw the problems ot economic development facing them as different from those of the industrialised East and West, and agreed to convene the Cairo Conference to discuss common problems and reach agreements on ways and means of 'repelling all damage which may hinder their development' and agree on the most effective measures to ensure realisation ot their economic and social development 7/.

The dissatisfaction of these countries with the then West- ern-dominated international framework at the UN, which refused to consider and deal with development issues, and at the Bretton Woods/GATT Institutions, which were controlled by the West and based on the view that operation ot the tree market worldwide would solve all problems, had been simmering ever since the newly independent countries joined the international comity of nations.

Founded in 1945, the UN spoke in the name of the peoples of the world, but was a political expression of the victorious allies of Europe and North America. The political order envisaged was based on the Big Five acting in concert to pre- serve peace. Almost at birth that hope proved illusory, and the East-West axis and conflicts began, with both the East and the West trying to line up the new countries in their camps, viewing 'whoever is not with us is against us'. The postwar economic order was underpinned by the Bretton Woods Agreement, creating IMF and IBRD. To buttress this on the trade front, the Havana Charter envisaged the setting up of the International Trade Organisation to implement it, but this was aborted when the US refused to ratify and assume obligations that would have circumscribed its national decisions. A part of the Havana Charter was put in place through the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), which despite its name is no international treaty, but continues to be a provisional agreement, in effect legally binding none. Though frequently described in its literature as a 'contract' and its signatories as 'contracting parties', it is not an enforceable treaty or contract, but depends on the willingness ot its members to implement it. And its history has been one of the powerful members unwill- ing to implement what does not suit their immediate interests. And the only power of enforcement is the right of its signatories to 'retaliate' - a jungle law and no more, through less junglelike than the prewar practice ot a cycle of bilateral retaliations that helped none.

It was this protound dissatisfaction with the then state ot affairs that resulted in the summoning and founding ot UNCTAU. The analysis of the international economic scene, and its inadequacies, both structural and institutional, was provided at that time by Paul Prebisch in his Report to the Conference. After 20 years, it still remains valid. The

problems afflicting the world economy today - the constant adverse terms of trade ot primary producers worsening their balance of payments problems, the inapplicability to the Third World of the Havana Charter/GATT concept that 'the expansion of trade to the mutual advantage of all merely requires removal ot obstacles that impede the tree play of these forces in the world economy', a concept based on the 'abstract notion of homogeneity that conceals the great structural differences between the industrial centres and the peripheral countries', the failure to apply 'strictly' the GATT rules and principles, in spirit and letter, the problems of Third World debt, international liquidity and development finance - were all sketched out even then 8 / .

The decisions of UNCTAD I, and resolutions and decisions at subsequent sessions and of the UN General Assembly, helped to torge a development consensus whose elements were:

. the economic development and social progress of the Third World is the common concern of the entire international community;

. the primary responsibility tor development rests with the Third World countries themselves, but international action should strengthen and supplement their efforts;

. the development of the Third World will contribute to the growth and prosperity of the industrial world too, and of the world economy as a whole;

. at the international level, there is need for a better and more effective system of international cooperation, a modified international division of labour that is more rational and equitable, and the removal ot inequity, untairness and disparity in international economic relations and systems. All these require positive discrimination favouring the Third World and based on principles of non-reciprocity;

. international trade has a crucial role to play in economic and social progress throughout the world, and particularly the accelerated development of the Third World. Development of equitable and mutually advanta- geous trade can promote higher standards of living, tull employment and rapid progress of all countries.

. international trade should be governed by rules that are conducive to promoting development, particularly that of the Third World;

. actions at an international level should be on a wide front, and concerted, convergent and comprehensive - and not ad hoc.

When the UN General Assembly in 1974 adopted the New Inter- national Economic Order (NIEO) Declaration, and in 1975 the Programme of Action tor the Establishment ot the NIEO, this development consensus was subsumed in it, with emphasis on restructuring international economic relations and systems.

Despite its current detractors, UNCTAD in its 20 year history, has made a decisive impact on international economic relations, "committed neither to the North nor to the South, but committed to this 'development consensus'" 9/ and by its innovative ideas and concepts, it has strengthened international economic cooperation tor development. Many ot its ideas were negotiated into international instruments, at UNCTAD itselt, or elsewhere in the UN system. If Raul Prebisch, in the preparations for UNCTAD I and as the first Secretary-General, and his successors Manuel Perez-Guerrero and Gamani Corea, have provided the intellectual thrust tor this, it was the Group of 77, through its unity and combined negotiations, that has made many ot these ideas accepted.

In its 20 year history, the Group ot 77 has defied all logic of international relations based on power - military and economic. While it was responsible for the convening of UNCTAD, and UNCTAD I was the catalyst tor the group's genesis, the complicated search for consensus in international economic issues, brought about the need tor group negotiations. The group negotiations soon became a fact of international life, resulting in the informal Group of 77, gradually acquiring a shape and character ot its own, and a torce ot sorts.

From the beginning, the two major forces in the Third World, the Non-Aligned Movement and the Group of 77, have worked in tandem, with the Non-Aligned Movement by and large providing the necessary political thrust for change.

In the beginning, the Group ot 77 concerned itself almost exclusively to North-South relations, and adopted a reformist approach, though even at UNCTAD I the emphasis was on a 'new order'. Soon, the inadequacies of the reformist approach became clear, and this ultimately led to the adoption by the UN General Assembly in 1974 and 1975 ot the Declaration and Programme of Action for the Establishment of a New International Economic Order. While the OPEC actions of 1974 catalysed these events, the philosophical groundwork for NIEO came out of UNCTAD at its Third Session in Santiago de Chile.

From inception, the Non-Aligned Movement talked ot mutual economic and other cooperation among the Non-Aligned and other developing countries and gradually began moving in this direction through decisions at several summits and the Action Programme for Economic Cooperation. The Group ot 77 began addressing these issues slowly, first within the UN system in terms of getting support of the UN organisations.

At the Mexico City 1976 Conference for Economic Cooperation Among Developing Countries, the Group formulated a comprehensive Plan of Action for ECDC. These concepts were built upon and incorporated into the Arusha Programme for Collec- tive Self-Reliance, adopted at the Group's Fourth Minister- ial Meeting in 1979. As the limitation of an ECDC approach

centered on the UN system - where both the East and West were blocking it - became apparent, the Group, at the High Level Meeting in Caracas 1981, adopted the Caracas Programme of Action. This brought foreign ministers, and foreign offices into the picture, thus providing a political thrust tor ECDC. Also, for the first time, it provided the Group, albeit only for ECDC, an institutional framework, through the annual meetings ot the Intergovernmental Followup and Coordination Committee ot senior officials, and biennially at the meetings of the Foreign Ministers in New York during the UN General Assembly. The rudiments of a secretariat were also provided in the shape of a 'core of assistance' to help the Chairman of the Group of 77 in New York.

While these developments have provided the Group with an institutional structure and framework, its inadequacies both for North-South negotiations and for ECDC are becoming daily more and more obvious.

The fact that the Group has managed to disprove all prophe- sies and attempts to break it up, and has continued to survive and remain together, is itself an achievement, given the pressures of bilateralism and centrifugal forces in world polity. As Manuel Perez-Guerrero, former Secretary- General of UNCTAD and veteran negotiator for the Group, has put it 'Although the logic of its need may not always be clear to some, every member country will stay in the Group for as long as it considers it to be in its interest. And the Group will continue to exist as long as it is needed to fulfil1 its indispensable role. For it is certain that, without the Group of 77, the world would have done little, it anything, to modify its previous attitudes and actions on development matters' 101.

But as the Group faces the needs of the latter half of the 80s and the rest of the century - with a world in crisis in economic and social sectors, and soon threatening to impact on international peace and security, and perhaps life on the planet itselt - it is still groping for a way to deal with these problems.

The underpinnings of the world trade and money and finance systems have virtually collapsed - though the institutional machinery is still limping along in its external garbs. The IMF, with its original concept of promoting free trade and full employment through short-term balance of payments support, was from the beginning irrelevant to the development needs of the Third World. After the breakdown of the Bretton Woods Agreement and its system of fixed exchange rates in 1971, the original IMF has ceased to exist. It is now no more than a debt collector for the international private banking system - with the IMF forcing the Third World debtors 'to adjust' by depriving their millions of poor with even the bare necessities of life in order to pay the foreign debts and ever-mounting interest charges.

In this situation, the USA has launched its campaign, not only to reverse the objectives of the postwar development consensus forged at UNCTAD, and the subsequent NIEO decisions for restructuring international economic relations and institutions, but push the Third World back to its colo- nial era status in economic relations - by emphasising bilateralism, rather than multilateralism.

In the political sphere, the fundamental principles of the UN Charter - non-use of force and non-interference in the internal affairs of States - has long been observed only in its breach. But tor nearly three decades, the breach was sought to be justified in terms of the right of collective security and self-defence. In the words of the former CIA chief, William Colby, covert intervention (in other countries to destabilise and overthrow governments of these countries) has long been used by the USA as an option 'between sending a protest note and landing marines'. From the East, the USSR too has used its KGB and other forms of intervention.

Recently, interventions have become more open and brazen and, as in the case of Nicaragua, the US now claims a legal right to indulge in such violations of the UN charter and international law.

It is this multifaced crisis and the new efforts at power play that faces the Third World.

When the US launched its attack on UNESCO and gave its notice of withdrawal, after a well-orchestrated western media campaign about UNESCO trying to destroy 'freedom of information' and seeking to 'licence' journalists - a charge that no one has been able to prove from any UNESCO decision or even UNESCO secretariat proposals - there was a temptation to view it in isolation, as related to the way Director- General MIBow was supposedly running the organisation.

But the subsequent attacks on UNCTAD (and US statements that the Secretary-General of UNCTAD, Gamani Corea gives too much freedom to division heads), and other international organisations striving to implement the development consensus, leave no room for doubt about the real objectives of the USA. It is seeking to force these organisations to adopt the US ideology, and has launched a systematic campaign against international civil servants daring to think independently. It is seeking to put in place at the head of the organisations, and at their policy-making levels, persons (whether from the North or the South) who will toe the US line.

There is much that is wrong, in the management of international organisations and bureaucracies. Improvements and rationalisation and constant evaluation to ensure efficiency and productivity are always needed. But all these are used as mere code words to change policies behind the backs of

intergovernmental bodies that deal with them, and the machineries and mechanisms for rationalisation and evaluation have become the 'tail wagging the dog' to the point of destroying the dog itself.

This is the fundamental challenge facing the Third World. For far too long its governments have not paid the kind of attention they ought to vis-a-vis the UN system as an important ingredient of even their bilateral relations. The governments have not always ensured the staffing of these organisations with people of highest calibre and integrity and commitments to the cause of multilateralism and development. Too often they have fielded candidates and got them appointed on the basis of patronage. At UNCTAD itself, far from facing the current US onslaught in all its implications, there has been a scramble for succession to Gamani Corea as Secreatry-General, and efforts at 'trade-off' between this post and other posts elsewhere soon to fall vacant. In this scramble, and bowing to the threats of the US to leave UN organisations not toeing its line, there is an attempt to compromise.

The Third World has a stake in the UN and the UN system. But the question to be asked, and faced up to, is what sort of UN and what sort of UN system? Universality is essential but universality for a system or for a mere shell - which is what giving in to the USA, whether by changing personnel at the top at its dictates or changing policies and ideas, will amount to.

In this, and other such matters, Third World governments must take the issues more seriously than now, and make their views known to the powerful countries in the North in their bilateral relations too. And collectively, the Third World, despite the current weaknesses and economic crisis en- veloping them, has some leverage, which it has so far failed to exercise. It must also strengthen this leverage, by more purposetul actions, and not mere talk as so far, through its ECDC programmes tor collective selt-reliance, such as by establishing the Global System of Trade Preferences among themselves - which in time will become a GATT subsystem, if not a Third World GATT itself - and forging mutual cooperation, with however small a beginning, in the financial and monetary fields through the South Bank and in the areas of technology development and transfer. It is through such credible actions, multilateral and bilateral, that they can influence the course of history.

In this course of action, the Third World can mobilise support in the North, but should not be taken in by its governments who often point to the rigidity and stands of the USA to avoid action. Often the OECD governments are merely taking shelter behind the USA. But the collective voice of the Third World will carry weight in these countries, and even in the USA which, despite all its power, does need the Third World as much as the Third World needs the USA.

One thing is clear: if Third World governments, and their elites with links in the North, seek to avoid some hard decisions now, they will be forced into harder choices in the future. Otherwise, the rising social unrest in these countries will only sweep them away.

Final Act and Report of UNCTAD (UN Sales N064.II.B.11) Vol.1, pp. 66-69.

'UN General Assembly Resolution 1995 (xix)' in Karl Sauvant (ed), The Collected Documents of the Group of 77 (New York: Oceana, 1981) 6 vol.; vol.1, pp.97-99.

ibid, p.93.

ibid, p.325.

For details of the Group's evolution, see Karl Sauvant, 'The Group of 77 - Evolution, Structure and Organisation' (New York: Oceana, 1981).

Collected Documents, p.133.

ECDC Handbook, documents of the Movement of the Non-Aligned countries and the Group of 77, Ministry of External affairs. Government of India, pp.1-3.

Final Act and Report, Vol.11 (UN Sales No64.11.B.12) pp.5-63.

Statement of the Group of 77 in Geneva on 20th Anniversary, SUNS N01031, p.3.

'The Group of 77' p.ix.

(continued from page 2)

mission to the UN in New York. However, this third factor may fade away next year, with or without Reagan I1 (better without it), since there are already some indications of a foreign policy change.

But the essential problem is no longer there. Denying as it does to the intergovernmental community the right to resist the pressure of private economic interests and to smaller or weaker countries the right to speak out, that is negating the universality and the inherent pluralism of the United Nations, the Reagan campaign is in fact destabilizing the very concept of international organization.

Clearly, the UN is limited by its intergovernmental nature but it still is the only attempt to establish global mechanisms for dialogue, mutual understanding and conflict resolution. The Reagan administration bears a terrible responsibility in refusing the rules of the game outside which there is only the law of the jungle, that is under-development, war and death. Marc Nerfin

IFDA DOSSIER 43 SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 1984 MARKINGS

THE REAL CHALLENGE OF '1984'

by Shridath S. Ramphal Commonwealth Secretariat Marlborough House, London SW1Y SHX, UK.

We reproduce below the text of the Cornnonwealth Secretary-General's opening address to a symposium convened by the Vienna Institute for Development in preparation for UNIDO IV. The symposium uae held in Vienna from 24 to 26 May under the chairmanship of IFDA Executive Committee member Ahmed Ben Salah, in his capacity as VID vice-chairman. A member of the Council of IFDA, Shridath Ramphat, MS recently elected chairman of the United Nations Cornittee for Development Planning.

Your Symposium is in preparation for UNIDO IV; and UNIDO IV

is about international cooperation for industrial develop-

ment. In the course of the next few days you will have much

discussion on industrialisation - its review and its pro-

spects - in terms of development and of the world economy more generally. In these opening remarks I shall dwell on

international cooperation which at the best of times wi l 1

influence the quality of industrial development world-wide,

and at the worst of times will render i t ineffectual.

The state of international cooperation - the state of the world as a community - is a critical element not only in the success or otherwise of UNIDO IV as a Conference but in the

attainability of industrialisation as a goal for countries

and people the world over. Not to be realistic about the

state of that cooperation is to run the risk of elaborating

purely hypothetical scenarios - of founding expectation on hope rather than on reality. I thought I might contribute best to your Symposium, therefore, by looking to that

critical backdrop of international cooperat ion - of the

environment for collective human endeavour for industrial

development in 1984.

Thirty-six years ago - quite a long time now (in 19481, a young English author, while he was literally dying, wrote a

book called 'Nineteen Eighty-Four'. It was translated into

a1 l the languages spoken here (and many more besides); i t

was widely read around the world; and was appropriately

controversial. I t worried many thoughtful people.

George Orwell's '1984' was a fearful prospect. If there is

even some small resemblance between his fantasy and our rea-

lity, between his '1984' and ours, most of you will agree

that we need to ask ourselves some critical questions about

our world and ourselves. As the New Year began, however,

Western conmentators were virtually unanimous in the sense

of relief with which they greeted Orwell's year. I t had not

happened. The terrible world of '1984' that Orwell had

prophesied - and prophesied for Western Europe - had not materialised.

Life in Western Europe, i t is true, is not life in Orwell's

'Oceania'. Western countries, on the whole, have sustained

the liberal tradition within their own societies. This is

not to say that there is ground for complacency. Science and

technology, for example, while offering massive opportun-

ities of enlarging human happiness, have burgeoned into in-

struments of power, control and manipulation worthy of

Orwell's 1984. Yet, there is good reason for satisfaction

that the structures of freedom in the West - within Western societies - have remained so far intact.

But for large parts of the world beyond Western societies

the issue is not marginal. For very many, '1984' is not

wholly a fantasy. 'Big Brother' is actually watching. I t is

so in East European countries; i t is so in some parts of the

Third World. For people of these countries 'the moral cor-

ruption of absolute power' (of which Orwell was warning) has

made '1984' a present nightmare. Too many people in too many

countries live with the reality of Orwell's warnings come

3 8

true. I t seems as if, somewhere, i t is always '1984'; not so

much a time as a place.

But, the world is not the sum total of its several parts;

and as I read the comentaries of complacency in the New

Year I wondered why no one asked whether i t was '1984'

worldwide. The truth is that, nurtured as we are on the doc-

trine of the nation state, and the concept of sovereignty

which sustains i t , we rarely catch a glimpse of the world as

a whole. And yet its separate states and their separate

people are so interlinked and interdependent as to have lost

some of their separateness; to have become, in fact, a glo-

bal community, a kind of global state.

For that global state, all is not well. Just pause and re-

flect dispassionately: is not our global reality in 1984

essentially Orwellian: a hierarchial international comunity

run by a small super-power directorate with an 'Inner Party'

of rich countries dedicated to permanent superiority through

an apparatus of economic, political, military and sometimes

even cultural domination - bolstered now by increasing observation from outer space - with the poorer states rele- gated to something comparable, in international terms, to

the lowly position of Orwell's 'proles'?

Quite recently the London Times characterised 'the gap'

between rich and poor in the world as no more than "natural

economic diversity" - the hybrid seed of elitism and racism currently being propagated by the anti-aid lobby. In

Orwell1s '1984' human equality was "no longer an ideal to be

striven after but a danger to be averted".

Is that not the underlying attitude of those who would deny

an equitable role in the international system to the hundred

and more new countries which have emerged in the post-war

era? Can the world's longer established nations have any

basis for genuine pride if while avoiding the worst of

'1984' at home - in their own countries - they have

contrived, benefitted from and now perputuate a global

system which secures i t abroad?

