ifda dossier 74 - Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation

therefrom, and integration into the
liberal international establishment
through financial and trade collabora-
tions on the other, mediated and facilit-
ated by the dominant international
framework of financial and development
agencies. Something similar is likely to
be attempted as the democratic mass
movements in Hurma, South Korea and
elsewhere gct channelised into the new
regional gco-politics of transnational
man;igen1eent.
It would be a jaundiced view to take if
one did not throw in one's lot with the
various movements for den~ocratization
and reden~ocratization globally, usually
along the framework provided by West-
ern liberal democracies. And yet, one
has learnt over time how so many
liberal democracies have promoted
dualist structures arising from ii~tcgra-
lion of the upper deciles into a growing
world middle class and exclusion of the
rest to become the world's underclass.
'lhe latter consists of the rural poor,
ethnicminorities and peripheral nationa-
lities, the women pushed out by modern
technology, the comn1unities displaced
by large development projects and
various other victims of the long histori-
cal process that began with the colonial
expansion of Europe in the various
continents of the Third World. More-
over, with such a divide engulfing one
society after another, there is likely to
be 'ecocide' on a large scale, undermin-
ingthe resource endowments of these
countries, particularly of their rural
hinterlands, tribal populations and the
poor generally.
Somewhat similar consequences have
also followed seemingly radical demands
for a new international economic order,
promoting greater transfer of technolog-
ies, and with such transfers, collabora-
tion with transnational corporations for
modernizing domestic economies, raising
exports and using foreign exchange
surpluses built through migrant labour
and the brain drain for makingggood
the 'technological la$ from which these
countries have been told (above all by
their own scientists) they suffer. Above
all, the same tendencies are likely to get
a fillip following the chain of regional
reconciliations (India and China, India
and Pakistan, Vietnam, Kampuchea and
Ihtiiland, in Western Sahara, or on the
issue of Cyprus) sponsored by one or
the other of the superpowers. 'Ihe
moving spirit that has provided a ration-
ale for many of these has been the
same: making good one's technological
la" releasing resources for moderniza-
tion, getting integrated into the global
framework of interdependence.
It is in these newly emerging contexts
of global and regional changes - and
their domestic reflections - that new
interventions from the bottom will need
to take place, building no doubt on the
positive forces that have been generated
by the New Detente and making use of
the breathing space and time provided
by the same, but at the same time
waging struggle against distortions of
the same engineered by dominant
structures of political, econon~ic and
technological power. 'I'here is urgent
need to generate counter-tendencies for
a more fundamental realignment of
forces that would utilize the new oppor-
tunities for putting an end to a world
structure that continues to be dualistic