Re: Keeping focus after the WTO

[Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1@xxxxxxx>]

Nathan wrote:
>The point is to argue that it is equality that drives progress -- economic,
>political and cultural -- and the debate is over how best to pursue that.

Under capitalism, isn't there contradiction between equality and progress,
even in Kerala?

>From an article posted on this list a while ago:
>The trouble for Kerala is that in a changing India, doing business is
>increasingly important. And as the socialist era comes to an end across the
>nation, Kerala's resistance to modern industry may prove to be an
>unsustainable indulgence. For years the state's economy has hobbled along
>on one leg -- the agricultural sector. That sector, I was told by Michael
>Tharakan, a historian at the Center for Development Studies, in Trivandrum,
>has been supported in large part by national tariffs that have raised the
>prices of imported crops. (The state's economy has also been bolstered by
>the remittances sent home by Keralites who work abroad, particularly in the
>Persian Gulf.) "In a way," Tharakan said, "Kerala is being sustained by
>favorable terms of trade."
>
>But Kerala does not exist in a vacuum. And as economic liberalization takes
>hold, tariffs are being lowered. Other states have dealt with the demise of
>a subsidized economy by turning to free-market enterprise and wooing
>multinational industries. Driving from Tamil Nadu, for instance, I passed a
>large Pepsi bottling plant and a gargantuan factory being built by Ford in
>collaboration with the Indian automotive company Mahindra.
>
>Whether Kerala will have to adopt similar measures is a matter of real
>concern in the state. Newspapers are filled with stories about cheap
>Guatemalan cardamom and Philippine coconut oil; even C. P. Narayan, that
>dyed-in-the-wool Communist, admitted that the state might accept some
>degree of industrialization -- though he hastened to add that Kerala would
>opt only for "labor-intensive industries."

"Labor-intensive industries" aren't progressive in social terms, are they?

Yoshie