The Soviets have traditionally made no pretence about help-

ing only their ideological friends - and then mainly with arms; of not responding to human needs because they are

human needs and, therefore, mutual needs as well. The United

States, to whom human needs were once important, seems also

to have abandoned any higher motivation. How Third World

countries vote in the United Nations, what causes they

espouse, what friends they keep, how their leaders speak,

what ideologies they preach, what economic doctrines they

practice; all are closely monitored. The surveillance is

constant and comprehensive: and no longer covert. In our

'global state' there is no pretence: 'Big Brother is watch-

ing'. No one should be surprised if, in time, those under

scrutiny turn out to be a wider public than Third World

countries.

And, of course, in true '1984' fashion, from the watching comes rewards and penalties. The 'friendship ratingr now

determines levels of aid, of trade, of financial flows, of

technology transfers. And, grotesquely, i t even seeks to

influence the policy prescriptions of some international

financial institutions - more and more openly controlled and 'politicised' by those who complain loudest about the

politicisation of other institutions.

If we can only stand back from our several societies and

look upon the wider human society of which each of us is a

part, we will see that 1984 - whatever our achievements at home - is a disquieting signpost for the end of the century, only 16 years away.

The 'Four Continent Peace Initiativer announced on 22 May

1984 by six world leaders from small and middle countries

for an end to the arms race is a 'cri de coeur' on behalf of

the world's people who know that militarism has lost all

sense of proportion and threatens human survival. Parliament-

arians for World Order - the enlightened movement that en- couraged this collective warning - has rendered a great service and the six leaders' call deserves to be taken up by

Governments and people the world over in a voice so loud

that even the Super-powers must listen.

For both Eastern and Western Europe a deeper human solida-

rity requires the assertion of independence within alliance.

There surely must be some habitable political ground between

neutralism and surrogation which even allies can occupy.

But, beyond that frontier of independence within alliance

lies a challenging path that must be taken by a coalition of

the world's middle powers - of East and West, of North and South. A coalition for peace, for more sensible world eco-

nomic arrangements, for preserving earth's habitat. A coali-

tion, in short, for a new internationalism that can take us

to the 21st century and over its threshold. The ethos of

that coalition must be 'world order'. I t may be six leaders

today; i t will be many more tomorrow. People require no less

Today, the weakest economies are threatened with collapse;

all with massive dislocation. After a decade of the most

intensive dialogue between nations in all of human history,

human suffering has not diminished; but hope of relief from

i t has. What began as an era of negotiation after the

post-war period ended has become a time of studied inertia

and firm resistance to change. Internationalism is in

decline, crude power is ascendant, international morality is

in retreat, a new militarism holds away. 'The moral corrup-

tion of absolute power', a global totalitarianism, has ex-

tended its hold over our international community.

Our world's directorate of power may not yet be ready to

proclaim that 'war is peace', that 'freedom is slavery',

that 'ignorance is strength'. But what else is the message

when over one mi l l ion do1 lars are poured prodigal l y every

minute of every day into the black hole of the arms race;

when the prosperity of the rich countries - their freedom from hunger and want - shares an environment which enslaves millions in abject poverty; when the powerful persist in a

political perspective of the world which acknowledges inter-

dependence but rejects its basic implication of limits to

power.

If you ask me what all this has to do with UNIDO IV, or with

industrialisation and development generally, I will tell you 'everything'. Without a renaissance of internationalism we

will not begin to tackle reform of the international economy

- in industrial development or anything else. We may even

fail to perceive the need for reform. Without a commitment

to change we will labour in vain at UNIDO IV here in Vienna

- as we recently did at UNCTAD V1 in Belgrade.

Last week in New York the United Nations Comrni ttee for De-

velopment Planning (which I have the honour to Chair) spoke out about that need for reform. The Committee is one of the

few standing bodies within the United Nations system whose

members serve not on an inter-governmental but on an indi-

vidual basis. The membership is drawn from a great variety

of countries, of North and South, of East and West, working

and speaking as members of the human family. With one voice

they stressed that the need for reform of the international

monetary and financial system had grown steadily more acute

as the international community failed to respond in any sig-

nificant way to calls from many quarters for such reform.

I t is now 40 years, they said, "since the 'Bretton Woods'

system provided a framework for international economic rela-

tionships in the post-war world and nearly a decade since

that framework ceased to function on the premises on which

i t was established." During that time nations have groped

towards new approaches, but without success; and no self-

correcting mechanisms offer solutions. Today, there is dis-

order verging on chaos in several areas critical to the

economic life of all nations: in currency and capital mar-

kets, in international debt and international trade, in the

funding of international institutions, in international fin-

ancial flows.

The effect is devastating for many economies but the heavi-

est burdens are falling on the weakest and poorest economies

and therefore on the people within our human society least

able to bear that burden. No country or group of countries

is free from blame; but major industrialised countries have

a special capacity to give a lead in initiating a process of

change. It is not a time for blue-prints. There are many

paths to reform. But there is now a quite desperate need to

devise a process of dialogue and negotiation along practical

and manageable lines through which the interests of all con-

cerned can be pursued and the necessary reforms agreed upon

and initiated. The Committee for Development Planning has

called for just such a process and invited the UN Secreta- ry-General to bring their message to world leaders some of

whom of course are assembling shortly in London at the West-

ern Summit.

The Commonwealth has been working particularly hard on this

matter of a functional approach. We took as our starting

point recognition that, before there can be any agreement on

what to do by way of reform of the Bretton Woods system, the

world must first agree on how to set about exploring the

options of change and negotiating and agreeing solutions

acceptable to all. Arising from Mr. Muldoon's (former Prime

Minister of New Zealand) initiative for reform 18 months ago

came the Commonwealth Report 'Towards a New Bretton Woods'

which developed that initiative, the New Delhi Commonwealth

Summit last November in which our leaders from North and

South accepted the need for "a comprehensive review of the

international monetary, financial and relevant trade issues"

and, within recent weeks, the work of the 8 Nation Consulta-

tive Group set up in New Delhi to work with me on promoting

a consensus on these matters. We are now embarked on just

such an effort.

Right at this moment I am actively canvassing on behalf of the Commonwealth Group, a formula for a process which can

tackle the problems of the world's trade and payments sys-

tem, which can represent the views of all the nations and

groups concerned, yet at the same time is small enough to

discuss the issues and work effectively - something of the size and constituency structure of the Development or Inter-

im Committees with necessary adjustments to reflect the fin-

ancial and trading interests of the financial community,

working at a high level of representation (preferably Minis-

ters) and having with them the Managing Director of the Bank

and the Fund, the Secreatary-General and Director-General of

UNCTAD and GATT and the UN Director-General for Development on International Economic Cooperation.

We believe that such a Group, working outside existing

structures, is the kind of body that will allow the serious

issues involved in what (for shorthand) we call ' the New Bretton Woods' to be canvassed in a balanced and pro-

fessional way and acceptable, indeed accepted, solutions to

be found. This is not a matter for majorities and mino-

rities. We all know, rich and poor alike, that the inter-

national monetary and financial system has been pushed back

from Bretton Woods to a veritable cliff's edge. Governments

tactically may not concede it; but all know in their hearts

how critical i t is to move forward again away from disaster.

Longer term reforms will by their nature take time, even if

a beginning is made now on devising and negotiating them.

However, some elements of the crisis demand immediate atten-

tion. The current situation with regard to international

debt threatens the world economy and many elements within i t

at a level of gravity not experienced since the 1930s. Ad

hoc responses on a case-by-case basis will not suffice for

much longer. Nor can any solution be satisfactory which does

not ensure that the unprecedented burden resulting from fac-

tors to which many have contributed are not shared by all

concerned. Prevailing high interest rates are clearly one of

the factors contributing to the present crisis. Nothing is

more urgent than international action which faces the gene-

ralised problem that now exists in the area of international

debt and. with the involvement of all parties, produces

agreement on equitable solutions.

The debt issue is typical of prevailing attitudes of studied

inertia to change. Over four years ago the Brandt Comnission

said this:

"Current trends point t o a sombre future for the world economy and

international problems ... A number of poor countries are threatened

with the irreversible destruction of the ir ecological systems; more

face growing food de f i c i t s and possibly mass starvation. In the

international economy there i s the possibi l i ty of competitive trade

restrict ions or devaluations; a collapse of credit with defaults by

major debtors, or bank failures; a deepening recession under possi-

ble energy shortages or further failures of international coopera-

t ion; cm intensi f ied struggle for spheres of in teres t and in f lu-

ence, or for control over resources, leading t o military conf l ic t s .

The 1980s could witness even greater catastrophes than the 1930s."

We were dismissed as prophets of doom. Only now is the con-

spiracy of silence on debt which passed for enlightenment

breaking up in the face of palpable crisis. But i t has given

way only to a mythology that the debt problem can be managed

on a piece-meal basis and that all will be well. Now even

this myth is being exploded, but only after massive costs

have been incurred in terms of national trauma and human

suffering. There are in fact ominous developments. Interest

rates show no sign of declining in real or nominal terms,

and current movements are upward. The recession may be

slowly lifting in Japan, Britain and Germany, but there is

every prospect of a serious relapse in the United States

after the November elections. Debt rescheduling has

postponed rather than reduced debt service and a serious

bunching of rescheduled debt will recur in one or two year's

time.

But the most serious concern is (or should be) over the ca-

pacity of Third World countries to sustain adjustment mea-

sures of the intensity and duration being required of them.

There is a wider issue here, concerning the extent to which

poor countries and the poorest people within them, can be

expected to carry the main burden of adjustment required in

the world economy. Questions are already being asked about

Third World countries "involuntarily financing the American

budget deficit". Consider the absurdity of Third World coun-

tries being expected, as they are now, to run trade sur-

pluses with countries richer than themselves essentially to

service their debts - all the 'adjustment', human sacrifice and high social and political risk merely to sustain a net

resource flow from poorer to richer countries. Is this what

industrialisation is to be about?

How long can such inequity survive? I t runs counter to com- monsense and to every notion of development we have evolved.

I t will not be tolerated. When each percentage point in-

crease in New York prime interest rates adds $4.5 billion

overnight to Third World debt service, and these rates are

above all historic norms, debtor countries can be forgiven

for seeing them as intolerable imposts. How different are

they from taxation? And when the IMF comes down in the role

of tax enforcer compelling payment at the price of immense

social deprivation, how long will i t be before governments

and their people refuse to accept that honour is at stake in

terms of usurious interest payments. If default is not far

off i t is because major creditor countries and the banking

community are themselves turning debts into illegimate

burdens.

Policies of adjustment are unavoidable and may, in some

cases, be positively desirable; but there is a limit to the

hardship that can be absorbed by weak economies and weakened

societies, and the speed with which changes can be accom-

plished. The political dimensions of the problem are often

not appreciated by economic technocrats in international

agencies and industrial country governments; but what more

is needed to sensitise them? The statement over the last

weekend (19 May 1984) by the presidents of Argentina,

Brazil, Columbia and Mexico (since joined by Venezuela)

makes i t clear that time is short.

In this entire area of crisis in the world economy and in

international cooperation for development there is no real

possibility of movement forward without a change of direc-

tion and a capacity for innovation which breaks with the

stereotype of international negotiation. That stereotype, I

suspect, will be remembered as the folly of dialogue in a

committee of 150 that characterised North South negotiations

in the 10 years now ending. We know now how proceedually to

give ourselves a better chance. Certainly, I believe the Third World countries recognise that there is no virtue,

either at the level of principle or of practicality, in

making the best the enemy of the good.

A more difficult question is whether the Western indus-

trialised countries, and the United States in particular,

are ready to return to the ethic of internationalism which

they did so much to reinforce at San Francisco in 1945. I

return, therefore, where I began; because this is the real

significance of whether it's '1984' after all in the world

community. It is significant that in "Newspeak", the offi-

cial language of Orwell's '1984', along with such words as

'honour', 'justice', 'morality' and 'democracy' that had

ceased to exist, so too had 'internationalism'. In our own

1 9 8 4 we are in fact witnessing the most steady decline in

internationalism and in the international morality which

must underwrite i t since the Charter was signed 40 years ago

(...).

The recent call by the six world leaders for a new initia-

tive on disarmament; the concurrent warning from five Latin

American presidents, two of them members of the six, that

the debt crisis can soon explode; the warnings from the UN

Committee for Development Planning; the urgings of many emi-

nent economists and economic practitioners that dangers are

being compounded, and the innumerable and unmistakable signs

that people in all countries know that their leaders can do

better and must do better if there is to be a future for

them and their children - all this is a challenge to turn away from ' 1 9 8 4 ' , to turn back to world order. I f the lead-

ing industrialised countries can respond to that challenge

with imagination and vision, UNIDO IV in Vienna will have a

chance to achieve goals that should, in 1 9 8 4 , be both cred-

ible and attainable.

IFDA DOSSIER 43 SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 1984 INTERACTIONS

THE GRASSROOTS OF THE FUTURE

by Ma jid Rahnema United Nations Development Programme Rm 2140 1 United Nations Plaza New York, NY 10017, USA

More than two billion human beings living at the grassroots level in the world "peripheries" are frustrated in their will to survive with dig- nity. In the words of the prominent Indian economist, D.L. Sheth, they have become the "untouchables" of the development age. While development strategies could be credited for some punctual achievements, primarily in the promotion of "things", they have unquestionably failed to bring about the expected improvements in the life of the peripheries. Even in those countries where development has resulted in a significant increase in GNP, the benefits have gone to the already privileged groups and people with some entitlements (land, education, social status or privileges etc.). They have not trickled further down. For the poorest, not only have the old questions of malnutrition, semistarvation, disease and destitution received no answer, but new problems have been added. In many instances, a socio-cultural variety of AIDS is already destroying the immunity defense systems which have been developed throughout the ages by the communities.

There are indeed political reasons for the failure of development strategies in reaching the impoverished and the oppressed. Yet even when certain governments (and intergovernmental organizations) have tried to reach them, the present structures of development and assistance, by touching them, have only aggravated their "untouchability". They all have been inhibiting the revitalization of communities at the grassroots level rather than promoting it.

In the first place, these structures continue to be based on the principle of developing the communities by competent outside developers as if they could not develop themselves. This infantilization of the deprived populations, added to an ideology of development which tends to consider them as objects of wider national plans rather than the living subjects of their destiny, is the primary reason why development activities do not take root in the life of the communities. These activities are perceived by the people as government activities pursued for their own purposes. And as these activities do not involve or commit them in any way, the "target populations" do not see any reason why they should waste their tine and effort in participating.

Development targets set by the centre

Secondly, development strategies are designed and promoted on the basis of nationally established priorities. This principle could be perfectly understood. Yet, what is hard for the same "target populations" to un-

derstand is that these strategies are defined almost exclusively by the development establishment and on the basis of its ova perception of the peoples' needs.

The same establishment also prepares the blue-prints for action according to its concepts of planning, of the choice and the management of resources, and of its own accountability, monitoring and evaluating systems. The whole operation, from the definition of priorities and tasks to the full implementation of projects, is thus almost exclusively per- formed through the existing bureaucracies and their professionally recognized experts and executing agents. For these, development remains a commodity that should be "delivered", according to previously adopted blueprints and criteria.

Communities at the periphery level have indeed a different perception of their development problems. They realize that, despite all the promises they had been given, the benefits of development, if any, have only gone to people who already had something. Most of them have lost both hope and faith in their "developers".

The numerous experiments, movements and organizational initiatives that have taken place at the grassroots level during the last few decades are the people's response to this situation and their decision to take their affairs into their hands, however weak these may be. As such, those represent the people's ova perception of their reality, a most authentic effort on their behalf to define the pressing and vital needs of their community and indeed their will to choose the type of action - or struggle - which they believe to be most suited to reach their goals. The success of the failure of these grassroots initiatives depends basically on two main series of factors. The first relates to their own inner strength, to the degree of peoples' awareness and social cohesion, to their organizational capacities and to the depth and solidity of the roots they have within the communities. the second relates to the perception that the governments concerned may have of such movements.

There is no doubt in my mind that the future of any genuine development process (i.e. a process, according to Webster's dictionary aimed at "un- folding gradually as a flower from a bud") depends more than ever on the manner in which governments and inter-governmental organizations choose to relate to grassroots initiatives. If the "authorities" in power decide that a given grassroots initiative is politically or otherwise dangerous to them, the latter has very little chance of immediate survival, although dramatic cases have been witnessed where the decision by seemingly powerful governments to respond by violence to well-rooted peoples' initiatives has only produced still more violent confrontations leading to revolutionary uprisings.

On the other hand, if a government has enough foresight to understand the sense and the importance of a truly community-rooted initiative, it can do much, not only for promoting its own objectives for reaching the peripheries, but also for establishing a two-way process of learning and action which would be of great benefit to both itself and to the community. The cases of grassroots initiatives that have been well-known and studied, constitute enough evidence to show that whenever a community has been led to believe in the usefulness of a collective operation, it

has revealed unexpected potentialities. Such cases have amply demonstrated that, contrary to certain beliefs, inspired and motivated communities are indeed able to organize themselves and achieve their objectives of self-development, often with much greater efficiency and lower cost, than governments or specialized organizations unfamiliar with the peoples' realities. They have also invariably shown that, under favour- able circumstances, populations committed to a common cause develop unexpected creative possibilities for finding the simplest, as well as the most creative and cost-effective, solutions to their problems on a self-reliant basis.

In establishing a two-way process of learning with such commuminities, a government can learn a lot about the dynamics of a genuinely people-rooted and participatory development process.

Moreover, if governments choose not only to give such communities all the support they might need but also to create the necessary political conditions that could encourage others to initiate similar activities, development may cease to be the delivery of a scarce commodity designed to placate the desires of the already privileged strata of the popula- t ion.

Development planners must change

The governments and inter-governmental organizations who choose to give the grassroots initiatives the attention and the support due them, realise the problem indeed only begins there. For the choice almost automatically implies an equally bold decision on their behalf, to bring about major changes in the modalities and techniques conventionally used for channelling assistance.

The reasons for this are clear. Firstly, the present structures for technical or financial assistance are the product of long-established principles and practices developed by the management systems and bureaucracies of the Northern Hemisphere in order to meet their own specific needs. Secondly, they correspond to "project" types of activities with well-defined objectives and plans of operations where almost every de- tail is foreseen in advance and calculated in terms of man-hours, exper- tise, equipment, etc.

Processes of change at the grassroots level have, at least in their initial stages, a highly qualitative and creative nature. They often represent situations where new forces and factors are called to interact with traditional modes of action and cultural attitudes. When those are introduced in a community with its own systems of self-organization and management, a kind of "chaos" is initially produced which calls for restructuring. Like dissipative structures, it is the interaction of the new inputs with the existing elements that will gradually give shape to the end product.

