Non Aligned Movement? Why now!

Non Aligned Movement? Well thats some thing we read it in our Social Studies text book long time ago. But today, is the world interested in it? Well the right question should have been - "Does the world remember that an organisation called "Non Aligned Movement" exists today?

NON ALIGNED MOVEMENT

NAM is the largest grouping of countries (114 member states) apart from UN, but its voice is hardly heard in international affairs now. NAM was the result of the efforts put in by JawaharLal Nehru, Tito, Nasser, Nkrumah, Sukarno(called as the Initiative of Five) and other prominent leaders of that time to create an organisation which is neither pro-USA nor pro-USSR. But today it is almost non existent except for the summit meetings which are held every year.

Failure of NAM: Failure of NAM can be attributed mainly to the five main countries who got involved themselves in power struggle i.e. India, Indonesia, Ghana, Egypt and Yugoslavia. But apart from the above reason, many of the member countries alligned with either USA or USSR e.g. Cuba and Vietnam with USSR, India to a greater extent was more comfortable with USSR than USA, Singapore got alligned with USA making the NAM no longer non alligned. But what's in a name? The United Nations are no longer united, NATO is no longer for the North Atlantic countries, SAARC is no longer an association for South Asian nations, ASEAN is no longer an East Asian Organisation ...................and the list goes on. So where did NAM fail? Why are people now interested in NAM?

NAM is more relavant now than before as it is an organisation of over a 100 countries with no country having a veto power, a flaw in the UN which gives extreme powers to five countries and thereby removing equality amongst member states. The relevance of NAM is evident from the fact that observers from various countries such as Brazil, China and organisations such as UN, league of Arab States, African Union etc have participated in the summit meeting.

Future of NAM

NAM should seek to play a major role at the United Nations, where the NAM as one has the majority. NAM can be an obstacle for the member states of UN from hijacking the UN for their personal needs.

The Great Indian Middle Class and The Great Indian Poor

The Great Indian Middle Class! The 300 million strong population had featured at the seventh spot in the list of 'Top 50 people who matter now' ahead of Bill Gates. I had never thought that the importance of the Indian middle class which I'm a apart of is something to be called as "The Great". A look into the past shows its importance. Remember, the BJP state government was thrown out in Delhi only because the onion prices were high, the IT power which we so proudly boast of was the result of the middle class and of course due to the lack of intervention by the Government.

M. Narayana Murthy, Dhirubai Ambani were a part of the same middle class which led the way of transforming India from a sleeping giant to its present position. They are now in a position to change governments and making the government hear their voices. We now have now parties having Bijli, Sadak, Paani (BSP) in their manifestos rather than emotional issues. Gone are the times where the main aim of the middle class was to imigrate to U.S, they now find their future in their own country, a case of reverse Brain Drain.

The Indian rich is doing great e.g. L.N. Mittal, Tatas, Birlas, ...., the Indian Midlle Class is being called as The Great, but what happened to our Great Indian Poor, Indian per capita income is 620$ and 35% ot Indian population lives on less than 1$ a day, i.e 45Rs a day. Let us consider the ratio of income earned by the country's richest 10% and the poorest 10%. The ratio for India is 7.3. That is, the richest 10% of the population is a little over seven times as rich as the poorest 10%. But the comforting statistics is that China has the ratio as 18.4 and the U.S has 15.7.

Its time we start looking at the plight of the Indian poor to lift up their standards. The researchers should start looking towards developing tools that would aid them e.g. Methods of saving the crops during flash floods, drought etc. Until we bring up these people we can't call our country as "Mahaan"