Thanks to the evil force known as Globalization, many people in Afghanistan are able to earn a living.
bq. Worldstock has been selling products made in Afghanistan since the summer of 2002. This spring, Byrne and Kanishka traveled to Afghanistan where they contracted with 1,450 artisans and placed orders for more than $150,000.00 worth of goods. According to Kanishka, “We ordered an assortment of exquisitely handcrafted Afghan rugs, embroidery, leather goods, and jewelry.” The first shipment of goods from Afghanistan will be available on Worldstock starting this week.
bq. Minister of Commerce, Mr. Mustafa Kazimi, said, “Fourteen-hundred more people in Afghanistan — 90% of whom are women — are able to earn a living and care for their families thanks to Worldstock. In addition to being the largest source of private employment in Afghanistan, Worldstock is also the largest source of employment for women in Afghanistan and the largest exporter of Afghan handicrafts.” [“Yahoo! News”:http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/040629/latu084_1.html]

It seems the Democrats have stopped harping on “Outsourcing is evil” message because the number of jobs lost was only a very small percentage.
bq. THE FUROR OVER “offshoring” of jobs to countries such as India, so pronounced during the Democratic primaries, seems to have faded. With good reason: Last week the Labor Department published the first government effort to quantify the impact of offshoring, which tentatively suggested that it may be responsible for just 2.5 percent of the job losses in the first quarter of this year. [“Washington Post”:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A53706-2004Jun18.html]
“Daniel Drezner”:http://www.danieldrezner.com/archives/001365.html#001365 has a detailed analysis of the Labor Department Report.
bq. So, to conclude — the percentage of jobs lost due to mass layoffs — in turn due to offshore outsourcing — as a percentage of total jobs lost through mass layoffs was not 3% — it was a whopping 1.9%. If you drop out seasonal employment, the figure rises to 2.5%. So my back of the envelope calculations from a few months ago are an exaggeration. My apologies.
bq. The caveats — this data does not cover two other kinds of job loss via outsourcing — 1) Those let go due to ousourcing when fewer than 50 people were let go; and 2) Those jobs created de novo overeas that may have been created in the U.S. instead were it not for the outsourcing phenomenom.
bq. At the same time, this data also does not cover two kids of job gains via outsourcing — 1) Those jobs created via insourcing, when a foreign firm hires U.S. workers; and 2) Those jobs created via the budgetary savings reaped from outsourcing.
bq. The bottom line — offshore outsourcing is responsible for a piddling number of lost jobs. [“Daniel Drezner”:http://www.danieldrezner.com/archives/001365.html#001365]

“Thomas Friedman has an article”:http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/06/opinion/06FRIE.html explaining why the anti-globalization movement has lost its steam. To explain this, he uses the example of the recent elections in India.
bq. To everyone’s surprise, India’s elections ended with the rightist Hindu nationalist B.J.P. alliance being thrown out and replaced by the left-leaning Congress Party alliance. Of course, no sooner did the B.J.P. ? which ran on a platform of taking credit for India’s high-tech revolution ? go down than the usual suspects from the antiglobalization movement declared this was a grass-roots rejection of India’s globalization strategy. They got it exactly wrong. What Indian voters were saying was not: “Stop the globalization train, we want to get off.” It was, “Slow down the globalization train, and build me a better step-stool, because I want to get on.” [“NY Times”:http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/06/opinion/06FRIE.html, regn reqd]
When you talk about anything in India, you cannot come up with a simple theory. For example in my home state of Kerala, there was no rapid globalization movement. Kerala is already a globalized state with most of the revenues coming from NRIs. The problem there was the infighting between two groups of Congress, which caused most of the people to vote for the Communists. But in many other states Friedman’s theory holds true. The prosperity advertised by the “India Shining” campaign did not reach the people who actually go out and vote.
The advice he has for the anti-globalization crowd is apt.
bq. My own recent travels to India have left me convinced that the most important forces combating poverty there today are those activists who are fighting for better local governance. The world doesn’t need the antiglobalization movement to go away now ? it just needs for the movement to grow up. It had a lot of energy and a lot of mobilizing capacity. What it lacked was a real agenda for helping the poor. Here’s what its agenda should be: Helping the poor by improving governance ? accountability, transparency, education and the rule of law ? at the local level, by using the Internet and other tools to spotlight corruption, mismanagement and tax avoidance. It may not be as sexy as protesting against world leaders on CNN, but it is a lot more important. Ask any Indian villager.