Under these circumstances, what should be secured, in the first place, is an atmosphere of collective belonging, of hope, of enthusiasm and of faith in the common objective. When the right forces are put together in such a "culture medium" and a process is started allowing for the right interaction of these forces, sooner or later, a new "order" emerges out of the initial "chaos". The structure which is thus shaped is often the

most suited and the most relevant to the success of the process, as only the people themselves have participated in creating it. This is undoubtedly superior to any other preconceived, alien structures which would be imposed on people's activities. This imposition would not only lead to inhibiting or blocking their creativity but would most probably meet with their resistance or opposition.

It is easy to imagine that such prospects would create serious problems for our development managers, bureaucrats and institutions who have long been addicted to the highly complex procedures set up for channelling assistance. Having closely worked with some of these institutions, and having become fully aware that they are, in turn, severely tied to certain rules of strict accountability set by their contributors and political constituencies, I perfectly understand their feelings of perplexity and total bewilderment at the prospects of having some day to deal with situations where almost nothing could be quantified, properly measured or evaluated according to their criteria.

Yet, realities are as they are. What was described above reflects only the dynamics of change and of genuine development when people at the grassroots level start organizating themselves. If we want to help them, we should try to understand these dynamics, not to ignore or to frus- trate them. Otherwise, what we do will only be counter-productive.

Development managers act on the basic assumption that their management techniques are unquestionably superior mainly on the ground that the validity of these techniques has been amply demonstrated in industrial societies. It never comes to their minds that people living in their own cultural milieus could eventually have developed other techniques that would possibly suit them better. It also never occurs to them that what could eventually work in highly industrialized societies would not ne- cessarily work in societies with completely different cultures and modes of life.

The perception from "the bottom" is of course different. In the first place, populations involved in grassroots activities strongly challenge all the claims, both of their national bureaucracies and of foreign assistance organizations, concerning the efficiency of their management techniques and other structures imposed on them. They believe they are good on paper and for the final reports. They are also useful for the cadres hired for the projects, for the payment of foreign equipment and for the routine operations related to them. But they are not at all cost- effective, they are not suited to local conditions, they are totally insensitive to the "before" and "after" periods and often leave traum- atic effects on the life of the community after the operations have ended. And while their very costly monitoring and auditing techniques are used to ensure that the funds serve only project purposes, in reality, the same structures lead to various forms of waste and corruption. Not only are most of the funds returned in one way or another to the countries of origin (experts, equipment, etc.) but they are also largely wasted in expenses related to internationally set standards of all sorts (high salaries, travel costs, social securities, cars, etc...).

This kind of structural waste and corruption is often aggravated by many "illegal" types of misappropriations of funds frequently associated with development projects (such as the personal use of project facilities and

transportation by the directors). However, these facts are always played down by the national and foreign bureaucracies both of whom have their vested interests in showing only the positive aspects of such operations.

Frustrating effect of central bureaucracies

Populations at the grassroots level feel very frustrated that, while both the foreigners and their own national bureaucracies are seldom held responsible for these negative aspects of management and planning, the same bureaucracies do everything in order to discredit the communities' abilities to organize themselves. Yet, these abilities have been demonstrated more than once. Colossal grassroots types of operations as the liberation movements in Africa, in Asia and elsewhere, have, namely, shown how ordinary people have been able to organize themselves against incredible odds, often against the most sophisticated management techniques of much more powerful adversaries.

The people at the grassroots level are therefore rejecting the myth established by developers that only "directed" development, i.e. development directed from above, can best optimize available human and material resources. Neither do they accept their assumption that "non-directed" development activities, i.e., those initiated by communities can only lead to a waste of resources, to frustrating situations or to possible upsettings in national plans and priorities. On the contrary, they are highly convinced that if let alone, or better still, if assisted on their own terms, they can indeed better organize themselves, and in such a way that would both foster the "processes" of their re-vitalization and the objectives to be achieved.

The problem lies only at the level of the outsiders. If they are genuinely interested in helping the communities, it is only natural that they adapt their techniques and structure of cooperation to the needs and realities of the communities rather than imposing on them heavy, costly and counter-productive structures of their own.

In reality, new methodologies of dialogical interaction and assistance to grass-roots initiatives are not as difficult to find as they may appear initially. The problem is only to accept that other ways of assess- ing the situation, of channelling funds and, indeed, of accountability systems are possible.

These should only be sought on the basis of the realities at the so- called "field" level, rather than on the acquired habits of "head- quarters". To base further cooperation with grassroots initiatives on people's own ways of organizing themselves and on their traditionally accepted systems of accountability could then not only be possible but also ultimately much more conducive to economy, to efficiency and to the other obje,ctives of planning, of monitoring and of evaluating. The UNDP sponsored "Fonds dtAide aux Initiatives de Base" (FAIB) in Mali has already created a good mechanism for this type of action. Along the same lines, better ideas and imaginative alternatives could be found in the future.

(Reproduced from Development and Cooporation, N06, 1983) .

EL DESPERTAR DE LOS POBLADORES

por Margarita Pacheco M.

"La casa nueva, blanca como urn paloma fue estrenada con un baize. Ursula habia concebido aquelZa idea desde la tarde en que vi.6 a Rebeca y Amaranta convertidae en adoleecentee y caei puede deciree que eZ principal motive de La constmcci6n fue e l deseo de procuror a las muchachas un lugar digno donde recibir las viei tas".

d e n 6 0 s de soledad G. Garcia Marques

Los ciudadanos que habitan asentamientos en crecimiento ya sean barrios piratas, de invasion o zonas de inquilinato en el centro deteriorado o periferia de la ciudad, estZn confrontados a problemas cotidianos por la carencia o la ineficiencia de 10s servicios ptiblicos, la calidad de la vivienda, y las dificultades de organizarse comunitariamente.

El interi5s de 10s documentos y testimonios que presentamos aqul radica justamente en la diversidad de situaciones y opciones de pobladores y t6cnicos preocupados por el medio ambiente y el desarrollo de barrios populares. Quisi6ramos que el uso de esta publicacih no se limitara a circular en Zmbitos academicos e intelectuales sino que trascendiera a un mundo 6 s amplio donde las experiencias descritas sean de alguna uti- lidad. DOS canales de comunicaci6n, uno analitico y otro pragmZtico, constituyen intencionalmente la base del intercambio de experiencias que intentamos establecer.

La gama de iniciativas en America Latina, Asia y Africa aqul presentada, y que se desconoce por la carencia de medios de informacion y difusion masiva, tiende a valorizar y multiplicar el impact0 positivo de acciones y programas realizados por pobladores organizados, creativos y comprome- tidos en el mejoramiento de su habitat.

For estas razones, El despertar de 10s Pobladores no esta dirigido sola- mente a 10s especialistas del desarrollo comunitario, del urbanismo y las ciencias sociales, sino a un publico mZs amplio que exige sencillez en el lenguaje y admite la espontaneidad y familiaridad que caracterizan 10s testimonies de habitantes rasos.

Nuestros relatores son personas que desde diferentes Zngulos participan en acciones comunitarias, ya sea como profesionales, colaboradores de grupos o asociaciones, investigadores con una trayectoria en el trabajo de campo, representantes y lideres de agrupaciones populares: mujeres y hombres proponen alternativas de soluci6n a problemas cotidianos.

Reunir en form armonica todos estos textos, respetar el lenguaje y el estilo personal de cada autor (especialmente 10s de habla inglesa y trancesa), y adaptar cada unidad a1 conjunto manteniendo fidelidad con el texto original, son tareas complejas para un aficionado a la edition. La materia prima de esta proviene del Taller-Encuentro ENDA-DABS reali- zado en 1980 en Bogota y en cuya preparation se invirtieron varies meses, tanto a nivel nacional como internacional. La "Experiencia de un

encuentro" que aparece a1 final de esta obra resume el proceso de orga- nizacion de dicho taller y 10s aspectos m& significativos que justifi- can la continuation del intercambio de experiencias iniciado allf.

Para estructurar esta edici6n hemos repartido 10s documentos y testimonios en tres secciones: una Asiatica con cuatro textos, una Africana con tres artlculos, y una Latinoamericana con ocho, de 10s cuales cuatro son colombianos.

El aparte siguiente presenta las tres entidades asociadas para esta publication: ENDA, CINEP y UNIANDES y la orientacion de cada una de ellas en el trabajo de desarrollo comunitario urbano.

En la recopilacion del material encontramos que el testimonio de Arputham Jockim (lfder comunitario en un sector de Bombay) en India, nos da las pautas para abrir las secciones geograficas. Su voz, su experiencia de lucha y de reflexion nos invitan a viajar en el tiempo y en el espacio. Con Jockim penetramos en el tema, con Banshali y Pinto en el barrio y en 10s problemas de la comunicaci6n interbarrial. Empezamos por Asia y nos vamos acercando a America Latina contactando el continente africano, a traves de relatos matizados por su contexto cultural.

En la India, el Servicio Nacional Kendra (SKN) puede actuar independien- temente y sus posiciones reivindicativas tienen cabida en un contexto politico amplio.

Para completar estas idgenes de Asia, el investigador indonesio Amir Karamoy nos da una vision crltica de la const~cci6n de multifamiliares en sectores populares de Yakarta.

La secci6n Africana esta constitufda por experiencias y analisis realizados en el Senegal, Cameriin y Zambia. El primer texto presenta la accion del proyecto CHODAK el cual intenta establecer un proceso de desarrollo urbano participativo en un barrio popular de Dakar. Este artlculo enfatiza el papel de ninbs, jovenes, y mujeres eo la economfa y en el planeamiento de 10s servicios del barrio.

El artfculo del Camerun describe las iniciativas lanzadas por pequezos empresarios y su inter6s radica en el uso de tecnologlas adecuadas a sus condiciones de production, inversion y mercado. Estas iniciativas indi- viduales, en un pals donde las cooperativas han tenido muy poco exito, incitan a pensar en nuevos frentes de trabajo que promuevan la produc- cion de bienes de consumo que no es necesario importar.

La arquitecta Anne Schlyter nos presenta un analisis sobre la necesidad de espacio en un habitat colectivo en Lusaka, Zambia y nos introduce a la probleditica de la organizaci6n de un asentamiento popular africano.

La secclon latinoamericana recopila textos del chileno Manuel Espinoza, un llder clvico de un area popular de Santiago, a quien tuvimos oportu- nidad de escuchar en Bogota exponiendo la acci6n de 10s comites de vivienda. Manuel Dlaz, un soci6logo mexicano asesor del Centro Operacio- nal de Vivienda y Poblamiento COPE-V1 en Ciudad de Mexico, Luls Chirinos, abogado peruano colaborador del Centro de Investigaci6n y Ase- soria Poblacional CIDAP, y el reverend0 Webster Edwards de Jamaica,

director de la "Operaci6n Amistad", complementan el panorama de acciones comunitarias significativas por su heterogeneidad.

Las multiples facetas de la acci6n local en Colombia estGn reflejadas a craves de 10s autores seleccionados: el analisis critic0 sobre las jun- tas de acci6n comunal que realiza Elizabeth Ungar, polit6loga de la Uni- versidad de 10s Andes en Bogota, y la description del programa de trabajo de la Junta de acci6n comunal del barrio La Manuelita que nos expone doZa Flor de Silva, tesorera de la Junta y lider cfvica de la zona de Suba, nos introducen en la probledtica de la organization popular institucionalizada.

Tambien en Bogota, la Central Nacional Provivienda CENA-PROV es una organizaci6n popular con larga trayectoria en la lucha por la vivienda para pobladores de mss bajos ingresos, SUS representantes nos explican la estrategia polltica que ha guiado la acci6n y la posici6n autocrftica que ha asumido. La "Organizaci6n de Destechados Camilo Torres" en Pereira (Risaralda) nos presenta una experiencia ejemplar en el context0 nacional por su vision integrada de la probledtica barrial y por la capacidad autogestionaria que ha demostrado para solucionar el acceso a la vivienda.

Humberto Molina, economists y planificador urbano, cierra la secci6n colombiana con un detallado analisis de las politicas de planeaci6n en Bogota y una propuesta para la legalizaci6n de 10s asentamientos popula- re6 en esta ciudad.

Con estos artfculos intentamos sentar las bases para una nueva discusion sobre el desarrollo de barrios y el potencial de la organizaci6n de 10s pobladores en dicho proceso.

Las tres entidades co-editoras de esta publicaci6n son ENDA (Medio Ambiente y Desarrollo del Tercer Mundo), el Centro de Investigaciones y Educaci6n Popular CINEP, y la Universidad de Los Andes a traves de su programs de "Desarrollo de la Comunidad". Estos organismos no guberna- mentales nos exponen sus criterios de trabajo en areas populares urbanas y las razones por las cuales apoyan el intercambio de experiencias a nivel nacional e international.

Finalmente, la "Experiencia de un encuentro" resume las propuestas y 10s interrogantes que se plantearon 10s participantes extranjeros y naciona- les durante el Taller-Encuentro Internaclonal ENDA-DABS (Distrito Admi- nistrativo de Bienestar Social) sin el cual esta edici6n no hubiera sido una realidad. A todos ellos debemos el cumulo de ideas y casos que fecundan el "Despertar de 10s pobladores". Los objetivos del Taller y de esta publication siguen siendo el de motivar el despertar de 10s pobladores, encontrar nuevos medios para comunicar 10s mensajes de solidaridad y apoyo a las iniciativas y creatividad popular.

El despertar de toe pobladores: Docwnentos y testimonies sobre e l desarrollo y Za participaci6n cornunitaria en barrios populares (US$6 par correo maritime, $12 por correo aereo). CINEP, Apartado Aereo 25916, Bogotif D. E . , Colombia.

LA DIMENSION CULTURELLE D U DEVELOPPEMENT

AVENTURE VECUE DU DEDANS OU TRANSFORMATION SUSCITEE DU DEHORS?

par Amadou-Mahtar M'Bow*

Pendant longtemps. le concept de developpement s'etait reduit, aux yeux de beaucoup, 2 la notion de croissance economique - et l'avenir avait semble se resumer dans l'accroissement continu du produit national brut. L'insuffisance d'une telle conception est maintenant de plus en plus largement reconnue.

Non seulement Ie developpement, ainsi concu, n'a pu produire au niveau materiel l'effet unifonn&ment multiplicateur qu'on avait attendu - puisqu'il a engendre la richesse aussi bien que la pauvrete, le progrss aussi bien que de nouveaux et graves problsmes; mais 11 a revel6 aussi des tendances profondement mutilantes - en dissociant souvent la vie economique de la vie tout court; en introduisant un sens exacerbe de la concurrence entre les regions, entre les differences branches de production et parfois entre les couches sociales et entre les individus; en affaiblissant Ie sens des solidarit6s essentielles au sein de certaines societes comme a l'echelle du monde.

Les limites d'une telle demarche se font desormais sentir, au Nord come au Sud de notre planste.

Dans les societes industrialisees, elle aboutit 2 ce paradoxe de donner 2 l'home les instruments d'une puissance intellectuelle et matgrielle sans precedent, d'un pouvoir sans frein sur la nature - tout en Ie pri- vant de plus en plus du recours 2 un systsme de valeurs morales et culturelles qui, seul, lui permettrait de definir les orientations du progrss come d'en controler les effets selon une vision reellement humaniste.

Cela a mene, notamment, dans de nombreux cas, 2 l'exacerbation des inegalites, 2 la disqualification acc616ree de certaines branches de la production et 2 un chomage massif, 2 un formidable gaspillage de ressources non renouvelables, 2 la pollution et plus generalement i de graves atteintes aux Gquilibres des 6cosystZmes. Face 2 un avenir dont les horizons semblent collectivement de moins en moins clairs, nous assistons 2 des desarrois 5 des anxietes grandissants.

Mais c'est surtout dans les societes du Tiers Monde que cette demarche a devoile ses defauts les plus graves. La, en effet, elle ne s'est pas deployge comme une aventure vecue du dedans, mais comme une transformation suscitee du dehors. Elle a ainsi et6 vecue come une interruption brutale des continuites historiques endoggnes.

* Extrait de ZraZZocution du Directeur gdn&raZ de I 'UNESCO 6 Z'ouvertwe de La Conference des organisations d i t e s "non gouvernementaZesv, Paris, 5 j'wn 1984.

De plus, Ie divorce entre culture et economie s'est aggrave par l'extraversion de celle-ci puisque ces pays se sont trouves engages dans un systeme qui leur impose de multiples contraintes, desorganise leurs structures 6conomiques propres et fait peser sur eux une part croissante de ses difficultes.

C'est des lors partout que se pose Ie probleme de rendre au developpement une signification plsniere - celle d'Etre 5 la fois, et indisso- ciablement, un plus-Etre et un mieux-etre, pour chacun et pour tous. C'est 5 ce niveau que s'impose, je crois, Itevidence d'une compl6menta- rite essentielle entre deux notions cles - celles d'identite culturelle et de developpement integre. Rendre 5 1'6conomie des finalites et une cohesion qu'elle ne peut puiser que dans la culture et rendre 5 la culture sa fonction vitale de regulation socio~conomique. C'est ainsi que Ie developpement peut retrouver tout son sens, celui d'un deploiement integral des virtualites de l'homme.

La communaute internationale commence 3 se rendre 5 cette evidence alors que se manifeste une tendance 5 l'emergence des singularites, 5 l'expression des identites particulisres collectives et personnelles. Les communautes ethniques ou nationales, les collectivit6s rurales ou urbai- nes, les entites culturelles ou confessionnelles cherchent 5 exprimer leur originalits propre, 5 renforcer leurs solidarites internes, a pre- server ou developper leurs langages. L'affirmation de leurs specificites paralt traduire, au coeur des difficultes de la situation actuelle et parfois sous des formes convulsives, une volonte de r6appropriation de leurs facultes creatrices, par oii elles retrouvent leur capacite globale de reaction, d'invention et de participation.

Dans Ie prolongement des spGcificit6s collectives, s'affinne aussi l'as- piration 5 11irr6ductible dignit6 de chaque personne, qui implique aussi bien Ie respect de ses droits fondamentaux que la chance effective de realiser ses virtualites creatrices, face aux menaces d'ecrasement de l'individu qui apparaissent ici et 15. Or, c'est par la culture, au premier chef, que peut se manifester, dans toute sa plenitude, l'affinna- tion croissante des personnalites collectives et individuelles, en meme temps que des possibilites d'une comprehension plus grande entre les nations et d'un rapprochement veritable entre les peuples.

C'est en effet par sa culture qu'un peuple se percoit comme tel et qu'il est en meme temps percu par Ie reste du monde. La culture definit aussi bien la personnalite propre d'une collectivite que son intelligibi1it.G aux autres; elle est la gardienne des plus intimes secrets de son histoire, mais aussi la cl6 qui rend cette histoire accessible aux autres.

