Saturday, September 8, 2007

SOME BASIC FACTS ABOUT INDIA’S POLITICAL,

SOME BASIC FACTS ABOUT INDIA’S POLITICAL,SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT



by George Mathew

Director, Institute of Social Science New Delhi



Introduction


India has a sub-continental dimension, covering an area of 32,87,263 sq.km, with a population of 846.30 million as on 1 March 1991. According to the 1993 estimate India’s population is 896,567,000. The annual population growth rate for 1980-93 was 2.0%. The second most populous country in the world, India is the home of 16% of the world’s population and accounts for 2.42% of the total world area. The population of India as recorded at each decennial census from 1901 onward has grown steadily except during 1911-21 when it showed a decline. In absolute terms, the country’s population has increased by 161.12 million during the decade 1981-91, which is ten times the population of Australia and more than twice that of Germany.

An encouraging feature is the decline in the growth rate of population which marginally decreased from 24.66% in 1971-81 to 23.85% during 1981-91.

India comprises 25 states and seven union territories (see map). In most states the population growth rate declined during the decade. However, seven states and three union territories, which account for one-third of the country’s population, recorded an increase in the growth rate. Nagaland registered the highest growth rate of 56.86% while Kerala, the lowest rate of 13.98 %. Uttar Pradesh continues to be the largest state, population-wise, with 16.44% of the people, followed by Bihar comprising 10.21% of the country’s population.

Bombay metro is the most populated city with an urban population of 12.60 million, followed by Calcutta with 11.02 million, Delhi with 9.42 million and Madras with 5.42 million. The population density (inhabitants per sq.km.) has gone up from 216 in 1981 to 273 persons in 1993.

Other important facts (1991) are:


Crude Birth rate


30.5


Crude Death rate


10.2


Infant Mortality rate


91.0






1980


1993

Population age 0 to 5


29%


25%

Population age 6 to 14


38%


34%

Percentage of

Urban population to total population





26.00





1981


1991

Percentage of







total workers to total population


36.70


37.68

Percentage of

male workers


52.62


52.56

Percentage of

female workers


19.67


22.73





1980


1993

Daily newspapers, copies per 1000


21


32

Radio receivers

per 1000 inhabitants


38


79





1980


1990

Television receivers

per 1000 inhabitants


4


32



Declining Sex Ratio

One of the most disturbing aspects of the Indian census is the decline in the female proportion of the population. The sex ratio (number of females per 1000 males) in India has been generally adverse to women. The ratio has also declined over the years except in the decade 1971 to 1981 when it slightly improved from 927 to 934. In 1991, it fell again to 927 per thousand males. The state of Kerala, known for its high physical quality of life like high literacy and with near more than one-fifth of its population Christians, presents a sharply different picture as the sex ratio is 1036 females per 1000 males. The inhuman neglect of girl child and discrimination against women account for this abnormal trend.


Political

India has a functioning democracy, the largest in the world. More than 500 million people – 18 years and above – out of its 844 million (1991) elected members of the Lower House of the Parliament in the latest general elections held in May and June 1991. Fifty-three per cent voters exercised their franchise in the latest elections. The percentage, though, was considered to be the lowest ever in the history of Indian elections. Higher levels of people’s participation has been a hallmark of Indian elections. For the last 44 years since Independence, democratic elections have been a regular feature in this country.

The political ethos today in India is rooted in the long years of the National Movement for Independence. India’s first organized attempt to overthrow British colonial power was in 1857 but it took the shape of a mass movement or mass struggle in the early decades of the present century. It permeated all levels of social life. Political education became part of Indian life through cultural organisations, educational institutions, reform movements, caste and communal associations and, above all, the plurality of parties, their ideologies, and media. Literature, art, theatre, etc. grew around the themes of nationalism and democracy. It is not wrong to say that today India is an “intensely political land and politics is in the people’s bloodstream.” Competing ideologies and parties attempt through all available means to educate the masses on issues affecting them, not only on the eve of elections but even at other times. In India there will be an election every year at one or another place, state or local level, if not a by-election to the Parliament. Each general election is a near social revolution in its magnitude and sweep. The discussions and de-bates are not confined to local issues; they are analysed in public meetings, from a national and international perspective. People know that their collective future is determined by the political process and that they have a stake in it. This means not indifference but active participation in elections.

India is one of the biggest functioning democracy in the world. But superimposed on a feudal social framework unexposed to real democratic traditions the people find it difficult to make a real success of their newly found democratic praxis. Once charismatic leaders like Pandit Nehru who practised democratic principles were removed the weakness of this democracy surfaced. The ruling party which ruled most of the time has degenerated.

A situation that has been developing in the recent past causing concern for the future of democracy is that of tensions and violence during campaigning and voting – in some regions to the extent of impeding the electoral process. In the 1991 elections more than 200 people lost their lives in election-related violence. This has resulted in politics and politicians being shown in a bad light, as well as a decline in political standards.
The institutions of democracy – parties, press (media), parliament, judiciary and local self-governments – create political awareness and therefore these institutions have to be nurtured and carefully protected by all democratic societies. India has had ups and downs in this vital area but on the whole there has been a fair amount of public awareness and protests whenever political expediency tried to subvert the institutions of democracy. The late Mrs. Indira Gandhi as Prime Minister attempted in her own way to bend these institutions to suit her interests but the people of India asserted their democratic rights and have continued to do so whenever they have felt that there have been subtle or not so subtle attempts at manipulation.

Perhaps the potential danger to India democracy is the tendency to mix religion with politics. Hindus constitute 82.63% of India’s population. This majority religious community is not homogeneous but constituted of many hierarchically placed castes and tribes. Some of them may not even identify themselves as Hindus. In the last few elections Hindu upper caste symbols were evoked by one of the political parties, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), and its front organisations to gain power. As a result, from an average 11% vote that this party used to get, it garnered 24% of the votes in the 1991 elections to the Parliament. This trend, if continued, can pose a threat to India’s secular character, minorities, and democracy itself. When religion and politics mix in the name of protecting a majority religious community’s interests, then fascism is not far away.

However, the 1993 November elections to four State Assemblies have demonstrated that peoples of India do not approve extreme right-wing Hindutva to come to power. The BJP lost its hold oil three out of four States it ruled from 1991-92.

The recent 73rd and 74th Constitutional Amendment has given constitutional status to local bodies below and at the District Level, known as panchayats. There will be about 500 district level, 5000 Block (middle level) and 2,30,000 village panchayats within the next one year. 2600000 elected members will take office from 1994, out of which 80,0000 will be women (one-third seats are reserved for women).


Literacy

For the purpose of census a person is deemed as literate if he or she can read and write any language with understanding. The literacy rate in the country, excluding J&K, is 52.21% (64.13 for males and 39.29 for females). The pupil – teacher ratio at primary level in 1980 was 45 and it has risen to 47 in 1990. The percentage of female teachers at primary level in 1980 was 27% and in 1990 it rose slightly to 28%.

The National Policy on Education (NPE) adopted in 1986 and updated in 1992 constitutes a landmark in the Indian educational policy. Having recognised the problem of working children, NPE proposes to tackle it with a programme of non-formal education as an integral part of a strategy to provide basic education for all. There are an estimated 153 million Indian children between the ages of 6 and 14 years. The age specific enrollment ratio is estimated to be 80%. Yet, there are still over 28 million out-of-school children in the 6-14 age-group, over 14 million of whom according to official estimates are working children. The drop out rate is also high: nearly half the children who enter class 1 drop out before reaching class V and two-thirds before class VIII. The target population of the National Literacy Movement (NLM) are the 121 million illiterates in the 15 to 35 age-group. With all these India can still claim the “dubious distinction” of leading the world in the number of illiterates.


Human Rights

The Indian sub-continent has been the scene of numerous ethnic and political conflicts. To quell unrest, India has unfortunately resorted to the enactment of laws at both national and state levels which contradict the provisions of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which the Government of India is a signatory. The National Security Act (NSA), the Terrorist and Disruptive Activities Prevention Act (TDAPA), the Disturbed Areas Act (DAA) and the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) are of particular concern in this respect. In the states of Kashmir, Punjab, North East and Andhra Pradesh, the Government of India is engaged in paramilitary operations which have involved arbitrary arrests, detention without trial, destruction of citizen’s properties, extra-judicial executions and deaths in police and army custody.

The Indian Government was under pressure to do something about its human rights policies and record. The pressure, explicitly and implicitly, took the form of the Government of India being told by International Aid Agencies that unless there was some positive evidence to show that it was doing something about human rights, India would not be entitled to economic and financial aid and support.

In 1992, the Government of India made a proposal to establish a Human Rights Commission and the Parliament passed the bill to constitute the National Commission on Human Rights in 1993.

The human rights and civil liberties movement in the country which is strong and active, is highly critical of the way the Human Rights Commission was established as they saw in it a move to appease international organisations, institutions and powerful lobbies abroad.


Minorities

Hindus, the religious majority in India, comprise 82.6% of the population of our country. Muslims are the largest religious minority. Though Muslims constitute only 11.4% of India’s population their absolute number, 92 million, makes them the second largest national population in the world. Christians, numbering 16.2 million form 2.4%, Sikhs 2.0%, Buddhists 0.7% and others including unclassified persons constitute 0.4%. To evaluate the efficacy of various safeguards in the Constitution for the protection of the religious minorities and to make recommendations to ensure effective implementation and enforcement of all the safeguards and the laws, a Minorities Commission was set up in January 1978.


Lower Castes And Tribals

The caste system is unique to India. The 82.6% Hindus (except the tribals) are hierarchically divided into castes on the basis of purity pollution principle and division of labour by ascription. The move to do away with the caste system in the independent India has met with little or no success. On the contrary, caste identi-ties have been strengthened and play an important part in bargaining in the political and economic spheres. The assertion of rights by the once op-pressed castes in recent years has resulted in brutal suppression and conflicts bordering on caste wars. India’s 51.6 million tribals (7.8% of the total population), are considered part of the Hindu population. Although the country has excellent laws to protect the rights of the tribals, the development path embarked upon by India, that has involved the construction of large dams, super thermal power plants, large-scale mining etc., has uprooted them without adequate measures for their rehabilitation, resulting in their economic and cultural impoverishment. India has 104.7 million (15.8%) lower castes commonly known as Scheduled Castes.


Child Labour

Varying estimates abound as to the number of working children in India. According to the 1981 census, work is defined as “participation in any economically productive activity.” Main workers are those who have worked for the major part of the year preceding the date of enumeration and whose main activity has been in either cultivation or as agricultural labourers or in household industry or in other work. Marginal workers are those who have done some work but cannot be classified as main workers. According to the 1981 census, there were 13.59 million working children in India. The National Sample Survey revealed that there were 17.36 million working children in India. Using another yardstick, the Operations Research Group comes to the following conclusions:

A working child is that child who was enumerated during the survey as a child within 5 to 15 age bracket and who is at remunerative work, may be paid or unpaid, and busy any hour of the day within or out-side the family... estimated working children in our country are around 44.0 million. Out of these about 21.0% are in urban areas and the rest are rural based.