While America preaches free markets and then passes “labor protection bills”:http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/181_574313,0008.htm, Saudi Arabia is going the same route
bq. The Saudi government began enforcing Saturday a decision to bar foreign workers from gold and jewellery shops in a move a leading economist said sends “a strong signal” that the retail sector will be “Saudized” to provide jobs for nationals.
bq. Up to three million foreigners face the axe in the next decade after the Saudi government decided in February 2003 to limit the number of foreign workers and their families to less than 20 percent of the Saudi population by 2013. [via “SIFY”:http://headlines.sify.com/2915news5.html?headline=Saudi~bars~Indian~workers~from~gold~shops]
About 25,000 to 30,000 jobs are to be reclaimed by the Saudis by the current action. A large number of people affected will be from my home state of Kerala.

Yazad has a link to an “article by Madhu Kishwar”:http://www.yazadjal.com/mt/archives/000209.html in which she says that NGOs who accept foregin aid grants should not be lecturing the world against Globalization.
bq. There is something similarly comic about the AGBs warning us about the evils of globalisation despite their own politics being altogether dependent on international aid money. Most of the NGOs who have organised events at the World Social Forum could as well advertise their NGOs as being ��run with 100 per cent imported money.��
bq. If the government were to impose similar restrictions on their receiving foreign money as they would like to impose on lesser mortals in the industrial sector and the farm sector, our NGOs would go screaming all over the world that their democratic rights and civil liberties are being violated. They want a jet-setting globalised politics for themselves but a closed-door economy for Indian farmers and industry.
The “WSF”:http://www.nirajweb.net/mt/niraj/archives/002106.html meet was best summarized in this editorial in Hindustan Times, aptly titled “If you believe in fairies”:http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/181_539671,0012.htm
bq. As these heart-felt cries show, the WSF is run by people who are finding their world collapsing around them. And the reason is simple. In the name of helping the poor, they seem to want to turn their back on the technology-driven world and return to an idyllic, even bucolic, past of self-contained communities. Instead of bemoaning the state of the poor, these nay-sayers should try to understand what has prompted Mr Lula to bid goodbye to their cherished �socialism� and, in India, Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee to wait with bated breath for a visit to West Bengal by the representatives of Gucci, a �greedy� Italian company. The problem with the votaries of the WSF is that, apart from being trapped by stale communist jargon, they are unable to offer a credible alternative vision to the world of private enterprise.

Till last year the “World Social Forum”:http://www.nirajweb.net/mt/niraj/archives/002106.html was funded by the Ford Foundation and this year they have been kept away. The Economic Times even had a headline which said “This communist war brought to you by Ford Foundation, Oxfam”:http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/421483.cms
bq. With war against globalisation on their mind, top Indian left leaders are reaching Mumbai this week for the World Social Forum which ironically is associated with champions of globalisation such as the Ford Foundation and Oxfam.
But then why was Ford Foundation asked to keep away from this years Forum ? The answer to that is given by “Lisa Jordan of Ford”:http://www.opendemocracy.net/debates/article-6-91-1678.jsp in an interview with Casper Henderson
bq. We are not supporting this year?s forum because the Indian Organising Committee (IOC), which represents a comprehensive attempt to bring together a large cross-section of Indian society, includes some groups who have objected to Ford?s activities in India since 1953 ? especially support for the Green Revolution in the 1960s and 1970s. They feel that contributions made by the Ford Foundation helped to prevent India from undergoing communist revolution.
So what happened during the “Green Revolution”:http://www.indiaonestop.com/Greenrevolution.htm and why are the communists so opposed to that ?
An estimated 4 million people died in what is known as the Bengal Famine in 1943. So when India became independent Food security was high on the agenda. This resulted in the Green Revolution which resulted in the continued expansion of farming areas, double-cropping existing farm lands, and using seeds with superior genetics.
bq. The Green Revolution resulted in a record grain output of 131 million tons in 1978-79. This established India as one of the world’s biggest agricultural producers. No other country in the world which attempted the Green Revolution recorded such level of success. India also became an exporter of food grains around that time. [“India One Stop”:http://www.indiaonestop.com/Greenrevolution.htm]
bq. India paid back all loans it had taken from the World Bank and its affiliates for the purpose of the Green Revolution. This improved India’s creditworthiness in the eyes of the lending agencies.
So India became self sufficient, people had food to eat. The Ford foundation helped in achieving this, and for this they have been asked to keep away.