L'identite culturelle d'un peuple apparait des lors come Ie principe meme de son genie createur, 5 la fois vehicule de son histoire passee et levier de son histoire 5 venir, miroir de sa double exigence de fidelite 3 sol et d'ouverture 5 autrui. C'est en prenant appui sur son identite culturelle que toute sociGt6 peut, 3 la fois, developper ses virtualites intrinseques et accueillir selectivement les apports exterieurs - et par la poursuivre Ie processus incessant de sa propre creation.

Si done Ie developpement est appele 5 etre synonyme d'un deploiement des virtualites de toute la collectivit6 et, au sein de celle-ci, de la creativite de chacun de ses membres - ce developpement doit certes

s'appuyer sur un accroissement quantitatif de biens - mais 11 doit aussi repondre 2 des valeurs communes, 2 une inspiration coherente, 5 des espoirs et des besoins partages, oG se reconnalt Ifensemble de cette collectivite et qui peuvent mobiliser ses volontes, ses energies, ses imaginations rassemblees.

C'est au regard de cette exigence qu'il paralt necessaire d'envisager Ie processus de modernisation des appareils de production et la maltrise, par chaque peuple, du savoir et du savoir-faire modernes. Dans un monde caracteris6 par un rapide progras des sciences et des techniques, il paralt evident que les sentiers de l'avenir passent, necessairement, par la maltrise des moyens que nous offre ce progrss, des modes de production, d'organisation et de communication qu'il nous permet de mettre en oeuvre. Mais une telle maltrise a pour finalit6 d'etablir de nouveaux equilibres entre les facteurs du changement et les exigences de la con- tinuite; de contribuer, non 5 etouffer mais 5 renouveler les valeurs spirituelles et morales, intellectuelles et esthetiques, essentielles 5 l'epanouissement de l'homme comae 5 la cohesion de la societe. Le progrss ne peut etre seulement synonyme d'accumulation de savoirs, de savoir-faire et de richesse; il dolt etre aussi, il doit etre surtout synonyme de creativite, de plenitude, de bonheur partages.

S'il est certain qu'aucune communaute ne peut, desonnais, se contenter de son seul patrimoine d'idees et de connaissances propres, chaque peup- Ie dolt se mettre en syntonie avec l'actuelle revolution des sciences et des techniques qui bouleverse et qui continuera de bouleverser de plus en plus la vie du monde. Mais aucun peuple ne peut reussir ce saut 5 moins d'interioriser 5 son propre souffle, et selon ses propres rythmes, la dynamique des mutations necessaires, 2 moins d'integrer cette dynamique 5 une vision pl6niSre de la vie enracinee dans les valeurs qui font son identit6 specifique.

L'UNESCO croit que les hommes sont pleinement capables, s'ils Ie veulent ensemble, de realiser cette utopie necessaire. Et que la culture - car- refour de l'universel et du singulier, du spirituel et du materiel, des permanences vitales et des ruptures creatrices - peut leur offrir les sources d'inspiration et les leviers regulateurs indispensables 2 la recherche d'un progrss scientifique et technique mis au service des plus hautes finalitss de la vie.

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FINDINGS ON DUTCH TRANSNATIONAL CORPORATIONS IN INDIA by Kristoffel Lieten University of Amsterdam Antropologisch-Sociologisch Centrum Sarphatistraat 106A 1018 GV Amsterdam, The Netherlands

During the second half of the 1970's. officials of the governments of India and the Netherlands discussed the feasability of incorporating in the terms of the Dutch development assistance to India a joint research programme on alternatives i n development. The project started in early 1981 as the Indo-Dutch Project on Alternatives in Development. One focus of research was the field of industrialisation. Under this umbrella, a group of scholars from the Jawaharlal Nehru University and the Institute of Public Administration at New Delhi, the Sardar Pate1 Institute at Ahmedabad, the University of Amsterdam and the Catholic University of Nijmegen took up four separate projects on the role and functioning of transnational corporations in India. The following note reflects on some of the findings of the project on The Role of Dutch TNC's in India, which was conducted under the directorship of professor Gerrit Huizer of the Third World Centre of the Catholic University of Nijmegen.

In a dozen reports, we have brought together empirical data on the operations of a limited number of transnationals, tracing first how India, caught in a position of confrontation with and reliance on foreign capital, has taken great care in enacting discriminatory measures. The government policy does not, however, seem to have achieved its major objectives of technological and financial self-reliance, a devolution of the concentration of economic power and a planned and rapid industrial development. The most recent apparent changes in the policy framework of the government of India indicate that a new page may be turned in the economic strategy, leading to what may be called the liberalisation of the economy.

At such a juncture, it would be useful to reflect on some of the data which our report has thrown up. The data certainly deserve close attention, although we readily admit that different approaches are possible for looking at the problem and that certain lacunae are present. In a different approach, one could have opted for a cost-benefit analysis. Such an analysis might have thrown more light on the alternative situation of a reduced presence of transnational corporations.

Our basic attempt has been to make a detailed study of the factual behaviour of some important transnational corporations and to shore up this picture of specific companies with some thematic studies of the combined Dutch companies operating in India. We admit that the factual infonna- tion may contain some omissions. The major companies concerned refused to reciprocate our requests for cooperation (. . . l .

During our work, we have tabulated sufficient evidence to reach the conclusion that a) transnationals cause a net drain on foreign resources; b) the gross outflow of foreign exchange on account of the drain of profits and of purchases of raw materials has been increasing during the last decade, in an absolute as well as in a relative sense.

Our intention to integrate calculations on the cash flow on account of transfer pricing could not be implemented. Some indices of this practice were encountered, but they were insufficient to draw sound conclusions. A specific research programme on this aspect would be advisable, both in view of the increasing imports and of the present policy stress on exports. The exports by transnational corporations, as we have seen, follow a capricious course, and do not help to realise the government objective, namely to conquer new outlets for finished products in the markets of the industrialised capitalist countries.

The equity capital structure of transnational companies in India is not basically different from the pattern pertaining in the industrial sector as a whole. The financial flow from abroad has not added significantly to the gross funds for investment. An analysis of the present flow even seems to suggest a trend in the direction of deinvestment. If anything, the transnational corporations differ from the Indian companies, except for the major monopoly houses, in the fact that a higher share of their equity derives from internal savings. The argument of the foreign firms that the retention of profits for reinvestment as an alternative to the repatriation of profits in fact constitutes a flow of capital, has some validity.

One aim which we had set ourselves was the study of the relation with the indigenous industry. Before taking up that study in a second phase. we planned to evaluate the performance of some companies. The detailed study of the entry, growth and diversification of Philips, Unilever and AKZO has confronted us with data material in respect of investments, sales, profits and employment which appear to be rather stunning, and ask for a convincing explanation. From the abundant material we could select any random sample for a thought provoking discussion. The following sample may be interesting enough:

The tax ratio as a percentage of total value-added has generally been decreasing over the years;

The share of wages has equally been decreasing, resulting in a relative increase in profitability;

Profits as a ratio of equity capital, working capital, sales as well as wages are generally on the increase, and are far above the levels reached by the corporate group internationally;

The growth of the companies in terms of sales, working capital and volume of profits exceeds by far the sectoral average of the industry;

The high profitability, which in the mid-seventies was the three- fold of the profitability in the Indian controlled private companies, leads to an outflow of resources from India;

The licensing system imposed by the government of India has not detracted the foreign companies either from entering into new areas through the take-over of existing companies with the necessary li- censes, or from producing above the permitted capacity;

The companies are generally active in product lines in which they have established and managed to maintain an oligopolistic, if not a monopolistic position;

The product range of most of the companies is generally restricted to the consumer sector, and moreover to product lines which in a number of cases have been reserved to the small scale sector and for which indigenous companies have established their own know-how;

The contribution to the overall development nf the industrial infrastructure can be considered to have been of minimal importance;

The process of Indianisation, both at the managerial and at the equity level, had started well before the government introduced its own scheme of indigenisation, and does not appear to have affected the expatriate control over the companies in the least;

The companies, one suspects, have a sufficiently developed intelli- gence and lobbying system which keeps them abreast of changes in the government policy and allows them to either plan accordingly or work for a change in policy.

The picture which thus emerged brought in focus a number of features which will contribute to a useful debate on the performance of TNC's in Third World countries and on the significance of Third World countries in the global strategy of the corporations.

The still missing link, namely the direct and indirect linkages with the rest of the economy, was vaguely indicated in a number of cases. Partic- ularly, the process of subcontracting, as noted in the case of Philips, Hindustan Lever, Lipton, Wavin, etc. opened up a new perspective of looking at the phenomenon of direct backward linkages. The many advantages associated with this system (low wages, a docile labour force, evasion of MRTP licensing procedures, absence of fixed capital, the re-installation of discarded machinery, etc.), make it into a likely vehicle for expansion by giant companies. A separate study in a limited number of industries would certainly deliver interesting results. So would a study of direct forward linkages, for which the role of Philips in the manufacturing of (colour) televisions and of NOCIL in the production of PVC-based durables could serve as illustrative examples. The absence of direct forward linkages on the other hand, as e.g. in the case of STPP production by Hindustan Lever, would complete the picture of both forward and backward direct linkages in the strategy of transnational corporations. In the present IDPAD programme, one such study has been completed, namely on Philips and the Radio Industry.

Aspects of indirect linkages, i.e. the impact on the industrial sector in terms of prices, technology, market share, etc. have been studied in two separate cases, namely HL in the detergent industry and Philips in the lamp industry. The studies have revealed that in both sectors, the TNC's concerned occupy a more dominant position than discernible from a superficial observation. A market share of over fifty percent in com- bination with the control over essential raw materials and with a much better efficiency in production, make for a complete domination over market and production factors. The threat which seems to emerge

occasionally from units in the small scale sector is by and large con- strained to a different market segment. Our suggestion for a further study would be that transnational corporations invest in those sectors in Third World countries in which they are able to establish a monopoly position. The absence of free competition which this situation entails allow them to amass superprofits, and does not compel1 them to venture into new and less profitable, albeit possibly socially more relevant sectors, such a situation seems to be the logical corrolary of the interaction between highly resourceful and productive companies ori- ginating from the Third world market economies and the much less resourceful and less efficient industrial enterprises in Third World cuun- tries. It remains to be investigated whether the concentration in mono- polised sectors, assuming that it is a general phenomon, is the outcome of the planned calculations by the international corporate group or whether it is a natural development which occurs after an initial investment in a protected market.

One of the arguments in favour of transnational investments In Third World countries is the flow of technology. Our study has shown that both the protagonists and the antagonists of this argument need to modify their position. The transnational corporations indeed do conduct R & D, and do this at a level which, in a number of cases, turns out to be higher than the national average. The import substitution policy which has been followed by the government of India till around the mid-seventies, as well as the financial concessions for research expenses, have definitely given an impetus to this development. The new trend in the direction of an export-oriented policy is likely to reduce the need for doing local research aimed at the utilisation of local raw materials. The liberal import policy which is currently being followed facilitates the import of R & D capital goods and testing material, and may strenghten a trend which has come to our notice, namely the use of Indian laboratories for the global research interests of the company.

The disaggregation of the overall research efforts has delivered fruit- ful insights in the different types of R & D undertaken. For example, the three cases studies of HL's research efforts in the field of minor oil, sisal and tissue culture, which have not been included in the report, show the differences between types of R & D. What seems to be important, from the point of view of a policy framework, is the level of technology involved. The transnational corporations in their R & D work in India make use of the local skills and know-how, and produce results at a level of sophistication which is generally comparable to the local competence. The conclusion to be drawn from this state of affairs is that the upgrading of technology in the country is not likely to be the result of the research efforts by transnational corporations.

Although the production technology has been upgraded as a result of the technical collaboration agreements, one cannot speak of a transfer of technology in these cases. The technology imported under the agreements hardly gets adopted and absorbed. One would expect this process to take place, first, within the production process of the contracting partner, and after a certain time in the other production units in the country. Our evidence suggests that the process is interrupted after the technology has been received. When a new generation technology is required, it still needs to be imported. The private character of the purchase of know-how and the accompanying purchases of capital goods, spares and raw

materials, creates islands of capital intensive production which do not foster the diffusion of technology, and even limit the multiplier effect in the sense that prospective ancilliary units are often not in a position to satisfy the specifications and measurements necessitated by the new technology. In short, the dependence of the subsidiary on the parent company for the know-how limits the linkages with the local scientific and technological infrastructure, and hence stimulates very little its development (...).

We hope that, given the openly voiced concern by many policy-makers, countervailing pressure groups, social scientists, peace activists, and church leaders, the study which we have concluded will contribute to a closer and balanced understanding of the role of transnational corporations. On a number of aspects, it will be possible to draw generally valid conclusions on the basis of the experience of India and of a limited sample of companies.

1984, AN 01 DES STRATEGIES ALIMENTAIRES ?

Sur la papier, les Strategies alimentaires avancent trSs fort. Trente, quarante Etats en ont une. Le concept s6duit. Organisations des Nations Unies, CEE, aides multi ou bilaterales enfourchent ce nouveau cheval de bataille centre Ie sous-developpement; puisse-t-11 ne pas devenir un nouveau cheval de Troie.. . Comment les Etats du Sud ne s'empareraient- ils pas egalement de ce concept puissant qui, outre les progres futurs, peut rapporter quelques financements 5 plus court terme?

Certes les echecs de la plupart des politiques agricoles et des politiques d'aide ont et6 soigneusement analyses. Certes les conceptions 6vo- luent et certaines volontes politiques s'affirment. Mais bien souvent les acteurs du developpement ne Ie savent pas. Sans information, sans tribune, comment peuvent-ils s'enrichir et temoigner?

Au moyen de son bulletin realise 5 la demande des Directions du Develop- pement du MinistSre des Relations Exterieures, Ie Reseau Strategies ali- mentaireslStrat6gies paysannes donne la parole 2 tous ceux - paysans, institutions, orgnanismes d'aide, coop6rants - qui ont leur not 2 dire pour sortir du mal-developpement agricole et alimentaire.

Au Nord come au Sud, 11 est necessaire de dialoguer pour construire des strategies alimentaires au service du developpement. Ce reseau, ce bulletin, dont les colonnes vous sont ouvertes, vous en donnent l'occasion.

(Jacques Chonchol, President, Rdseau Strategies alimentaires/StratLgies paysannes - Seer. technique, 8 Villa du Parc Montsowis, 75014 Paris).

DIFFUSION DE TECHNOLOGIE ET IDEOLOGIE Dt LA MODERNISATION

Michel Thiollent COPPE/Universidade Federal de Rio de Janeiro Engenharia de ProducZio/Organizaciio Industrial Caixa Postal 68507 21944 Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brfisil

Introduction

Nous presentons ici quelques remarques critiques sur l'une des approches les plus connues en matiSre de diffusion de technologie en milieu rural, celle de E. Rogers et F. F. Shoemaker (1971). Les principaux aspects de la critique portent sur la methodologie du modsle de recherche communicationnelle et sur la conception ideologique de la modernisation qui caracterisent l'approche consideree.

1. ModSle de recherche communicationnelle

La conception de la diffusion de technologie en milieu rural, telle qu'elle a et6 formul6e par E. Rogers, est amplement appliquee depuis les annees 60 dans different6 pays du Tiers Monde et exerce une forte influence sur les politiques de communication et de developpement. Cette conception est , aujourd'hui, objet de critiques que nous allons examiner.

L'une des critiques, formulee par Agarwal (1983), consiste dans Ie fait que l'approche de Rogers privilegie les attitudes et autres traits de la personnalit6 des individus qui adoptent les techniques modernes. En elle-meme, l'innovation n'est pas mise en question: elle est consid6ree comme donnee et sans participation des usagers. Ces derniers sont vus come simples objets sur lesquels doivent s'exercer diverses pratiques d'information et de persuasion.

La critique, plus ancienne, de Maho (1969) met 2 jour certaines limitations conceptuelles de l'approche de Rogers. Les concepts de "flux de communication", "leader d'opinion" et autres, extraits de la recherche sur les opinions et la propagande, ne s'appliquent pas sans difficult6 2 la diffusion de technologie. Dans la perspective diffusioniste, on ne trouve pas une probl6matique adequate pour la technologie qui ne se reduise pas 2 un fait d'opinion ou de persuasion. En plus de cela, d'aprss Maho, la notion d'innovation est suffisamment vague pour englo- ber l'adoption de n'fmporte quelle apparente nouveaute au sein de la population. Ce qui est design6 come etant une innovation par Ie cher- cheur ne l'est pas necessairement aux yeux de la population. Les com- plexes phenomsnes de perception et de langage, en relation avec les techniques, ne sont pas suffisamment mis en relief. L'auteur questionne egalement Ie concept d'innovateur qui est utilise pour distinguer parmi les "adopteurs" ceux qui sont "avanc6s" de ceux qui sont "retardataires". I1 observe que: "les innovateurs sont les premiers qui adoptent ou utilisent une innovation. La definition est done purement nominale, si ce n'est grammaticale. Elle derive de la notion d'innovation". (Maho, 1969:12).

De mode compl6mentaire. nous pouvons reprendre et amplifier les critiques adressees au modele de recherche communicationnelle auquel appar- tient la conception de Rogers.

Ce modele a et6 elabore aux USA, specialement pour l'analyse des effets des moyens de communication, pour la propagande et la manipulation de l'opinion publique. Dans Ie contexte de la communication de masse, ce modele a recu de s6vsres critiques aussi bien au niveau thkorique qu'i celui de ses implications ideologiques, en particulier en ce qui concerne le caractere unilateral et autoritaire des flux de communication entre lt6metteur et les recepteurs. On concede que ce modele puisse pos- s6der une certaine efficience, surtout en tant qu'instrument de rationalisation de la propagande politique et commerciale. Mats sa contribution scientifique est plutot limitee: on considers que la principale "diicouverte" qui lui est associee consiste dans Ie rzle des leaders d'opinion dans les deux "Stages" des flux de la communication. Cette "d6couverte" est attribuee ii Katz et Lazarsfeld.

L'etude de la diffusion d'innovations est considferee comme un sous-ensemble de l'etude de la communication en general. Le modele conventionnel, centre dans l'information opinative, est transpose dans 1'6tude de la diffusion de technologie. L'innovation est generiquement definie comme "idee, pratique ou objet percus comme nouveaux par un individu" (Rogers, 1971:19). Le processus de diffusion est consid6r6 du point de vue des canaux formels et infonnels et est, en lui-meme, independant de la nature ou du contenu de l'innovation.

Cette conception est essentiellement "receptionniste". Les usagers sont consider& come "recepteurs" d'information. On n'imagine pas la possibilite d'un effort conjoint de creation de techniques et de mobilisa- tion collective pour des techniques adequates ii la situation des produc- teurs. I1 est toujours presuppose que les techniques sont "import6es" par Ie groupe recepteur et, dans cette conception, 11 ne se manifeste aucun interet autour de la generation interne d'idees techniques ou de modes de diffusion dotes d'une relative autonomie.