While the census definition appears to be unreasonably restrictive since it is unwilling to recognise that children play a very important economic role, even if it is not directly productive, the ORG figures seem closer to reality and underline the enormity of the problem.

Article 24 of the Indian Constitution prohibits children below the age of fourteen from working in any factory, mine or other hazardous job. Yet, children are routinely found employed in mines, on construction sites and in factories in carpet weaving, beedi making, gem industry and so on. Article 39 of the Directive Principles of State Policy directs the states to ensure just and humane conditions of work. The Child Labour Regulation Act, the Factories Act and other industrial legislations do exist according to which the present situation of child labour is not in consonance with the dignity of a child.

While India’s child labour laws prohibit children from being employed in factories and mines, where wages are high, their provisions do not apply to cottage industries, restaurants, households and the agriculture sector, where wages are low. In fact, the agricultural sector stands out as the biggest single employer of child labour in India.

In India, it is primarily female children who maintain the household in both rural and urban areas by undertaking non-productive activities like caring for younger siblings, cooking, cleaning, washing and fetching water. Parents are thus able to go out and work as wage labour because the household work is done by their children, especially daughters.

The bias against the female child is both the cause and the effect of relegating her to such a role in contrast to the more productive type of work that the male child is typically engaged in.

Though a large number of female children assist their mothers in a variety of home based industries, they largely remain outside the ambit of the child labour law for it relates only to those children working outside their homes in work-shops, factories, etc.

The existence of bonded labour in India has been recognised for long. Despite progressive legislation, it is not uncommon in parts of the country for parents to pledge their children to employers – in both the agricultural and urban unorganised sectors – against loans taken with the understanding that the child will work throughout its life for a pittance. Appallingly, many children when adults buy their freedom by offering their offspring in exchange.


Economic Situation

Indian economic situation today presents a kaleidoscopic picture that conveys hopes to some and frustrations to many.

At the time of Independence the expectations were raised very high. The early Five-Year Plans fully reflected it. There was a perspective of high growth, full employment, reduction of poverty and above all a socialist pattern of society based on distributive justice and equality of opportunity. The socialist pattern, clearly not a dogmatic variety sought to give the “commanding heights” to the public sector and control the private sector so as to serve social goals. A series of controls of production, prices, imports, physical control to direct scarce and essential commodities, location of industries, development of backward areas, etc. have been introduced. Unfortunately, this led to a controlled regime that bred inefficiency and corruption. While Thatcherism and Reagonism gained popularity in the West and capitalist world increasingly took to an era of liberalization and globalization, India too gradually welcomed liberalization. But that, in turn, led to heavy borrowing to finance increased the imports. Borrowing was easier than taxation and politically more popular. Total external debt increased from 20.6 billion in 1980 to 71.6 billion in 1991 — a 248% increase as against 71% increase in GNP. As on March 31, 1993 the official figure of debt is $93 billion as against 83.5 billion for China. No wonder net flow of funds is turning negative. By June 1991, the foreign exchange resources were pushed down to a nadir, not enough to meet even 10 days imports for a big country of the size of India. India’s credit rating which was on A+, fell to a B. The country also found it difficult to meet her debt service obligations. It was at this juncture that the IMF-World Bank inspired structural adjustment policies were clamped down on India.

The Industrial Policy Statement of July 22, l 991 which came close on heels of the announcement of the new economic reform, a policy towards greater decontrol and delicensing was announced. The role of public sector has been reduced and the number of industries exclusively under public sector was reduced to just 8. A regime of privatisation has been started in full force.

It is to be noted that Indian industry has over the years developed a highly diversified structure, considerable entrepreneurship and a vastly expanded capital market. This was in no small measure due to the autonomous and self-reliant path India has pursued over the years.

India has also built up a stable agricultural sector. Today, she has become self-sufficient in food grains. But except in Kerala land reforms were not implemented. The rural sector remains highly skewed and hierarchical.

Now the pertinent question is whether the regime of liberalization, globalization and privatisation will help the country achieve the cherished goals for which it fought the British? The answer is a firm no. The comprador business interests and the large middle class and upper echelons of society welcome the change as heralding a new world order. The WTO which will be in place from July 1, 1995, will usher in a global capitalist world order dictated more by considerations of profit. This will undermine the nation-State’s efforts to help the marginalised, poor and the needy without entitlements to participate in the market. Already the style of development has done the damage. The country’s economy has been hijacked by corrupt politicians, bureaucrats and business people. Indians are now part of what they call “emerging nations” with freedom for international capital to operate in India while millions of small man categories are denied of credit. International financial community is finding India an attractive place for investment. From the near-zero situation today’s fore amounts to $17 billion. This is an all-time high and is expected to grow. It shows that inter alia foreign investors are prepared to park their hinds in India. Now really India faces what some economists call a Dutch disease. While this surges ahead the two questions need be answered. First, are the increase in financial capital improving production or are we ushering a casino economy? Second, do the financial reforms help the credit needs of vulnerable sections of society? The answers are clearly in the negative.

The sum and substance of what is said is that the new reforms are targeted towards the 250 and odd million people who only can be part of the market friendly regime. For a country with over 870 million population the question is can we leave the rest of 600 and above to the mercies of the market. The trickle down theory is totally irrelevant.

In India, by government’s own admission, 42% of its population is below poverty line (those who cannot afford a daily intake of 2100 calorie), nearly one-fifth of the total urban population, or 20.1%, is poor. Independent scholars, however, estimate the incidence of urban poverty to be around 37 percent. The most disturbing feature of these official and independent estimates relates to the figures on the absolute number of urban poor. While official estimates show that there has been a significant decline in the number of urban poor from 47.3 million to 41.7 million between 1982 to 1988, independent estimates indicate just the opposite trend, an increase in the absolute number of persons in absolute poverty, from 69.2 million to 77 million for the same period. Experts apprehend that the discouraging trend pertaining to the growth of absolute numbers of urban poor in India has accelerated after the introduction of the economic reform process since the 1990s. It is estimated that during 1991-92, the first year of the adjustment and stabilization process of the Indian economy, there has been an overall increase of 10.7 million in the number of poor in the country, of which 2.6 million has taken place in urban areas.


The New Economic Policy (NEP)

The Government has undertaken sweeping economic changes since July 1991 that at best services the interest of merely the tiny, privileged minority. Under pressure from the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, and the internal lobbies the trend is to integrate the economy into the global market ignoring local, political, economic conditions and cultural backgrounds. India is compelled to start from an unequal situation. The opening up policy undermines self-reliance, in the long term pursuit of independent development path. Fears are expressed whether it will even affect the nation’s sovereignty and independence. The NEP has resulted in devaluation of rupee, inflation, rise in prices of essential commodities, cuts on education, health and social welfare. The government for all practical purposes is withdrawing from its responsibility of providing social security and welfare to the poor.


Implications Of GATT

The overall tendency will be towards expansion of agri-business enterprises and bringing more land under export oriented cash crops at the expense of subsistence agriculture. This will lead to larger concentration of land at the top and swelling of the ranks of landless agricultural labour.

This is a direct onslaught on the impoverished masses. The traditional knowledge systems about seeds, live stock and agriculture as well as soil re-generation and water management will be destroyed.

The NEP and the GATT has political implications too. The elected representative and the entire parliamentary process may lose its power to represent the people’s grievances. Democratic rights face abridgment with talk of moratorium on protest, struggles and strikes. Workers and union rights will be curtailed to suit the regiments of TNCs and local industrialists with amendments of labour laws. The military and paramilitary are being strengthened to control and suppress people’s organised struggles.

There is sigh of hope in the protest movements gathering momentum against the NEP and GATT. There are groups and articulate sections of intelligentsia thinking of alternative economic policies which have generated considerable interest throughout the country.


Environment

At the time of India’s Independence, our priority was the provision of the basic human needs of food, fuel, shelter, health, employment, etc. This was also reflected in the Five Year Plans. In the early 70s problems related to environment began to receive the direct attention of the central government. Nearly 10 years later, in 1980, the Department of Environment was set up. From 1985, there is a full fledged Ministry of Environment and Forests to serve as the focal point in the administrative structure for the planning, promotion and coordination of environmental and forestry programmes.

Environmental protection and ecological balance are essential to ensure that development is sustainable in the long run. Environmental problems in India can be broadly classified as (i) those arising as negative effects of the very process of development, and (ii) those arising from conditions of poverty and underdevelopment.

The Environment (Protection) Act 1986, is a landmark legislation as it empowers the Central Government to take all necessary measures for protection of the environment and to plan and execute a nation-wide programme for prevention, control and abatement of environmental pollution, including laying down standards for discharge of environmental pollutants and for quality of environment. It aims at plugging the loopholes in the other related acts.

The Ministry of Environment and Forests announced a National Policy for Abatement of Pollution in 1992, according to which the key elements for pollution prevention are adoption of best available clean and feasible technologies rather than end-pipe treatment. This implies serious consideration of production process changes which involve significant improvement in energy and water conservation.

Under the same policy, 17 categories of heavily polluting and environmentally critical industries have been identified for introduction of pollution control measures through economic and policy instruments on a priority basis. The industries are cement, thermal power plants, distilleries, sugar, fertilizers, oil refineries, among others.

The Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) has identified 13 grossly sly polluted stretches of rivers Sabarmati, Subernarekha, Godavari, Krishna, Indus (tributaries), Sutlej, Ganga (tributaries), Yamuna, and a few others to formulate short-term result oriented programmes.

The Environment Ministry has identified 19 critically polluted areas in the country which need special attention as regards pollution control. These include Vapi (Gujarat), Singrauli (Uttar Pradesh), Korba (Madhya Pradesh), Talcher (Orissa), Howrah (West Bengal), Chembur (Maharashtra), Najafgarh (Delhi), among others.

Sixty per cent of air pollution in India is due to emissions of vehicles moving on the roads network. Although traffic density and petrol and oil consumption are not high as compared with those in the developed countries, the rate of pollutant emission per vehicle in India is 35% higher than that in the USA on account of poor maintenance of vehicles and roads, lack of traffic planning, a high proportion of old, overused vehicles, crowded highways and a large proportion of two and three wheelers.

The objective of all development is to enhance the economic and general well-being of the people so that their standard and quality of living can be improved. It is imperative to incorporate environmental aspects in development projects right at the inception stage, to prevent the erosion and contamination of the resource base itself. Environmental Impact Assessment (ElA), which was introduced in the country in 1978, is a handy tool to assess the environmental compatibility of the development projects in terms of their location, suitability of technology, efficiency in resource utilization and recycling etc. At present ElAs are done for almost all major projects including thermal power, mining, river valley, industries, atomic power, new towns, communication projects etc. Projects which are sensitive and located in already environmentally degraded areas and those which are central government projects costing over Rs.200 million, are also subject to EIA.

Forests are a renewable source and contribute substantially to economic development. They also play a major role in enhancing the quality of the environment. India has an area of 75.23 million hectares notified as forests, of which 40.6 million hectares is classified as re-served and 21.5 million hectare is protected forests. About 19.47% of the total geographical area of the country is under actual forest cover.