“The World Social Forum 2004”:http://www.nirajweb.net/mt/niraj/archives/002106.html, currently being held in Mumbai, India is turning out to be just a place where people can vent their frustrations against Globalization, Americans, War, and everything else. In particular, the anger is against Globalization.
bq. “The WSF, which believes in the possibility of another world, aims at bringing together organisations and social movements to build alliances to create a just world and to oppose imperialist globalisation that leaves the rich richer and the poor even more impoverished,” he said. [“Rediff”:http://www.rediff.com/news/2004/jan/12wsf.htm]
But then I got “this article”:http://www.reason.com/0312/fe.ng.poor.shtml by Johan Norberg by via “Abhi nahin to kabhi?”:http://manyu.blogspot.com/. Some exerpts
bq. The contrast is especially clear on the Korean peninsula. It�s the same population, with the same culture, just having two very different political and economic systems. In 50 years, one of them went from hunger and poverty to Southern European living standards. The other one is still starving.
bq. Take the discussion that�s going on now in Saudi Arabia about whether women should be allowed to drive, which they can�t legally do now. While it�s unlikely the situation there will change anytime soon, it�s progress just to have the discussion. People are saying it�s extremely costly to hire drivers, often from other countries, to drive women around. You can see how basic economics, basic capitalism, creates the incentive to give women more rights.
I think WSF should announce what their plan would be to generate employment, uplift people from poverty, create prosperity and the like. Just shouting anti-Bush slogans and assuming that the world will change is basically living in a fool’s paradise.

bq. Within a week of each other, two earthquakes struck on opposite sides of the world — an earthquake measuring 6.5 on the Richter scale in California and a 6.6 earthquake in Iran. But, however similar the earthquakes, the human costs were enormously different.
bq. The deaths in Iran have been counted in the tens of thousands. In California, the deaths did not reach double digits. Why the difference? In one word, wealth.
bq. Wealth enables homes, buildings and other structures to be built to withstand greater stresses. Wealth permits the creation of modern transportation that can quickly carry people to medical facilities. It enables those facilities to be equipped with more advanced medical apparatus and supplies, and amply staffed with highly trained doctors and support staff.
bq. Those who disdain wealth as crass materialism need to understand that wealth is one of the biggest life-saving factors in the world. As an economist in India has pointed out, “95 percent of deaths from natural hazards occur in poor countries.”
From an article by “Thomas Sowell”:http://www.townhall.com/columnists/thomassowell/ts20031230.shtml, via “AnarCapLib”:http://www.yazadjal.com/mt/archives/000199.html

The “Resident Idiot”:http://www.tni.org/fellows/bidwai.htm, “a liar”:http://www.madhoo.com/archives/002358.php and “supporter of murderers”:https://varnam.org/archives/000300.html, gave the “following advice”:http://www.nirajweb.net/mt/niraj/archives/002090.html to Congress(I) for winning the elections
bq. What the party needs is a major realignment with India’s social reality after more than a decade of rightward drift. The central aspect of that reality is the state of underdevelopment, deprivation, poverty and ignorance in which the bulk of the population lives even as it aspires to a life with freedom and dignity. This locates India’s “natural” political centre of gravity on the Left. Only a left-wing programme charged by egalitarianism and progressive social policies can address the needs of the mass of the population.
And at the same time what is happening in the “mothership”:http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/181_526031,00020008.htm ?
bq. China plans to lay off some three million workers every year until 2006 as to streamline the bloated public sector units in the country, the state media reported on Friday.
China is also closing down loss making state owned enterprise. China has learned that for that country to survive in this era of Globalization, it has to stop wasting money and concentrate on wealth creation which in turn drives job creation. They are smart folks, who do not want to go the Soviet Union way and are accepting the Darwinian brutality of free-market capitalism.
China is now wearing what Thomas Friedman calls the “Golden Straitjacket”:https://varnam.org/archives/000132.html.

Recently we found out that "Asia is an attractive investment":https://varnam.org/archives/000129.html now. We have some numbers now.
bq. "Feature: Indian stock market in wonderland:":http://www.sulekha.com/redirectnh.asp?cid=312758 FIIs have pumped more than $2 billion into Indian stocks and bonds so far in 2003 compared to about $555 million in the whole of 2002, out of which over $700 million surged in the three weeks ending June 30. This is the fourth time in almost 10 years since India opened up to foreign investors that net FII inflows have crossed the $2 billion mark. Many FIIs have even started predicting that considering the current macro-economic situation and strong liquidity, this year may witness record inflows.