Peace” and “human justice in Middle East” must prevail in 2009. This poignant call was issued by none other than the leading Israeli pianist and conductor Daniel Barenboim during the annual concert at Vienna on Thursday to mark the beginning of the year 2009. Barenboim was granted Palestinian citizenship only recently for his outstanding work to bring peace through his music. It “symbolises the everlasting bond between the Israeli and Palestinian people,” the Israeli music conductor asserted.
During this strife-torn period, the world needs more Barenboims. As the Israeli government stepped up its all-out invasion in the Gaza Strip ostensibly to weed out those rocket-firing-Hamas (whether they should be characterised as freedom fighters or terrorists depends on the world view one adopts), it is doubly reassuring that there are many Jewish writers and intellectuals who take a contrarian view of the current developments.
Indeed, there is an urgent need— whether in West Asia or different parts of the world— for a new paradigm to address the burning problems. Nobody can deny that several developments during the last three decades have wreaked havoc on innocent human beings the world over. The “solitarist” and compartmentalised consensus of Washington and Wall Street need to be discarded if there has to be relief in the coming days, months, and years. After all, the market-driven-fundamentalist policies in global economy and the law-and-order-influenced-counter-terrorism approach in domestic and international security have failed to deliver the desired results.
In a world, where over 1.5 billion people live below what is called absolute poverty of less than a dollar a day, problems arising from poverty, destitution and squalor need to be addressed from a humanitarian perspective. In his book Identity and Violence, the Illusion of Destiny, Nobel laureate Amartya Sen, made a compelling case for a paradigmatic shift to address “a number of economic, social and political problems that have global dimensions, and the policy issues that relate to them.” Though he did not dismiss globalisation, Sen pressed for what he called a “fairer arrangement” that would include a range of actions both on national and international fronts.
To start, the immense gains in “expanding” the reach of education and public health care can be hardly restated. Annually, tens of millions of people die due to lack of access to affordable medicines, especially in areas such as HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and other chronic diseases. International initiatives and institutional reforms for “making patent laws and incentive systems more friendly to the development and usability of medicines” will go a long way in addressing some of the public health problems.
Last month, the UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) said, around 75 million children who are out of school today are among the most vulnerable in the world. They live —and often have to work — in remote or rural areas, urban slums and conflict zones. Indeed, national governments are required to allocate at least four to six percent of GNP and 15 to 20 per cent of public expenditure on education if a dent has to be made on illiteracy.
Global initiatives are also needed on a war footing to curb the arms trade (if the deadliest aerial warfare launched by Israel is any pointer) or the destructive casino-capitalism activities. Providing market access for the poorer countries to the markets of the richer economies in cotton and other commodities can go a long way in reducing the poverty that is the root cause for much of global perils.
On their own, these changes can bring about a drastic change. More importantly, “they can contribute to greater human security and restrain easy recruitment for terrorism and training.” Ultimately, this would result in “changing the climate of tolerance of violence, which is itself a factor in allowing terrorism to be nurtured in societies with deep grievances”!
