Human Development Report 2005; United Nations Development Programme; Price: Rs.575; 372 pp

Every summer when the United Nations Development Programme publishes its brilliantly written and data-laden Human Development Report, one can’t help acknowledging a profound debt to the late Pakistan-born economist Dr. Mahbub-Ul-Haq (1934-1998). Acutely aware of the great infirmity of per capita national income statistics (which ignore income inequalities within countries) as an indicator of the wealth and well-being of nations, in 1990 Dr. Haq constituted an international team of researchers and authored the pilot issue of the Human Development Report, 1990 to make economists, sociologists and political leaders around the world conscious of new yardsticks with which national development needs to be measured in a rapidly globalising world. Going beyond crude per capita income calculations, the 15 annual HDRs published since measure national development efforts in terms of education, health and nutrition provision; infant mortality; gender equality; shelter and infrastructure availability etc.

In the year 2000 to commemorate the beginning of the new millennium, leaders of all the major nations of the world met together in New York and made a solemn pledge to eliminate the glaring economic disparities which are live testament of the disunity of humankind and evidence of man’s inhumanity to man. The major Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) to be attained by the year 2015 were: drastic reduction in child mortality around the world; halving global poverty, and universal primary education for all. The Millennium Declaration was signed by leaders of 189 nations on September 8, 2000.

Yet five years on despite much hand-wringing and rhetoric, not much progress has been made towards attaining the goals and targets of the Millennium Declaration. Measured by the current rate of progress towards attaining the MDGs, 41 million children around the world below the age of five will die by 2015; 380 million people in developing countries will continue to scratch out a living on less than $1 per day and 47 million children will be out of school. Therefore HDR 2005 which does a stocktaking of the progress towards the MDGs over the five years past focuses upon the acceleration of international aid, trade and provision of security to make up for the slippages of the past quinquennium to attain the MDGs within the next decade.

The authors of HDR 2005 are fully convinced that the rich industrial nations have failed to make good their promise of greater aid flows to the struggling developing nations of the third world as per the Millennium Declaration, despite the fact that fulfilling their pledge would not make any difference to their living standards because the world’s rich are well, very rich. HDR 2005 produces the startling statistic that the aggregate income of the world’s richest 500 people is greater than of 416 million poorest people, and that if the world’s richest 10 percent set aside a mere 1.6 percent of their annual incomes, they could help raise 1 billion people living on less than $1 per day above the extreme poverty threshold.

The report highlights the reality that the OECD nations are nowhere near delivering their promise of canalising 0.75 percent of their GNIs (gross national incomes) as international aid to poor countries. For the past five years they have averaged 0.25 percent. “Yet for every $1 that rich countries spend on aid they allocate $10 to military budgets,” laments the report.

HDR 2005 is also unsparing in its criticism of the OECD nations for their international trade policies which deny fair access to third world businessmen and farmers in particular, to their affluent markets. It laments that Sub-Saharan Africa with its 689 million people “accounts for a smaller share of world exports than Belgium, with 10 million people”. In particular the fiercely independent authors of HDR condemn the grossly unfair rules governing trade in agriculture. “The basic problem to be addressed in the WTO negotiations on agriculture can be summarised in three words: rich country subsidies. In the last round of world trade negotiations rich countries promised to cut agricultural subsidies. Since then they have increased them. They now spend just over $1 billion a year on aid for agriculture in poor countries and just under $1 billion a day subsidising agricultural overproduction at home- a less appropriate ordering of priorities is difficult to imagine,” says HDR 2005.

The third panacea following increased aid flows and improved terms of trade, which the authors of HDR 2005 recommend for attainment of the MDGs is elimination of violent conflict or “regional wars fought within weak or failed states and with small arms as the weapon of choice”. According to HDR 2005, of the 32 countries in the low human development category, 22 have experienced conflict within the past 15 years. “Conflict undermines nutrition and public health, destroys education systems, devastates livelihood and retards prospects for economic growth,” says the report while recommending a cut in the flow of small arms and calling for larger peace-keeping roles for the UN and associations of nation states.

Although given HDR 2005’s Africa focus India is spared severe criticism, there’s no doubt that the very same prescription (greater aid flows, fairer terms of trade and improved security) which this brilliantly written report recommends as the panacea for creating a more equitable new world order, is applicable to distribute the gains of economic liberalisation within our national borders.

