Obama's Visit to India

President Obama is in India today courting one of the world’s growing economic powers on issues of trade, counter-terrorism and nuclear proliferation. The image of President Obama and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, signing agreements and addressing the “defining challenges of our time” are supposed to be a signal of international cooperation and democratic values but I can’t help but wonder how the most widespread issue facing the vast majority of people in both countries is off the agenda?

According, to the Hindustan Times of India,

“India has been ranked among top 10 global countries on income gain but widening disparity between rich and poor and gender inequality have been identified as major challenges in a United Nations report released on Thursday. The Human Development Report 2010 said India gained 15 positions on global Human Development Index (HDI) because of a high income growth since 1970. However, on overall HDI, Nepal, being the second fastest HDI gainer globally, did much better.”

India is not alone. As corporate profits soar and the burden of economic recovery is placed onto the backs of workers and the unemployed, the gap between the rich and poor is growing in nearly every country around the world including the United States. If wages internationally are declining and unemployment rising as corporations heighten exploitation and roll back social protections, then the only logical expectation is greater social instability, conflict and death at the hand of treatable diseases. In other words a decline in human well-being even if economies grow slightly.

The United States and India should be trying to bridge the rich-poor divide in their own countries and cooperating to ensure greater accountability among multinational corporations who skirt labor and environmental standards. Manufacturers, petroleum companies, and investors operating in North America and South Asia should be forced to follow unified codes of conduct that puts the breaks on ruthless competition. There should also be a coordinated attempt to promote fairer trade agreements between the two countries that create quality jobs in both nations and raise incomes.

There are a number of very important issues on the table during the President’s visit in India. But unfortunately, the most critical problem has been overlooked.

Mining, Social Movements, and the Resource Curse

During the growing push for nationalization of mining in South Africa, it is worth keeping in mind broader debates about the promises and perils of the mining sector as a development pathway in poor countries like SA. I stumbled upon a paper from the Brooks World Poverty Institute at Manchester University, Contention and Ambiguity: Mining and the Possibilities of Development. You can read the working copy here.

From the abstract,

We review evidence regarding debates on the resource curse and the possibility of an extraction-led pathway to development. We then describe the different types of resistance and social mobilisation that have greeted mineral expansion at a range of geographical scales, and consider how far these protests have changed the relationships between mining and political economic change. The conclusions address how far such protest might contribute to an ’escape‘ from the resource curse, and consider implications for research and policy agendas.

The ANC leadership appears hesitant at best to consider any nationalization of mining despite strong support from trade unions. This reluctance could easily change if even more voices calling for greater regulation, revenue sharing and participatory management of mining demand a reversal of the "resource curse" facing mineral rich countries like South Africa.