Fawlty Globalisation

Manuel holds the key. You remember Manuel, surely. He was the Spanish waiter in that uproarious BBCtelevision series Fawlty Towers. He was hired by Mr Fawlty, the owner of a British country hotel, for only onereason: because he came cheap.

Manuel no speak Inglis; Manuel say si si si si and bring wrong wine; Manuel send Mr Fawlty's nerves intotriple fault; Manuel man with heart of gold and hands of brass; Manuel crazy and drive everybody crazy; butspeak-no-Inglis Manuel get job in remote English countryside instead of local Englishman under spluttering MrFawlty because Manuel come cheap.

That is globalization.

Bitterly divided, constantly warring Europe could never have turned into a dream without giving theunderprivileged the right to a job in any partner economy. It was this base that underpinned the largerconcepts of political and economic unity. You cannot have globalization without creating space for economicasylum.

There are two recognized forms of asylum. The first, being political, is more politically correct. Theworld has long recognized the need for political asylum when population groups suffer the misfortune ofoppression. Economic asylum has always been more troublesome, because it is considered invasive. After all, bydeclaration, these are migrants who have come for a part of the economic wealth of the host nation. The humanspirit generally finds room for shelter to the political refugee; it is less accommodating towards theeconomic refugee.

But there is sufficient evidence to prove that a refugee of either kind can actually add to the economicwealth of the host nation. Political refugees are, more often than not, qualitatively better. The Jews broughttheir skills in banking, trade and scholarship to the Ottoman Empire; just as they later took the same virtuesand put them in the service of the American empire. Punjabi and Sindhi Hindus who were driven into India afterpartition that created Pakistan, quickly became substantive builders of the post-colonial Indian economy. Atthis moment, the Sri Lanka-Tamil refugees who have taken shelter in India from the civil war are creating anetwork of businesses: their traditional asset of education is a strong foundation for entrepreneurship.

Economic asylum is tinged with less salubrious factors, with greed and guilt entering the relationship onboth sides. Obviously the desire for a better life drives the poor into a richer neighborhood. But there isalso the greed of the rich, who want to pay less for the services that the economic refugee offers. Thesyndrome is the same, whether it is the dhobi (laundry-man) setting up shop in a posh locality in Delhi, orBritain inviting the sweeping (janitor) classes from the old empire in order to keep Heathrow airport clean.

Supply and demand easily stretches across national borders. Inevitably, the consequence is culturaltension. Ideally, the rich would relish the use of cheap services, and then ensure that the service-providerswent back to where they came from, a slum, or a nation, that is out of sight. That is what Enoch Powell wouldhave liked to have done with the Asians after they had finished cleaning Heathrow. But such wishful thinkingdoes not work in human affairs, although in some cases (like the old South Africa) it can continue forgenerations. But not forever.

Slavery, or cruel forms of inequity like indentured labor, can never last forever. Human beings will riseabove their economic origins, and then demand to live according to values that are associated with moderncivilized social behavior. Conflict is inevitable, and sensible societies must find the means of conflictresolution. Affluent nations who want the comfort of cheap labor must enlarge their social and political spaceto integrate such communities, and then provide scope for upward mobility.

This is what the United States has done consistently with refugees, who first came from Europe and thenfrom the rest of the world. The political rationalization of America in the 18th and 19th centuries, throughindependence and unity, and the defense of both in a civil war, created the momentum, harmony and order thatpropelled the economic process. Ambition is always a great spur to economic growth, and no one wants a betterlife more desperately than an economic refugee.

The secret of America was simple: it became the ultimate dream of the dispossessed and the disinherited.Immigration was the great powerhouse that drove the American economy to the point where it is seeminglyinvincible. Every fresh wave of immigration brought the raw power of boiling ambition. You could trace theroute map of every wave: first, the street, with jobs in either crime or services like the taxi-trade; theninto the factories; then the gentrification; and then the turn of the curve in the parabola, and five-dayweeks with pretty homes in the suburbs. It was normally a three-generation process.

India, the potential but unrealized America of the East, has always maintained a generous refugee-regime.It is partly to do with traditional values: the Indian has had little difficulty in finding space for theother, and then, imperceptibly but surely, converting the other into an Indian. But there is a more modernreason as well. The calamity of partition sensitized India to the tragedy of displaced lives. It was afull-blown crisis that could not have been resolved only by the government; it required, and received, thecomplete cooperation of the people themselves.

Modern India faced the challenge of political/economic asylum at its very birth. Fortunately, socialintegration was not an issue, since the refugees were Hindus who shared the faith and culture of the hostnation. But the Indian experience includes a remarkable variation of this theme that is a tribute to somethingunique in the Indian consciousness. This is the absorption of a huge Muslim migration into Hindu-majorityIndia, from Bangladesh - a country that broke away from Pakistan. The Muslims of Bangladesh are voting againstthe economically ruinous division of India with their feet. Partition has prevented united India fromrealizing her true economic potential, and will remain a barrier until the subcontinent becomes a free tradezone.

The unity of India itself is protected by free trade and free movement. India is large enough and disparateenough to be, by itself, a model for the prevalent theories of multinational globalization. In a sense, themakers of the Indian Constitution offered a model which Europe has now applied to its own circumstances, amixture of local rule by linguistically different communities and a supra-economic structure that is designedfor the greater benefit of all.

No structure can prevent imbalances, which may arise from the frailties and imponderables of humanbehavior. If the under-developed state of Bihar has not exploded into a Maoist-type anarchy, of the kind wesee in neighboring Nepal for instance, it is because the Bihari below the poverty line can seek to redress hiscondition by free movement to wherever he can find work, whether in a bakery in Mumbai or a road building workin Kashmir. Without free movement, the Indian union has no economy; and without an economy, India can hardlyremain a union.

If globalization is the prevalence of free trade, then it existed before it was called so. India's problemwas that it did not extend the principles that had worked so well within India, to its economic relationshipsoutside India. Indians paid a heavy price for this mistake.

But some of the chief votaries of globalization commit an error when they forget that you cannot sharewealth without sharing opportunity. Globalization must, in order to succeed, be a composite idea rather than asingle-track focus. It is in danger today of becoming synonymous with injustice, and a form ofquasi-colonialism. This perception may not be wholly correct, but it is gaining strength on the street becauseglobalization has become the private property of a number of vested interests - multinational corporations andgovernments of rich nations included. You cannot take natural resources out of a country, even if you pay anotional price for them, and expect the people who once owned the resources not to ask for a share in therising value chain.

It is welcome therefore that one of the gurus of globalization, Professor Jagdish Bhagwati, argues that"the world needs a World Migration Organization to complete the international superstructure of'governance'." The WTO can best survive with a WMO as its companion. The professor traverses heights ofeloquence when he writes: "As people walk, fly, and swim across borders, as migrants or refugees, fleeingor simply seeking a better life, and their numbers steadily rise, the time has come to address institutionallythe ethics and economics of this flow of humanity instead of leaving it to the whims of individualnation-states. Anything less would be a shame."

It would also be a mistake. Remember: Manuel holds the key.