Dans certains cas, les individus designes come etant "modernes" et "avances" sont decrits come agriculteurs riches, de bonne education, d'esprit cosmopolite et de bon niveau d'information. On peut penser que de tels agriculteurs sont plus sensibles ii l'innovation qui consiste, en fait, 2 acheter avant les autres de nouveaux tracteurs, engrais ou pesticides. Dans ce sens, l'approche que nous critiquons paralt tres lice a la sphere du march6 des biens industriels destines ii l'agriculture et des pratiques de marketing et propagande. Cette approche accorde peu d'attention ii la sphere de production, aux relations entre les "decideurs" et les travailleurs ou usagers effectifs. Dans Ie contexte d'usage des techniques, on ne prend egalement pas en consideration les informations qui sont objet de retention et qui portent sur dt6ventuels effets negatifs sur l'environnement ou la sante. De telles informations devraient Ztre inserees dans une plus ample problematique de l'innovation.

D'une manicre generate, l'approche "diffusioniste" ne met pas bien en evidence les obstacles ii la diffusion, en dehors de ceux qui sont attri- bu6s aux attitudes ou mentalitgs des individus. D'autres approches ont accord6 plus d'importance aux phenornenes de retention de l'information

dans la diffusion des connaissances, crest Ie cas, en particulier, des contributions de Roqueplo (1974) et Barbichon (1973), bien qu'en dehors du contexte specifiquement rural.

Finalement, l'etude de l'information technologique, avec ses aspects de diffusion et de retention, ne nous paralt pas separable de l'analyse des conditions socio-economiques du milieu considere. Par exemple, la structure de la propri6tE rurale exerce un effet de concentration aussi bien au niveau de la terre et du revenu qu'2 celui de la technique et de l'information. En plus de cela, les economistes ont l'habitude de considerer que le faible cout de la main d'oeuvre contribue 2 llmlter la diffusion des innovations techniques potentiellement applicables.

Toutes ces remarques convergent dans le sens d'indiquer les insuffisances du modsle conventionnel de recherche communicationnelle applique 2 l'innovation technologique.

2. Ideologie de la modernisation

Dans l'approche de la diffusion de technologie que nous examinons, aussi bien au Iowa qu'en Inde ou au Bresil, Ie monde rural est vu come etant compose d'individus statistiquement distribues en cinq categories: innovateurs, adopteurs avances, majorit6 avancee, majorite retardee et retardataires. Cette distribution renvoie Z une opposition generique entre les individus modernes (avances) et traditionnels (arrieres). I1 s'agit d'une representation du monde rural sans classes. L'unique "con- flit" reconnu est une opposition de type "moderne" contre "traditionnel" qui, peu 2 peu, se resorbe par la diffusion du modernisme par les moyens de communication. Au nom de l'ideologie de la modernisation, on pretend promouvoir les valeurs et attitudes positives associees au changement, 2 la technologie, la science, la rationalite. le cosmopolitisme et l'empathie. Cette ideologie a et6 elaboree dans les annees 50, prin- cipalement aux USA. Avec elle, on pretend changer la mentalit6 traditionnelle des populations rurales du Tiers Monde par lfintenn6diaire d'une combinaison des effets des moyens de communication de masse et de l'influence personnelle des agents de developpement, y compris ceux qui sont fonctionnaires d'organismes des pays de la metropole. Cette idsolo- gie trouve dans les oeuvres de Rogers une formulation assez achevee qui est presentee come approche "scientifique".

Come 1'a montr6 J. de Sousa Martins (1975) , cette meme ideologie modernisatrice a et6 amplement divulguee au Bresil parmi differentes categories d'agents qui agissent dans le domaine rural (vulgarisateurs, assis- tantes sociales, communicateurs, etc.). Parmi ces agents, la representation de l'homme rural est fortement stereotypee et centrge autour des prejuges de classe doyenne urbaine. I1 faut noter egalement que cette ideologie n'est pas une simple illusion: elle accompagne la penetration des pratiques capitalistes 2 la campagne.

Ceux qui critiquent l'ideologie de la modernisation ne sont pas tous partisans du retour au passe. Les arguments qui nous paraissent les plus pertinents portent sur l'evaluation sociale et ecologique des dites innovations. Par le fait de fetichiser le modernisme, les partisans de l'ideologie de la modernisation sent pratiquement "aveugles" aux effets negatifs de l'introduction de techniques qui, pour Gtre "modernes" seraient automatiquement "bonnes" et plus "efficaces". A partir des

annees 70, avec Ie developpement de la conscience Ccologique, l'ideologie de la modernisation a commence 5 Etre serieusement critiquee.

Quelques-unes des impasses de la conception dominance en matiere de modernisation rurale ont et6 analysees, dans Ie contexte bresilien, par Graziano Net0 (1982). L'auteur montre qu'en &change d'une plus grande rentabilite immediate, beaucoup d'innovations mecaniques et biochimiques provoquent une serie d'effets desastreux sur Ie plan 6cologique (6ro- sion, desertif ication, empoisonnements, etc. ) et sur Ie plan social (appauvrissement, exode, etc.). Un des exemples donnes est celui de la technique de labour profond, adaptee au climat tempere qui, sous climat tropical, detruit les sols. La diffusion de techniques modernes est com- mercialement pressionnee par les int6rZts des grandes entreprises industrielles - multinationales pour la plupart - qui recourent aux medias et 5 diverses formes d'assistance technique.

Dans Ie monde entier, on volt augmenter Ie nombre d'etudes sur les inadequations commises au nom de l'ideologie de la modernisation. Par exemple, de rgcentes etudes montrent que 1'"innovation" qui consiste 5 substituer les buffalos par des tracteurs dans la riziculture de Sri Lanka exerce des effets n6gatifs sur la production et la population (Senanayake, 1983). I1 serait possible de multiplier les exemples, tous marques par la faute d'une adequate prise en consideration des implications 6cologiques et sociales.

L'approche rogerienne est apparemment neutre en ce qui concerne les effets negatifs de certaines techniques. Mais, come nous l'avons dej2 vu, I'innovation est definie come etant n'importe quelle chose nouvelle, sans reelle mise en question. Les eventuelles consequences sont laissges de c6t6, pour etre etudl6es 5 posteriori. L'apparente neutra- lit6 est tres superficielle; en effet, tout l'"6difice" repose sur les fondements normatifs de 1'"id~ologie modernisatrice", c'est-5-dire la conception capitaliste du developpement proposee (ou imposee) au Tiers Monde par les metropoles. En plus de ce qui precede, nous pouvons indiquer d'autres possibilit6s critiques applicables aux discours sur modernisme et traditionalisme. Observons. en passant, que les approches sociologiques qui polarisent ces deux notions ont "et6 l'objet de s6vSres critiques, y compris dans Ie contexte des etudes sur la "marginalit6" urbaine (Perlman, 1977).

Dans Ie cas particulier de la conception du modernisme et du traditionalisme adoptee par Rogers et autres, nous pouvons examiner la fausse neutralit6 de l'etude des normes sociales qui, de categories d'analyse, se transforment en veritables normes de conduite acceptees sans relativisme culture!. Les normes de modernisme renvoient 5 l'orientation favorable au changement, au developpement technologique, 2 la methode scientifique, 5 la rationalit6 ou cosmopolisme et 5 l'empathie. Les normes de traditionalisme sont l'oppos6 de chacun des six aspects precedents considtires par Rogers et dont la typologie est inspiree par Parsons, Redfield et Weber.

A notre avis, une analyse faite 2 partir de tels critsres exclusifs, sans reconnaissance des differences culturelles, ne peut pretendre 5 l'objectivite et 5 la neutralite. Dans Ie meilleur des cas, ce serait une evaluation faite 5 partir d'une selection de criteres normatifs qui, en elle-meme, presente toujours un caractere arbitraire. Pourquoi ces

criteres et non d'autres? La "fermeture" qui est donnee 5 la definition des composantes du modernisme et du traditionalisme peut etre plus ou moins justifiee, mais il ne nous parazt pas exister en sociologie les moyens d'une caution scientifique pour une telle justification.

L'evaluation ne doit pas Ztre confondue avec l'analyse. L'evaluation est seulement une projection d'une echelle de normes (et valeurs) qui sont definies i ltint6rieur d'une cosmovision propre 5 une soci6t6 plus "ddeveloppee" et, en particulier, 2 un groupe privilegie. Les "descriptions" obtenues 2 partir de ce cadre sont, de ce fait, evaluatives et leurs categories sont normees dans une forme de vie etrangere 5 celle des populations-cibles de l'innovation. Les recherche5 dans lesquelles sont confondus Ie normatif et Ie descriptif ne possedent pas l'objecti- vit6 et la neutralit6 que les chercheurs empiristes pretendent atteindre. Ces derniers finissent par considerer les normes non pas come un objet d'analyse, mais come une echelle de preference ou de jugement des personnes ou des situations sous observation. Ce qui les conduit 2 6tudier les populations non pas come elles sont, mais come elles devraient Ztre pour s'approcher de l'ideal du modemisme occidental qui, en fait, n'est pas universellement accept6.

Les normes de modernisme sont inserees dans des discours dont la realit6 designee n'est pas necessairement ce que l'on croit. Leur signification est beaucoup plus li6e au contexte des discours, socialement situes du cSt6 des metropoles. Cette "localisation" est importante pour eviter diverses formes d'absolutisation dans la "description" du moderne et du traditionnel.

Notre remarque critique ne conduit pas, cependant, 5 nier Ie "fonds de realite" qui existe dans les descriptions "6valuatives" du modernisme et du traditionalisme en milieu rural. I1 s'agit seulement de souligner la presence d'une distorsion id6ologiquement qualifiee, avec appui des concepts et m6thodes utilises dans l'approche examinee.

3. Recherche d'alternatives

I1 est clair que Ie modele de recherche en diffusion de technologie que nous critiquons, vieux de plusieurs decennies et d6veloppe par des mil- liers de chercheurs dans Ie monde, ne sera pas substitue du lour au len- demain. Soulignons la necessaire modestie en matisre de recherche d'alternatives. Cependant, au plan international, on constate que s'accrois- sent les efforts de recherche d'alternatives.

Selon Agarwal (1983), il existe des alternatives qui ont d6j2 6te expe- rimentees en Asie. Leur principale caracteristique consiste dans Ie fait qu'elles cherchent 5 faire participer les usagers dans la creation et l'adaptation des innovations, avec mise 5 profit de la connaissance propre, des aptitudes et experiences pratiques de la population. Une telle orientation suggere de nouvelles normes qui renvoient 5 l'adaptation des techniques aux conditions locales, 2 la preservation des capacites traditionnelles et 2 la limitation de la dependance 2 l'egard du monde ext6rieur.

Une orientation convergence est sugggree par Herrera (1981) qui propose: (a) l'usage de la "connaissance locale" des usagers dans la creation de la technologie rurale appropriee aux conditions de l'environnement et

(b) la "participation locale" des int6resses dans les programmes de developpement, celle-ci devant etre considerge non seulement come con- dition id6ologique. mats aussi come exigence opgrationnelle.

Ce sont lii quelques principes ii partir desquels la reconstruction d'une problematique de la creation devrait rester 5 l'abri de l' "ethnocen- trisme" de l'ideologie de la modernisation et des divers aspects ante- rieurement critiques. Ainsi, la diffusion de technologie ne serait pas separee du contexte de creation et d'usage effectif considere sous ses aspects sociaux, culturels et 6cologiques. Au lieu des normes de modernisation "aveugles", d'autres normes seraient promues en direction du respect des conditions de vie et de la prise de conscience appropri6e aux obstacles et moyens d'action.

Un programme d'6tude de l'innovation technologique devrait contenir une forte composante evaluative (sans contusion avec la base descriptive) dont les critsres seraient explicitement formules pour appr6cier les conditions et cons6quences sociales de l'introduction des techniques. Dans les recherches sur l'innovation et la communication, cela peut se traduire en incorporant une preoccupation de type "&valuation sociale de la technologie" (Thiollent, 1982). Ainsi, l'innovation ne serait pas vue sans prise de consideration de ses multiples implications, non limitees S la rentabilit6 Gconomique et 5 la persuasion ideologique.

Dans certains cas, on pourrait imaginer la possibilit6 de recourir aux methodes de recherche participative ou de recherche-action, dont Ie role conscientisateur est bien connu dans les domaines de lt6ducation, de la communication et de l'organisation (Thiollent, 1983). Avec de telles methodes, on peut ouvrir de nouveaux champs d'application et de nouvelles formes d'action differences de celles qui sont associees au conventionnel modsle de recherch'e en communication.

Conclusion

Nous avons r6uni quelques critiques au sujet de la conception courante de la diffusion de technologie en milieu rural. Les insuffisances et les distorsions de l'approche rogerienne ont et6 soulignees, en particulier au niveau de sa traditionnelle m6thodologie de recherche communicationnelle, et 2 celui des concepts et de l'ideologie de la modernisation sous-jacente. Nous avons note une insuffisance en matiere de conscience 6cologique. et une distorsion normative qui porte atteinte 2 la neutralit6 et 2 110bjectivit6 de l'approche.

Finalement, nous indiquons quelques lignes d'orientation pour une conception differente, dans laquelle les questions de diffusion seraient mises en relation avec la creation, la capacit6 de connaissance propre, la participation de la population et les conditions sociales, cultu- relies et 6cologiques du contexte.

. Bina Agarwal, "Diffusion of Rural Innovations: Some Analytical Issues and the Case of Wood-burning Stoves" in World ~evelo~ment (11, N04, 1983) pp.359-376.

. Guv Barbichon, "La diffusion des connaissances sicentifiques et techniquesu in S. Moscovici (Org.) Introduction 5 la psychologi~ sociale (Paris: Larousse, 1973) tome 2, pp.329-363.

. Francisco Graziano Neto, Questao Agrzria e Ecologia - Crftica de Moderna Agricultura (Sao Paulo: Brasiliense, 1982) 156pp.

. Arnilcar 0. Herrera, "The Generation of Technologies in Rural Areas" in World Development (9, ?l, 1981) pp.21-35.

. Jacques Maho, "Diffusion de l'innovation: Valeur et limites de quelques concepts" in Epistgmologie sociologique (NW8, 1969) pp.3-22.

. Jose de Sousa Martins, Capitalism0 e Tradicionalismo (Sao Pdulo: Pioneira, 1975).

. Janice Perlman, 0 Mito da Marginalidade. Rio, Paz et Terra. (1977).

. Everett M. Rogers & F. Floyd Shoemaker, Communication of Innovations: A Cross-Cultural Approach (New York: Free Press, 1971) 2a. ed.

. Philippe Roqueplo, Le partage du savoir - Science, culture, vulgarisation (Paris: Seuil, 1974).

. Rani1 Senanayake, "The Ecological, Energetic and Agronomic Systems of Ancient and Modern Sri Lanka" in The Ecologist (13. No4, 1983) pp.136-140.

. Michel Thiollent, "Avaliacao, social da tecnologia" in Revista Brasileira de Tecnologia (13, N03, 1982) pp.49-53.

. Michel Thiollent, "Problemas da metodologia de pesquisa-acao" in J. Marques de Me10 (coord.) Teoria e Pesquisa em Comunicacao. Panorama Latino-Americana (Sao Paulo: Cortez-Intercom, 1983) pp.130-138.

LETTERS

FROM MEXICO:

Quiero agradecer a usted, profundamente, por la nota aparecida en el IFDA Dossier 40, de fecha marzo-abril del ano en curso, en que hacen un relate de la injusticia de que ful victima. Debo informarle que estoy en libertad desde el 4 de abril pasado y aunque la sentencia fue minima, he apelado ante la Suprema corte de Justicia de la Naci6n porque no acepto ningun cargo por minimo que sea. Gracias a1 apoyo recibido de organiza- clones de todo el mundo, como la de ustedes, pude enfrentarme a la presi6n del Estado, para distraer mi trabajo en favor de 10s indlgenas, 10 cual no les di6 resultado.

Dr. Salornon Nakmad Sitton, Mexico

FROM UGANDA:

I recently had an opportunity to use the IFDA Dossier and I feel it is a document one should not miss in a library collection. I wish, therefore, to ask for your kindness to include my address on your nailing list to receive the periodical regularly.

John Kakaire Menya, Kampala

FROM COLOMBIA:

En primer lugar quiero agradecerles el envio permanente que han venido haciendo de 10s diferentes numeros del IFDA Dossier. Esta publicaciSn me es muy Gtil tanto a nivel te6rico como practice en mi trabajo. Yo continue trabajando en la primera investigation sobre uso de tiempo que se hace en mi pals. Ademas tengo gran inter6s en todo 10 relacionado con estudios sobre el tiempo y el ocio, tecnologlas apropiadas, ecologla y, en general, todo 10 referente a alternativas de desarrollo con un punto de vista humane.

Juan Cami 20 Rodriguez Gdmez, Bogota

FROM BELGIUM:

I received your IFDA Dossier for July/August this morning. I have to tell you that I always read your magazine with great interest. It is very well written, very readable, and very interesting. We are now organising a mini-consultation on Lom6 I11 - a viewpoint of the churches. The agenda will be built around an analysis of recently published church material on Lom6 111. This analysis will be made by Tom Draisma of the Ecumenical Research Exchange in Rotterdam, who is a member of the JTF. We will invite both church people and negotiators to this conference (ACP and the Commission/Council). The conferenre will be held on 20/21 September.

Ria de Vent, Executive Secretary, Joint Task Force on Development Issues, Brussels

I F D A DOSSIER 43 NEWS FROM THE T H I R D SYSTEM

AS1 AN REGIONAL EXCHANGE FOR NEW ALTERNATIVES

Asian Regional Exchange for New Alternatives (ARENA) was founded in July 1980 at a Founding Consultation of Asian Researchers and Scholars. The programme has been formulated with an aim to bring and knit together scholars, intellectuals and action-oriented researchers as a community on the basis of common goals and mutual recognition of the varied intellectual efforts and orientations needed for human and social progress in Asia. Different organizational, institutional and non-institutional forms of interaction exist owing their inspiration and history to the very social, cultural, ethnic and religious diversities manifest in Asia. ARENA while collaborating with ongoing efforts, seeks to provide a forum for Asian social researchers and scientists, for the exchange of ideas, sharing of experiences and lessons and for the critical analyses of alternative perspectives for social transformation, development and human progress in Asia.

ARENA relates to a section of unestablished, younger scholars from the university/academic system, independent, unorthodox groups and centres of study and research and grass-root organizations within Asia. A common vision that the strengthening of intellectual efforts and traditions is an important dimension of development and a deep social commitment and concern about the developmental processes in each of their societies links them together as a network.

