3. 'Poverty, Processes of Impoverishment and Empowerment: by Yash Tandon; in Chapter Two; 'Empowerment: Towards Sustainable Development', edited by Naresh Singh and Vangile Titi; Fernwood Publishing Ltd, 1995; page 29.

"Poverty has been with us since the Pharaohs ruled Egypt ... It is as old as the hills ...". Poverty has even been described as a "curse" of mankind, or alternatively, as a "disease". In the past, it has often been attributed to supernatural forces, or God's creation. All one could do with poverty was to give alms or charity to the poor. Most ancient religions provided for this. The view that poverty has always been with us is not true. When compared with the material wealth of our present times, ancient societies were "poor", but by their own self-perception, those societies may have regarded themselves as "rich". Within those communities, the disparities of wealth either did not exist (as in communal societies), or where it existed, the material gap between the "wealthy" and the "poor" was relatively small compared to our own times. What is new about poverty in our times is the stark contrat between the rich and the poor, and the sheer numbers involved. According to the Report on the State of World Rural Poverty (Jaziary et al. 1992), the poor have increased in number and now constitute about 1.1 billion or one-fifth of the world population. Indeed the gap between the poor and the rich is ever widening, between nations at the global level and within nations between citizenry. The second new aspect about poverty in outr times is the conceptualization about its cause. Poverty is not seen as God's creation, although a minority still hold this view, but as man-made. (Here I have to be gender specific; most women would probably say, qite rightly, that they have no part in the creation of poverty). Views on the causes of poverty can be divided broadly into two categories. The first is the structuralist view which says that poverty is a product of the very structure of the society's mode of existence - from production to distribution and consumption. Marx was the greatest exponent of this view in our times, although he was by no means the only one. The others - non-structuralists - are a mixed bag of theorists comprising those who say , for example, that poverty is a result of the lack of application of technology to production, and those who say that it is an "accidental" or contingent phenomenon (linked for example with drought or poor natural endowment). In this group there are also those who argue that the poor are their own creators; they are lazy (or not industrious enough), passive, or "fatalist". At the global level, this last view often expresses itself in racist terms when entire nations or races are described as "lazy" and blamed as authors of their own poverty. The structural view of the causes of poverty has become somewhat out of fashion, ever since the collapse of the Soviet Union and the global "socialist" movement.Theorists are moving away from grandiose explanations for the phenomenon of poverty ... and the reigning orthodoxy (capitalism) deliberately sets out to discourage a "systemic" analysis of the problems of poverty. Why? Because too close an identification with the capitalist system as the root problem of poverty would point fingers at those who hold power within the system. The power-holders are also dispensers of charity, so they concentrate on the "practical" issues of alleviating poverty, rather than examining the (systemic) causes that create poverty. This activist passion for "doing something about poverty" has itself become an ideology. Oftentimes, at intellectual or "policy"-driven conferences, when the system itself is projected as the cause of all poverty, the immediate reaction to this is: "And what can you do about it?" - implying that the solution to poverty has to be found within the system itself. The rapid explosion of NGOs on the world scene (especially in the third world countires) has added to this activists' obsession with "doing" something rather than "merely" talking about it. The dominant paradigm on poverty today is non-structuralist. Corresponding to the structuralist and the non-structuralist viewpoints are theories about "solutions" to the problem of poverty. In Marx, this takes the form of class struggles. Capitalism, to simplify Marxist theory, breeds its own opposite - namely, the working class - who in alliance with all other oppressed classes and exploited people, wage a struggle against the capitalists until the system collapses and gives birth to a new system of organizing production, disribution and consumption. The other solution is the "developmentalist" view, which says that the poor countries are poor because of lack of capital and that poverty can be eliminated through the application of further capital to production. A third view emerging in recent years says that poverty will be removed neither by capitalism (i.e. by the application of capital) nor by socialism, (i.e. by collective ownership of the means of production) but by the action of the poor themselves. In other words, the poor are their own redeemers ... Empowerment: Empowerment is a very misunderstood concept. It has acquired a considerable aura of "respectability", even "social status" within the vocabulary development, but it has not yet acquired a socially agreed content. It is also one of those concepts whose full implications people do not realize when they use it. Lurking under its naivety lies a dangerous "monster", the monster of revolution, for if the logic of the concept is taken to its full limit, then it can only mean equalizing or near-equalizing power, empowering those who do not have the power in the system. Empowerment is a systemic concept the way participation is not. The concept of "participation", to diverge a little, was a concept which, although born in earlier decades, gained major currency during the 1980s, culminating in the case of Africa, with the Conference of