STRIVING TO HOLD SWAY OVER THE SUSTAINABLE ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT ACTIVITIES IN NEPAL
The world as a whole does not feel at ease after what happened in the past five years of this just unfolded 21st century. It is obvious that we are worried about the drawbacks such as the awful September 11, 2001 event of NY, the wars in Afghanistan and in Iraq, never ending enmity and rift between Israel and Palestine; also, the rapid shift of climate in the world. Further, we are all very much indulged in due consideration concerning the far-flung and sprawling future of mankind. In consequence, are we supposed to be more optimistic about the outstanding victory of peace and prosperity for everyone in this running century?
In effect, the past 20th century was by far the most murderous as well as the most inventive one in comparison with the other previous eras. Never human beings made as much progress in all spheres of life as in that aforesaid era. For instance, great progress in the fields of household comforts and commodities, in hygiene and medicine, in human sciences such as in the treatments of psychological setbacks and no doubt in the field of Information Technology (IT) beside cybernetics, telecommunications, transportations and computer revolution since Leibniz’s invention of binary (0,1) language (1646-1716).
The first computer using binary language was manufactured in the south of England in 1944. It helped the Allied Forces to win the WW II by encoding the secrecy of the 3rd Reich and its spies at the quickest before the Nazi regime. The same computer is now transformed into a laptop that everybody can carry with him at his convenience.
In times past, when somebody was teeming with new ideas and wanted to pierce thru’ the unknown world of science and technology, he was entitled to go west if he wanted to improve his living standard. Now instead, it is alternated by go east for whomsoever in search of vast market and profitable businesses.
Furthermore, do not forget the inventers, the innovators, and the researchers or say “the grey matters” are so far mostly in the west. The best Universities, the think tanks are all based in the west.
Of late, I heard that the USA was alarming ‘cause they noticed that the sharp brains were deserting Universities as they found better perspectives and accommodations elsewhere.
When an American, Francis Fukuyama published “The End of History” after the fall of Berlin wall in November 1989, he was for certain overwhelmed with joy and emotion ‘cause of landmark victory of capitalism over communism.
Hopefully, he might think and anticipate that capitalism or neo-liberalism would prevail all over the world without any restriction and boundary. He did not perceive the human and social aspects that the whole world could not be put into the same mould ‘cause peoples all over the world had their own personal vision of lives and they did not tolerate that somebody coming from outside could impose upon them something abject they could not abide and then manipulate them as one pleases.
In a way, I concede that there are real scopes in the east for the time being for them who wish to expand their factories. But did you ever try to know how far the scholars and the ordinary workers in different Universities and Enterprises of the USA and the EU were inventing the new materials and equipment to better up the lives of the developing third world countries?
Further, forget the guy of Arizona in the USA who tried to earn money by registering a fake patent about Mexican yellow beans and thus tried to touch royalties for lifetime. No bio-diversified elements of the nature can be registered as a patent so as to crook the world consumers. There is jurist prudence. Obviously, an another regrettable en route incident that smudged the pundits of the scientific world; it comprises the Korean crook Huang Woo Suk who mesmerized the scientific world for some days with his tricky results about stem cells. After his short-lived glory, he would be forbidden to exercise in the labs and then forgotten. And now we should give more heed to the forthcoming vaccinations for AIDS, cancers and further improvement of genetic engineering to cope with the genes’ malformation.
Besides, if your memory gets rusty, nonetheless you like to quench very much your thirst of knowledge staying at home and want to make work your neurons, do not forget to go to the website:
http://www.ocw.mit.edu; you will enter into the “Temple of knowledge” of MIT Massachusetts, Boston, USA. You can fancy going for a spare time lecture quite fruitful as well as blissful by selecting any scientific topics of your choice and humanities implied for your further improvement of knowledge.
21st century will be indeed the century of the invention of the fair weather controlling devices; if not the warming Gulf Stream resulted by the rapid melting of the Arctic and Greenland ice caps would bring no more mild winter with moderate temperatures in the north eastern part of the USA and the coastal areas of the Scandinavian countries as well as the other countries in the EU. To avoid a rapid change of climate for the northern hemisphere, drastic measures are to be taken as soon as possible.
