* G * O * A * N * E * T C * L * A * S * S * I * F * I * E * D * S *
Sangath, www.sangath.com, is one of Goa's leading NGOs.
Sangath is looking to build a centre for services, training and research
and is looking to buy land of approx 1500 to 2000 sq mtrs
betweeen Mapusa and Bambolim and surrounding rural areas
If you have land to sell, please contact:
contac...@sangath.com or yvo...@sangath.com or phone +91-9881499458
http://lists.goanet.org/pipermail/goanet-goanet.org/2009-July/180028.html
The Pope's moral blunders on outsourcing S A Aiyar Sunday August 02, 2009
Religion and business rarely mix well. This shows up in the encyclical
of Pope Benedict XVI. The encyclical0 generally supports
globalization, but criticizes western companies that outsource
business to developing countries.
This criticism has an unfortunate ethnic slant. The Pope echoes the
wish of a white labour aristocracy in the West to snatch jobs and
income away from much poorer but more competitive workers in Third
World countries. That is repugnant in both economic and moral terms.
The western argument cannot quite be called racist. Politicians and
workers in the West are not all white - some are black or brown. Yet,
the ethnic implications of the western protest against outsourcing
cannot be ignored. The protest rarely focuses on outsourcing to white
countries like Poland, Latvia or Bulgaria. It focuses overwhelmingly
on outsourcing to black, brown and yellow nations.
This is mainly on economic grounds - wages are lower in Asia than in
Eastern Europe, and so, the scope for outsourcing is far greater. Yet,
the ethnic implications cannot be ignored. The mainly white labour
aristocracy of the West is clamouring to get companies to shut down
jobs and production in countries with black, brown and yellow workers.
This means impoverishing poor workers to subsidize the labour
aristocracy. Instead of being ashamed of trying to rob the poor of
jobs, the labour aristocracy talks in high moral tones, as though it
has a God-given right to jobs that have actually gone entirely on
merit to the Third World.
For most of history, China and India were the richest countries in the
world, with the most advanced technologies and best jobs. The
Industrial Revolution changed that - the best jobs moved to the West,
and millions of Indian textile workers were rendered unemployed by
British mills. The western labour aristocracy never complained of that
shift of the best jobs from the East to the West, but cannot
countenance a shift in the opposite direction.
One valid western objection, on both economic and moral grounds,
relates to the use (mainly by China) of prison labour, forced labour
and child labour to produce cheap goods for export. Such exports have
largely been checked, and now constitute a negligible part of
outsourcing. This objection does not apply at all to India's
burgeoning exports of software or BPO, or to the shift of 80,000 IBM
jobs or 35,000 Accenture jobs to India.
China has become the world's biggest supplier of manufactured goods,
while India has become a major exporter of computer software,
back-office services and RD. This has transformed the economies of
the two most populous countries in the world, made them the fastest
growing in the world, and helped hundreds of millions of poor people
to rise out of poverty.
You might think that the Pope would hail this as a great development
for humanity. Instead, he has parroted the bogus claims of the white
labour aristocracy. His encyclical says, the so-called outsourcing of
production can weaken the company's sense of responsibility towards
the stakeholders - namely the workers, the suppliers, the consumers,
the natural environment, and broader society - in favour of the
shareholders, who are not tied to a specific geographical area and
who, therefore, enjoy extraordinary mobility.
The racial implications of this leave me dumbstruck. The Pope has
posed the issue as one of stakeholders versus shareholders. But are
white stakeholders the only ones that matter? When IBM shifts 80,000
jobs to India, 80,000 Indian stakeholders replace American ones. Are
the rights of 80,000 Indian stakeholders any less than those of the
Americans they replace? When Chinese suppliers outbid American ones in
supplying hardware to IBM, are the Chinese lesser stakeholders than
the Americans they replace?
The Pope is simply wrong in posing outsourcing as a conflict between
shareholders and stakeholders. Outsourcing merely globalizes
stakeholders across the world instead of leaving them within narrow
national walls. And as a believer in one world, the Pope should be
encouraging this spread of stakeholders across all humanity.
Shareholders are getting globalised no less