Priority areas are: (a) Conservation of bio-diversity including forests, marine life, and mountain ecosystems; (b) Conservation of soil and moisture and prevention of pollution of water sources; (c) Control of industrial pollution and wastes; (d) Access to clean technologies; (e) Tackling urban environmental issues (safe drinking water, sanitation facilities and garbage disposal); (f) Strengthening environmental education, training, awareness and resource management; (g) Alternative energy plan.

In spite of government regulations environmental degradation is going on because of extreme poverty of the people and politician-official-busines/industry nexus.



Social Security

Social security has been listed in the Concurrent List of the Constitution signifying the responsibility of both the Centre and the States in this sphere. The task of providing meaningful social security continues to be challenging in view of financial as well as operational constraints, high incidence of poverty, unemployment, illiteracy and the large size of unorganized/informal sector.

The permanent social security benefits provided through legislative measures like Workmen’s Compensation Act, Employees State Insurance Act, Employees Provident Fund & Miscellaneous Provisions Act, Maternity Benefit Act, and Payment of Gratuity Act, etc. cater to mainly organised urban labour comprising less than 10% of the total labour force. Most of the States/UTs have pension schemes for the old and disabled, but due to eligibility criteria of income and age, only about 9% of old-age population gets the benefit of pension. In the last few years, group insurance schemes for landless agricultural labourers, life insurance scheme for Integrated Rural Development Programme (lRDP) beneficiaries and group insurance for certain categories of workers belonging to weaker sections of the society have been introduced. The coverage under permanent social security measures, however, continues to be small.

Emphasis is, therefore, being given to transitory measures of social security. These include special employment and anti-poverty programmes, welfare programmes for development of women, children, weaker sections of the society, handicapped and disabled persons, Public Distribution System for supply of essential commodities at low prices, and subsidised education and basic health care. The National Renewal Fund has been established to fund schemes for compensation, retraining and redeployment of workers affected by economic restructuring.


Rural Poor

More and more areas under the cultivation of food crops have now been planted with export oriented cash crops. This has led to non-availability of food leading to starvation and hunger among the rural poor. With drastic reduction in subsidies, majority of the poor cannot afford to purchase food grains from the open market. The government schemes to help the poor, for instance, IRDP have declined from Rs. 3.4 million in 1989-90 to Rs. 2 million in 1992-93. The employment generated under the JRY (Jawahar Rozgar Yojana) also declined from 864 million man-days in l989-90 to 778 million man-days in 1992-93. In both, the decline was pronounced during the period of SAP, the years 1991-92 and 1992-93.

The logic of liberalization prevalent in the industrial sector holds true also for the agricultural sector. In the name of efficiency small farmers are gradually driven out of agriculture by big farmers and agribusinesses. This has become a major area of concern especially in relation to the question of food security which is critical in a country where a third of the population lives below the poverty line. The gross area under food grains cultivation came down from 127.7 million hectares in 1988-89 to 126.8 million hectares in 1991-92. As against this, cultivated area under cash crops has shown magnificent increase during same period. This trend towards commercialization will only intensify with the export-or-perish principles being now vigorously pursued under SAP. Further, a disturbing trend is observed in terms of the per capita availability of food grains which declined from 494.5 grams per day in 1989 to 476.4 grams in 1992.

Moreover such averages of macro statistics reveal little about food security at the threshold level. Growing food stocks and availability are meaningless if households lack the purchasing power or resources to ensure an adequate nutritional intake. Further, security at household level may reveal nothing about intra-household distribution of food, which by convention discriminate against women. Clearly then, the notion of food security must be considered in terms that reach beyond a simple stock-taking of government storage facilities.

Besides, the government is amending the land ceiling laws to provide easy access of MNCs to penetrate the agricultural and food processing industries. Number of legislations and regulations to protect the small and marginal farmers and agricultural workers remain on paper and unimplemented with the meagre benefits of the measures being siphoned away by big farmers and farm-lords.

The export-drive will lead to further inequalities in land ownership. Small land owners, without the means to shift production to more profitable export crops will have no option then but to sell off their lands and become landless labourers. Employment opportunities are minimum in the export-crops, the sector being highly capital intensive. This will lead to massive unemployment, mass migration, disruption of family and family life, child labour and intensified exploitation of women. Thus, the globalization of agriculture leads to the demise of rural life and society.

Urban Poor

During the decade of the ‘80s there has been considerable shrinkage in employment opportunities. The rate of growth of employment has been decreasing every year during the decade. The later half, 1987 to 1990 has actually witnessed negative growth rate in employment in the private sector and the rate in public sector was only around 1.5%. The official figures based on registration in employment exchanges underes-timate the severity of unemployment and under the liberalized process of economic competition, the industry will begin to retrench workers which was not so easy even in the recent past. Along with the “exit policy” that is sought to be implemented, employees will be forced to choose between unemployment and a lower wage rate. Moreover with the full adoption of market economy in Indian conditions where labour supply exceeds demand, the real wages will be compressed by 30-40% of the present level. Unskilled labour with very low bargaining power because of its unorganised character and poverty will hit the hardest.

Since the last couple of years a new phenomenon of employees resorting to employment of contract and casual workers is noticed. This has led to further drop in the strength work of the permanent work force. According to one assessment out of a total of 300 million in the work force, nearly 270 million persons work as casual or contract workers or self-employed.

The shrinkage of job opportunities in rural areas forces growing migration of rural people and thus to an increase in urban population — from 29 million in the ‘60s to 56 million in the ‘80s.

The situation has led to a perceptible increase in indebtedness of the rural poor. In the absence of institutional mechanism local issuers advance money to the toilers at rates as high as l00% and use goons to recover interest and capital with criminal intermediation and even torture. This is one factor which leads to the almost all-pervasive criminalisation of the city.

The criminalisation is now also a political phenomenon. The external reactionary forces are based upon criminal terror which permeates both the work sites and the residential areas. The subsequent erosion of democratic institutions is capitalised upon by forces of religious fundamentalism and communalism who receive no mean aid from the policy paralysis on socio-cultural issues of the Central and State governments.

Women are, of course, the special victims of this abysmal urban conditions. The shrinking job market renders them unemployed. They then fall into the trap of the highly exploitative contract labour system. Self-employment schemes have been more or less uniform failures. These have not led to the empowerment of women but only pushed them into the money economy on the most adverse terms. The current spurt in globalisation and liberalisation will further depress their incomes, intensify their exploitation and deteriorate their workshop conditions.

This, obviously, leads to deterioration of living standards and conditions. Health already vulnerable due to malnutrition, hard work and violence suffers even more. Commercialisation of health services deprives them of even the minimum relief.

Women are also targets of dubious and hazardous population control technologies, once again heavily pushed by the international financial institutions. Cynically the authorities use them as guinea pigs and play havoc with their bodies, minds and lives.

The helplessness on the one hand and the rampant consumerism and commercialisation on the other propels many women into prostitution. Not only are they demanded thus but put in bondage, subjected to violence and ultimately smitten with STDs and AIDS.

In the last two decades, most rapidly growing cities have become the symbols of unequal development. These islands of prosperity deny the urban poor even the basic right to shelter. As a result, they are forced to live on pavements, railway tracks etc. Under pressure to release urban land for non-housing purposes or for expensive residential complexes, the State responds with demolition and eviction of the urban poor from their dwellings. The threat of eviction is an ever-present danger with guarantee to alternative site almost non-existent.

Authorities fail to realise that the urban poor are an integral part of urban society and they have to play a key role in maintaining the informal economy of most of the metropolises, a major contribution which goes unrecognised. In this sector too privatization and monetization has made its impact. People are lured into the logic of privatization schemes by the promise of security of tenure. Often this leads to the eviction of the poor in favour of schemes for high and middle income sections. The promise of alternative accommodation under “sites-and-services” schemes becomes meaningless as people under the pressure of inflation and unemployment are unable to repay loan installments. This is all the more true as the alternative sites are invariably far away from places where people have their livelihood, (where they can work as domestic workers or petty vendors, recycle waste, ply rickshaws, etc.) As the Jawahar Rojgar Yajana scheme has been cut by 38%, loans for self-employment are also not easy. Under economic pressure people will sell their right to accommodation and again squat elsewhere illegally.


Conclusion

“The Asian miracles,” or “the Asian tigers” and the “emerging economies” phenomena, are all indicative of the new economic development taking place in Asia. This rapid economic development in several parts of Asia has brought with it new problems as well as possibilities.

It is clear that market-based economic policies, alone, cannot create conditions to eliminate poverty and unemployment. In fact, the inequalities created by market forces and their distortions will worsen existing social crises in parts of Asia. In other words, country experiences in Asia show that growth alone cannot and will not solve the problems of poverty and unemployment without state intervention.

The tendency of several Asian countries to incur large expenditures on defence during the Cold War period must give way to diverting those resources to social sectors. Mahbubul Haq has summed it up succinctly: “It is time for the politicians and the generals to interpret national security not just for their land but for their people. Not just territorial security but human security.” At the same time, the post-Cold War scenario must not give space for economic conflict or economic warfare resulting in the domination of one economy over the other.

In Asia, social justice for the deprived sections – minorities, women, oppressed castes, indigenous people – is the priority. If appropriate actions are not taken the gap between the burgeoning middle class, with its consumerist values, and the poor will continue to widen. There is an urgent need for the rich and affluent to reorient their life styles and consumption patterns because the available resources of Asia are not enough to sustain these high consumption levels of a few.

ONE CHINESE CHRISTIAN’S VIEW OF GOD

ONE CHINESE CHRISTIAN’S VIEW OF GOD


by K.H. Ting

Bishop K.H. Ting is President of the China Christian Council. Bishop Ting presented this
paper in the Union Theological Seminary in the Philippines on the occasion of the conferral of the Doctor in Theology (honoris causa) degree in November 1993 by the Union
Theological Seminary, Dasmaninas, Curiste, Philippines.

First of all I want to thank Union Theological Seminary in the Philippines and the President of the Seminary for the honor you give the church in China and to me personally. J trust that what you do today will result in a closer relationship between our two peoples and our two churches. We in China have a high evaluation of the witness of the Christians in the Philippines to Jesus Christ, calling people’s attention to human worth as children of God and to democracy as the mandate of history in accordance to the will of God. We, the church in China, have much to learn from our fellow Christians in the Philippines. Thank you also for the invitation to address this distinguished group of church leaders, professors and students. This is a good opportunity for me to bring the warm greetings of your fellow Christians in China. Let me also thank the President for the kind exaggerations in his citations.

I would like to speak to you on how more and more Chinese Christians, and I as one of them, have come to think of God as Love, as the only possible way to think of God at all. Perhaps I do not need to say that what I have to tell you is not so much for the instruction of Philippine Christians as a report to you on how we in China are trying to help our constituencies to grow into a more mature spirituality with a vision of God intellectually honest, spiritually edifying and morally challenging.

Let me begin by telling you something about myself. I was born into a family in which the grandfather on my mother’s side was an Anglican priest. I received the larger part of my formal education in China. My career in the church can be simply divided into two periods. The first period was in working among students through the Student Christian Movement, first in China, then in Canada and then on the international scene. The second period has been with theological education and religious studies in China, centering in Nanjing Theological Seminary and Nanjing University. Both of these periods are important to me in my theological formation and reorientation.

