FIFTH COLUMN

Gobbleization

It’s a term coined by a budding industrialist from Bangladesh Iqbal Z. Quadir. According to him, it happens when bigger entities gobble up smaller entities. He fears that globalisation is leading us inextricably into that process. His fears aren’t unfounded.

The process is all encompassing. Herbs and seeds native to poor countries get patented by transnational in America. It’s the American culture that is projected as cool for the Generation Next everywhere. At its most perverse, a militant Hindu organisation bows before an American INGO to beg for finances for its religious works!

It’s not only a Bangladeshi who is worried, alarm bells have started to ring all over the world. Recently, an Egyptian scholar was in town who pointed out the risks associated with the concentration of power in few hands.

Concentration is enormous indeed. Newsweek reports that the assets of the world’s three richest people are more than the combined GNP of 26 of the world’s poorest countries. One Bill Gates gloats over his trillion dollar empire while in ten countries of the world, Nepal being one of them, more than half of the population lives on $1 a day. Never in human history, so much power has concentrated in so few hands, causing misery for so many.

It’s not just the supporters, even the opposition grounds have been captured. If American energy corporations advocate huge dams, then it’s the American foundations who fund their opposition and exercise control over the whole process of debate by directing it to the direction that is most convenient for them.

But fighting globalisation is easier said than done. American government is run by the Chief Executives of its major corporations and their whole establishment crushes a dissenter with as much viciousness as they have displayed in dealing with Iraq. Governments of the poor countries behave like their maid-servants, just as one of them did in case of Karnali for Enron rights here in Nepal.

However, fight trnsnationals one must, despite the odds. An option to do so is by strengthening regional cooperation-one European Union is a bigger challenge to American hegemony then all the fears of France, worries of Germany and concerns of Scandinavian countries put together. In our region, there is a bit of a difficulty, because nobody wants to be gobbled up by the sharks of Indian Ocean in order to fight the whales of the Pacific.

Another option could have been in having a more responsive government, displaying a determination to save national interest without unduly antagonizing the regional Big Brothers or the global bully. Unfortunately, that appears to be a wishful thinking at the moment. Our ministers fall over each other to curry favor everywhere.

That leaves the last and the perhaps the most challenging option of creating awareness about the dangers of globalisation. Just think about it.