Clinton points to Rajasthan village to back globalisation

By Hasan Suroor

WARWICK, DEC. 15. In possibly his last overseas speech before laying down office next month, the United States President, Mr. Bill Clinton, singled out a woman's empowerment project in Rajasthan's Nayala village as an example of how technology can help development. He had visited the village on his visit to India early this year, and he still remembered it with a great deal of admiration - something that he thought deserved to be mentioned to an international audience that included scientist, Mr. Stephen Hawking, writer, Ms. Germaine Greer, and Keynes' biographer, Lord Skidelsky.

Mr. Clinton, speaking at Warwick University on Thursday on challenges of globalisation before winding up his three-day visit to Ireland and England, cited the Nayala ``model'' to debunk the notion that offering computers to developing countries was like selling cake to those who could not afford to buy bread.

He said he was ``astounded'' by the way women in Nayala used computers for access to information that helped them in their daily lives. They told him that it improved their knowledge about issues of immediate concern such as information on healthy diet for children, health facilities and family improvement programmes.

Mr. Clinton said he did not agree that technology was a luxury for impoverished people and argued that the choice was not between ``pentium and penicillin''. It was a ``false choice'' which smacked of the developed world's ``condescending'' approach. Of course, people needed clean drinking water, food and shelter and technology could help in this.

He wanted the ``digital divide'' between the developed and developing world to end; and he wanted the developed countries to help the latter with technology. This was a part of the ethics of globalisation. In a global economy, it was the duty of the ``haves'' to use their resources to remove illiteracy and disease in the less privileged regions of the world. ``Eventually it would benefit the wealthier nations because, as he put it, ``global poverty is a powder keg ignitable by our indifference.''

Mr. Clinton strongly disagreed with the opponents of globalisation saying the protests at Seattle and recently at Nice missed the point of an inter-dependent global economy. The issue was not whether globalisation was bad - it was not - but how to steer it in a direction that would benefit everyone. ``No generation has ever had the opportunity that all of us now have to build a global economy that leaves no one behind and to create a new century of peace and prosperity.''

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Section  : International
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