I would like to help you to see right away where I stand on your theological map. After the great social and political turmoil, called the Cultural Revolution, which cut off my theological and intellectual communication with the outside world for over ten years, I found upon resuming my international contacts three Western schools of thought most consonant with the fumblings and gropings of Chinese Christian intellectuals: liberation theology, writings in one way or another influenced by process philosophy, and the thinking of Teilhard de Chardin. This you will find understandable given not only the theme of change passed down from influential ancient Chinese classics, but also the motif of liberation and all the dynamism and zigzags of change and reform China has been going through.

My early training made me think of God largely in terms of his omnipotence, his power, his might, his self-sufficiency, his self-containment, his changelessness. Yes, in terms of his love too, but love was not God’s supreme attribute and was often overshadowed by his righteousness, his severity, his anger, his judgment and his arbitrariness.

The vicissitudes of all these years have moved me to a spirituality which affirms Christ’s place in God’s whole creative process and sees the kind of love embodied in Jesus in the four Gospels as the nature of God. Love is at the back of God’s whole creative process. Today, when I say Jesus Christ is the revelation of God, I mainly think of him as the revealer of God’s love. From struggling with the question of Jesus’ divinity and Godlikeness I have moved to the Christlikeness of God. Love becomes for me God’s number one attribute.

I am fascinated by what Alfred North Whitehead says towards the end of his Process and Reality about what he calls the “Galilean vision” in which God is perceived as a being loving, creating, educating, persuading and expecting human responses. When the Western world accepted Christianity, he says, Caesar conquered. Let me quote:

The brief Galilean vision of humility flickered throughout the ages, uncertainly... But the deeper idolatry of fashioning God in the image of the Egyptian, Persian and Roman rulers was retained. The church gave unto God the attributes which be-longed exclusively to Caesar.

Whitehead laments over the fact that, in so much of Christianity, God is conceived in terms of “the ruling Caesar, or the ruthless moralist, or the unmoved mover.” China, of course, has no lack of our own autocratic rulers in whose image various Chinese religions have fashioned their God. But it is the all-encompassing love at the heart of reality, sharing the joys and the sufferings of the created order, and moving the world towards greater coherence and greater love, that Christ reveals.

Let me help you locate me in your socio-political map too. My conviction in God as love and my conviction in socialism as the path China is to take strengthen each other. Socialism is love organized for the masses of the people. The collapse of the Soviet Union and Eastern European state power has had its effect on me, but has not shattered my conviction that, for China, neither feudalism, nor colonialism, nor capitalism is acceptable as an alternative to the social system we call socialism with Chinese characteristics which, in forty years has enabled twelve hundred million human beings to live more decently and gives us ground to hope that they can live still more decently by the end of the century. A longer view of history tells us that socialism is not an accident or a mishap that can now be erased. Socialism has only had a very short history. It has no charted course and no model to copy. While I am quite upset by many of the things done in the name of socialism, I still think socialism is a good name to describe the road for Chinese society that avoids the pitfalls of feudalism, colonialism, and capitalism all of which China has experienced and found disappointing. It is a road that liberates and develops the country’s productive power to an un-precedented extent, thus improving the people’s material livelihood, cultural level and self-respect.

We attach our hope to socialism not so much because we know exactly in detail what the socialist way is, but because we are fed up by all the other choices open to us. What is common in these other choices is the large scale of private ownership of the means of production and the unfair distribution of wealth, requiring the masses of the people to bear the cost by enduring endless suffering. People in that state cannot easily recognize God as love. We look for a corrective to all social systems which believe that the nastiest of men and women with the nastiest self-interest will work for the benefit of the masses of the people. What is called for is a brake to the un-bridled search for private profit. The failure of the Soviet Union which was just one experiment in social planning has done nothing to improve the attractiveness of feudalism, colonialism and capitalism. It is quite unthinkable that China is now to switch itself away from its socialist path and return to the old ways. I do believe that, with the gradual rise in economic and educational level, we can expect an increase of democracy in this socialism with Chinese characteristics.

Does the advocacy of atheism affect my support of socialism? No, it does not. I look at both atheists and ourselves as half-completed products in God’s creative process and that we are all becoming. There are atheists who are sincerely devoted to efforts to fashion a more humane society. Their cry against God is really a cry in favor of humanity. Their atheism is worthy of our sympathy in so far as it is a rejection of the false notions of God we religious people propagate. Who is the God they have in mind when they deny his existence? It is the tyrannical Jupiter who chains Prometheus to a cliff because he does good for humanity, or the ruthless underworld King Yen in Chinese popular religion who sends out emissaries to fetch people to be thrown in everlasting hell fire as punishment for their misdeeds. Atheistic humanism is actually one form of human seeking after God without its own knowing it, and can be our ally as it can help greatly to salvage authentic faith. We can join forces with humanitarians of many sorts to oppose the idolatry in those views of God that diminish human dignity and block human liberation. Some of my friends abroad are surprised that I sometimes speak as highly as I do of certain atheists and communists. There is a part of me as a Christian which utters a hearty “Amen” to what they advocate, a part of me that refuses to rebuke them, but rather warms to them and wants to work with them against forces we both want to combat, even though we get our orders in doing certain things together from different chains of command.

The New Testament is the source of our knowledge about Jesus Christ and through him about God. The record is fragmentary and does not give us as complete a picture of the person as we like to have. But two portraits are unmistakable:

(1) Jesus the great lover of men and women.

He tells us about the father who believes in the prodigal son and waits for his return, about the shepherd who has his ninety-nine sheep in the fold and yet cannot bear to lose one that is missing. We see a Jesus who weeps with those who suffer and rejoices with those who rejoice, a Jesus who refuses to condemn a person who has gone astray but protects her, a Jesus who has loved his friends and loves them to the end, one who tells his friends, “Do not let your hearts be troubled, believe in God, believe also in me.” This Jesus introduces a new scale of things in which Sabbath rules are subordinate to human needs. The picture we get of him in the New Testament touches the chord in all that is best in human nature: the lonely man, homeless and self-forgetful, with his outpouring of love and sympathy, his suffering and agony, his tender words on the cross, and the final victory over ruthless power. He lived and died as one who loves, a true lover.

(2) Jesus the Cosmic Christ.

He is not just the crucified one on the cross, the only image that has meaning to many Christians. He is the one who sustains the universe by his word of power. His is the primacy over all creation. He exists before all things, and all things are held together in him. He is the image of the invisible God, the first born of all creation. In him all things were created, things visible and in-visible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers. It is not that God carried his work of creation for six days and then stopped and ceded its control to the successful rebellion of Satan, and then the redeemer came into the world to rescue some individuals out of it to be returned to God, leaving all others to eternal damnation. As creativity is inexhaustible and creation a long, on-going process, Christ has been and is with God, in all the creative work in the universe to this day. He has to do with creation just as much as he has to do with redemption. Redemption is a part of God’s ongoing work of making a world of his design. The New Testament does not allow us to think that God is the creator and not the redeemer, and Christ is the redeemer and not the creator.

Now the essence of Christianity is the appeal to the person of Christ as revelation of the nature of God. When these two portraits of Jesus, Jesus the lover of men and women and Jesus the Christ in whom all things are created, are put together, we come to know God whom Christ reveals as the Cosmic-Lover, or Creator-Lover.

It is unfortunate that this is not the God many Christians in China, and I suppose, elsewhere know to be God.

The most commonly recognized attributes of God are his almightiness, his omnipresence, his omniscience, his severity, his unrelenting judgment of non-believers. We talk of love as an attribute of God too, but his love seems to be very arbitrary and enjoyed only by a few who are specially selected, or who please God in special ways. To the others, God is essentially a punisher-rewarder, a being hard to please. Hence, fear of God’s displeasure is the mark of much that goes under the name of Christianity.

I was brought up in a Christianity very much like that. We went to church every Sunday to curry God’s favor. If there was illness within the family, it was God’s punishment for some hidden sin. When I went to be a theological student to prepare myself for the ministry of the church, the common notion in the family and in church circles was that such an act of dedication would win God’s pleasure and bring health and well being to myself and my family.

Today, as I move about the Chinese church at its grassroots, I find that this is still the level of spirituality many are at. In some villages as many as half of the Christians became Christians when there was illness on the part of some family members who supposedly got healed when Christians came to pray and drive out the evil spirits. Many Christians at the grass-roots enjoy “testimony meetings” in which anybody can speak. At such meetings a common pattern emerges: some misfortune happens to a person, he or she searches for his or her sin or sins; after identifying the sin or sins and confessing to God and much praying, God moves away the misfortune. On the other hand, misfortune lingers and intensifies for those who are hard-hearted and do not repent, culminating in unending suffering and death in the family.

Holding on to this image of God is accompanied by a spirituality of acquisition and utilitarianism. We give God praises and honor and get, in return, health, wealth, protection from catastrophe in this life and eternal bliss in heaven. It is highly ironic that, while Christ was laughed at for his ability to save others but not himself, so many of his followers are only eager to save themselves by getting on the church as Noah’s Ark without a faith that concerns itself with the welfare of the people outside.

The image of God we find here is essentially what Whitehead calls that of the “ruling Caesar” with all his power over human fate. It is so far from the Christ we have come to know, to love and to adore as we read the four Gospels, with all his tenderness and rejection of power and coercion over men and women.

To say that God is love is to affirm God as the Cosmic Lover and to see love as the force directing God’s ever continuing work of creation, redemption and sanctification. Love is the supreme attribute of God, above all other attributes and subordinating them all. Christians make Christlike love the definition of God, the motivation in all God’s work of creation in nature and history. It is first of all in the ongoing process of creation that we are to see the supreme expression of God’s love. It is not a mark of higher religion to discern God’s love in terms of personal fortunes and misfortunes. God looks forward to and is working towards the emergence of a commonwealth of human beings who, out of their free will, choose to be co-creators with him of goodness, truth and beauty and of all things of value to God and to humanity. God’s love does not coerce. It works through education, persuasion, transfiguration and sanctification. In God’s creative process the world and all of us are thus far half-made products. Through this process men and women are being transformed from obedience to arbitrary commands to willing acceptance of the invitation of love, i.e. transferred from the realm of necessity to the realm of freedom.

We have been trained to think of God largely in terms of superior power which can either crush us or make us powerful. This is often a projection and legitimation of our power-hungry, exploitative, monopolistic social structures and attitudes. But, in the New Testament, God’s power comes out of weakness and he exercises sovereignty through crosses, not through conquests. We must not fashion God in the image of Egyptian, Persian, Roman and Chinese potentates, thereby giving to God the attributes which belong exclusively to Pharaoh, Caesar and their like. We need to relegate to the side all those attributes such as his absolute power, his absolute knowledge, his absolute changelessness, his absolute dominion, his arbitrariness and intolerance, imposed on God as a reflection of an absolutization of human beings’ own cravings, especially those of male human beings. These attributes need to be deabsolutized and subordinated to God’s supreme attribute of love.

