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Journalism of Courage
NEW DELHI, MARCH 25: It was a day of British invasions. Tony Blair’s guru Anthony Giddens and his Cabinet colleague Clare Short, Minister for International Development, competed for the attention of the media in New Delhi in two separate lectures.
It’s difficult to assess who came tops in numbers, but the Short lecture (that lasted over half an hour) was embellished by the likes of the newly-wedded wife of cigar promoter Chetan Seth, Manya Patil, and the Secretary of the National Human Rights Commission, N. Karthikeyan, apart from the British High Commissioner Rob Young and those representing the news fraternity in South Asia.
Short, recently back from her tour of Orissa, began her talk on A New Global Vision For Poverty Elimination’ with startling statistics such as that around the world 1.3 billion people live in abject poverty on less than $1 per day and “of these 500 million people are in India”. And she is part of an initiative by 2015, to lift one billion people out of abject poverty, ensure universal primary education, cut infant mortality by two thirds and maternal mortality by three quarters and ensure universal access to reproductive health care.
At this point, she clarified that she hadn’t invented these targets for herself rather they had been agreed upon by the governments of the world at the various UN-sponsored conferences through the 1990s.
Dressed in a black pantsuit with a red jacket, Short, who despite her name is fair sized, vehemently stressed that these reforms, however, cannot be imposed by outsiders. “Reform cannot be imposed on reluctant governments as was seen in Africa,” said Short, drawing attention to the fact that the IMF and World Bank, despite their condition-based aid, could not force progress in that continent.
This, she added, has proved that development isn’t about money alone. “It means that trade, investment, agriculture and policies must all support development.” In real terms, achieving the targets means enrolling 33 million or more 6 to 11-year-olds in schools, reducing child deaths by 430,000 a year and the number of mothers who die in childbirth by 90,000 a year.
So far, the minister said the response from the government has been “friendly and agreeing”.
