Apparently, good governance and investment reforms – the West’s prescription for developing countries — has failed the big test, according to Yash Tandon’s new book: Development and Globalisation: Daring to think differently.

The book is a collection of essays written as editorials for the South Centre’s fortnightly South Bulletin: Reflections and Foresights by Tandon. These editorials were being written as events unfolded, and not with the benefit of retrospection.

Most of them are critical of the present system and global economic and political governance, and with good arguments too.

South Centre, where Tandon is director, is the inter-governmental think tank for the South.

For the past 30 years, Tandon has been challenging the “misdirected” aid and development policies meant for the developing world. He has been offering alternative concepts and paradigms of development for policy makers and peoples’ movements on wide-ranging issues, often with critical concrete suggestions on how to move these issues forward.

In this book, he challenges his readers to “dare to think differently.”

For African countries facing political and development crises, Tandon offers a home-grown solution. He writes that lack of clarity on development matters leads to simplistic policy prescription, or illusory “capacity building” projects in the vain hope that they will lead to good governance and an improvement in the climate of investment. He argues that the issues of poverty, land distribution and the evolving ethnic and class nature of society, have their origins in the colonial era.

The essays expose Tandon’s thinking on a cross-spectrum of issues, including the reform of the Bretton Woods institutions; climate change and food security; industry; trade; innovation and intellectual property; the global financial crisis; ending of aid dependence and the Palestine-Israel question.

The essays are essential reading for those who believe that “another world is possible.”

Tandon puts his ideas on an alternative paradigm of development as a counter to the dominant imperial paradigm of the North. He offers an alternative paradigm, an alternative perspective, often with critical concrete suggestions on how to move these issues forward well before some of the world’s leaders began to talk about the need for a second Bretton Woods conference.

Some of the ideas put forward by Tandon are well before their time, but have passed the test of time. Notable is the just concluded climate change talk in Copenhagen, Denmark.

In one of the essays on climate, energy and the food challenge, Tandon writes about returning to the open solar energy system in order to reverse 300 years of fossil-fuel based closed system that is primarily the cause of climate change.
“These essays promise to stand the test of time,” writes former Tanzania president Benjamin Mkapa in the book’s foreword.

Some of the ideas are practical and doable, but there are serious psychological and institutional obstacles to implementing them, such as the idea of ending dependence on aid and working against the existing power asymmetries. Most politicians in the developing world would dismiss this idea outright, despite the logic behind it.

According to Tandon, development is self-defined. It is primarily the responsibility of the South to develop itself; the North does not have a duty to develop the South, nor should the South expect it. Development, he says, is about building confidence between governments and their people. It is not about winning the confidence of banks and global financial institutions such as the World Bank and the IMF, which is what globalisation is all about.

Tandon is a Ugandan policymaker, political activist, professor, author and public intellectual. He has lectured extensively in the areas of International Relations and Political Economy. He was deeply involved in the struggle against the dictatorship of Idi Amin in 1970s Uganda and has spent time in exile. He is the author and editor of numerous books and articles and has served on the editorial board of many journals.