God is no cosmic tyrant who forces obedience. He lures, invites and waits for free responses and does not resort to scolding and reprimanding. That is why we in China find the Gospels’ analogy of transformation of seeds and the growth of plants and trees in air, rain and sun more appealing than the image of the sheep which are constantly treated with rod and staff. God is the will to fellowship, not the will to power. We want to depart from a severe and intimidating God, a bulldozer God, who is not the Chrislike God the four Gospels lure us to want to believe in. We like the image of God in Hosea 11:4, of one who secures us with reins, leads us with bonds of love, lifts us like a little child to the parent’s cheek, and bends down to feed us. When I was a theological student, I wrestled with the problem of Christ’s two natures, ending up with his divinity. Today, it seems to me that to confess that Christ is Godlike is not half so important as to affirm that God is Christlike and that Christlike love is the way God runs the cosmos.

You have seen that, in affirming love as the supreme attribute of God, I have relegated his omnipotence and omniscience to the second place. We cannot think of God in his self-contained existence, in abstraction from the world, but in terms of his creative activity in the world. He works in his creation tirelessly and inexhaustibly to bring about the realization of the potentialities which he has implanted there. God in his love craves for the emergence in the universe of persons whom he can have fellowship with. Fellowship implies freedom. Human enjoyment of this freedom implies God’s respect for human choices and therefore the curtailment of his own omnipotence. In so far as human beings have the right to make choices, including wrong choices, and in so far as God respects this right, God does not have a pre-knowledge of how a person will exercise his or her freedom or right to make choices. Thus, God’s omniscience is also relativized. By permitting freedom to his creatures and accepting their misuse of it, God can bring about results more attainable than in any other way. The possibility of disobedience is the price of liberty, and liberty is the condition of selfhood and selfhood the preliminary to fellowship.

There is a popular Chinese movie condemning feudalism in which a young woman’s fiance has died but she is still compelled to marry into the family as daughter-in-law. After the tearful wedding she enters the bridal chamber, only to find a five-foot long trunk of a tree on the bed. She is expected to live the rest of her life with that log as her husband. How can she have fellowship and communion with such a non-person?

God being love, more and more of us are seeing that the father figure is not necessarily the only or the best analogy for characterizing him. For centuries and to this day, in China anyway, what is taken for granted in the father is his severity, and in the mother her loving kindness. In fact, the proper Chinese way to refer to one’s own father in polite conversation is the “severe one in my family,” while “the loving one in my family” is reserved for the mother. We all know of fathers of whom love is hardly an attribute. There are Biblical passages which show no hesitation in using the image of the mother to indicate how God loves. In Isaiah 66 and 49, God says: “As a mother comforts her son, so shall I myself comfort you,” and “Can a woman forget the infant of her breast, or a mother the child of her womb? But should even these forget, I shall never forget you.” And in Psalm 131, the Psalmist says, “I am calm and quiet like a weaned child clinging to its mother.” Thus, to say that God has the attributes of the father is not to say he does not have the attributes of the mother.

To assert the cosmic dimension of Christ’s role and to ascertain God as the Cosmic Lover does not mean that everything that happens in nature and history is God’s work and design. Many things are happening that contradict God’s loving kindness and are harmful to the welfare of the world. Creation is a long process yet incomplete and, as Paul insists, imperfect and subject to frustration, especially as it involves the making of free human beings who are not slaves but children of God. A world still in the making must be one in which ugliness and devilry have their place. Events all over the world are telling us how tortuous the way is towards the perfect community of free, loving children of God, and how dear a price in suffering God and human beings have to pay for every inch 6f progress towards that goal.

That God is the great lover working out his purpose for the world brings in its train an understanding of all reality not as being so much as becoming. It gives us hope for history and beyond. We have no idea as to how the end of history as we know it will come about, but can be sure it will be the triumph of love and grace.

We receive great consolation in reading Romans 5:15-17 where a comparison is made between the effect upon the world of Christ’s grace and Adam’s fall. There Paul speaks of the infinitely greater impact of Christ on humanity than that of Adam, using such expressions as “much more,” “vastly exceeding,” “in far greater measure,” and “out of all proportion.” We are elated and get a sense of liberation upon reading this. The Incarnation profoundly affects human and cosmic life in all its aspects. It is inconceivable that any area of human endeavor should be permanently affected by Adam’s fall and unaffected by grace. Too often, Christians make the effect of Adam’s fall universal while limiting Christ’s grace only to the few who profess a belief in him. It really amounts to saying that the Incarnation of the Son of God has made less of an impact on humanity than the fall of Adam. But this is not a view that can go along with the vision of God whose name is love and whose concern is to bring about through redemption, education and sanctification a humanity that will reach perfection as free, intelligent and voluntary co-creators with God.

The way from alpha to omega is not always a straight line, but love accompanies the pilgrims. “The Love that moves the Sun and the other stars,” in Dante’s great words, becomes a Love which brings meaning to human existence and hence redeems men and women from triviality, frustration, cheapness and lovelessness. We do not have to through tortuous ways, but we remember Christ’s words: “A woman in labor is in pain because her time has come; but when her baby is born she forgets her anguish in her joy that a child has been born in the world.” We see the darkness that appears before dawn as well as the dawn that will surely arrive after darkness. As is so well said in Psalm 30: “Tears may linger at nightfall, but rejoicing comes in the morning.” This view of nature, history and ourselves as becoming instills life with meaning and direction. This is essentially a long-ranged and forward-looking worldview. Tielhard de Chardin makes a moving prophecy when he says, “Someday, after we have mastered the wind, the waves, the tide and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love; and then for the second time in the history of the world, humanity will have discovered fire.” I also like the cosmology and view of history Lu Shun, the greatest modern Chinese writer, presents so beautifully:

Myriads of beautiful people and beautiful deeds weave a heavenly tapestry, moving like tens of thousands of flying stars, spreading far and wide, even to infinity. Things and their reflections dissolve, flicker, expand, melt into each other, but then draw back, approaching a semblance of their original selves. Their edges are variable as those of summer clouds, shot through with sunlight, emitting flames the colour of mercury. All things without exception mesh and intervene into a fabric, ever lively, ever unfolding.

Christians as a little flock are heartened by the vision of Christ leading the whole creation towards the goal of unity in God. In this saving work of his, all human movements of progress, liberation, democracy, humanization and love are joined. The church is important as a place where Christ is explicitly known, confessed, adored and preached. The world needs the church’s gospel of forgiveness and reconciliation and peace. But God’s saving work is not coterminous with the boundary of the church. It has the whole cosmos as its arena. As Vatican II says, “Many elements of sanctification and truth are found outside the visible structure of the church and so the helps necessary for salvation are always and everywhere available to all who are obedient to the dictates of conscience.” I like to think that, if these elements are arcs of a circle, Christ is the perfect round in whom they will all be completed, fulfilled and united.

In spite of the darkness human beings in many parts of the world find themselves in, there have always been courageous souls with their firm belief in the final triumph of God’s grace. I like to close with a few inspiring lines left us by Victor Hugo:

Will the future ever arrive? – Should we continue to look upwards? Is the light we can see in the sky one of those which will presently be extinguished? The ideal is terrifying to behold, lost as it is in the depths, small, isolated, a pinpoint, brilliant but threatened on all sides by the dark forces that surround it; nevertheless, no more in danger than a star in the jaws of the clouds.

Human beings are fumbling and groping for a faith in God as revealed in Jesus Christ. We all see in a mirror, dimly. This address tells you where I am, and where many of my fellow-Christians in China are, that is, the sort of spirituality the Holy Spirit is guiding us to in our pilgrimage. I will want to be open to any help that enables further growth in understanding.

THAT THEY MAY HAVE LIFE

THAT THEY MAY HAVE LIFE


by Oscar S. Suarez, Ph.D
.

Dr. Oscar S. Suarez is professor of Ethics and Christian Theology in Union Theological Seminary, Dasmarinas, Cavite, Philippines. He presented this theological/biblical reflection at the Consultation Towards New Economic Visions held in Manila under the joint auspices of the CCA-International Affairs and Theological Concerns Desks in November 1994.

First of all, let me respond to the call of Filipino tradition by saying a word of welcome to all the delegates of this conference. While I understand that most of you are not here in the Philippines for the first time, your effort to be present in this important gathering is worth a thousand gestures of hospitality. And so, in that spirit we would like you to feel at home in the next few days of ecumenical exchange.

Ironically, however, “feeling at home” is not necessarily an experience shared and enjoyed by many Filipinos themselves who have long been struggling to survive the onslaughts of social and political life. Apparently, the very condition in which we find ourselves here gives us some feeling of dislocation. Since many aspects of our lives are dominated more and more by foreign models of political and economic governance, there is hardly any evidence that we are indeed running our own household.

As you probably know, the Philippines is not exactly poor. We were only made poor by historical circumstances – and such circum-stances are in no way hard to explain. We make no excuses for our own shortcomings, but the more we learn about the roots of our alienations and the forces at play in our economic system, the more we realize the need to expose them. This consultation, I understand, is designed to unmask those forces as a way of shaping alternative schemes of economic cooperation among us.

I believe many Asian countries today share a similar story and that explains why we are here – to listen to each other’s stories of suffering and despair and, at the same time, draw a shared vision of hope and life for this continent. Hence, the fact that we begin this whole process of envisioning with a biblical reflection, reveals our search for a solid foundation, a truly profound inspiration, and some clear guidelines that would finally bring us to a continent we can rightfully call our home.

While I do not, in any way, assume to fulfill the above-mentioned purposes in this brief scriptural reflection, I am, at least, more than glad to make a humble contribution. Let me thus begin by reading a few passages from the 10th chapter of the Gospel of John verses seven to ten (10:7-10).

So again Jesus said to them, “Very truly, I tell you, I am the gate for the sheep. All who came before me are thieves and bandits; but the sheep did not listen to them. I am the gate. Whoever enters by me will be saved, and will come in and go out and find pasture. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.

I have chosen this text for this morning’s reflection because I am inspired by the radicalism of the pastoral images it depicts and the way such images shape a certain paradigm for deepening our understanding on the issues pertaining to economic and political life. In this text Jesus begins by making a messianic claim, pointing to himself as the “gate” through which the sheep must pass if they are to find pasture. Offering himself as the gate to life and prosperity, he discloses in plain language the distinct character of that gate. The fact that Jesus issues here an open invitation suggests that it is an inclusive gate. Everyone, regardless of color, gender or tribe is welcome to enter it since to Jesus every one is entitled to an open opportunity. This is an indictment against exclusivist paradigms of success in the context of a male-dominated world, a world that looks at the color of one’s skin as a criterion for participation, a world where the strong seeks domination amidst a plurality of voices.

Admittedly, ours is a world of endless opportunities where various gates to certain pastures are being opened one after the other. In fact, there are probably too many gates open for us today by virtue of the advent of a “high-tech” society and thus the overflow of capital in modernizing and industrializing societies. But, the tragedy of the human condition is precisely that in the face of contending models of economic success, ideological options or political choices, we no longer know which of these “doors” can lead us to the kind of justice we all deserve. In this country, not a few doors have been opened by the ruling class, all promising economic abundance and liberation from much of our social ills. But most of them are inspired by some ideology of domination and control, we often end up with denuded forests, poisoned rivers, polluted air, cheap labor, abused workers, exploited women, and a servant-class to foreign investors. What we had earlier hoped to be our benefactors, as they often impressed upon us, turned out to be ferocious wolves in sheep’s clothing. To them, the name of the game is economic and political hegemony, which sometimes bear the name of “trade agreements,” “free trade zones,” or “development incentives.”