Activities: ARENA activities are focussed around:

1. Inter-flow of individual country experience with reference to (i) actual experiments in development and change, (11) theoretical, empirical studies and enquiries about particular processes of development and (Hi) alternative development perspectives.

2. Providing resources to strengthen local initiatives especially in the field of research, training and alternative means of communica- t ion.

3. Dissemination of research and studies for the promotion of and contribution to Asian perspectives within a global context of development and social transformation.

4. Participation and interaction as a Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) through (1) relevant agencies within the UN system, with regard to research cooperation such as the United Nations University and (11) membership in professional associations such as the Asso- ciation of Asian Social Science Research Councils (AASSREC).

Research:

The main thrust of ARENA being interdisciplinary research promotion and cooperation in Asia, research activities are organized through linking up with ongoing national research activities and initiation of specific research projects on a country, multi-country, and regional basis. Re- search concerns of ARENA are focussed on study themes such as (i) 'State

of social sciences and social research' (ii) social movements, (iii) TNCs, (iv) women's question and (v) ethnic, religious and linguistic problems. Specific research activities are underway on:

(i) Urban social movements: protest, participation and transformation.

(ii) Ethnicity, integration and development.

(ill) Grassroot rural experiments: information and social change.

(iv) Women, law and participation.

Publications:

Dissemination of ARENA work and promotion of Asian interaction is done mainly through the publishing activity of ARENA, which includes: 'Asian Exchange' a quarterly bulletin published from the ARENA Hong Kong Cen- tre, occasional research and seminar papers and books.

Sub-Regional Fora:

The programmes of ARENA are also carried out with a special emphasis on sub-regional activity and interaction. For this purpose the regional coverage of ARENA is sub-divided into three sub-regions, East Asia, South-East Asia and South Asia. Sub-regional activities, such as enquiries, sub-debates and workshops on themes that specifically address the sub-regional realities are coordinated from Tokyo, Bangkok and Bombay.

Consultancy:

ARENA offers consultancy services in research, development project evaluation etc. to relevant national, regional and international organizations and agencies.

Council:

The council is the policy-making body of ARENA, which"plans, guides and reviews the work of ARENA. The council meets once in two years.

Steering Committee:

The implementation of policies and perspectives formulated by the ARENA Council Meeting are done through the ARENA HK Centre, headed by a full-time coordinator, who is assisted by an appropriate team of support staff. Concrete planning for the implementation of the perspectives and policies drawn-up by the ARENA Council, ensuring the work of the ARENA HK Centre and mobilising the financial and other resources for the work of ARENA is done by a Steering Committee elected by the Council. The Steering Committee members represent each of the sub-regions in Asia, with one member elected to the Steering Committee as a regional overview adviser and the coordinator of the ARENA HK Centre who is an ex-officio member of the Council represented on the Steering Committee.

(For further information: Rrn A4, Block G, 2nd Floor, Hung Horn Bay Centre, 104-108 Baker Street, Hung Horn, KowZoon, Hong Kong).

7 4

THE INTERNATIONAL CENTRE FOR ETHNIC STUDIES The Ethnic Dilemma

Ethnicity is no longer an unique concept either to social scientists or policy-makers. It has achieved a dynamism and demonstration-effect which is clearly recognised, but has yet to be understood. The recent outpouring of research material, scholarly articles and journals which attempt to come to terms with ethnic tension is symptomatic of worldwide concern over the persistent revival of ethnic conflict. The ethnic factor is often the primary motivating force in international politics and usually the major divisive issue in policies for national development and integration. The unique feature raised by ethnic tension is that the universalist ideologies of liberalism, socialism and communism have always down-played the importance of ethnicity as a remnant from an ancient more feudal era. As a result these ideologies per se no longer appear to contain easy answers or exhaust all policy approaches. No single nation, rich or poor, capitalist or socialist has a monopoly of the problem - or of the solution.

Ethnicity, being primarily a question of "horizontal integration", is interwoven in a complex manner with a whole host of other intractable issues. Ethnic conflict is constantly acerbated by mass poverty, access to resources, human rights, national integration and issues of international peace and security. It is at once the instrument of national integration and the darkhorse of internal disharmony and discord. Through ethnic consciousness is often irrational and uncompromising it also provides the healing bond of community, that which gives depth to human civilization and culture. It continues to liberate enslaved nations, but also anchors them to a local parochialism. Ethnic consciousness is unique in that it contains within it the forces or fanaticism and small-mindedness, and yet especially in Third World societies, it raises expectations of a new society, "an attempt to pre- serve the past and transform it into something new, to create a new type upon ancient foundations".

Scholars have pointed out that a certain consciousness of ethnicity has always been important in human history. However, present day ethnic revival, sustained by the ideology of nationalism, seeks the creation of legal and political instruments which will maximise ethnic interest. This new self-consciousness, coupled with an active assertion of legiti- macy gives present-day ethnic conflict a scope and intensity which did not exist in earlier eras. As a result ethnicity is no longer a descriptive concept, but an assertion of political power and identity. The international concept of nation-state is now given the content of ethnic self-determination. Past ideologies and strategies which minimise the role and function of ethnicity may have to be revised and restated so as to better reflect the experience of contemporary society.

Ethnicity then remains one of the greatest challenges to modern social theory as well as to creative political innovation. It calls for indepth cultural understanding as well as a process of astute political management. It is in this context that a group of scholars and individuals concerned with issues of public policy have established the Inter- national Centre for Ethnic Studies (ICES) in Sri Lanka to encourage comparative discussion and cross-national exchange.

The Objectives of the ICES

Despite the outpouring of scholarly articles, research in the area of ethnic studies has been primarily concerned with either empirical research on particular ethnic groups or a general theoretical understanding of the "Ethnic Factor". The ICES has been created with a different emphasis in mind and to fill an important gap in ethnic studies research. Firstly, the Centre will engage in comparative research so as to develop a data base which is cross-national and which captures experience and knowledge in a variety of different cultural settings. Sec- ondly, the Centre will be policy-oriented, with a special emphasis on conflict resolution. It is hoped that the findings of the Centre will lead to discussion of concrete issues and the development of alternative solutions which may help alleviate the negative aspects of ethnic rivalry and conflict.

The origins of the Centre must be traced back to the workshops at Taita Hills (1981), Trincomalle (1982) where the basic rationale for research in this was articulated. As the original project proposal stated there were essentially four fundamental objectives which motivated scholars to initiate this new Centre for Ethnic Studies:

a) the advancement of human rights; b) contribution towards national cohesion; c) advancement of international peace; d) contribution towards a more equitable development process.

More specifically, the ICES was conceived with the intention of giving a clear focus and identity to issues of ethnic conflict, to provide a means for a regular exchange of information and to help shape and stimulate comparative research in the area of ethnic studies. Sri Lanka was chosen as the home for the Centre because of its geographical loca- tion and its relatively free intellectual life.

The specific objectives of the Centre are:

1. to provide a clear institutional focus and identity for study and understanding of the management of ethnic conflict;

2. to stimulate cross-national comparative research in ethnic policy studies;

3. to bring together scholars, policy-makers, academics and those in public life for dialogue and mutual learning, and

4. to indirectly encourage experimentation with innovative policy and action approaches that hold promise in the resolution of ethnic conflict.

In pursuit of these objectives, the Centre seeks to encourage policy research, serve as a secretariat for information exchange, and facilitate practical co-operation between countries to resolve ethnic conflict in specific settings.

In its research role, the Centre seeks to stimulate interest in policy-relevant work by bringing scholars together to shape an agenda which they may then pursue in their own countries.

Technical co-operation seeks to encourage exchange of specific concrete knowledge on countries with comparable problems and relevant experience. Practitioners are rarely well-informed about efforts of other countries in coping with ethnic problems. The Centre proposes to match practitioners charged with policy formulation or programme implementation in one country with counterparts in other countries with relevant experience. By carefully selecting key persons and exchange sites, the Centre hopes to broaden options within countries and help them avoid "reinventing the wheel".

The Centre has two offices, one located in Kandy, housing the documentation centre, and specializing in historical and social science research. The second, located in Colombo, maintains the Centre's international links, and with proximity to the Law Faculty and the country's political institutions specializes in socio-legal research. The ICES staff is completely Sri Lankan. However, the ICES, in collaboration with the Univer- sity, is hoping to institute a Visiting Fellowship Scheme which will allow international research scholars to spend some time in Sri Lanka researching on ethnic-related issues. The Centre maintains its international links through its directors and a system of corresponding- members from different parts of the globe. The corresponding-members assist the Centre in suggesting participants for workshops, in developing ideas for research projects, in implementing projects and in helping to edit final reports and publications of the Centre. They are on its regular mailing list and receive complimentary copies of the Centre's publications and reports including the newsletter Ethnic Studies Report.

Themes of Research and Workshops

The research and workshop components of ICES current on-going programme fall into four areas:

a. Ethnicity and legal political structures - including workshops and research on the judiciary and devolution.

b. Ethnicity and social status - including workshops on religion, culture, education and women and certain select minorities,

c. Policy studies and ethnicity - including studies into Sri Lanka's national ethnic crisis and attempts to bring about a national consensus on ethnic-related issues. In addition a proposal for an international task force on ethnic issues is being sponsored by the Centre.

d. State of the art reports - reports on the nature of research and analysis currently available on ethnic studies within particular countries or regions.

Three international workshops were held by ICES during the course of its first year:

. The role of the Judiciary in Plural Societies (Surajkund, India);

. Theories of Equality in the Religious and Cultural Traditions of Asia (Colombo, Sri Lanka, December 1983);

Muslim minorities in Sri Lanka, South and South-East Asia (Colombo, January 1984).

The publication programme of ICES was launched this year with Goldman, Wilson (ed.) From Independence to Statehood, Managing Ethnic Conflict in Six African and Asian States (London: Prances Pinter). Forthcoming titles include:

. The Role of the Judiciary in Plural Societies with papers covering India, Sri Lanka, the Philippines and Malaysia,

. Theories of Equality in the Religious and Cultural Traditions of Asia: this volume will include a conceptual chapter on human rights, equality and religious traditions, an overview of Asian religious traditions and papers dealing with Theravada Buddhism, Mahayana Buddhism, Christianity, Islam, Taoism, Confucianism.

. Problems in Ethnic Integration - The Muslim Minorities in South & South-East Asia with papers dealing with India, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Malaysia and Nepal.

. Education and Integration of Ethnic Minorities with papers covering Germany, Japan, Nigeria, Israel, Sri Lanka, USA and France.

ICES publishes a quarterly entitled Ethnic Studies Report with articles and book reviews on ethnic issues.

(For further information: ICES, 8 Kyneey Terrace, Colombo 8, Sri Lanka)

LES SERVICES JURIDIQUES EN MILIEU RURAL

Sous ce titre a eu lieu en avril dernier 5 Tambacounda (Senegal) un seminaire organise par 1e Conseil des Organisations non-gouvernementales d'aide au developpement (CONGAD) et la Commission internationale de juristes (CIJ).

Le seminaire a r6uni une trentaine de participants, dont 13 juristes et 15 representants d'ONG de developpement. Ont egalement pris part aux travaux deux paysans senegalais du village de Bamba ThialSne et Mme Sonia Helena Moraes, directrice de 1'Association bresilienne de r6forme agraire (ABRA) . Les debats ont fait ressortir, entre autres:

. les difficult6s de receptivite du droit en milieu rural;

. l't5laboration des textes legislatifs et reglementaires concernant les populations rurales sans la participation de celles-ci;

. la nCcessit6 imperieuse d'assurer la diffusion du droit en milieu rural;

. la meconnaissance chronique de ses droits les plus elementaires qui caracterise Ie monde rural.

L'experience brgsilienne d'assistance juridique en milieu rural pr6sen- tee par Mme Moraes a suscite un vif int6rSt. meme si les realitss senegalaises sont, i certains Sgards, differences des r6alit6s bresi- liennes. Toutefois, du point de vue de la methodologie de la formation parajuridique, Ie seminaire retiendra une partie de 1'approche bresilienne.

La strategic du FLAG (Free Legal Aid Group - Philippines) et un programme preliminaire d'orientation pour la formation parajuridique fond6 sur l'experience indienne, ont 6tG 6galement discutgs.

Les trois groupes avaient respectivement pour objectifs:

Groupe I : identification des problsmes juridiques qui se posent en milieu rural;

Groupe I1 : profil et formation du "parajuriste" en milieu rural;

Groupe 111: recherche et action - modalit66 d'intervention..,

Les participants ont 6galement visit6 Ie Projet OFADEC et discut6 avec les populations rurales. Le projet OFADEC est inspire de la "self-reliance" (d6veloppement autonome); il a beaucoup retenu l'attention des participants, surtout en ce que les communaut6s concern6es gerent elles-mzmes leur affaires.

Le s6minaire a cr66 un Comite de suivi compose de juristes et de representants d'ONG de d6veloppement avec pour mandat de structurer un projet-pilote de formation parajuridique en milieu rural; d'organiser au Centre de Bopp (Dakar) un s6minaire dt6valuation; d961aborer 2 la meme occasion un projet, 5 1'6chelle nationale, d'assistance juridique en milieu rural.

Les travaux du seminaire feront l'objet d'une publication.

(CIJ, BP 120, 1224 Genave, Suisse; CONGAD, Centre de Bopp, BP 6070, Dakar, S M g a l )

LE CENTRE JOSUE DE CASTRO

Le Centre d'etude et de recherche Josue de Castro, association de droit prive i but non lucratif, a et6 fond6 le 4 octobre 1979 et a son siege i Recife, Bresil.

Le Centre est un organisme de recherche, d'gtude et d'intervention dans la realit6 sociale et 11 a le Nordeste du Bresil come zone privilegiee pour ses activites. I1 a et6 fond6 par un groupe de professeurs, de chercheurs et de techniclens, preoccupes par le manque et la dispersion des etudes sur la realit6 sociale et, plus particulierement, par Ie fait que ces travaux n'etaient pas mis 2 profit pour ameliorer les conditions de vie des secteurs les moins favorises de la societe. Le Centre cherche ainsi % developper un travail de defense des interzts de ces secteurs a partir d'etudes precises sur la realit6 sociale.

Les membres du Centre sont organises en groupes de travail. Actuelle- ment, il y en a douze: education (7), sante (Z), syndicalisme, force de travail, politique, technologie ( l ) , etudes agraires (2).

Activites du Centre pour la periode 1979-1982

. Manifestations culturelles dans une comunautE de bas revenu de la region metropolitaine de Recife (RMR).

. Structure et representation syndicale.

. Recensement des activitgs productives du secteur informel de la commune dlOlinda.

. Developpement et systematisation de methodologies alternatives d'organisation des populations 2 has revenus.

. Escola viva rural: une alternative de materiels didactiques pour le soutien de la scolarisation de la population rurale.

. Escola viva urbana.

. Recensement des conflits sociaux dans la zone rurale de Pernambuco.

. Mobilite de la main d'oeuvre: etude de cas dans les industries sub- ventionnees par la SUDENE dans la region metropolitaine de Recife.

. Tendances electorates dans la RMR.

Le Centre Josue de Castro a en outre organise douze seminaires autour des themes suivants: structure et representation syndicale; crise en Pologne; salaires et mobilite de la main d'oeuvre; production des connaissances; journalisme et conjoncture electorate; assistance technique aux partis et parlements: Bresil, Espagne, Venezuela; partis politiques et societe au Bresil; le comportement electoral dans la region metropolitaine de Recife; methodologie des recherches socio-economiques; evaluation des resultats nationaux des elections de novembre 1982; debat sur des experiences dans le domaine de l'education; organisation de la Centrale unique des travailleurs au Bresil.

(Centre Josu.6 de Castro, Rua Earao de Sao Borja 4.95, Boa Vis ta Recife 50000, Ergsi 11.

AN OUTLINE OF JAPANESE NON-GOVERNMENTAL ORGANIZATIONS IN DEVELOPMENT COOPERATION

1. First Study on Japanese NGOs: Today, most people in the world would be able to name one or two Japanese companies. However, very little is known about Japanese non-profit, non-governmental organizations.

This is no wonder if we consider that even in Japan, nobody had an accu- rate knowledge of NGOs before perhaps 1981. At that time, some people who were interested in the activities of non-governmental organizations got together under the name of NGO study group to undertake a survey on Japanese development-oriented NGOs. Eventually, in 1983, this group published a directory of NGOs with financial and other support from Asso- ciation for Promotion of International Cooperation (APIC) and Inter- national Development Center of Japan (IDCJ).

The results of this study were striking. While only 35 Japanese NGOs were listed in the "Directory of Non-Governmental Organizations in OECD Member Countries Active in Development Co-operation" published in 1981, the NGO study group has discovered that there were many more - at least 118. If the 42 study groups and cultural exchange groups, the 29 groups providing scholarship to foreign students, and 44 other groups which were supposed to be engaged in development cooperation, but did not respond to the questionnaire were included, the number would be well over 200.

However, a few of these groups had to be eliminated from the list because they did not meet the criteria of being a NGO: a private, non-profit organization concerned with development cooperation. Even then, some 120 groups could be considered as genuine NGOs. The following is but a rough sketch of them.

2. Activities: The range of activities of these NGOs is fairly wide - from traditional medical care, rural development, development planning, refugee relief work to managerial administration, alternative energy development and desert afforestation.

The majority of them (65) may be regarded as financial and/or material aid type NGOs, 18 others could be regarded as personnel dispatch type, and 16 as trainee - receiving type. The rest (21) could not be classified into these categories.

3. Geographical Distribution of Aid: Asked about the geographical distribution of aid, 66 NGOs (55%) mentioned one or more countries in Asia, 2 organizations (1.6%) listed the Pacific region, 1 NGO referred to Central America while none mentioned Africa. 49 others had either partners in two or more continents, or did not specify the geographical distribution of their counterparts. Of these, however, many named Asia and the Pacific region.

From this, it is clear that the majority of Japanese NGOs are concerned with the development of countries in the Asia and the Pacific region, while very few have contacts with African or Latin-American countries.

This corresponds to the geographical distribution of the Japanese development cooperation activities in general: approximately 70% of bilateral ODA is provided to Asian countries.

4. Type of Organization, Scale and Financial Sources: Japanese NGOs can be classified roughly into 2 types: juridical persons (corporate, foundational, religious, medical and other) and groups not registered with any government office.

Of the 120 NGOs, 55 have acquired the status of juridical persons. These are the larger and more established organizations. Many NGOs of this type were founded before 1970, even though they may not have been actively engaged in development cooperation activities until the mid-seventies. The majority of them are foundational juridical persons, with incomes accrued from their own endowment as well as from other sources, such as membership fees, fund-raising activities, income generating programs and public grants.

Subsidy from the government is given by the appropriate authorities, i.e. ministries or local governments. Thus, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs provides grants to 6 organizations, all of which are included in the aforementioned 120. In fiscal year 1983, subsidies granted by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs alone amounted to 491 million Yen (US$2.1 million).

