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We want to be in a human world

Mrinmoy Das

Do we need a human globe to live and exchange ideas with neighbours and beyond, to go for a better world? To reduce social unrest caused by income inequality, we should care innovative ideas and implementing active programs following inclusive policies. How can we do that within the framework of so-called welfare state concept in democracy? What is right thing to do to eradicate poverty round the south globe? Isn’t the North globe affecting for the same by all means?

In 2000, 189 country leaders signed together to achieve 8 Millennium Development Goals (MDG). Out of the goals, MDG 1- eradicate extreme poverty and hunger has a very crucial role for all of us. To achieve the same, world leaders conceived three targets for MDG-1.

Target 1/a, hoped to reduce halve the number of people earn less than 1$ a day set in 2000, by 2015 through social protection. Ten years projections indicate that in 2015 almost one and half billion people will still be living on less than that.

Target 1/b framed to decent employment for the vulnerable section of the society. Globally, 456 million workers lived below the $1.25 a day poverty line set in 2011, A reduction of 233 million since 2000, heavily influenced by progress in East Asia with the support of good governance. Insecure employment, poorly paid jobs accounted for an estimated 58 per cent in developing regions in 2011. More than 80 per cent of working women in sub-Saharan Africa, Oceania, and Southern Asia present in vulnerable jobs in 2011 recorded. On the other hand most of the corporate and parliamentarians nexus have designed a parallel world of selfish giants to gear up the poverty line.

Target 1/c had been taken to halve by 2015, proportion of people those who suffer from extreme poverty and hunger. About 850 million people, nearly 15 percent of the global population are estimated to be undernourished.

Since nineties giant corporate houses using land, water and energy indiscriminately with active help of Governments for profit making only, thus facilitating to enhance poverty-population rather maintaining conservation of ecosystem. Obesity is other, a present day puzzle in south globe countries, even with some north globe countries those who live in the top of the pyramid responsible for the poverty further.

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In present knowledge driven society we are hesitate to agree with the so-called corrupt elected settlers-leaders for their own development model. They are talking only on growth, inefficient act on equality without achieving arms trade and corruption control. What's about the reducing of poverty-population, people hunting for decent work round the globe even after enjoying of seven thousand years co-called civilization?

Poverty is an adverse phenomenon for the majority of the world’s population and nations. It is easy to blame poor people for their hazardous situation they belong. We must think about so-called welfare state, failed to pursue policy implementation towards sustainable development at large without any social accountability for welfare states. The tiny causes of poverty and inequality are being shorted out by innovative thinkers rather than critical global issues of poverty are often less discussed.

Growing interdependence in land-water-energy is being used unethically for profit making only by the Government-NGO-Corporate nexus. Times again promised by the country leaders, globalization is global decisions but policies and practices were not followed accordingly. These are typically influenced, driven and formulated by the powerful of top of the pyramid. Here we were being continuing with jargon since 1990, followed by only talk, paper & paperless work within the framework of complex design by the development professional and policy makers for eradicating poverty and raise inclusive growth. Now we can think and act on nonsense governance and corporate giants nexus, lead the globe as they want to be fit for them not for the people at large.

The poor people are typically marginalized from the society have no representation in public, making it even harder to eradicate poverty. In contrast, instead of paying attention to the basic needs and values, the so-called welfare states are trying to strengthen their political stability at any cost which is responsible for alienation of young people from the main stream of society. The wealthier we are, to benefit from economic and political policies and amounts both the globe spends on military, financial bailouts for corporate giants, using NGOs to show the political will, that benefit the wealthy compared to eradicate poverty and related problems are undermine. After seven thousand years of so-called civilization world leaders must think and act to avoid Arab Spring and to reduce social unrest caused by extreme poverty along through imbibing global oneness rather than organizing seminars to publish papers decade after decade.

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Fortunately the MDGs have focused world attention and action on ending extreme poverty in all its forms but failed to break the nexus of corporate-government-NGO. The fifteen-year MDG acting period will be completed at the end of 2015. On the other hand the Rio+20 Summit in June 2012 resolved to finish the job of ending extreme poverty and hunger as a matter of urgency is a farce. Another farce is that the summit endeav-ored to place poverty reduction within the broader context of sustainable development. The summit’s final outcome document, The Future We Want, calls for new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), including the eradication of poverty. It also launched an in-tergovernmental Open Working Group to make recommendations to the UN General Assembly on the design of these goals. With a world population now at 7.2 billion peo-ple and an annual GDP of nearly US$90 trillion, the world economy using today’s tech-nologies is already exceeding several of the earth’s “planetary boundaries”. Many key ecosystems that are essential for human and societal wellbeing are being threatened or destroyed.