Thus in our text, it is no surprise that Jesus, fully aware of the false messiahs of his day, sought to dismiss in strong language the old paradigms of economic and political practices that only brought ruin and misery to society. He refers to the patrons of old order as “thieves and bandits” who do not “enter the sheepfold by the gate but climbs in by another way.” Thieves and bandits they are, they nevertheless wield great powers, and, thus are well equiped as to be capable of forcing their way in. Yet, precisely for their trickery and deceptive methods, the sheep would no longer listen to them. For, true enough, as Jesus remarks, “the thief comes only to steal, and kill and destroy.”

I believe that in this consultation there are crucial choices we have to make. We need to ask what particular doors may be opened in such a way that we no longer fall prey to vicious wolves in sheep’s clothing. We need to ask what ideological options may inform us in our quest for a shared vision of a radically transformed economic and political life. We need to ask whether the doors and gates that have thus far been opened in Asia are in need of recasting or tearing down. We need to ask, in other words, who benefits from their very existence and who pays for them at what cost.

Jesus’ claim to messianism, as our text attempts to explain, is justified not merely by some divine mandate, but by his historical representation of justice and righteousness – the themes quite central to his preaching of the reign of God. In complete contrast to the messianic claims of the world’s hegemonic forces, the door in which we are invited to enter reserves no room for mere self-interested parties, for those motivated only by greed or those who have no reverence for life. For Jesus it is a door to salvation and green pastures, meaning, for those who have long been burdened by anxieties and grief, hunger and misfortunes, death and sorrow. Indeed, as he puts it so aptly, “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.”

This single statement of Jesus touches the core drama of life in the despairing countries of Asia today. In various places as in ours, victims of natural calamities multiply almost daily. In this country alone, we are tired of earthquakes, vulcanic eruptions, typhoons, floods, you name it. This is not to mention the scandalous condition of our system of governance, the dispensation of justice, and the way wealth and power are distributed among our people. Today, when you speak of budget deficits, external debts, inequitable income distribution, landlessness, unemployment, graft and corruption at all levels of government, unfair labor practices, ecological degradation, etc., you actually speak of the many yet familiar faces of death. They may not sound alarming to a few who manage to build their fortresses in this whole desert of uncertainty, but for the majority of our people – they only mean who dies where and when. Perhaps the Philippines is among the many Third World countries that has seen too many funerals, too many deaths of various causes. None of our days pass without some news of massacre somewhere, death toll at a landslide accident, huge earthquakes claiming hundreds of lives, vulcanic eruption tearing down houses and burying entire communities, you name it, we got it.

It is in that sense that Jesus addresses us with this most powerful words: “I came that they may have life...” Any theology that aims at building the foundations of a fundamentally new economic vision, is in essence a theology of life. As I look at it, however, it is not complete to simply call it a theology of life. Since Jesus wants us to have life in the context of abundance- which means not only that which pertains to economics, but our political and cultural world, and all that constitute the requirements of a truly just society – it is more appropriate to call it “a theology of wholeness.” To have life and have it abundantly – is to celebrate life in its wholeness. This is a theology that overcomes all dualist tendencies, that which separates, for example, the concerns of the body-politic from the sacred foundations of life, the material basis of existence from the spiritual. This is a theology that looks at life no longer in terms of fragments. For in the face of dualist and fragmented worldviews, at best all you get is partial or piecemeal justice.

In a world dominated by fragmented relationships and truncated concepts, human beings no longer have the capacity to celebrate life in its wholeness. Somehow the ruling forces of society perceive us only in terms of our partial identities. Politicians, for example, look at us as mere voters and supporters who are visible to them only during election time; corporate bureaucrats look at us as mere workers and employees, nothing more. In the same token women are always looked upon by men as mere sex objects waiting to be exploited. But the capitalists are no better. They look at our skills and competence and all of our humanity in terms of market values and they alone decide whether we have any value at all or not. In all these aspects, the human being enjoys no experience of wholeness to speak of, only pieces and fragments of life.

Given our theme in this consultation, the vision we are looking for puts human life and human relationships at its center, something that is radically opposed to the paradigm of relationship among objects and things in the context of the modern capitalist project. In the context of market economy relationships are made meaningful by what certain theologians call “fetishism,” some kind of a magical power ascribed to commodities and other key concepts like money, capital and power. In a world of fetish relationships commodities are made to appear like persons relating to each other. Commodities have the power to command the flow of capital and the entire market system that all too often human beings are powerless before them. In other words, fetishism promotes relationships only among objects and things. They never go beyond material relationships and that is why in that kind of set up commodities have the decisive power to command.

That human beings are powerless before the majesty of commodities is the biggest scandal of our time. Indeed, we are living in what Marx once called “an inverted world”– a world in which objects are gods and humanity is reduced into a mere object to be exploited. Concretely, these are the underlying realities that must be unmasked if we are to deal more deeply on the depths of human misery in Asia today.

I believe the biblical passages before us this morning address this issue if only in terms of bringing back the whole discussion of socio-economic envisioning to the question of the depths of human alienation. That Jesus came to bring life means that God’s salvific project in history puts all forces of death and alienation under rigorous interrogation. The Apostle Paul, must have his own musings on this issue as he anticipates that “the world itself will be freed from its slavery to corruption,” even ourselves who “groan inwardly while we await” what he calls “the redemption of our bodies” (Rom.8:19-24).

Yes, life in its fullness, that is what we are looking for. For to freely and truly celebrate the wholeness of our being, is at last to celebrate ultimate justice.

THE CAPITAL IN THE RAPIDLY CHANGING WORLD

THE CAPITAL IN THE RAPIDLY CHANGING WORLD


by Dr. Kim Yong-Bock


Dr. Kim Yong-Bock is President of Hanil Theological Seminary of
the Presbyterian Church in Korea in Chonju, Korea.



Why a theologian had to deal with the question of the capital today? The answer is simple and biblical. It is because it has become the Mammon and humans cannot serve God and the Mammon at the same time. Our faith claims our exclusive loyalty to God, who gives life.


A Socio-Biographical Note

As I look back my life story, I was very poor most of my life. The Japanese colonial power took all the land that my grandfather held. My father and uncle were taken to be mine workers in Manchuria and in North Korea during the World War II. I had to gather and submit to the local colonial authority a bundle of grass to feed horses of the Japanese army. I remember doing this every day around 1944. My father died at the beginning of 1945 due to the forced hard work in Manchurian mines for the Japanese colonial power.

When Japan was defeated in 1945, my family lost everything whatever was remained due to severe post-colonial economic disruption. The poverty has been the absolute predicament of my life till 1969, when I returned to Korea after my study in the States.

It was my acquaintances with Korean workers through the Urban Industrial Mission, I began to realize the victimization of my brothers and sisters, who are sacrificed under the Park

Jung Hee’s Project Modernization and Economic Growth. During my university days, I got acquainted with the life of war refugees and urban poor, for my family was one of them. I was familiar with the rural poor, for I have been one of them. My friends and I were running night school for our poor friends, who cannot go to junior high school due to their poverty during late 1950’s. Perhaps it was natural that I got interested in the issue of the Minjung.

This personal background led to an investigation and study of the Korean minjung during the Chosun Dynasty and the Japanese colonial rule and their movements, particularly religious dimension of their movements, to overcome their political and socio-economic contradictions. This is the subject on which I have written my doctoral dissertation.

Korean people were caught in the Cold War structure for almost 50 years, in which the socialism and capitalism bitterly competed in ideological, political and military terms as well as in economic terms. I grew up in this cold war system with a heavy dose of anti-Communist ideology. Economic growth and national security have been supreme values of our society. My church has been an integral part of the Korean version of anti-Communist capitalist system.

The Minjung have gravely suffered during the last 50 years of the Cold War structure. They suffered under the anti-Communist ideology, military dictatorship in the name of national security, and socio-economic hardship and exploitation in the name of economic growth under the military dictatorship. Particularly during the last 30 years the Korean version of capitalist development dictatorship made the Korean minjung suffer most. In close association of urban industrial mission in Korea, in Asia (CCA-URM), and in the world (WCC-UIM), I have developed my critical consciousness and analytical thinking on the capitalist development.

My major involvement in the study of transnational corporations in Asia – Korea, Philippines, Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia and Hong Kong – has helped me get acquainted with the reality of capitalism in Asia. This project was sponsored by Christian Conference of Asia with a support of WCC and its member couches. From this study experience, I have evolved a thesis on transnational corporations in Asia in the light of the suffering of Asian peoples.


Asian People In The New Global Order

Now we need to reassess the Asian situation in a new way, particularly the reality of power of the capital. The Asian people’s situation has been undergoing dramatic changes, as the world is experiencing rapid and drastic changes in recent years.

In the first place, the socialist states and former socialist states are being integrated into a global capitalist market. The Asian socialist states such as China, Vietnam and even North Korea are being integrated into the global market. This has serious implications for the life of Asian peoples. No longer a socialist option for development is realistically available to the people. All the socialist movements in Asia are experiencing a serious identity crisis, for the people have lost hope in the socialist alternative. Of course, this situation does not mean a victory of the capital-ism of the people. The people experience worse situation than the time when socialism and capitalism were competing each other.

Uruguay Round in GATT negotiation has culminated in a World Trade Organization being installed, opening an era of truly global market, breaking up all the national boundaries that have protected the people with national framework of economy. This opens an era in which the economically powerful in the industrialized countries and in the Newly Industrialized countries (NICs) will dictate the global market for their power and interests. This is carried out in the name of limitless competition in the global open market. The economically weak will find no protection in this fierce jungle of the global market place.

Naked reality of struggle for the “Survival of the Fittest” and the logic of “the Strong Eating up the Weak” will dominate the market place in a new way in the global market. This means a renewed fierceness of the jungle-like competition in the market which will victimize the weak and poor peoples in Asia and everywhere.


National Governments Serve The People Or The Capital


Governments in Asia are pursuing open market policy under pressures from the Western governments, especially the United States Government. Uruguay Round agreement in GATT negotiation is the first step in this direction. At the same time, the governments are launching slogans such as “Age of Limitless Competition” and “National Capacity to Compete Internationally is Critically Important for the Survival of the Nation.” It seems that doctrine of national security is replaced by the doctrine of “national competition.” But for whom to compete is not clear. Is it for the people or for the capital?

Human rights and democracy have been emphasized in the world and these values are of the Western democracy. Such emphasis could be regarded as a ploy of the Western powers to open dictatorial and authoritarian political systems so that they may create conditions for global open market. Liberal democracies in the West have been political preconditions for the capitalist market. In an ironic way, such “democratic re-forms” are weakening governments to control national economy and to protect the socio-economic security of the people. Liberal democratic governments in the West as well as in the South have been failures in taming market forces such as giant transnational corporations.

