As a citizen of India, that is Bharat, I was proud to see our Prime Minister introduce heads of powerful states, one by one, to our lady President and show them the magnificent backdrop of the Nalanda University behind them, the world’s first center of universal knowledge, established in 427 CE, 1500 years before Bologna University, the first European university, founded in 1088.
The great achievement of India’s G20 Presidency in 2023 was to remind the G20 of the purpose for it was created in 2008, which was to stabilize the global economy, which had been shaken by the financial crisis within the G7 countries, and to expand benefits of economic growth to other nations equitably. The G7 highjacked the G20 in Indonesia in 2022 after the Ukraine war as another platform to settle scores between Nato and Russia. This year the US’s wars of sanctions and its military alliances against China cast other long shadow across the G20. However, India, with the support of Indonesia, Brazil, and South Africa—four “Southern” nations who will be leading the G20 four years in a row now—held firm. The G7, where only 10% of the world’s people live, must not highjack the G20 for its geo-political purposes, they declared. It must be a forum for global development and India was able to get the African Union added as its 21st member.
However, the Prime Minister had set the aspirations of India’s G20 Presidency much higher than to just bring it back on track. The theme of India’s Presidency, projected in airports and on the streets of cities around the country, where hundreds of meetings were held in the run up to the final Summit in Delhi on 9thSeptember, was Vasudhaiva Kutumbakan, translated in English as “One Earth, One Family, One Future”. This was a paradigm shift from the purpose of the G20, whose vision of globalization is One Earth, One Economy, One Future. In line with this, the Prime Minister appealed to leaders, on the eve of the Summit in Delhi, for a “shift away from a GDP-centric view of the world to a human-centric view”. Sadly, other than expressions of pious hopes and intentions in the declaration, the GDP-centric view has prevailed in effect.
The economic and social costs of a narrow focus on economies are very visible. The G20 declaration admits that “at the midway point to 2030, the global progress on SDGs is off-track with only 12 percent of targets on track”. The private business sector and financial institutions are powerful actors in the GDP paradigm and measure their own performance in terms of monetary profits and revenues. When GDP is the overall measure of a country’s development, the business and financial sectors’ views about public policy will prevail. Thereby, they obtain concessions to increase their own revenues and profits to boost overall economic growth. Paradigms are hard to change from within. Champions of voluntary change in the financial sector, like Larry Fink of BlackRock, the world’s largest investment fund, who stuck his neck out too far for the sector’s liking to promote ESG, are brought down to the ground by their own sector.
Business and financial sectors have resources to influence the global policy agenda. The B20 advertised its support of the G20 with four-page advertisements in India’s national papers. The L20, which represents the needs of working people, has been barely visible in comparison. Civil society organizations were distributed across many other “20s”, for renewable energy, health, education, etc. Here too the business and financial sectors were well represented. Sadly, the worth of a dollar invested in education, health, and other social sectors is also measured by how much it will increase GDP in the long run. All for GDP: then who is for humanity?
The G7 and G20 were set up to solve global financial and economic problems. In this vision, social institutions are deformed to increase economic growth. Women’s work at home is not valued in the economy. Women are plucked out of their families and trained to work in industrial establishments to contribute to GDP. One Earth; One Family; One Future requires a paradigm shift in the concept of well-being of humans. To realize this vision, family values must be nurtured more in so-called “social enterprises” than their financial valuations in stock markets and contributions to the economy.
Paradigm change requires power shifts which are always difficult because people with power will not let go. Money gives power; political authority gives power; and formal knowledge gives power too. In fact, this is the basis of a caste system of power in all societies. Those with the power of money, authority, and formal higher education are the upper castes in the power hierarchy. They form coalitions amongst themselves, ostensibly to make life better for the common people who, they say, cannot govern themselves and must be developed by others.
“We cannot solve complex systemic problems with the same ways of thinking that have caused them”, Albert Einstein said. A paradigm shift is necessary in global systems of expertise. It is time for the powers above to humbly listen to the people and learn from them, rather than teaching them ways that have led humanity to problems with environmental degradation and economic inequities that must be solved urgently in the next few years.
A paradigm shift is required in Western dominated systems of knowledge and expertise. Ancient wisdom can teach the modern world a lot about ethics and about sustainable living. Women are half of humanity: their views must not be over-powered by masculine ways of thinking. The knowledge within the informal sector, in which a majority earn their livelihoods exercising least pressure on the Earth, must be respected by experts in the formal sector. The time has come for powerful people in the world to humbly learn from the rest and change their ways.
(Published in The Tribune on 12th September 2023)
https://www.tribuneindia.com/news/comment/moving-away-from-a-gdp-centric-prism-543436