Inequality and social exclusion are widening within many countries, rich and poor alike, partly as a result of rapid technological change and globalization. Current growth pat-terns are not providing enough decent jobs and are leading to unemployment, particu-larly among the young and people who have received little or no schooling. As some pri-mary resources become increasingly scarce, poorer and more vulnerable communities are crowded out and fall further behind. The rising inequality is feeding resentment and exacerbating social exclusion. A post-2015 framework must therefore promote gender equality, human rights, decent jobs for all, and social inclusion.

In an age of globalization, governance within and among countries is becoming more diffuse and complex. Whereas in the past national governments took most decisions re-lating to a country’s internal economic development, today they must coordinate with a broad spectrum of actors, including businesses, local governments, regional and interna-tional bodies, and civil society organizations. Information and communication revolu-tion is leading to unprecedented transparency and growing demands for participation in key decisions from all segments of society in every country. An action agenda for sus-tainable development must therefore mobilize governments at all levels as well as civil society and business.

The world is becoming multi-polar. It is unquestionably good that no single country or even group of countries can impose its will on others. At the same time this diffusion of 3

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global governance makes it enormously challenging to tackle problems that require global cooperation. As one example, multinational corporations from both high-income and developing countries have become key players in the global economy. They are now central to global trade, finance, production, and technological change. At the same time, globalization allows them to undertake regulatory and tax arbitrage across jurisdictions, undermining the effectiveness of national policies and underscoring the need for global cooperation on taxation and business regulation. Managing globalization would there-fore require more global cooperation across countries, but in practice we often observe less cooperation in a multi-polar world.

As ongoing global discussion on poverty, we have witnessed nearly 50 percent of the world's hungry people live in India, a low-income, food-deficit country almost doubled of Sub-Saharan Africa. Around 35 percent of population is considered food-insecure, less than 80 percent of energy consumption. In the outcome of Global Innovation Index 2012, is gradually deteriorating its performance in innovation which leads to minimum inclusive growth in the country. India can only regain standard position through proper exploitation of innovation & green entrepreneurship policy issues. Gallup study found that only 22% of aspiring entrepreneurs who plan to start their business in India within the next 12 months want to have access formal or informal training to start a business without following a sustainable business idea, is much lower even than the Asia average of 44%. India has some high-profile entrepreneurs who can serve as inspirational icons; there are not many offer success stories from which aspiring entrepreneurs can learn.It is proved that Small and Medium Enterprise (SME) is the major employment generating hub round the globe related to capital involvement and culture.

Here arise the concept of innovation policy issues for SMEs that more akin to Indian business and employment context. Innovation is as much applicable to SMEs as to large Indian Enterprises and Multinational Company (MNCs) in respect of green employment generation. The simple importance of the SME sector comes forward, contributing as much as 40% to GDP of India. SMEs are providing livelihood to millions of people. We are all aware that Indian SMEs are facing the challenges of innovative ideas, inefficient to serve world class goods and services, higher cost of funds to operate R&D, big gap in intellectual asset management system, appropriate access in transfer of technology through knowledge management, acute infrastructure constraints and many more. Many SMEs’ first experience of innovative business model and implementation will be at the point when a problem gets surfaced; often they become aware that a competitor has 4

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taken entrepreneur’s innovative idea.

Willingness to take the risk of running a business is not a common trait among a majority of Indians. The most critical factor in becoming an entrepreneur in India is access to social entrepreneurial attitude. There is a huge scope to start-ups that may offer the high demand products and services in the healthcare or energy sectors in India’s massive domestic market. Government priority on environmental issues leads to generate green employment through building capacities in eco-efficiency of Indian SMEs, keeping in mind, India’s unemployment and domestic market size, government can rethink about SME policy issues for poverty eradication.

Though it is proved that SMEs are the major employment generating hub for inclusive business growth, they are the ineffective users of the innovative tools due to lack of cost-effectiveness, user-friendly and readily accessible information support services from government and other related support organizations. They remain vulnerable in today’s highly innovation intensive business environment embodied in the highly competitive national and international markets. Millions of SMEs is facing lack of awareness for the role and importance of the value of innovative ideas and management to achieve their business success. There is a big gap in information data base and R&D support from government for SMEs.

I think Research-Communication-Capacity Building could be the tool to improve the link between research on SME and governmental decisions towards better SME policy issues and interacting with policy makers and other stakeholders of SME community accordingly thus generate more and more decent employment can eradicate poverty.

References: 1. Global Innovation Index 2012, INSEAD2. KAUFFMAN Thought book 20123. From ideas to growth: Helping SMEs get value from their intellectual property

Intellectual Property Office, UK, April 20124. Final Country Report for Follow-up Program of WIPO & SPRO on “Industrial Property

in Global Economy”, Mrinmoy Das, 2012 5. Essay presented at Seoul, in The 2nd Annual KIPO-WIPO-KAIST-KIPA Advanced

International Certificate Course on Intellectual Property Asset Management for SME

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Business Success, Mrinmoy Das November 2011

6. Human Development Index 2012, UNDP

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