Governments are active players in the global market, and yet they are not ultimate players. Giant transnational corporations in food and agriculture, in industrial manufacturing, in finances and services, and in media and communication are real and ultimate players, which know no national boundaries, accountability to no people, and no control by any power. There is a certain absolute character in corporate powers in the global market. Governments are incapable of making these corporate powers accountable for their dealings in the global market.

When national governments are driving the policy of national competition, they are actually supporting and serving these corporate powers to compete in the global market. But their interests are not identical with the interests of the people, who is supposed to be sovereign to national governments. Opening of the nation by deregulation in the context of the Uruguay Round of GATT negotiation is precisely for the corporate powers, particularly for those of the industrialized West.

What this means is that nation states as supreme political institutions of sovereignty and self-determination of the people, as agencies of economic development of the people, and as protector of socio-economic security of the people have been drastically weakened in the global market. Powers of the nation states have succumbed to the transnational pressures of the international powers in the global market.



The New Gap Between The Poor And The Rich In Asia And In The World

The global market is being dominated by the Western capital powers, and the peoples and nations in the South suffer poverty more seriously than ever. Minimum protection of the people by their governments has been weakened, and their societies have been forced open to external market forces, and their economy has been integrated to the global market. What this means is that the people’s socio-economic security is exposed to the global market forces and the socio-economic victimization is intensified everywhere in Asian countries.

The people in poorer nations suffer most, because the gap between poor nations and rich nations are widening, but the poor in the Newly Industrialized Countries in Asia (Asian tigers) suffer more severely than ever, too, because the people in NICs are equally exposed to the global market forces. Even the poor in the industrially advanced nations are suffering severely in the process of globalization of the market and the poor in the socialist and former socialist countries are no longer protected by national social safety network.

In short, the socio-economic security of the people are in jeopardy everywhere in the world, and the poor and weak are exposed to global competition and victimized in a new and global way. A good illustration is the fate of the Korean peasants. The poor in India, for example, are more severely exposed to threats of diseases due to the pharmaceutical drug market indiscriminately selling many banned drugs to people without prescriptions.


People Become Victims Of New Violence

The international relations and social constellation of powers have been rapidly shifting due to the demise of international Cold War balance of powers and to the opening of the society to the global market process. The previously latent conflicts become manifest such as ethnic and national conflicts. The social power and solidarity of traditional classes such as workers and peasants have been weakened and violence, physical or otherwise, against them have become intensified due to the weakening of the social movements.

Ethnic and national groups assert themselves in the context of rapidly shifting social and national balances, giving ways to violent conflicts. These are being exploited by the subterranean military weapons market. These conflicts are violence-intensive, making the people suffer, and wasting their lives.

The violent conflicts are sparked off by social, ethnic-national and racial tensions as well as international tensions. The fierce competition. in all directions without limits will intensify conflict situations both national and international situations. Common security and peace, social and national, of the people will be threatened in a far-reaching manner. National police or military will not and cannot handle such multiple violent situations.


Global Cultural War Against People

The context in which we are speaking about communication in the global market is a “cultural war” between the power and the people, waged through political propaganda, commercial advertisement, educational process, public media and information technology. This cultural war takes place on both national and global levels, assuming the form of ideological or propaganda war. Sometimes it works to domesticate the minds and desires of consumers, inducing them to buy things that are produced this is to control and conquer the market. The educational system acts to establish hegemony over the minds of students in the name of socialization. Traditional cultural process and religious institutions are also mobilized to serve the cause of the powers. But the most important aspect of this cultural war is manifest in the modern mass communication media such as newspapers, wire services, radio and television.

The ideological battles between the two supper powers have been fought through political propaganda against each other (communism vs capitalism), through ideological inculcation in formal and non-formal education systems, through public media and information processes and often through religious institutions and practices. Now this ideological war seems to be over but power conflicts, violent or otherwise, will continue to involve semi-ideological battles for legitimacy and support. The communist societies have complete control over the process of political propaganda, but its effectiveness is regarded doubtful in recent years. Societies where a liberal press is allowed have a facade of freedom of speech, but the powers control the media and education in highly effective ways in these societies. Dictatorships around the world have sought to control the speech, thought, feeling and perception of the people. Today this process of control by power is done through hi-tech communication and information media this communication technology is intensive and therefore brutally effective. The power of the capital is manifest in global communication and information order.

The economic life of the people is very much affected by communication and information in three basic ways. The struggle for decisions on economic policies involves fundamental cultural struggle in terms of economic philosophies and economic objectives such as economic growth and economic distribution. The most direct way in which the economic life of the people is swayed is through commercial advertisements in the communication media. The media is the chief culprit in consumerism, which corrodes the minds of the people with enticements to cheap materialism and economic hedonism.

Moreover, information has become a commodity and service in economic transactions, for information is both power and resource. The information and communication network constitutes the network of people’s economic and socio cultural life as well and the powers create, expand, and sustain this network of information and communication on a global scale.

There are several inter-related networks that operate in a global scale. The political and military intelligence and information network of the governments, the economic network of information of transnational corporate powers, global media, and the religious-cultural networks of world religions have powerful influence over information and communication in global dimensions.

The term “international information and communication order” is a misnomer to reflect the reality of the present communication and information process nationally and internationally, although the McBride report has clearly shown the nature of the international information and communication order, as dominated by the powerful. The process of information and communication is not merely the objective order of society and community, but it penetrates into the mind and brain of the human person, into the perceptual apparatus of the body, and into the heart and soul of the whole human being. The information and communication process pervades the human self. The battleground is the sense, consciousness, mind, heart and spirit of the human person as well as the community.

The globalization of communication and information has become technetronic intensive through hi-media technology on all levels. Symbols, images and pictures in full color, simultaneously translated languages, and scenarios and sequences of events are instantly transmitted to the people, who are turned into the victims of this global communication onslaught. Technetronics intensive communication and information involves the global network of value adding process with increasing acceleration in intensity and speed. Such global network of communication increasingly encircles the life of the people it envelops their perceptions and understanding, and it finally invades the innermost chamber of consciousness, the minds and hearts of the people, deeply affecting their spirit as well as their life.

The most important consequence of this communication and information revolution carries out through hi-tech development is the subjugation of the spirit, mind, will, heart, passion and even desire of the people to the dictates of the dominant powers, near and remote. Human subjectivity which is the engine of human life, is the final territory being conquered through cultural process of communication and information. Western development of modern science and technology in the past has excluded the human subject from the epistemological world and now its advancement allows the powers to dominate human subjectivity to domesticate life itself.

Such domination is manifested in political and ideological control and manipulation, domestically and internationally. It involves the total planning and control of the market. Such a capacity to subjugate human subjectivity in a mass scale is used to manage social, political and military conflicts on domestic and international levels. This becomes the case due to symbiotic power relations between the public media and the political powers, in which the people’s participation is prevented. Such power relations are complex and difficult to discern. But government propaganda, the use of the media for the implementation of political power and policy and election campaigns are clear manifestation of such symbiosis.

The domination by western political power, especially the U.S., and the West-dominated international communication order with its dominant network of information industry, wire services, satellite communication and so on, makes a powerful impact upon the peoples in Asia, by interlocking with the Asian national communication media and by subverting these on political, economic and cultural levels.

The economic powers such as giant transnational corporations use the public media to dominate and control the market, to create arbitrary needs among consumers, causing a deep sense of deprivation, and to cover up the ugly image of the corporate powers. There is no marketing without the media and the advertisement of products and services create false and unsound economic propaganda, often providing false in-formation and images about the products and services. This process distorts sound economic values, fostering “cheap and pragmatic material-ism”. The media serves corporate powers’ techno structures to carry out the total planning strategy of profit-maximization by controlling marketing as well as production. Without such subservient media the corporate strategy of total planning would not be possible. The people as workers and consumers are molded according to the plan of the economic powers in and through the media the people have lost their subjecthood in production as well as in the market they have become victims of the distorted information imposed on them, and have an inverted self-image implanted in their consciousness by the media.

In the same way the transnational corporate structures have pervaded all the Asian societies to subjugate economic selfhood not only in economic political terms, but also in cultural terms through their economic propagandic advertisements. This has destroyed the health and whole-some vision of economic life of the Asian people.

The Asian national media, under the influence of the Western domination of the global information and communication order, have corroded and subverted Asian cultural values and Asian styles of life with the Western values and life styles. Particularly the Asian cultural identity has been suppressed among the Asian nations and peoples. Religious and cultural heritages are disparaged as pre- or ant-modern (meaning anti-Western) the languages, symbols and images are suppressed and replaced by the Western ones. This process causes profound cultural dissatisfaction among the people, even to the point of unhealthy national and cultural romanticism and nostalgia. The people’s uprootedness is caused by the mass media, which receive heavy doses of Western cultural injections in the present international information and communication order.

Such cultural corrosion and subversion and even “genocide” are tragic part of the cultural subjugation of the people through the global media dominated by the Western powers, and this is inevitable, given the inherent character of the present global order of information and commu-nication which excludes participation of the people, their dialogues and interactions.

The power of the Western media violates the rights of the people in their own society and often the people has no means to redress these violations. It also violates the cultural and ethnic rights of the people in the world. It promotes the Western racial, cultural and religious values against racial, cultural and religious heritages of the people of the world.

Disinformation and misinformation, partial truths and small lies and sheer ignorance and prejudice are mingled and spread in the process of communication and information in various ways in different situations. These phenomena are directed against the oppositional forces of the people in both liberal societies and dictatorial societies, in their conduct of international policies as well as in domestic affairs. The whole process serves the power interests of the powerful.

When the Western media criticized the dictatorial powers in the third world for their violation of human rights and dictatorial control of the media, this was regarded by these powers as hypocritical behavior, infringement of national sovereignty or interference in the internal affairs.

In recent years a certain democratic reforms are being promoted in the Third World by the Western powers so that these powers themselves can make direct intervention through investment and trade by TNCs, through political pressure in such cases as human rights, and especially through the Western media. Introduction of “liberal democratic reforms” opens the Third and Second World societies for more direct penetration of those societies by the Western media as well as by the Western market forces. Thus the Western media of communication and information become instruments of “low intensity strategy” in the arena of “cultural domination and war”.

The communication and information media create a strange world out of an arbitrary combination and superficial construction of colors, images and languages that are simplified and separated from reality. The media creates a perceptual world that is in no relation to the real world or in opposition to the actual world. The modern media in the global market has a capacity to create a strange new world of illusion in the minds and hearts of the people everywhere.

In this way the peoples in Asia are victims of the powers militarily, politically, socially, economically and culturally and international media networks constitute an integral dimension of the victimization process, as the cultural power of domination that victimizes the people culturally.


People’s Participation In The New Global Market

With people’s participation in the market being further curtailed under progressive globalization, we should reflect on the situation that has existed up to now.

One of the major reasons why socialist systems collapsed is that they did not allow full participation of the people. At the same time, the major weakness of liberal governments is also their limitations on people’s participation. Now is the time for the people to become direct and active participants in the affairs that affect their own lives not only on national level, but also on local and global level.



