The Devil of Economic Fundamentalism

by Javed Jamil

that is consistent with healthy life. To achieve this grand objective certain constitutional and administrative meas­ures will have to be taken.

  The first major constitutional step that has to be taken is to enshrine “Right to Health” as a Fundamental Right. This will go a big way in guaranteeing that no activity related to any field whatsoever, which can cause, directly or indirectly, serious harm to health, will not be permissible, and all the governmental po­licies must take into consideration their impact on health before becoming operational. The production, trading, and use of all such items and activities as may cause fatal or paralysing dis­eases will then become forbidden by law. Those items and activi­ties that are harmful, but do not cause a fatal or paralysing illness, must be discouraged, but not forbidden. To keep a watch on the developments, an autonomous National Health Commission must be constituted in every country. This Commission will conduct health impact studies of all the developments taking place in the country; it must be given constitutional powers to determine whether to allow or not different activities and its decisions must be binding. The Commission must have as its members medical specialists of distinguished career. Similarly, a World Health Commission must be formed to assess the impact on health of the various social, economic and political develop­ments at the international level. The Commission must not be financed by any nation or group of nations, and must be funded through equal contributions from all the countries. The Health Commissions of all the countries must be members of the World Health Commission, and its chairmanship must be rotational.

  When the right to health becomes a fundamental right, smoking, drinking and uninhibited sex would automatically become forbidden; for each one of these is responsible for increase in annual mortality of millions of people. This will result in a momentous fall in the incidence of diseases like lung cancer, mouth cancer, cirrhosis, ischaemic heart disease, peptic ulcers, bronchitis, Korsakoff psychosis, syphilis, gonorrhoea, chancroid, herpes, AIDS and a number of psychiatric diseases. The crime and suicide rates would also decline.

  The study of the ways in which the medical science can guide and control the social and economic developments on the basis of their real or potential impact on health can be called “Medicosocial Sciences". This will prove to be an extremely absorbing subject; at the same time, it will be of immense utility for the development of a healthy human society. An aggressive pursuit of knowledge in the field is the crying need of the hour.

  The World Health Organisation has failed abysmally in its role as the saviour of the world. It has become a mere pawn in the hands of some powers. The economic fundamentalists are able to influence in a big way the decisions of the WHO. The sad truth is that it has outlived its utility and the sooner it is wound up the better.

  The infectious diseases are still the major cause of morbidity and mortality in the developing countries; these are also reappearing in the Western countries. The diseases like Tuberculosis, Malaria, and Diarrhoea in infants and worm infestation are big hazards and must be tackled on a war footing. The world bodies have shown indifference towards the primary preventive measures because the multinational drug companies have vested interests in the contin­uation of these diseases. The essential requirement for the pre­vention of infectious diseases is total hygiene. Village to village and street to street campaigns are required to teach the importance of hygiene to the masses. Anti-mosquito drives must be regularly conducted. Tuberculosis surveillance camps must be organised in every village and every mohalla at least thrice a year. There should be no excise duty and sales tax on medicines so that the masses can easily buy them. The physicists, chemists, nuclear scientists and experts of other fields must vow that they would not allow their researches to be used for destructive purposes.

  Humanisation of Civilization

  Under the maddening effect of economic fundamentalism, civi­lization has taken a back seat. The neo-junglisation of the world is almost complete. People enjoy appearing naked in public, care little for one another, are busy in trampling upon other’s rights, and are killing one another with impunity. Man has, been converted either into animal following only his instincts, or into ma­chine bereft of human sentiments, working day and night for the ultimate benefit of the economic fundamentalists. The big busi­ness is always keen to project even the baser instincts as normal human behaviour. The criteria of civilization have been so de­vised as to sweep the seamier side of the ongoing developments under the carpet. The solution to this horrendous state of affairs lies in humanisation of civilization.

  It is true that human beings are animals. But it is equally true that human beings are human beings. They may eat, mate and die like animals but, in addition, they possess an extraordinary healthy relationship with fellow humans, a highly sensitive conscience that censors their activities and supreme spirituality that seeks to instill divine virtues in them. Liberty, in the modern era, has only become an instrument invented by the economic fundamentalists for the purpose of imprisoning the conscience and spirituality of human beings. These must now be liberated and allowed to function without fear. Once the conscience and spiritu­ality are set free, humanisation of mankind will rapidly progress. Man will then not only enjoy the fruits of material devel­opments, but will also ensure that this is done in a way as would not disturb his mental peace and social order.

  The ruthless suppression of the human conscience and spirituali­ty, the promotion of materialism and the laxity of the legal system have helped crime to reach dangerous levels. But the economic fundamentalists have purposely based the criteria of development and progress only on the material advances and have omitted the rate of crimes and the level of mental peace for this purpose. Different kinds of approach will now have to be adopted to gauge the level of the progress of civilization. New criteria will have to be fixed for finding out the conditions prevailing in different parts of the world. One of these, for example, may be the Peace Level that would determine the most and the least peaceful nations of the world. To find out the Peace Level, one can use the following formula: Peace Level = 1/Rate of murder + rapes + suicides per 1000 population x 100.

  On the basis of Peace Level, the countries may be categorised into Turbulent, Disturbed, Peaceful and Highly Peaceful nations.

  Similarly, another criterion, the Civilization Level may be intro­duced. This may be calculated by the following formula.

  Civilization Level = Peace Level x Per Capita Income x Assets Distribution Index. On the basis of Civilization Level, the countries may be categorized into Barbaric, Uncivilized, Civilized and Highly Civilized nations.

  There must be a world body to keep a close watch on these levels. The body must present its report every year. This would automati­cally bring peace into focus, and the less peaceful nations will be under tremendous pressure to improve their record. The new criteria will also show the hollowness of the “devel­opment” of the so called developed countries.

  Mobilisation of Public Opinion

  Till a few decades back, the leftist tendencies had their impact on the popular campaigns, but, during the last decade, the non-governmental organisations all over the world have been successfully manoeuvred, through grant-in-aids, to work on the lines consistent with the interests of the big business. In order to stall the march of economic fundamentalism, a new direction will have to be given to the various welfare programmes that are already running, and new campaigns will have to be started.

  Population Control programme is running almost all over the world. In most of the countries, this is being done under the name of Family Planning or Family Welfare. The fact that these programmes are being pursued by the capitalist the communist as well as many Islamic countries indicates that there is, at least, some sub­stance in the popular perception that the rapid growth of the population is hazardous for mankind. At the same time, there are several reasons to argue that it is not the population growth but the unequal distribution of wealth and resources that is respon­sible fo
r the various problems consequent of the population growth. It is, however, unquestionably true that the inability of the married couples to properly space their children on account of the hesitancy on the part of mothers to actively breast-feed their children for an adequate period of time, and the negligence of mother’s health by the husbands have resulted in an unbalanced growth of population producing several adverse effects on the health of various members of the family. There is, therefore, no harm in continuing campaigns convincing the couples for having only as many children as their physical, social and financial conditions can bear. More important than this is the question: is family welfare limited or should be limited to limitation of the size of family? The Family Welfare Programme mooted by the West is, in truth, aimed at destroying the family system. This is why they do not only convince the people to marry as late as possible, but also sug­gest premarital sex to satisfy their sexual urges. Similarly, they promote habits like drinking, smoking and gambling that, more often than not, have adverse effects on their family. A perfect family welfare programme