Indo-Eec Perspectives on Development Cooperation

At the outset, it seems necessary to make clear that our attempt at finding a formula of development cooperation has to be in accord with the existing democratic (political and economic) texture of the two composite entities. Our task is facilitated by the fact that there already exists a certain level of appreciative consciousness of the need to promote mutually beneficial cooperation. It was only in 1981 that India and the EEC had concluded a new five-year Commercial and Economic Cooperation Agreement (CECA), which bears considerable improvement on the 1973 Commercial Cooperation Agreement (CCA). It called for “closer cooperation across the whole range of commercial and economic endeavour†such as, in the fields of trade, industry, science, energy and finance. It is felt that in case this agreement was honoured in the spirit in which it was concluded, it may perhaps bear satisfactory results. However, the basic problem is that the agreement has to be honoured not by the EEC Executive (Commission) itself, but by the Member States (with varying political complexions and economic competence) and the industrialists on both the sides. As is well known, industrialists would cease to be themselves if they were not motivated by profit, which enables them to ensure development of their own industries. The concept of social justice hardly enters into their work design even if the economic philosophy of the state (such as the “Social Market Economy†in the case of the ERG) makes a specific provision in this regard. None the less, it is generally believed in the Indian official and business circles that our increased inter-action with the European Community in the industrial field may promote the rate of economic growth, which, without doubt further strengthens the economic competence of the state. But, even then, so it is surmised that the fruits of economic growth may remain confined for the most part only to the rich. In the industrial West, however, the fringe benefits of industrial growth have been so immense that the basic needs of their poor could somehow be met. This phenomenon has little to do with the much publicized theories of social or economic equity. In India, as in other developing societies, the problem (in the given framework) has two equally important dimensions, economic growth and meeting the basic needs of the poor, which have to be programmed simultaneously. How, realization of these two-fold objectives could be facilitated through cooperation with the EEC and its Member States calls for debate. Perhaps, a limited optimistic stance is permissible only if India succeeds in ensuring continuous dedicated industrial vigilance and social commitment in its endeavours at industrial modernization. A caveat may, however, be added here that generally speaking the bureaucrats and industrialists (if the experiments at industrialization in Western Europe or in the NICs are any guide) attach no more than lip-sympathy to social (distributive) justice. However, political leadership in a given country has considerable scope to influence the functional modes of both the bureaucrats and the industrialists, as it bears out from the historic constructive role played by General de Gaulle in drawing France in the-early and mid-1960s out of the colonial impasse and setting it on the road to economic modernization. In other words, given the political will and economic wherewithal, a good deal is within the realm of the possible.