Participatory Development in Arusha, Tanzania, in 1990. Sometimes, when a concept acquires international recognition, it is also on its way out. This is what happened to "participation". The Arusha conference was both a recognition of its importance as well as a signpost of its demise. This is not to say that "participatory development" has lost its relevance or its devotees. As long as there are "institutions" (NGOs, research bodies, etc.) that get their donor funding by brandishing the word "participation", the word will continue to draw its band of supporters. But participation, since the 1980s, has lost some of its currency. When combined with the word democracy ("participatory democracy") the concept still retains some value, but when combined with development ("participatory development") it has been the victim of gross abuse. In the name of "participation", the people are made creators of their poverty (called "development") much like the way the colonials used to get people to "participate" in the building of roads, and the way people in post-colonial Kenya engaged themselves in "Harambee" projects, thus relieving the government from carrying out its responsibilities to the people. The concept of empowerment has somewhat dethroned participation. It came into vogue in response to the situation where people could "participate" in a project without having the power to decide on critical issues related to the project. Like every concept born of the people's struggles (participation among others), the concept of "empowerment" too has been co-opted by those in power. But empowerment is a hardy term. As noted earlier, its logic should drive the disempowered into positions of power and, equally, bring down those riding high on power. Since the concept is located within the very centre of "power relations" and therefore challenging to powerholders, they have no choice but to incorporate it within the language and rob it of its threatening implications. Empowerment in the hands of those who hold power has come to mean "management of power". There are two kinds of powerholders in our system - those who hold the power of prosperity, or wealth, and those who hold the power of knowledge. This gives rise to different views of empowerment. First, the argument of institutionalized powerholders [such as thew World Bank (WB) or International Monetary Fund (IMF), Western governments or the donor community including the large Northern non-governmental organizations (NGOs)] is that poverty is essentially a phenomenon of and in the third world. The problem with countries in the third world is that the elite appropriate wealth for themselves by monopolizing power at the political level (one-party rule, out and out dictatorships, etc.) and through corruption at the administrative level. Therefore, empower people at the grassroots (for example, by breaking the monopoly of state economic power through encouraging small business enterprises and by making governments more accountable to the people), and you will have created "enabling conditions" for a more equitable distribution of wealth and progressive assets. Among the second group of powerholders belong the progressive or "liberal" intellectuals (we leave alone intellectuals who are directly in the pay of, for example, World Bank). They argue as follows: both capitalism and socialism have failed to provide for the poor; the existing leadership in the various institutions of state and international organizations do not have the answers to the problem of poverty; we need therefore to look for new leadership and new paradigms from within "civil society"; and NGOs working in the area of "development" can provide both leadership and ideas for a third alternative to socialism and capitalism. Both the above versions of empowerment are "top-down". In the first case, the IMF, WB, etc. seek to contain the concept within the bounds of the existing order, and in the second, liberal intellectuals seek to maintain their hegemony of knowledge. Both groups talk about "empowering the people" as if power was for them to give and not for the powerless to take. Both talk about creating "access" to resources or "rights" (eg: the right to food), as if these resources and rights are for them to give. Of course, there are fundamental differences between them, both in the content of their message and the possibility in what they want to achieve at the end of the day. But both groups have a similar approach, that is, based on an assumption that they possess the resources (wealth, knowledge) which they can make available to the powerless. Indeed, look around and you will see that sometimes the representatives of the two "clubs" even dine together. On the part of the "liberal intellectuals" it often takes the illusion of "reforming the World Bank from within", or statements  such as, "They are not all bad guys in the World Bank; so and so is a good person, we can work with him/her." Against these essentially patronizing and fundamentally reformist perspectives is a third view which says that power is not there for the giving but for the taking. Those who "give" power condition it; power has to be taken. It is through active struggle for rights that you secure those rights. It is through active struggle for resources that you get those resources. That is the lesson of history. The powerful never concede voluntarily; they have to be forced to concede power - through moral force, as Gandhi did; or through withdrawal of labour, as the working classes the world over have been doing for over a century; or through armed action as the liberation movements in South Africa were compelled to do. In the meantime, the powerful may appear to be conceding power, but they do so in order to manage the powerless. "Empowerment", therefore is a contradiction in terms; there can only be "self-empowerment". This latter view does raise the question of where those who describe themselves as "animators" or "facilitators" (as I do) fit into the above, admittedly simplified but essentially valid, characterization of the three positions of empowerment?  