Since a large part of the NGOs income was generated by providing speci- tic services to the government, the overall flow from the official sources to the NGOs Is considerably higher than the above figure. This may often result in dependency on, and control of the NGOs by the government in exchange for financial stability, all the more so because the government itself had played an active role in the establishment of the organization concerned.

Organizations without official registration, on the other hand, are generally small, relatively new and loosely structured. Most of them were founded after 1970, many especially immediately after the large-scale emergence of Indochina refugees.

Some innovative and quite active NGOs like the Shapla Neer (SN) and Japanese International Volunteer Center belong to this category. The former was started by some volunteers early in the 1970's when Bangladesh became independent, and has since been active in rural development at the grass-root level. With 6 paid-staff working in Tokyo and Dhaka, its income in 1982 was just over 11 million Yen (US$478,000). Nevertheless, SN is one of the leading NGOs in the Japanese third world development movement because of the quality of its work and the dedica- tion of its members to their task. The other organization, Japanese International Volunteer Center (JVC) was established in 1980 to undertake refugee relief work in Thailand, but has now widened its scope of work from mere emergency relief to resettlement and development cooperation. The 1983 budget allotted for projects in Asia and Africa amounted to 181 million Yen (US$754,000).

5. Financial Problems and Public Subsidy: As neither SN nor JVC is affiliated with religious or political bodies, they are unstable in financial terms: they have to rely on funds raised from the general

public, especially SN, which so far has not received subsidy from any multilateral agency. At present, Japanese citizens may be willing to carry a part of the project cost, but very few are ready to bear the administrative expenses. Therefore, independent organizations are looking for ways to get governmental subsidies without losing their autonomy.

Whether this can be realised is another matter. Some organizations, notably those with Christian backgrounds, refuse to receive governmental subsidies even on a matching-grant base for fear of public intervention. This, they claim, historical experience has taught.

It should be noted here that Christians have played an important role in the Japanese "third world movement": out of the aforementioned 120 NGOs, at least 18 organizations (15%) have been set up by Church-related people, which by far exceeds the proportion of Christians to the whole population (estimated to be less than 5 % ) , whereas only 7 Buddhist organizations active in development cooperation could be identified from the same list. To be sure, this does not exclude the fact that one of the largest NGOs is a Buddhist organization. Nevertheless, generally speaking, Buddhist organizations are more concerned with peace movement than development cooperation.

Conclusion: As already mentioned, the number of Japanese NGOs is larger than generally believed. But they have serious weaknesses, which are described below:

In quite a few cases, the autonomy of NGOs is restricted because of their affiliation to larger bodies including the government. This applies particularly to juridical persons.

Independent grass-roots NGOs suffer from financial limitations. They also lack professional manpower.

The viewpoint and approach to issues by the government and the NGOs are quite apart from each other. Except for the NGOs which are virtually part of the governmental structure, there is little coordination of action. Exchange of information ie also very limited.

Communication among NGOs, both within the country and internationally, is just emerging. A national coordinating body of NGOs does not exist, although a Development Education Council was formed in 1982.

Perhaps too much emphasis has been put on activities In Asia. In order to overcome at least some of the difficulties, the establishment of communication channels between the NGOs and the government is greatly needed. Important questions such as the public support of NGOs should be discussed through these channels.

(Takayoshi Amenomori, APIC, Association for Promotion of International Cooperation, 23 Mor i Building, 1-23- 7 Toranornon, Minato-Ku, Tokyo 105, Japan)

ASSOCIATION FRANCE-ASIE DU SUD ( AFAS)

On ne connalt pas tellement les peuples de 1'Asie du Sud, ici. Ces peu- pies sent les Indiens, les Pakistanais, les Bengladeshis, les Nepalais, les Birmans, les Bhutanais, les Srilankais, les Maldivois, c'est-2-dire des peuples qui vivent dans les pays qu'on appelait autrefois les Indes.

Mais l'inverse est aussi vrai. On connalt tres mal le peuple fransais dans ces pays et on connatt encore mal les peuples francophones d'autres continents.

Quant nous vivons 1'Sge de la communication mondiale, cette ignorance n'est ni souhaitable ni justifiee. Dans ce monde qui est un village planetaire, 11 faut que nous nous connaissions mieux. La connaissance mutuelle est encore plus exigee peut-Gtre aujourd'hui, au moment meme oG les nuages du racisme menacent les climats sociaux un peu partout dans Ie monde.

Est-ce qu'il faut agir? On a pens6 que OUI. C'est ainsi qu'avec quelques amis "1'Association France-Asie du Sud" s'est cr66 2 Montpellier depuis quelques temps.

Aujourd'hui, nous avons une petite antenne 5 Paris aussi. D'autres groupes en d'autres villes sont en train de se creer.

Notre principal but: c'est la solidarit6 entre les peuples. Mais il faut savoir delimiter les problsmes et done Ztre concrets. Done, etant origi- naires des Indes, on a delimit& cette region qu'est 1'Asie du Sud (Inde, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal; Bhoutan, etc.).

Pour Ztre concrets, nous avons choisi come tgche essentielle de diffu- ser l'information sur ces pays et peuples et d'avoir des gestes de soli- darite tels que des aides ponctuelles pendant les calamites, naturelles ou autres, ceci d'une manisre restreinte.

Pour ce faire, nous organisons des soirees sur un theme, illustre par diapos, films ou video, suivi d'un d6bat sur Ie sujet. Nous organisons aussi un recital de musique ou de danse de ces pays pour animer la soi- ree. Nous faisons aussi des programmes tres regulisrement dans une radio locale, chaque samedi de 17.00 2 19.00 heures, sur 96.3 Megahertz (EM), (Radio Nassim. tel. 45.52.77).

Notre Association n'est pas 2 sens unique. Nous oeuvrons pour une veritable amiti6, c'est-;-dire ?i deux sens: informer Ie public ici et le sensibiliser et aussi informer l'opinion publique dans les pays des Indes sur la vie d'ici dans tous les domaines.

L'association France-Asie du Sud (AFAS) est ouverte 2 tous: jeunes ou ages, homes ou femmes, Franeais ou 6trangers. francophones ou anglophones, quelles que soient vos croyances religieuses, rejoi- gnez-nous .

(Association France-Asie du Sud, 6 rue Dahomey, 34000 Montpellier, France).

EUROPEAN I B F A N GROUPS LAUNCH M I L U P A C A M P A I G N

Action groups in eight European countries decided last May to focus on the West German company, Milupa, as the major target in the infant feeding campaign in Europe.

At a European Regional Conference of the International Baby Food Action Network (IBFAN), groups from Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands, Switzerland and the United Kingdom planned a major action campaign against Milupa in response to the company's aggressive promotion of infant feeding products in Europe and the Third World which violates the International Code of Marketing of Breast-milk Substitutes.

The Code, approved by the World Health Assembly in 1981, has been con- sistently ignored by Milupa. The company distributes free samples to mothers, advertises directly to mothers in parents magazines and offers gifts to health workers - practices which are prohibited by the Code.

IBFAN spokesperson, Judith Philipona, said "Milupa's marketing practices are a disgrace. The company has had three years to bring its practices in line with the Code but hasn't bothered to do so. Milupa promotes its weaning foods in Switzerland, for example, from as early as three weeks of age. In the UK, the company sells its fennel tea, which is more than 90% sugar, for babies from the first week of age. We have developed a coordinated programme of action in eight European countries where the company sells to put pressure on Milupa to abide by the International Code. "

The IBFAN conference included groups from Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden and agreed to establish a monitoring centre in Geneva to collect information about the marketing practices of other companies in Europe and the Third World. The information will be passed on to the World Health Organisation as part of the monitoring requirements of the Inter- national Code.

Groups also decided to begin efforts to implement a resolution approved by the World Health Assembly earlier this year, which called for an examination of the promotion of foods unsuitable for infant feeding, and the promotion of the too early introduction of infant foods.

More than 30 people attended the conference which marked an intensifica- tion of the campaign to improve infant feeding practices in Europe and the Third World.

( IBFAN, Case 157, I S 1 1 Geneva 19, SuitzerZand)

EARTH CONSTRUCT1 ON TECHNOLOGIES

AN INTERNATIONAL COLLOQUIUM IN BELGIUM

The government of Belgium, Ministry of Development Cooperation, intends to host and organize an International colloquium on "Earth Construction Technologies Appropriate to Developing Countries" which will take place in Brussels, Belgium, from 10 to 12 December 1984.

This International Colloquium will be organized in cooperation with

. UNCHS (Habitat) Nairobi, Kenya

. Post Graduate Centre Human Settlements, Leuven, Belgium

. Centre de Recherche en Architecture, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium

and possibly other partners.

Early in 1982 the Belgian Ministry of Development Cooperation provided financial support to UNCHS (Habitat) to undertake a research project on earth construction, with the main objective to clearly situate the potentialities of earth as a building material in a continuously evolving world and to promote its use wherever desirable.

This International Colloquium will be a follow-up of this research project and has the following objectives:

1. to communicate and disseminate the results and outputs of the project;

2. to relate the results of the project to the experience of experts in the field of earth construction and to receive a feedback

3. to promote a better understanding of the advantages and requirements of earth construction;

4. to identify priorities for future actions related to the better use, the appropriate promotion and the further developments in earth construction technologies.

Participation in this colloquium is restricted to those actually involved in the development and use of earth as a building material in Third World countries.

The organizers will make a selection of participants on the basis of relevant qualifications and competence in earth construction technologies.

A limited number of fellowships will be available for selected participants from Third World countries.

The working language will be English.

To propose your participation and to request fellowship nomination forms, please write immediately to:

AGCD-ABOS Place du C*-de-Mars 5, Bte 57, Bureau 1925 1060 Brune Z les , Belgium

I FDA DOSS1 ER 43 sEPTEMBER/oCTOBER 1984 FOOTNOTES/NOTES

N.B. Documents mentioned i n the following section are not available from IFDA but, depending on the case, from publishers, bookshops or the address indicated a f t e r the description of the document.

INNER SPACE

. Fritjof Capra, The Tao of Physics (New York: Bantam Books, 1984) 352pp. Research physicist, Fritjof Capra explores the parallels between the underlying concepts of modern physics and the basic ideas of Eastern mysticism in The Tao of Physics. In a clear style supplemented by draw- ings and diagrams, Capra expounds on the theories of relativity, astro and atomic physics, and relates these theories to the mystical traditions of Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, Zen and the I Ching.

. Edith Newbigin, I am who I am, 115pp.; Life is for Living, lllpp.; The Human Family, 115pp.; British Roots, 119pp.; The Development of the Human Race, 119pp.. (47, Reeds Road, Huyton, Liverpool L36 7SL, UK).

LOCAL SPACE

. Isis-WICCE, Women Transform Media (Women's World Dossier Ne2) 50pp. A kaleidoscope of women's creativity in the media. (POB 2471, 1211 Geneva 2, Switzerland).

. Richard Jolly and Giovanni Andrea Cornia (eds.). The impact of world recession on children a special issue of World Development, 391pp. Including papers by K.N. Raj "The causes and consequences of world recession" and Alejandro Foxley and Dagmar Raczynski "Vulnerable groups in recessionary situations - the case of children and the young in Chile" (Pergamon Press Ltd., Headington Hill Hall, Oxford OX3 OBW, UK).

. Racism in Children's and School Textbooks (Geneva: World Council of Churches, 1979) 28pp. (150 Route de Ferney, 1211 Geneva 20, Switzerland).

. John J. Vincent, OK, Let's be Methodists (London: Epworth Press, 1984) 82pp. (Room 195, 1 Central Buildings Westminster, London SW1, UK) . . International Planned Parenthood Federation, The Human Right to Family Planning - Report of the working group on the promotion of family planning as a basic human right, London, November 1983, 52pp. (18-20 Lower Regent Street, London SW1Y 4PW. UK).

. Peter Oakley and David Marsden, Approaches to Participation in Rural Development (Geneva: ILO, 1984) 91pp. The term 'people's participation' has become a familiar one in the vocabulary of development, but so far there is no agreement on its meaning or on the way in which it should be promoted. In this monograph, the authors maintain that the

sources of these different interpretations of the term lie in fundamental differences in perception of the development process. They contrast two broad interpretations of participation: under the first, outsiders 'mobilise' the people; under the second, participation is regarded as 'empowering' the poor to take independent action. The dimensions of 'empowering' are naturally imprecise. They can be illustrated, but not predicted. Some examples are provided. Price: 15 Swiss francs.

. Luis Razeto Migliaro, Empresa de trabajadores y economia de mercado (Santiago: Academia de Humanismo Cristiano, 1982) 315pp.

. Koenraad Verhagen, Co-operation for Survival (Amsterdam: Royal Tropical Institute and International Co-operative Alliance, 1984) 194pp. + 50pp. Price: Dfl.19.50. An analysis of an experiment in participatory research and planning with small farmers in Sri Lanka and Thailand; focuses on the operational problems of an action-research which has sought to promote co-operative action and organization among small fanners; analyses the prevailing 'big farmer' bias of existing co-operatives and other service organizations; sets out the essentials of an alternative approach capable of generating more authentic forms of co-operative organization among the small farmer population (RTI, Rural Development Department, Mauritskade 63, 1092 Amsterdam, The Netherlands).

A. Nicolon, Le vehicule electrique - Mythe ou realit6? (Paris: Editions de la Maison des sciences de l'homme, 1984) 128pp. Le vehicule electrique a deji une longue histoire. A-t-il un avenir? Acres avoir examine les raisons de qualite de l'environnement et d'independance energetique qui justifient aujourd'hui l'int6rCt pour Ie v6hicule electrique rou- tier, 1' auteur retrace l'histoire recente de son "redeveloppement" et fait Ie point sur l'etat de la technique, notamment dans Ie domaine des generateurs electrochimiques qui constituent actuellement le principal obstacle i son industrialisation. Cependant, les obstacles d'ordre scientifique et technique et les surcoCits d'exploitation qui, dans une certaine mesure, leur sont lies, ne sont pas les seuls. L'auteur montre qu'en definitive c'est tout un environnement socio-economique largement faconne par l'usage generalise du vehicule thennique qu'il faudra forcer progressivement i partir de creneaux limites de penetration.

NATIONAL SPACE

. GREDET, Tunisie: Quelles technologies? Quel d6veloppement? (Tunis: Ed. SalammbE et Dar El Fen, 1983) 244pp. A la base des pratiques de developpement se trouvent trgs souvent des considerations implicites ou explicites qui confzrent au d6veloppement et 2 la technologie des significations particulisres. Au centre de ces presupposes se trouvent 111mp6ratif Technique et son corollaire lfIndustrialisme. La remise en cause de ces postulats stavere necessaire. Les "imperatifs techniques" fondes sur les normes internationales se doivent d'etre reevalu6s, critiques, demystifies car Ie risque est grand d'etre submerge et faconne par la frequence et la puissance des messages emis par Ie Nord. D'oC la n6cessite de capacites nationales de selection et de maitrise des informations, essentielles 2 la construction d'une capacit6 de maltrise technique. Le processus de maltrise technique suppose une

rupture d'avec le mimetisme et la prise en compte des potentialites techniques locales.

. Azzam Mahjoub, Industrie et accumulation du capital en Tunisia - lSre partie: de la fin du XVIIIe siScle jusqu'A la seconde guerre mondiale (Tunis: Facult6 de droit et des sciences politiques et economiques, 1983) 315pp.

. Programa de economia del trabajo, Los trabajadores frente a la crisis economica (Santiago: Academia de humanismo cristiano, 1983) 52pp. (PET, Catedral 1063, 6to piso, Santiago, Chile).

. Guy Gran, "From the Official Future to a Participatory Future: Rethinking Development Policy and Practice in Rural Zambia", Africa , (4th Quarter, 1983) pp.5-22.

. CETIM, Afrique du Sud - du discours ii la realits (Gensve: Centre Europe-Tiers Monde, 1984) 214pp. (37 Quai Wilson, 1201 Geneve, Suisse).

. Chahrokh Vaziri, Les formalites des procedures populaires de detotalisation du pouvoir dans l'etat islamique iranien (Lausanne: Facult6 des sciences sociales et politiques, 1984) 21pp.

. Ashok V. Desai, Market Structure and Technology - Their Interdependence in Indian Industry (New Delhi: ICRIER, 1984) 122pp. Working Paper NO13 (Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations, 40 Lodi Estate, New Delhi 110003, India).

. Federico Mayor (ed.) Scientific Research and Social Goals - Towards a New Development Model (Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1982) 236pp. Summarizes UNESCO's activities on research and human needs, a programme completed

THIRD WORLD SPACE

. Fernando H. Cardoso, Les id6es 2 leur place - Le concept de developpement en Amgrique latine (Paris: Ed. A.M. Metailie, 1984) 200pp. Remettre en place quelques id6es essentielles sur Ie d6veloppement et Ie - -

sous-d6velopiement est une entreprise de salubrite intell~ctuelle. Fernando Henrique Cardoso etait particuliSrement bien place pour entreprendre cette tzche. Ancien de la CEPAL, fondateur du CEBRAP, auteur de nombreux ouvrages, il est aujourd'hui senateur federal, representant 1'Etat de Sao Paulo 2 Brasilia. Un des grands theoriciens du sous-developpement et du developpement, 11 a su constamment marier la rigueur theorique et une grande sensibilit6 pratique, ancrant toujours sa reflexion dans l'analyse des realites directement vecues. Ce volume - dont une version portugaise, Ideias as su lugar (Cadernos CEBRAP 33). avait paru 2 Sao Paulo en 1980 - inclut la premiere traduction francaise de la contribution de F.H. Cardoso au Rapport Dag Hammarskjold 1975, C& faire - Un autre developpernent. Ce texte avait paru en anglais dans Marc Nerfin (ed), Towards another development, Approaches and Strategies (Uppsala: Dag Hammarskjold Foundation, 1976). F.H. Cardoso est membre du

Conseil de la FIPAD, qu'il a preside en 1981 et 1982. (5 rue de Savoie, 75006 Paris, France).

. ILET, Deuda externa en America latina - Los desafios de 1984 (Santiago: Altercom, Informe Especial N05, 1984) 63pp. (Casilla 16637, Correo 9, Santiago, Chile).

, Fred Stangelaar, Expansion transnacional y comunicacion alterna- tiva - el videocassette en America latina (Santiago: ILET, 1984) 64pp. . NAMEDIA, "Media Conference of the Non-Allgned, New Delhi December 9 to 12, 1983" Final Report and Documents, 127pp. (Tej Building, 8-B Bahadurshah Zafar Marg, New Delhi 110002, India),.