Free Subjects In Every Aspect Of Life

The people are free subjects to participate in every aspect of life. This has concrete implications in the vortex of the global market today.

The people are workers, producers, and managers of life and community. Economic participation of the people is expressed at the level of workers and producers but the people must also participate in management, distribution and community welfare. In this way they can participate as gardeners of life. People’s participation should make interventions in all aspects of the socio-economic life of the community, local and global.

Money is the enemy of the people. Money has become the Mammon that victimizes the people in the world today, more than any other form of economic power. The financial powers and their institutions are making the people powerless and victimizing them for life. Trans-nationalized banking institutions and international monetary organizations deprive the people, put them into debt, and bankrupt the people and their economies. The people must take charge of their own financial resources.

The people must participate in the management of their economy. Today the management of economies by the transnational corporations and nation states is highly technocratic essentially, the people’s participation in planning the economy, and in the production and distribution of goods and services, is systematically eliminated. Workers are totally integrated into the productive process, and participation by workers’ unions is getting weaker and weaker. The people must participate as workers, consumers and concerned citizens in the political economy, to make interventions in the global market.

The people must be subjects of their own welfare. Housing, clothing, food, education, health and cultural activities cannot be left to the political and economic powers in the world. The people’s direct participation in their own welfare is essential in this rapidly changing global economic situation. They cannot wait for the structural changes that are not forthcoming anyway they must recognize themselves as the primary subject to secure their own welfare of life.

The people must create their own socio-economic values they must reject the dictates of the state and corporations. To determine their own needs, their own material values and their own style of life, they must wage a cultural struggle for a decent and good economic life.

The people are political subjects. In spite of the many formal declarations of the sovereignty of the people, their actual participation is minimal or even completely suppressed. Every aspect of life must be politicized, in the sense that people must participate in decision-making in every aspect of their life.

A democratic structure of national government does not necessarily mean democratized structures in local communities. The nature of the nation state must be transformed from the perspective of people’s participation in local community politics. The local should be prior to the regional or central, if the sovereignty of the people is to be truly realized. Democracy is a political process from bottom to top, not the other way around.

People’s participation should extend to every aspect of social life: class, status, caste, minority, gender, and so on. Social democracy should be prior to political democracy. Without the participation of the socially weak and down-trodden, there can be no true participatory political democracy. This is a biblically founded principle, upon which a constitution can be written.

Cultural life must be radically democratized and the people must be cultural subjects. The traditional authoritarian cultures must be democratized the modern media should be under the people’s control and the education process must be reversed to raise up the people as the cultural subjects who sustain their cultural struggle. It is here that the people’s participation will be determined in the newly globalizing market, that is, on the cultural front. No political propaganda of ideology, national security or war should dictate the minds of the people. The people must be masters of information and communication they should refuse to be victims of their political and cultural identity. They should refuse to be docile objects of the communication order, and rather become communication activists who are the subjects of cultural and political life.

Often religious resources are mobilized to justify political life. Essentially, politics is spiritual, and even religious. The powers and authorities always have to reckon with the ultimate destiny of the people. The people must not allow the powers and principalities to exorcise their religious and spiritual power instead, the people must claim that they are the primary spiritual subject, for God — or the ultimate reality — is essentially related to the people, not to the powers-that-be. Invocation of spiritual power by the powers-that-be often brings about demonic con-sequences. It is not enough to secularize the state spiritual subjectivity must be reclaimed.

The people’s subjectivity must be realized in all social relations.

The people as a socio-economic class are subjects in social relations and should be at least equal with other classes.

This means that the people as a lower social class should be more participatory than other social classes. This vision is not of an ultimately classless society, but of a social process in which the lower class has advantages in participation over the other classes. Here the principle of social equality demands the preferential rights of the people.

The people of out-castes or lower castes, lower status, and minorities must assert their subjecthood and participation. Participatory structures and processes should be designed differently, but their identity, their self-determination and their direct participation must be insured. Women’s social participation has a unique place which in turn illuminates the full participation of the people in all other situations. Women’s participation is not merely the question of equality against social discrimination. Their participation makes human community whole and full, as well as equal and just.

The spiritualities of the people in different social situations are different and religious communities have not recognized this reality. The people must be able to express their own spiritual subjectivity to make society whole and just. In any case, various mechanisms and teachings of religions should be transformed to open up the people’s participation.

The people are cultural subjects. Historically the people are culturally and religiously domesticated, suppressing their cultural development and participation. In the modern world of information and communication, the people’s cultural identity is uprooted, their cultural values are destroyed, their style of life is destroyed and they are culturally victimized. This is more cruel than economic, physical and political victimization their soul is destroyed as well as their body.

The people are speakers, writers, and communicators expressing their own feelings, perceptions, opinions, convictions and will. Now the people must have their own means of communication and media. They also must have access to the media and the media must become public, not allowing monopoly by any power.

The people have cultural resources that are to be mobilized. Their experiences accumulate information, wisdom and insights for life. The people must assert their own experiences as primary and use their cultural resources to communicate their own experiences and will. The people must resist and transform any cultural imposition, whether of values, styles or media.

The people must have cultural power. Communication and information are power over mind, senses and perceptions.

The people must form a value-added net-work of cultural resource centers, so that they can counter the cultural domination of the powers.

The people must affirm their own cultural traditions, values and styles. Cultural subjectivity begins with the affirmation of one’s own cultural life as well as cultural traditions. This is the beginning of the struggle against the dominant cultures. This cultural struggle is to ensure cultural identity and cultural fulfillment.

The people are religious and spiritual subjects. Spirituality and religions exist for the subjectivity of the people, and not the other way around.

The deepest root of people’s subjectivity is in their deepest religious experience. The meeting with God gives birth to the subjectivity of the people.

All the religious activities of teaching, rituals and practices should enhance the subjectivity of the people to the level at which the people as subject respond to God or ultimate being.

The people’s historical subjectivity is deeply rooted in their ultimate commitment. Any dichotomy or symbiosis between the religious root and the historical manifestation of the people’s subjectivity will seriously harm that subjectivity.

The people are subjects of life in the world. The people’s body is spiritual and historical as well as biological and material. People’s participation in life is wholistic, interconnecting all dimensions of life, human and natural.


Conclusion: People’s Subjecthood In The Global Market

The people are an independent actor in history, and therefore, in the global market, which is dominated by the capital. I regard it to be MAMMON of the present age, which thrives upon victimization of the people. The God’s sovereignty is being manifest in the OlKONO-MIA of God, in which people become new subjects in the global market. God and Mammon are in struggle in the global market. Our faith in God is the ground of our hope in the self-hood and participation of the people, who will transform the “JUNGLE” of the market into the “GARDEN OF LIFE”.



Subjects Of Life And History

People are created and destined to be subjects of their life and history in a wholistic sense.

They are subjects as the covenant partners of God, who is truly sovereign. God does not allow the people to be subjugated or domesticated to other powers or principalities in heaven or on earth.

The Hapiru people were slaves under the despotic imperial ruler of the Egyptian empire. But God established a special relationship with the enslaved people, freeing them and making them God’s faithful partners in covenant. The people were liberated and became subjects, not slaves.

The people were enslaved workers but in the created order of God, they have become free subjects, the stewards and gardeners of life. They are no longer subjugated to the powers of darkness and chaos that destroy life, as in the Baby-lonian empire.

The year of Jubilee has been proclaimed by Christ. In the Jubilee, the disinherited, the indebted, and the physically, mentally, economically and socially disabled all become subjects who participate in the political economy of God.

The people are the subjects of political rule. The establishment of political authority, whether in the form of kings, emperors, modern dictators or democratic rulers, is permitted only within the framework of God’s covenant with the people. God’s covenant does not permit the people to be other than God’s partners, who are subjects, free to respond to God’s faithful word.

The establishment of kingship in Israel was conditioned upon the kings’ being subjugated to the covenant and covenant laws, which had been wrought between God and the people. In no case was this to be violated. Historically, kings broke the covenant, and prophetic movements rose up to restore the convenant on behalf of God and the people.
The true political authority came as “dou-larchy” in Jesus, who came not to be served but to serve, and to make the first the last to serve all. Here the people are the subjects and the powers are the servants.

The people are the subjects of their vision they are visionaries. When the people are dead and have become dry bones, scattered in the dark valley of defeat, God awakens them to a vision of restored life, in which they rise up to be the subjects of life and history. In relationship with God, the people become the visionary subjects of life. The visions of the prophet Isaiah (Chapter 11) and of St. John (Rev. 21 & 22) rose out of the people’s subjugation under the Babylonian and Roman Empires. The people, in faithful covenant relationship with God, are the subjects of the future history they have hope for the future, imagination for the future, and the passion and will to struggle and create the future, in which they are the ruling subjects along with God.

The Messianic vision is the vision shared among the people, of their participation in the Messianic banquet, in the new city of heaven and earth. The people rise up from despair and hopelessness and move forward to the Messianic Reign.

The people are the subjects who form relationships among themselves in the context of their covenant with God. God’s justice in the covenant raises the people from the bottom up, from the downside up. This is the social and cultural dynamics of God’s covenant with the people, who are downtrodden. God created nations, races, genders and the natural world, not in hierarchical order, but to be participants in God’s Garden of Life. The setting up of secondary divisions of class, status, caste and so on, in the world of life is against God, for such divisions destroy the people, denying their participation in life.

The people are gathered from every corner of the earth, regardless of color, race, ethnic origin, religious-cultural heritage, gender, class, status, caste or any other difference, to participate in God’s reign. This is the Messianic invitation, and no power can prevent the people from participating in this Messianic koinonia. In Christ, there can be neither chosen nor gentiles, free nor enslaved, male nor female, rich nor poor, high caste nor low caste, high nor low, powerful nor weak. The people are all co-participants in Christ’s Reign.

The people are living subjects and partners of life in the biological sphere as well as in the historical and spiritual spheres. When life in the natural world is victimized, the people are victimized and suffer together with nature. This is the meaning of the Garden of Life, which is tended as a whole by the people as the gardeners. God’s creation of life and people’s participation in the gardening of life is their common struggle against death, against killing and all the forces of death. The people are the permanent subjects of life in struggle against death, to fulfill life in its wholeness.

In Christ the people cannot be destroyed. Christ guarantees life, eternal life, that is, the life that cannot be destroyed. In Christ the people find the fullness of life, for Christ is of the people and the people are of Christ. In Christ the people resist the power of death, as Christ rose again from the death that was imposed by the power of the Roman Empire.

The people are subjects who glorify God in worship and life. When God created the world in which people are the subjects of life, it was good and beautiful and the people sang to glorify God in full orchestration with all the living creatures on the stage of the natural world. People’s worship of God is a total drama celebrating God’s faithful relationship with them, for God made them partners in the covenant. The Celebration takes place in the life of the people in the world in full harmony of colors and music. It takes place in the universe, in history and in every aspect of life. This is the true tabernacle of God with the people.

The Messianic banquet is the celebration of life in the highest form. The angels are mobilized to enhance the celebration in the most beautiful and glorious manner, for the chief end of people is to glorify God and enjoy God forever. The people are celebrants in this messianic banquet.