A simple answer would be that this very much depends: on the position they occupy within the power structuire; and on the methods they use to work with the powerless. The question of animators raises the whole question of the "interface" between the impoverished and powerless people and political power. The Marxist theory, as it was organizationally developed and put into operation by Lenin, posited the "vanguard" party as the "necessary" interface between the exploited people and political power. That notion, in the light of pratical experience with the "Communist" countries has been discredited. The question is: what is there to take place of the "vanguard"? Indeed, are there any institutional arrangements at all which, in trying to "facilitate" the people's assumption of power, would not hijack people's efforts and end up being self serving?   Theory and Therapeutics: This leads to the question of strategy and tactics. Talk about "empowerment" must recognize that there are more candidates for empowerment than one. The women, the children, the disabled, the ethnic or racial minorities are among those with legitimate claims to empowerment. Indeed, nature too is a candidate for empowerment - nature has been disempowered, robbed of its internal dynamism and its regenerative capacity. Consider just three of the major movements of our time - namely the anti-poverty movement, the feminist movement and the ecological movement - and examine, broadly, their strategy and tactics. In one sense, the three movements are complementary and in strategic alliance when they confront the whole "system" for the damage it has caused to the poor, the women and the environment. But, like everything else in the world today, there is competition for the "market". Among other markets, there is a market for ideas, a market for information, a market for engaging the interests of the people who may not be directly involved in the struggle, and so on. When the three movements compete with one another for these markets and for the resources with which to access them, then surely they obstruct each other. In some ways, the feminist movement has worked in the opposite direction to the anti-poverty movement. The global feminist movement is very strong in terms of its contribution to the theory of power, but in my view, extremely poor in terms of its strategy and tactics of struggle. By making the "woman question" central to their concerns, they have marginalized the poverty question, especially during the decade of the 1970s. In the case of the third world, most self-conscious women are confused over the question of whether they should be with their sisters in the first world or with their brothers in the third world. There are competing demands on their time and allegiance. As we approach the mid-1990s, however, we observe a greater clarity in their strategic and tactical thinking. Many of them are now critical of the "feminist movement" as it was conceived in the North and openly dissociate themselves from it. They are beginning to link the issue of women's marginalization with issues of international trade, environmental degradation, and so on. Also, there is now a gradual shift to talking about "gender relations" rather than about "women" qua women. The ecological movement, on the other hand, is poor on theory and strong on strategy and tactics. At the level of theory, the movement has made little headway beyond the Brundtland Report, which (as is the providence of all commissioned reports) is a good empirical description of the environmental situation but one totally devoid of theoretical or philosophical depth. On the other hand, the ecological movement has done better at the strategic level. It has challenged the very notion of "development" and put to question the very basis of the modern system's craving for exploitation and greed. The feminist movement (especially as conceived in the North) does not provide a systemic challenge; as far as the poor are concerned, power can shift from men to women without denting the system's ability to continue to impoverish two-thirds of humanity. The environmental movement, on the other hand, has raised a systemic challenge and therefore it has become a critical arena of contest between the powerholders and the powerless.   Conclusion: Our present world is in deep crisis. It is above all in a crisis of knowledge itself. The Baconian certainty about science has given way to uncertainty and self-doubt. This is not necessarily a bad development. It has woken up those in the South who had given up, surrendered too much of their own science and culture in the belief that what the West was offering was superior and infallible. In the South, people are beginning to re-examine and re-valdate their own knowledge and approaches to knowledge. They are re-legitimizing the content and methodologies of their knowledge formation. Unfortunately, in some cases, this has given rise to manifestations of cultural relativism, but this, we must understand, is a defensive action against the aggression (cultural, political, epistemological) from the West. We in the South must realize that the advances of sciences are not a product purely of the West, even if the West now takes credit for all. Science has an ancestry of thousands of years, and much for which the West tries to claim credit is in fact universal knowledge of mankind. Above all, I hope the uncertainty about science and knowledge will generate a certain amount of humility in the way we relate to one another as human beings and the way we relate to nature. If this is a possibility, the signs as yet are not too encouraging (judging by what is happening in the former Yugoslavia and Somalia and the efforts at the UNCED conference). Let us, however, take comfort in the view that large shifts in thoughts and attitudes take generations, and we are only on the first uncertain steps.