GLOBAL SPACE

. Edgard Pisani, La main et l'outil (Paris: Robert Laffont, 1984) 249pp. Le developpement ne sera pas favorise par nos interventions cha- ritable~, mats par la mise en oeuvre d'une politique rationnelle fond6e sur des arguments rationnels; c'est une perte collective et durable que celle que l'humanite subit du fait de la missre de la moiti6 de ses membres. Je suis tiers-mondiste parce que derriere tant de beaux discours sur Ie Tiers Monde, j'ai Ie sentiment qu'on Ie dgpece, qu'on en extrait les matisres premieres et les cerveaux sans retour, qu'on detruit son environnement, peut-Stre pour l'eternite des temps, qu'on entretien ses querelles pour en tirer parti.

Pascal Erard, Frederic Mounter, Les marchi5s dc la faim (Paris: Ed. La D6couverte. 1984) 215pp. Que faire centre la faim dans le monde? L'aide alimentaire est-elle la meilleur solution? Est-elle reellement distribute aux plus pauvres? Quels avantages en retirent les donateurs? Qui donne de la nourriture? Comment? A qui? L'aide allmentaire serait- elle un remsde pire que Ie mal? Le tiers monde ne peut-il vraiment pas se nourrir lui-meme? C'est 5 toutes ces questions et 5 bien d'autres que repond cet ouvrage, accessible au plus large public. (1 place Paul- Painlev6, 75005 Paris, France).

. Chadwick F. Alger, "Reconstructing human polities: collective security in the nuclear age" in Burns H. Weston (ed.). Toward Nuclear Disarmament and Global Security - A Search for Alternatives (Boulder Colorado: Westview Press, 1984) pp.666-687.

. Chadwick F. Alger, "Reconstruction of global polity: a critique of Jayaprakash Narayan's scheme" in Gandhi Marg (New Delhi: N. Vasudevan, 1983) pp.377-393.

. Frank Blackaby, Jozef Goldblat and Sverre Lodgaard (eds.) No-First-Use (Stockholm: SIPRI, 1984) 151pp. The debate on no-first-use of nuclear weapons has been conducted on a number of fronts. First use of nuclear weapons has come under challenge from many different directions: from church synods, from international lawyers, in debates at the United Nations and from strategic thinkers. This book takes stock

of the arguments for and against no-first-use and examines the political, military and arms control implications of such a commitment. (Bergshamra, 171 73 Solna, Sweden).

. Armand Mattelart, Transnationals and the Third World - The Struggle for Culture (Massachusetts: Bergin & Garvey, 1983) 184pp. (670 Amherst Road, South Hadley, Mass. 01075, USA).

. UNIDO, Industry in a Changing World Special issue of the Industrial Development Survey for the Fourth General Conference of UNIDO (Vienna: United Nations, 1983) 369pp.

. i3m. Horlogerie suisse et Tiers Monde (Lausanne: Service Information Tiers Monde, 1984) 75pp. (ch. des Epinettes 10, 1007 Lausanne, Suisse).

. Eric Hees en Joan Verloren van Themaat (red.) De prijs van de schuld - de internationale financiele krisis en de derde wereld (Amsterdam: Evert Vermeer Stichtine. 1984) 1 9 0 ~ ~ . (30 Nicolaas - - ~itsenkade, 1017 Amsterdam, The etherl lands).

. CEPAL, La crisis econ6mica internacional y su repercusi6n en America latina (Santiago: Estudios e Informes N032, 1983) 81pp. (Casilla 179 D, Santiago, Chile).

. Gunther Kohlmey, "Structures 6conomique et division internationale du travail dans la region europeenne du CAEM" in Economies et sociCtGs, Cahiers de ~'ISMEA (Tome XVII, Nol, janvier 1983) pp.89-113, et Internationale Werte heute - Methodologisches und empirisches, (1984). 85pp. (Leipzigerstrasse 3-4, 1080 Berlin, RDA).

. Helmut Kramer (ed), Oesterreich im internationalen system - Zusamenfassung der Ergebnisse und Ausblick (Austrian Institute for International Affairs, 2361 Laxenburg, Austria).

PERIODICALS

. Africa Development (Vol. VIII, N03, 1983): "class, Gender and Capitalist Transformation in Africa" by Janet M. Bujra and "The IMF and Africa in the 1980s" by G.K. Helleiner. (Vol. VIII, N04, 1983) "South-South Cooperation: The Lagos Plan of Action and Africa's independencen by A. Benachenhou and "Le plan d'action de Lagos et la Banque Mondiale - etude comparative des deux points de vue sur l'alimentation et l'agriculture en Afrique" par Thandika Mkandawire (POB 3304, Dakar, Senegal).

. Aliran (Vol. IV Nol, Jan. 1984): "Constitutional Crisis - the ~ftermath" by Chandra Muzaffar (FOB 1049, Pulau Pinang, Malaysia).

. Alternativas (Numero Especial, Junio 1984): "5 estudios sobre la idea de decadencia historica" (CERC, Academia de Humanism0 Cristiano. Catedral 1063, Santiago, Chill).

. Alternatives economiques (N022, 1984): "Polanyi centre Braudel - Ie marche: pour Ie meilleur pu pour Ie pire?" par Louis Puiseux (20 rue dVAssas, 21000 Dijon)

. Am6rique latine (No 18, avril-juin 1984): "La revalorisation de l'espace rural, un axe fondamental pour le d6veloppement de 1'Amerique latine" par Jacques Chonchol; "Les communaut6s eccl6siales de base" par Frei Betto; "Les grandes villes face la crise: travail, nourriture et gnergie dans 1'6cod6veloppement urbain" par Ignacy Sachs (CETRAL, 35 rue des Jeuners, 75002 Paris, France).

. Asian Action (Nu45, 1984): "A Picture on the Reality of Nepalese Women" report from ACFOD Women Workshop (ACFOD, FOB 2930, Bangkok, Thailand).

. Asian Exchange (Special issue 1983, Vol. 11, N"2,3.4): "Philippines: Jose W. Diokno Interview; The Economy - An In-Depth Look"; Political Development - the emerging trends" (Arena HK Centre, A4, G Block, 2F1, Hung Horn Bay Centre, 104-108 Baker Street, Hung Horn, Kowloon, Hong Kong).

, Autogestion y Partlcipacion (~"13-14', Abril 1984): "Chile: El desastre econ6micot' (CLA, Casilla postal 4822, Lima 18, Peru).

. Autogestions (N016, 1984): Mouvements paysans et alternatives de developpement - Projets et possibilites d'agricultures differences - Seductions et contraintes de la modernit6 (Ed. Privat, 14 rue des Arts, 31000 Toulouse, France).

. Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (Vol. 40, N06. June-July 1984): A 40-year History of Civil ~efense" by Allan M. Winkler (5801 S. Kenwood, Chicago, 111. 60637, USA).

. Cahiers d'etudes strategiques (N03): "Dissuasion infra-nuclgalre - 1'6cole allemande de techno-guerrila" par Alain Carton. (CIRPES, 54 Bvd. Raspail, 75006 Paris, France).

. Comercio Exterior (Vol.34, N03, 1984): "Los mercados financieros internacionales y 10s problemas de la deuda externa latinoamericana" por Jorge Espinosa Carranza. (Vol.34, Nu4, 1984): "Una perspectiva a mediano plazo de la economia mundial - restructuraciSn financiera versus restruc- turaci6n real" por Victor L. Urquidi; "Deuda externa y soberania de Ame- rica Latina - 10s desaflos" por Aldo Ferrer (Banco Nacional de Comercio Exterior, Venustiano Carranza 32, Centre Cuauhtemoc, 06000 Mexico D.F.).

. Coyuntura Econornica (NolO, Enero 1984): "La economia chilena en 1984: problemas y pronostico" por Humberto Vega F. (PET, Catedral 1063, 6Opis0, Santiago, Chile).

. Development and Peace (Vol.4, N02, 1983): "Peace Research and Peace Movement" by B. Hettne, J. Kalanovics, G. Izik-Hedri; "Mexico: Develop- ment Strategies for the Future" by Denis Goulet (Kultura, FOB 149, 1389 Budapest, Hungary).

. Economic Bulletin For Asia and the Pacific (Vol.XXXII1, NU1, 1982): "IMF condititionality and the low income countries" by I.S.

Gulati; "Transnational cooperation in the ASEAN region: A survey of major issues" by F. von Kirchbach (ESCAP, United Nations, Bangkok, Thailand).

. Economic et humanisme (N0277, mai-juin 1984): "Dossier - Pour sortir de la crise: libre 6change ou protectionnisme?"; "Syndicalisme paysan et indianit6 en Bolivie" par J.P. Lavau (14 rue Antoine Dumont, 69372 Lyon Cedex 08, France).

. LIEconomie sociale (juillet-septembre 1984): "Regards historiques: la problEmatique historique des origines de llEconomie sociale. Les textes fondateurs. Les courants utopiques. Premieres experiences mutualistes" (22bis, rue de Terre-Neuve, 75020 Paris. France).

. Ethnic Studies Report (Vol.11. Nol, January 1984): "Ethnicity and State Coherence in Africa" by Goran Hyden (8 Kynsey Terrace, Colombo, Sri Lanka).

. (N023/24, 1984): "Nouvelles pratiques de l1emp1oi" (18 rue de Varenne, 75007 Paris, France).

. Future (N09, Winter 198311984): "A forest in crisis: Nepal's struggle to regain lost ground" by Erik Eckholm (UNICEF House, 73 Lodi Estate, New Delhi 110 003, India).

. Futuribles (N077, 1984): "Les nouveaux medias en AmErique du Nord" par Eddy Cherky and Richard Clavaud (55 rue de Varenne, 75007 Paris).

. Idoc Bulletin (N03, 1984): "Militarisation in Asia and Pacific (2) - Indonesia" (30 Via S. Maria dell1Anima, 00186 Roma, Italy). . Internationales Asienforum - International Quarterly for Asian Studies (N01/2, 1984): "Political violence and the future of democracy in Sri Lanka"; "~arvodaya approach to a solution to the national crisis" (Weltforum Verlag, ~arienbur~erstrasse 22, 5000 Koln 51, FRG).

. KolEyu (NU34, 1984): "El movimiento femenino en Nicaragua" por Glenda Monterrey (Apto 18164, Caracas 1012-A, Venezuela).

. La Lettre de Solagral (N027, juin 1984): "Le Tiers Monde pris au filet" (5 rue Feois Bizette, 35000 Rennes, France).

. Mainstream (Nehru Special Number, May 1984): "Twenty years after Nehru" (F-24 Bhagat Singh Market, New Delhi 1, India).

. Mazingira (Vol.7, N04, 1983): "Environnement et societe" par Jan Szczepanski (ENDA, FOB 3370, Dakar, Senegal).

. Monthly Review (Vol.36, ?l, 1984): "The tranformation of the Philippine economy" by Robin Broad (155 West 23rd Street, New York NY 10011, USA).

. NFE/WID Exchange-Asia (Vol.3, N"10, 1983): "The Indonesian woman - today's portrait" (University of the Philippines, Los Banos, Laguna, Philippines).

. Nouvelles de 1'6codeveloppement (No28/29, 1984): "L'6conomie cachee et les structures du quotidien" par Michel Schiray; Dossier "Energie, alimentation, d6veloppement8' (CIRED, 54 Bvd. Raspail, 75270 Paris Cedex 06, France).

. Peace News (N"2222, 1984): "Peace protest alive and well in Hungary" (8 Elm Avenue, Nottingham 3, UK).

. Politica Internazionale (Nv5, 1984): "L'Europa tra crisi e rifondazione" di Piero Bassetti; "L'impegno per la cooperazione con i paesi in sviluppo" di Edgard Pisani (62B Via del Tritone. 00187 Roma, Italia).

. Politique aujourd'hui (N"4, 1984): "La France plurielle": les solutions urgentes des problsmes poses par la presence durable de plus de 4 millions d'immigres en France appellent un consensus large. Ce numero suggere qu'il est possible. (14-16 rue des Petits-HGtels, 75010 Paris).

. Polls (N025, 1984): Political information system/systSme d' informations politiques (FOB 9002. Dakar-Palais, Senegal).

. Science tor Villages (No79-80, 1984): "Agriculture and ecology" by Claudio Alvaret (Magan Sangrahalaya, Wardha 442001, Maharashtra, India).

. SlM Newsletter ( N 0 6 , 1984): "Counting human rights violations in El Salvador" by Dirk Elsen and Berth Verstappen (Nieuwegracht 94, 3512 LX Utrecht, The Netherlands).

. Socialismo y participation (N025, 1984): "El sector informal urbano" por Daniel Carbonetto (Apto 11701, Lima 11, Peru).

. Tiers-Monde (Tome XXIV, N"96, 1983): "La coopSration Sud-Sud - 6tat et perspectives" present6 par Stephane Hessel sous la direction de Abdelkader Sid-Ahmed avec la collaboration, notament, de Ali A. Attiga, Gonzalo Martner and Manuel Perez Guerrero (Presses Universitaires de France, 12 rue Jean-de-Beauvais, 75005 Paris, France).

. Trialog (N02, 1984) : "Schwerpunkt - Regi~nal~lanung" (15 Petersen- strasse, 6100 Darmstadt, BRD).

. Vraagbaak (Vol.12, N"1, 1984): The TOOL Foundation in Amsterdam (Netherlands) and the ATOL Foundation in Leuven (Belgium) have since 1972 jointly published the magazine Vraagbaak (the 'reference book'). This quarterly magazine is meant to provide technical support to organisations, groups and individuals working directly to improve the position of the economically and socially deprived in Third World countries. Vraagbaak carries articles concerning a wide range of topics, including agriculture, nutrition, health, appropriate technology, extension education and problems in the social and economic management of projects. The articles written are in respons to requests for advice, reactions and impressions from development workers and to report on new developments in appropriate technology. in an effort to reach a larger public than has previously been possible, and especially to reach more readers in Third World countries, Vraagbaak is now published in English and French editions. A subcription to Vraagbaak costs US$7.- a year. (Postbus 41, 6700 Wageningen, The Netherlands).

MATERIALS RECEIVED FOR PUBLICATION

LOCAL SPACE . Carlos Aveline, Communitarian alternatives for Brazilian crisis (Caixa postal 191, 95600 Taquara, RS Brasil), 5pp.

. H.P.B. Moshi, The impact of inflation on rural development in Tanzania: the case of Kilimanjaro region (Stadtlohnweg 13, 4400 Minister, FRG), 18pp.

. Mamadou H. Idi Niane et E. Seydou N. Toure, L'etat et les paysans en Afrique 6pp. et Quelle animation rurale pour les annees 80? (ASRADEC, BP 3679. Dakar, Senegal).

. Francoise Salager-Meyer, Apprendre les langues ctrangsres - un luxe de raffinement culture1 ou une necessite prioritaire pour les pays en vole de developpement? (c10 Mme Ammann, 167 rue Joliot Curie. 69005 Lyon, France), 7pp.

NATIONAL SPACE

. Marco Antonio de Souza Aquiar, Marcos Arruda and Parsifal Flores, Economic dictatorship versus democracy in Brazil, 13pp. and Mark Hertsgaard and Marcos Arruda, Brazil debt crisis, 5pp. (IBASE, 29 rua Vicente Souza, CEP 22251, Botafogo, Brasil).

. Martin Carnoy and Jorge Werthein, Socialist ideology and the transformation of Cuban education (IICA 62 R. do Passeio, 13'Andar. Sala 1303, 20021 Rio de Janeiro, M, Brasil), 17pp.

. Arnoldo K. Ventura, Integration of scientific and traditional technologies for the development of poor countries (University of Miami, Rickenbacker Causeway, Miami, Florida, USA), 16pp.

. Otmar Hall, Small states in Europe and dependence (Austrian Institu- te for Int. Affairs, 13 Schlossplatz, 2361 Laxenburg, Austria), 3lpp.

THIRD WORLD SPACE . Norman Girvan, Adjustment via austerity: is there an alternative? (UNCTC, United Nations, DC2-1226, New York, MY 10017, USA), llpp.

GLOBAL SPACE . Institute for Policy Studies, Meeting the corporate challenge (1901 Que Street NW, Washington DC, USA), 7pp.

. Fernando Reyes Matta, Communication and new order: the economic-technological crossroads (ILET, Casilla 16637, Correo 9, Santiago, Chile), 12pp.

. K. Ahooja Patel, The international scene: The place of women (Ch. des Sansonnets, 1299 Cornmugny, Switzerland), 10 + 4pp.

9 5

THEY HAD THIS TO SAY

A N T O N I O G R A M S C I : DE L ' U S A G E D E L A LANGUE SARDE

E stato un errore, per me, non aver lasciato che Edmea, da bambinetta, parlasse liberamente in sardo. Ci5 ha nociuto alla sua formazione intellettuale e ha messo una camicia di forza alla sua fantasia. (Lettera alla sorella, 26.03.1927, in Lettere dal carcere (Torino: Einaudi, 1965).

(Traduction libre): Ce fut, selon moi, une erreur de n'avoir pas laissg Edmea (la niece de Gramsci) parler librement en sarde depuis toute petite. Cela a nui a sa formation intellectuelle et a mis une chemise de force 2 son imagination. (Lettre 3 sa soeur, in Lettres de la prison).

ANANDA K , COOMARASWAMY: ON L I T E R A C Y

One would have supposed that it is of the first importance to be able to speak one's own language well, to be able to understand what is well said in it, and of secondary, however great, importance to be able to read it. I do not think anyone would maintain that the first result has been attained by universal compulsory elementary education anywhere; on the other hand, very many competent witnesses have assured us that - for example, in Scotland, Ceylon, and in remote islands of the Pacific - the illiterate are typically masters of their language, using a very rich vocabulary - no mere "Basic" such as had to be invented for the benefit of Harvard students - with perfect competence. One must add to this that in illiterate cultures everywhere one finds amazing powers of memory and that reciters are often able to repeat a traditional literature that would fill many printed volumes; and it can hardly be overlooked that a too great reliance upon books "of reference" often means that though one knows where to find a thing, one does not know the thing itself, or that the literate peoples are only too apt to treat their "hundred best books" in this way only as books of "reference".

As Plato long ago pointed out, literacy may mean nothing better than a lazy man's substitute for recollection. All this should convince us that statistics of illiteracy are of no real value whatever as tests of the profundity of cultures; and that to impose literacy on culture, merely for its own sake, may be, as it has often been, the means of destroying rather than extending the culture itself.

(Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, Sources of Wisdom (Colombo: Ministry of Cultural Affairs, 1981, pp.27-28).

Contributions t o the IFDA Dossier are presented wider the sole respon- s i b i l i t y of the ir authors. They are not covered by any copyright. They may be reproduced or transmitted i n any form or by any means without permission of the author or IFDA. In case of reprint, acknowledgement of source and receipt of a copy would be appreciated. The IFDA Dossier i s published bi-monthly. Printed i n 12,800 copies.