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MODERNIZATION AND PHILOSOPHICAL TRADITION 49
If someone defines modernization as a fast improvement in distribution of wealth with constant breakthrough in production, then even if it sounds paradoxical, China heads the list as the most modern country.
even if it sounds paradoxical, China heads the list as the most modern country.
Such is also believed that affluence is a sign of modernization and thus the richest country is the most modern country. It is in this context that we should draw a distinction between 'scarcity' and 'poverty'. Unless we grasp their difference we may start believing that America is more modern than Russia aud Russia is more modern than China. Scarcity is a natural situation of non-availability of necessary resources; in such cases the problem can be merely economic and the solution or at least effective intervention be brought about by building up proper resources which again presupposes an independent economy. Poverty, on the other hand, is often an artificial instituition generated and reinforced for economic and political interests of the power structure of the society. Removal of poverty, therefore, calls for a total transformation of the economic and political structures. In the case of India the people are being doubly exploited by indigenous as well as foreign capitalists. It is no wonder, therefore, that the slogan of 'Foreign aid' is so powerfully preached by the interested groups, as if that is the key to all solutions. But this kind of aid makes an economy politically dependent on other countries. This is the simple logic of Neo-Colonialism. That this kind of aid is anything but a giveaway or helping programme on the part of the richer countries motivated by human considerations will be clear from a speech by the late American President Eisenhower as early as in 1953:
"If we lost Indochina and the Malaya peninsula, the tin and tungsten we so greatly value from that would cease coming... Finally, if we lost all that, how would the free world hold the rich empire of Indonesia? The prodiguous supplies of rubber and rice-the areas of Thailand and East Pakistan ?
So when the United States votes $ 400,000,000 to help (the French in) the war, we are not voting a giveaway program. We are voting for the cheapest way we can to prevent the occurence of something that would be of a most terrible significance to the U.S.A.. our security, our power and ability to get certain things we need from the riches of the Indonesian territory and from Southeast Asia."
The U.S. Military-industrial complex was thus preparing for a 'Gulf of Tonkin' when Vietnamese people, were trying to solve their poverty. India, naturally, is no exception. Strangely enough, what Eisenhower said to his sceptic governors in 1953 could be very well said in the British Par