If only for the sake of those who suffered in the past, human beings could control some natural phenomena such as tsunami, hurricane, tornado, flooding, draught, famine, earthquake etc., without haggling over the events, our lives would be more relaxed with fewer drawbacks.
Another great problem is folks live more and more old. There is everywhere “Pappy booms” thanks to the excellent health care system in all developed countries. We must find out a solution to it. Otherwise there would be no more comfortable retirement pension for the seniors; they would be obliged to work until the last breath of their lives if nothing is done to bring about the changes required.
All in all, if you were having the chance to coach some brilliant offspring who were at the prime age of frequenting the Universities, I entreat you to take this option to impart and advise them to learn a trade in the sectors of industry where they no doubt could make their career without obstacles. They are as follows:
1) Nanotechnology
2) Biotechnology relevant to the health care and
3) Clean energy with minimum emission of CO2 that affects O3 layer in the stratosphere.
1) Nanotechnology will have the immense application in the improvement of the properties of existing materials. I’m of the opinion that products using nanotechnology could grow 1 trillion euros worth in a decade or so from 10 bn euros now. In addition, this technology is applied successfully in the development of hydrogen fuel cells as well as in the improvement of drug deliveries.
2) Biotechnology has given a new life to the modern medicine thru’ the decoding of human genome. Research is advancing step by step to control all aspects of DNA, genetic hazards and variations in order to find out the appropriate treatment for any disease. The therapy called as RNA interference will be applied to cross off the genes that cause the diseases. One day the problems of asthma, obesity, overweight and so many others will vanish for good. All the while, in a very near future the reparation of neurons of the patients affected by the disease of Alzheimer or Parkinson would be possible.
3) Clean energy or renewal energy sources will multiply in coming years to save the environment from the emission of greenhouse gas fallout. Clean energy mostly solar and wind power propellers will make leap from today’s 20 bn euros (approx.) to about 100 bn euros per year worth come 2015 or so if exploited wisely.
Some societies such as Mitsubishi, Siemens and Quantum fuel systems are developing the tomorrow’s systems to support hybrid electric and hydrogen fuel cell powered vehicles. Toyota is at the front line by already producing everyday thousands of vehicles in all continents.
Next decade will be poised to enhance on making energy savings.
Believe it that the generations to succeed shall be wiser than this one so as to prepare the well being of everybody on earth. The present Galileo spacecraft project of the EU brings forward the burst of creativity and as such it is creating jobs for thousands in the EU. Further, it will help facilitate the people in their daily activities by guiding them in all moments of requirements as does GPS spacecraft in the USA.
Now the appropriate motto shall be “Survival of the fastest”. Sooner or later the 21st century shall be named as “The intelligent economics era”.
In the end, the topic of globalisation would be more and more plausible when people all over the world would hold the reins of power by participating as main actors in the forum of deciders.
P.S.: The Nobel Peace Prize award to the microcredit pioneer of Bangladesh, Mohammed Yunus, the founder of the famous Grameen Bank (1983) makes people believe in the credibility of simple capitalist methods.
Now, let us see how we can adapt it to the Nepalese remote ends of villages where so many men and women are striving to vanquish the poverty.
The ramification as well as the anecdotes of such microcredit banks could be possible by defying first of all the conventional wisdom and install at the same time the will power amongst the borrowers for the sustainable economic development activities. Moreover, there are already some imitations here and there functioning mostly in big towns such as Kathmandu, Lalitpur, Janakpur and Birganj etc.
First off, let the borrowers take out loans in groups of five. Each person involved should be the guarantee of other’s dependability. The evident threat of being ashamed of and losing face before their peers could be sufficient to oblige them to honour their promise at all costs. United we win Divided we fall.
Traditional grant-giving by governments and other bodies like the World Banks must take new turns and thereby change their visions so as to participate in the economic progress of the poor countries where only the determination of some pioneers could make such microcredit banks viable.
The Planet Bank created to this effect by Jacques Attali, the former chairman of BIRD Bank, with the financial assistance of some capitalist entrepreneurs is working in full swing everywhere, mostly in Africa. One time, he with Yunus wanted to construct the barrier dams in the Himalayan foothills to avoid repeated flooding in Bangladesh but higher costs for their realisations discouraged them so far to enhance this human gigantic adventure.
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