An ailing Europe, austerity and world hunger

The picture on page five in this newspaper on October 13, showing people thronging a veritable Soup Kitchen in New Jersey in a frantic effort to secure a square meal, is bound to have taken many a reader by surprise. They would have least expected the spectre of hunger to haunt the seemingly wealthiest country of the West, but the truth is that both hunger and unemployment are proving to be quite widespread in this once affluent hemisphere.

Given the increasing number of European countries which are trying out economic austerity plans, Europe could be considered as fast becoming the ‘Sick Man’ of the globe. Austerity measures in some of Europe’s weaker economies, such as, Greece, Portugal and Spain are seeing a spiking of the unemployment rate in the West, with the ILO estimating that some 30 million more persons are out of work now than before the onset of the global economic downturn a few years ago.

There was also the thought-provoking disclosure by the OECD that the number of unemployed in the advanced economies stood at 47.8 million people, 13.1 million more than when the global economic crisis erupted in 2008.

It went on to say that unemployment in Spain amounted to 25 percent, while the corresponding figures for Portugal and Ireland were 15.9 percent and 15 percent. These countries join Greece as some of the countries of the West which are experiencing some of the harshest effects of the global economic crisis.

Global food crisis

Meanwhile, the international community would be gathering under the aegis of the FAO on Tuesday, World Food Day, with the aim of remedying a gathering global food crisis, which is leaving some 870 million persons around the world starving or malnourished. This translates into one in eight persons in the world today, starving or malnourished.

As should be expected, these bleak developments are coming in tandem because if more and more people are starving, it is because people in increasing numbers cannot find any or sufficient employment. This could be particularly true of the world’s youthful sections, which is something to be factored in while ascertaining the causative factors of the ‘Arab Spring’ phenomenon and the Wall Street protest, which jolted the upper social strata of the West and its ruling classes to the stark reality of relentlessly growing economic hardships within their seemingly impregnable affluence.

Compared to the West, several regions of Asia could be said to be materially better off, but there are no grounds for complacency. South Asia, for instance, continues to be one of the economically worst off of the globe’s regions.

Certainly, more and more countries of this region are seeing better times as a result of liberalizing their economies but it is an open question whether the wealth gap in these countries is being bridged to the desired degree or whether economic equity is taking hold. Being a centre of dynamic economic growth is one thing, being an exemplar of economic equity quite another.

Accordingly, although we are seeing a gradual eclipsing of Europe as a hemisphere of wealth and economic productivity, this does not necessarily mean that the tables are turned and that the ‘South’ is now on the ascendant in terms of both productivity and equity.

In fact, the ‘South’ may need to learn a few lessons from the global economic downturn and ensure that there is more efficient economic management to combine wealth with equity.

Economic practices

A few decades back the phrase North-South Dialogue was very much in vogue and the world was given to understand by the opinion moulders of the West that there ought to be a greater degree of economic cooperation between the developed and developing worlds if the world was to be a peaceful and equitable place to live in. Essentially, discriminatory and debilitating economic practices by the North against the South, or the developing countries, were seen as some of the root causes of world hunger, which haunted mainly the poor countries at the time.

This point of view does not hold any longer. There is no longer a fabulously wealthy North, or developed world, and an economically hamstrung developing world or South.

Both hemispheres are to a lesser or greater degree, suffering the same socio-economic blights, although there are sections of the South which are economically dynamic and productive. Economic growth minus equity has failed the North and the same condition would befall the South if a new economic model which combines both is not evolved. Apparently, a collective search needs to be made by both the North and South for this model.