Read between the lines, for the self-serving establishment of post-liberalisation India and its greedy and insensitive new middle class given to trumpeting India’s high rates of economic growth, HDR 2005 should serve as a cold reality check. The very injustices and inequities of the global order against which establishment spokespersons rail in international forums, are mirror-imaged within our national borders. That’s the hidden message of this valuable compendium.

Dilip Thakore

Also read: 1M2030: UN Youth leadership development programme

Sad gentle giants

Gods in Chains by Rhea Ghosh; Foundation Books; Price: Rs.895; 230 pp

By a curious coincidence even as technology assumes omnipotent status in the 21st century, religion is gaining ground, as evidenced by the ever-increasing numbers of devotees who throng temples and churches. This phenomenon is not just confined to less literate developing nations. First world societies are witnessing the revival of the fundamentalist right wing, a politically strong force that thrives by invoking orthodox religiosity.

In the normal course the incremental influence of technology should have driven people away from religion, but the reverse seems to be happening. Nor has this technology-driven era made societies more scientific and rational. Religious cults are gaining ground; old and crude forms of worship continue to thrive.

Consider the condition of the captive temple elephant. Believed to be representative of the elephant-headed god Ganesha, the elephant has been revered in Indian culture for several millennia. But typical of the contradictions of India, this respected animal is also one of the most abused and neglected. In Gods in Chains Boston-based Rhea Ghosh, an animal welfare activist, has gleaned valuable information on the pitiable state of the pachyderm, by observing elephants in captivity and interfacing with forest departments and authorities in the field.

As anyone gifted with eyesight knows, in the frenzied struggle for survival in professedly humane India, animal abuse is not unusual. What makes this a matter of exigence, is that misguided notions about the elephant are so widespread. As Ghosh explains in Gods in Chains, the greatest adversary of the elephant is “man” and societal indifference, coupled with a general reluctance to question some common beliefs. The elephant, like all other creatures of natural environments, is a victim of modern civilization.

For instance it is taken for granted, that the temple elephant is a lucky creature. It has found its place in human society, and doesn’t feel the effects of declining forest cover or poaching. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

Ghosh shakes up such complacence and spotlights the elephants’ plight. According to her, this largest of mammals can never become domesticated, unlike the cow or sheep. An elephant out of its natural habitat is always under stress. As a social creature, its emotional needs are fulfilled only by others of its tribe; to abduct it from the jungle and force it to perform obscure rites at temples is a violation of nature. The dazzle of temple festivals obscures the reality that elephants have to perform tasks that are demeaning and tortuous.

Gods in Chains is a compilation of research on the captive Indian elephant. Ghosh sources her information extensively from such authorities as Peter Jaeggi, Jacob Cheeran and others, and her own contribution is in leading the reader through various aspects of the problem. Legal implications, the socio-economic status of mahouts, tools and methods that are used to train elephants, and the biology of the animal are some of the important issues she highlights in the five chapters of this lavishly produced work, embellished by high quality photographs. She particularly draws attention to the mahout, a vanishing species. Once respected in society, and living in close association with his trusted elephant, he would pass on his knowledge and occupation to his children. Today, however, the mahout earns less than a truck driver and even an experienced mahout has nothing to look forward to in his arduous and unrewarding profession. As a mahout frequently changes jobs, the elephant under his care languishes; it is unable to develop the same relationship with a new caretaker.

Having defined the problems that afflict the captive elephant, Ghosh outlines several recommendations that might alleviate them. These include the establishment of sanctuaries and rehabilitation centres for captured elephants, a management initiative to distinguish elephants from livestock, and updated ownership guidelines.

The photographs are evocative, and the book is well produced, though it has its share of editing errors. The danger is that since the book was commissioned by the Wildlife Rescue and Rehabilitation Centre (Bangalore), it might be dismissed as “activist literature”- provocative writing published by vested interests who present uni-dimensional aspects of a debate. Moreover with 230 glossy pages and priced at Rs.895, the book is too expensive for the lay reader.

Notwithstanding all this, Ghosh has written passionately about an issue that needs urgent attention.

Dev S Sukumar