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4. 'Closing the Great Divide' by Abdus Salam; in 'An Agenda for the 21st Century' by Rushworth M Kidder; The MIT Press,1987; page 107.

[Prefatory note: ... After attending Panjab University, Salam took his BA at St John's College, Cambridge University. He received his Ph D in theoretical Physics from Cambridge's Cavendish Laboratory and took an appointment, which he still holds, at Imperial College of Science and Technology in London. For his work in the physics of elementary particles - on which he has published some two hundred and fifty papers - he shared a Nobel Prize in 1979. He now spends most of his time at the International Center for Theoretical Physics at Trieste, Italy, which he founded in 1964 and has directed ever since. In that capacity, and as head of the Third World Academy of Sciences, he has helped bring together physicists and mathematicians from industrial nations and the developing world.]

Trieste, Italy The International Center for Theoretical Physics perches on a pine-covered slope overlooking the sapphire-blue Adriatic. But the Director's Office looks out the back into the side of a hill. The location seems somehow in character for Abdus Salam, whose purpose lies less with elegant vistas than with little-known corners of the world - and who despite his Nobel Prize for physics, typically describes himself as "a humble research physicist from a developing country." Asked about his agenda for the next century, he responds without hesitation. "The real issue, to my mind," he says, "is the great divide between the South and the North," referring to those regions of the globe roughly representing the developing and the developed nations. Although he speaks softly - from a desk chair facing a framed photograph of Albert Einstein, and a blackboard chalked with mathematical formulae, his words carry fervor. This "great divide" between the developing world and the industrialized nations, he explians, arises from the fact that each side has a completely different set of problems. The major 21st century issue facing the North, he says, is the 'Arms Race' and the threat of nuclear warfare. The problem facing the South is the threat of starvation and utter poverty. Picking up a copy of Ideals and Realities, a collection of his essays, he turns to a piece he wrote about Al Asuli, an 11th Century Islamic physician. Al Asuli, he says, divided the problems of humanity into diseases of the rich and the diseases of the poor. If Al Asuli was alive today, says Salam, he would make the same distinction. "Half his treatise would speak of the one affliction of rich humanity - the psychosis of nuclear annihilation. The other half would be concerned with the one affliction of the poor - their hunger and near-starvation. He might perhaps add that the two afflictions spring from a common cause - the excess of science in one case and the lack of science in the other." For Salam, the operative word here is science - which he is careful to distinguish from technology, or the application of scientific knowledge to human problems.One great difficulty for the developing world, he explains, is the misplaced assumption that sharing the Western machinery, communications and transportation - technology transfer - will be a panacea for the South. "Technology transfer is something the South has asked for and the North is resisting. Quite rightly. I don't blame the North for one second for not giving technology as such. Why should you? Why should anybody part with things that nobody else has helped to create?" "That's where the bread and butter is concerned," he adds, referring to the central role that the sale of technology plays in the economies of the industrial nations. Instead of technology transfer, Salam says, the South in the coming century should be asking for a transfer of the basic science out of which technologies can spring. "I wish that the North could decide to give the South as much science as possible." Why this insistence on science? Because "science is the basis of technology in the present day." He cites the case of Japan. Over the years, the Japanese invested heavily in learning "all of science at a very high level. And then they were really successful in their technology." Similar things are beginning to happen, he says, in five of the developing nations: Argentina, Brazil, China, India and South Korea. He is especially impressed by South Korea, which he recently visited. "They took me straightaway to the television studios for a two-hour long interview," he recalls, "in which they said, 'we have made it a national objective to win Nobel Prizes. Can you give us advice?' "I told them they were being silly," he says with a chuckle, "adding that they may or may not get Nobel Prizes." But he notes with approval that "the very fact that they made it a national objective is a very important thing. That means that they will stock up their libraries, they will get scientific literature, they'll fund a lot of fellowships, they'll do everything possible to make themselves into a scientifically advanced country." And that, he suggests, will do more for South Korea than any amount of reliance on Western technology. As he looks froward into the 21st centurry, Salam distinguishes several kinds of science that will be practiced. The first he calls "science for science's sake" - the most basic and theoretical research, producing discoveries that sometimes go unappreciated for decades. In general, such research is "probably in a healthy state", despite the never-ending battle to pay for it. "Then there is science for man's sake," he syas, a category he breaks down into three parts: "global science, science for the rich countries, and science for the poor countries". "Science for the poor doesn't exist, simply doesn't exist," he laments - although he notes the poor countries have plenty of problems that science could help resolve. He cites the current medical