THE ECONOMIC DILEMMA OF THE MUSLIM WORLD

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ASMA RASHID/T~~ Economic Dilemma of the Muslim World
was made to ease the pressure of rights over production. It was soon countered
by a demand for more rights, for example. in rice ration and wages. This unrest
was most probably directed from quarters outside the country who sought to
cripple the development process by utilising against the workers entrusted with
the execution of the plan "the Leap Forward", their innate inclination for the
easy thing.
It is the height of cunning that a man may be broken up, or cripple
himself with his own hands, without being aware that some imposter had duped
him with the language of rights and liberties.
Individual Biological and Social Equation in Recent Experiments
A society may happen to prepare all that an expert deems necessary and
adequate to tackle a problem only to discover with shock that it could not be
solved on this basis. The Indonesian society lived through just such an
experience, along with Dr. Schacht, a well-known expert of economic planning.
There is no doubt that the failure of his plan for the revival of Indonesian
economy was something the latter had not envisaged. On the one hand, it had
been prepared with technical precision, and on the other, possessed in his eyes
all the necessary material and human resources to guarantee its success. It was
to be implemented in a land blessed with the most fertile soil, producing all sons
of treasures, enjoying a climate which bore fruit in three seasons and was
inhabited by a hundred million human beings endowed with an astonishing
intelligence and a kcen aesthetic sense.
Despite all these ingredients, the plan met with failure. The author may
have looked into the causes ofthis failure but as far as we know he has not left
us a record of such an investigation. Hence we arc entitled 10 ask: What caused
the Schacht plan to stumble and miscarry?
As a matter of fact, we would have to go back to the formation of
Schacht as an economic scientist. His experience was formed in the period
between 1933-1936 in the course of his efforts to revive the German economy.
His plan sought to obtain from the poor German soil and the capabilities of the
German people all the conditions of its success. It did achieve a success which
enabled Germany to confront and withstand the most extreme military and civil
conditions during the 2nd world War.
There is no doubt that Schacht formulated his plan on conditions
provided directly and mechanically by the German people during the
implementation stage. Nor is there any doubt that, later on, he automatically
applied the same conditions to the Indonesian experiment. That is to say, he
formulated his plan on his own personal equation as a member of the German
society while the Indonesian experiment naturally proceeded on the basis of the
equation of the Indonesian individual. Thus the Indonesian experiment tripped
over an error committed by Schacht in his assessment of the human element in
the economic field. For, his mind carried only one form of the human element