Liberalised economy
When it comes to the economy, the of-repeated drumbeat is monotonous: the demand from the third world to liberalise its economies as a 'requirement' for development. Looking at the international development, that has taken place in the last three decades, we see the domination of capitalism. It has completely monopolised economic development and enforced its formula upon the world.
The IMF and World Bank have spread their capitalist-oriented notions like a tsunami. These monetary institutions claim that industrialisation in hand with the diffusion of liberal economic ideas would positively transform traditional economies and societies. It is argued that these influences would place poor countries on a path of development similar to that experienced by Western industrialised nations during the Industrial Revolution. The models presented to fortify this stance, are the Asian tiger economies-China, South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore and Hong Kong. These countries are held as successful nations who adopted liberalism and progressed.
However, that stark reality stands in sheer contradiction with this policy. Today Poverty is the state for the majority of the world's people. Three billion people in the world live on fewer than two dollars a day; another 1.3 billion people live on less than one dollar a day. Moreover 1.3 billion have no access to clean water; 3 billion have no access to sanitation and 2 billion have no access to electricity.
It's clear without an iota of doubt that Liberalism has actually been a significant cause behind the wealth disparities and poverty that majority of the world's people face. A number of surveys have highlighted that liberalism has created even more poverty stricken people in the world. A United Nations institute -'World Institute for Development Economics Research' conducted a global study. A mere glance at some of its findings leaves one spellbound. After gathering research findings from countries all over the world the study concluded that the richest 1% of the world owns 40% of the planet's wealth and that only 10% of the world's population owned 85% of the world's assets.
The tragic fact, camouflaged in glitter, is that Liberalism has resulted in the Western world feeding of the remainder of the world. Liberalism in no way helped alleviate poverty, it actually contributed to it, and hence any continuation of liberal economic policies in the third world will result in the poor getting even poorer. It's time, we break this monotony of global capitalist hegemony.
Reviving an alternative system of governance and economy that emanates from the Islamic Ideology may well be the only panacea to the ills that have been brought about by the capitalist economy.
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