The emerging economic order is viewed differently from different perspectives. Conservatives think that this is the most progressive force and it will make each one a good capitalist. Radicals think the present economic order as the most retrograde one and it will bring immense miseries and cause unprecedented environmental damage to the earth. Conservatives think that the radicals are loonies and old communists in disguise. There is another view amongst the Marxists who think that capitalism had got some redeeming qualities and the present globalisation may have a great liberating effect. According to this view, liberation means "the destruction of boundaries and patterns of forced migration, the reappropriation of space, and the power of the multitude to determine the global circulation and mixture of individuals and populations."

Broadly speaking, globalisation is as old as human society. It really began with the discovery of the New World in the fifteenth century. There has been a world- wide increase in domestication of animals and that of food plants, the two basic props of civilisations.

The improvements in transportation alone have enabled rapid migration of large numbers of people all over the world and increased the volume of raw materials and finished products in international trade 800 times, fossil fuel 30 times and industrial production 100 times in the last century. The population of the world has more than doubled to over 6 billion people and the world's economic output has increased fivefold. By the year 2005, for the first time in history, more people will live in urban than in rural areas.

Most of Europe's leading powers did not rely on private initiative alone but adopted mercantilism to promote their development. Substituting domestic goods for imports was the most popular route to economic development prior to the 1980s. Although the United States enjoyed success with such a strategy from 1790 until 1940, no developing country has a home market large enough to support a modern economy today. East Asian success stories are modern versions of the export-oriented form of mercantilism. Today, of course, such strategies are condemned as violations of global trade rules, even for poor countries.

The traditional advantages of poor countries have been in primary commodities (agriculture and minerals), and these categories have shrunk from about 70 percent of world trade in 1900 to about 20 percent at the end of the century. Rich nations who laud liberalism and free markets are rejecting those very principles when they restrict freedom of movement. The immigration barriers in rich countries not only foreclose opportunities in the global village of billions of poor people, they help support repressive governments by denying the citizens of the developing countries the right to vote against the brutal regimes.

The expansion of capital from rich to poor countries is comparatively recent. There is no consensus among economists that financial integration yields any net benefits in growth. Financial integration is a mixed blessing. It has costs and benefits. It is difficult for developing countries to strike a right balance. An incautious opening of the economy to foreign capital is likely to do more harm than good, particularly in those developing countries where financial regime is both inefficient and erratic.

Unfortunately, the role of international capital in spreading financial breakdown is growing. In a survey of global finance, it has been pointed out the mistakes that led to the financial crises of 1980s and 1990s, were made by rich-country financial institutions under the supervision of rich regulators.

Rich countries preach free trade to the poor while lavishing over $ 300 billion a year on their own farmers. Poor countries that are best suited to produce food and textile are denied the markets in rich countries. The world needs a more pragmatic, country-by-country approach, with room for neo-mercantilist regimes until such countries are firmly on the convergence track.

Theoretically globalisation offers opportunities for all nations, but in practice most developing countries are very badly placed to capitalise on them. There are bad climates, limited access to navigable water, long distances to major markets, and unchecked population, very unequal income structures inherited from colonial regimes and stagnant patterns of income distribution; the greatest disadvantage has been the poor quality of government.

The fundamental problems of our time are terrorism, transactional crime, global poverty, and humanitarian crises. These problems are diffuse and complex, with widely varying cause. They appear to originate in poverty that spreads to and disproportionately affect developing countries where governments lack the capacity to ensure security, to meet the basic needs of citizens, and to maintain political legitimacy. Afghanistan, Angola, Burundi, Haiti, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Sudan are said to have failed on all three counts over the past decade. As many as 50 countries are deficient in at least one of these dimensions. Thirty-one low-income countries have been affected by significant armed conflicts in recent years. A larger number of countries fail to provide basic services. In some countries, governments barely exist. In this atmosphere of poverty, instability and conflict the question of "development" may sound irrelevant nonsense.

According to a recent survey conducted in Bangladesh, about 2 million of our ready-made garments workers (with 90% females) walk 2.8 billion kilometers a year, and devote 8.4 billion work-hours a year i.e; they walk one kilometer for every three hours of work.... As a consequence of globalisation-driven MFA phase-out it is most likely that one million of these low-paid, low-end job work force will be unemployed. The imbalance can hardly be justified on any economic, social, moral and ethical ground.

International jurisprudence has conceptualised the question of development through calls for a new economic order, the right to development, the definitions of rights and duties of states and sustainable or environmentally friendly developments. These concepts recognise that international relations between developed and developing countries have been prejudicial to the latter and that industrialisation has been taken in a manner responsible both for growing social inequalities and for unprecedented environmental damage. Presently, governments are increasingly forced to compete with one another in a worldwide "race to the bottom" on wages, taxes, and environmental protection and any other factor that might influence investment decisions.