concern over AIDS; "As long as it remains in Haiti, nobody even bothered about it." Now that it has come to Europe and America, "it will get the attention it deserves". "It always deserved that attention," he adds wryly. And what about science for the rich countries? That gets entangled in defence spending - which he says acounts for half of all research spending in the developed world. For Salam, in fact, the real threat of the nuclear arms race is not that it might end in holocaust. It is that swelling defense costs will sap resources needed to combat the rest of humanity's problems. Its a line of argument, he says, elaborated by President Dwight Eisenhour. "Eisenhour made it very clear that every single B-52 bomber that is made in America is depriving not only the poor in the third world, but also Americans of sustenance, of shelter, of aid." "If Eisenhour were alive, he would be just aghast" at current levels of defense spending and the lack of attention to the developing world. Referring to massive defense spending in the North on the one hand, and to developing world poverty on the other, Salam drives home the connection. "Unless you are conscious that the two problems are connected, and that the developed nations are squandering the wealth of this world - not only the wealth of this world - but also the time and the energies of its scientists and its technologists, which could be used toward bettering humanity - you will never get to grips with "the basic challenge facing the twenty-first century. But what about the peacetime spin-offs that arise from defense-based research? "The statement that defense expenditures have 'fallout' is rubbish, total rubbish," says Salam flatly. "And the statement that since you invest in 'star wars' you will do your toothpast better is total rubbish." What's really needed, he says, is not the "fallout" from defense projects but a concentraed effort to study some of the developing world's most pressing problems - starvation, for example. Although he supports the idea of food aid for developing nations, he sees it as only a "shot-term business." The root of the problem is "food deficiency, drought and desertification." "This is the basic problem to be solved scientifically." But across much of the developing world, he points out, "there are no scientific studies at all of climate and of the underground water situation in the deserts - whether there are undergornd lakes, and so on." The lack of such studies, which are common enough in developed nations, supports his contention that "science for the rich" is something quite different from "science for the poor." One problem in conducting such studies, however, is that they frequently transcend national boundaries. For that reason, they fall under Salam's third heading of "global science" - the study of the largest interdisciplinary and international issues concerning the global environment. On this point he expresses profound pessimism. "There's no such thing as global science as a subject," he complains. Even the disappearence of rain forests, which is commanding increased public attention, is not being considered in global terms. "People do not take rain forest as a global asset," he laments. "People take it as a problem of Brazil, a problem of Malaysia. How many governments are willing to spend money on that sort of thing? None. Zero." The problem is the lack of "the scientific infrastructure to look at global problems." "Everybody seems to be for himself," he says sadly. "There is no global vision at all. It's the lack of global vision that worries me. really. It's the lack of global vision that is missing in science, that is missing in the food problem, that is missing in the health problem." What is needed is "a vision of a sort that I don't see any statesman having." From his point as an administrator, Salam says he clearly sees the need for sources of funding that would encourage such globalism. He adds that such funds, if they are to come, will have to come from the developed world.  But he again rejects as "rubbish" - one of his favourite words - the idea that "if you save funds from nuclear arms limitation, you will put them into welfare of mankind." The temptation will be for the rich countries to simply funnel the savings back into tax relief - "making the rich richer and the poor hungry man's soul sink lower."  "The whole attitude has to become very different." And if the "great divide" between the rich and the poor nations is not closed, Salam says that it will be increasingly "hard to ignore the developing countries' problems in the 21st century" for two reasons. First, the North will no longer be able to "insulate itself" politically from the South. If the gap is not narrowed, "what will happen is already happening already in the third world" - turmoil, military governments, unrest and "people on top of each other." Second, he notes that the worldwide environment "may be affected by lack of attention to the global problems and to scientific globalism." "In that sense, no parts of the world are going to be safe from the feeling of turmoil. At the moment, it doesn't seem to affect American to have starving Africans at their hands. They may very well say, 'Well, if they want to starve, let them starve.'" "But I don't think man lives like this," he says. Speaking of rock star Bob Geldof's efforts to raise money for African famine relief, he says, "I think the Geldofs of this world make their point when they show what can be done in a small way." What, then, does he hope will close the gap? He would like to see industrial nations specialize in providing the scientific training to elevate the developing nations. "For example, higher education may be taken up by Britain and the United States. The Russians may take up lower education. The Japanese and Germans will be asked to do technology." "That," he concludes, "will be my vision of the future."

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