Francesca DL 2ASN2 CHAPTER 10 : EQUALITY AND DEMOCRACY
South Asian countries :
o Have accepted the ideology of planning for development o Have treated the economic development as a concern of the state and thus a political issue Those are important facts that differentiates our situation from the Western countries o Another is South Asians commitment to egalitarianism (an integral part of our ideology of planning ; it played a role in the liberation movements)
ECONOMY should be a paramount of PLANNING
o Whether a conflict between economic equalization and economic progress arises a price must be paid for equalization in terms of retarded progress
ECONOMIC INEQUALITY is one of the causes of SOCIAL
INEQUALITY o TO RESOLVE : a decrease in economic equality should tend to bring about a decrease in social inequality, which would have a beneficial effect on economic development LOW LEVELS OF LIVING AND LOW PRODUCTIVITY OF LABOR o The lower strata should increase labor input and labor efficiency, and raise production o CONVENTIONAL POST WAR APPROACH : treats development simply as a function of investment, abstracts from both these important relationships, and this makes it possible to believe not only that development can take place without egalitarian reforms, but even that increasing inequality may be a condition of economic growth When the paramount goal of greater equality is retained at the same time as the development problem is approached in the biased way, the result is likely to be muddled, opportunistic thinking and the covering up of policies that are not in line with the egalitarian ideal
Effects to raise standards of health and education should have
equalizing effects o BUT, only a small part of the governments expenditure is earmarked for the neediest
o And the SCHOOL SYSTEM in particular is biased, against
the LOWER STRATA
UPPER CLASS regard themselves as middle class citizens
LOWER CLASSES are the people that need to be aided if there is to be a real advance in equality o Interest in this matter has waned in the face of mounting internal and external political problems
POLITICAL DEMOCRACY is related to the ideal of social and
economic equality o A system in which an executive is responsible to the peoples will, as expressed by : Elections with universal suffrage Independent judiciary Guarantee of a wide range of civil liberties
Part of the attraction of greater social and economic equality was
the realization that without political democracy would be an empty achievement
Commitment to political democracy was commonly embraced by
the leaders of all of South Asia
The patterns they chose were borrowed from the Western
countries o Little thought was given to the fact that the political structure of the Western countries was quite different when they were at a comparable stage of underdevelopment o The pattern of the West were modified to confer to the norms and the belief of a country o Some of the South Asian countries used the Parliamentary form and the Democratic form, in which the Philippines use
From the standpoint of modernization and economic
development : o The contrast between the countries that retained a democratic form of government and those that moved toward authoritarianism is more apparent than real
The tide of history cannot be rolled back to enable the new
states of the region to experience the political evolution of the Western countries
The issue of government intervention in industry is assumed,
everywhere, to be crucial : o ANSWER : socialist or free enterprise society o The South Asian countries after independence, could have : Inherit enterprises in the public sector Nationalize private enterprises Establish new state industrial enterprises