With regard to the protections for investment and intellectual property rights that have been embedded in international agreements Stiglitz said they "are stronger than business groups could have achieved even in the pro-business environment of the United States." According to him "Global public goods and externalities -- actions which affect others throughout the world -- need to be dealt with at the global level; local public goods and externalities -- those which affect only those within the local community -- should be dealt with at the local level".

Conservatives often preach the best government is the least government. In this regard, the views of Stiglitz are very relevant and heart warming: "Economies can suffer from an over intrusive government, but so too can they suffer from a government that does not do what needs to be done -- that does not regulate the financial sector adequately, that does not promote competition, that does not protect the environment, that does not provide a basic safety net."

Technological advance can hardly be reversed. Every new technology is a ratchet of progress. We are witnessing a wave of a new technology of major proportions. It is, probably, more deeply rooted and wide-ranging than the development of electricity or the internal combustion engine.

Developing countries may not be able to emulate the advanced technology. They can however, resort to simulation techniques for imparting basic knowledge of modern technology to the students. But then again even, simulation technology is not all that easy and inexpensive. The developing countries must, in the meantime, clear away existing statutory and administrative roadblocks to the application of the new technologies. Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen suggested that one of the causes for the success of the Indian computer industry was that it suffered from less legal hurdles.

On the Strategic Significance of Global Inequality Jeffrey D. Sachs pointed out in 2001 that the economic success of developing countries enhanced the United States' well-being by expanding U.S. trade and investment opportunities. By contrast, developing countries' economic failure breeds problems, including terrorism, mass migration, drug trafficking and disease, which jeopardize U.S. interests. He identified four major sources of foreign economic failure -- extreme economic impoverishment, overwhelming debt, sudden reversal of capital flows, and political transition crises.

Adam Smith's idea that free markets lead to efficiency as if by an invisible hand … is invisible at least in part because it is not there.

On 21 December 2002 Nobel Laureate Kenneth J. Arrow said in Dhaka that globalisation or market economy would have both positive and negative components. The policy makers should be aware of it so that the effect of the bad elements could be put aside and the positive components could be utilised for the betterment of the human being.

Jeffrey Sachs has pointed out about 15 per cent of the earth's population provides nearly all of the world's technology innovations. Perhaps half of the world's population is able to adopt these technologies in production and consumption. And around a third of the world's population is technologically disconnected, neither innovating at home nor adopting foreign technologies.

Jeffrey Sachs has pleaded that the international community should make a firm commitment to promote scientific and technological capacity in the poor countries. As part of this, rich countries should exercise restraint in the use of property rights and pay more attention to the U.N. Declaration of 10 November 1976 on the Use of Scientific and Technology Progress in the Interests of Peace and for the Benefit of Mankind.

The World Trade Organisation's talks in Cancun held in last September only engendered by mutual discriminations. The developing countries blamed the developed for reneging on the promises at Doha that this would be a development round, aimed at reducing the inequalities of earlier rounds of trade negotiations. The U.S. blamed Europe and the countries which gave the impression that a new trade agreements between the developed and less developed countries could be crafted.

The Commonwealth took a more constructive tack and called upon Professor Stiglitz and the Initiative for Policy Dialogue, based at the Columbia University, to assess what a true development round would look like, reflecting development priorities of the less developed countries and indicating what kind of assistance would be required if these countries were to avail themselves of the new opportunities.

Professor Stiglitz is of the opinion that the main issue of the developing countries is the double standard of the North industrial countries. He has pointed out, for instance the standards the US uses against foreign companies for unfair trade and dumping would never be accepted by its own antitrust authorities. Again, the north has demanded the South open up its markets and eliminate subsidies on its products. There is an urgent need to reduce protection on labour-intensive manufacturing and unskilled services.

For developing countries with scarce funds and weak institutional structures trade reform can be very costly. The adjustments costs can be thought as the price to be paid for the benefits of multilateral trade liberalisation. Professor Stiglitz thinks that the Commonwealth report lays out the frame of priorities for how major changes in the negotiating positions of the North may be done.

We are to accept emerging global economic order as a reality. We cannot opt out. We are to formulate strategies to manage that new economic order so that we may minimise the adverse effects and maximize the gains from it.

The views of the western authors are highly regarded and revered in the developing countries. In our country for some time the politicians were all agog and keen to export gas, though people in general vehemently opposed that move. When a celebrated economist like Professor Stiglitz pointed out that it would be unwise for Bangladesh to export gas, because she soon may have to import gas, the eerie enthusiasm subsided.

Ours is a small country and we have some little image problems. Bigger powers have greater image problems. But that is no consolation to us. We must collect our native strength to face the modern economic order which often falls in disarray. We have not failed in financial commitments. We are having on average a steady 5 per cent growth. Our economic performance is not all that bad and it could be better if we were a littler more law-abiding and less corrupt.

Muhammad Habibur Rahman is former Chief Justice and head of caretaker government. The article is based on excerpts from the author's address at the international conference organised by Bangladesh Economic Association on 28 June 2004