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11.08.2014

Social Pollution in Global Governance & Psyche of Governing Hierarchy

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SOCIAL POLLUTION IN GLOBAL GOVERNANCE SYSTEM

PSYCHE OF GOVERNING HIERARCHY

Mirza Arshad Ali Beg

arshadalibeg@gmail.com

 

The previous chapters have presented a scenario of the development of governance system in Pakistan and in a few societies whose cases were briefly cited. They have examined the impact of the governance system operated under different psychological frames of mind on different social issues and institutions governing them. The system, it has been suggested, is operated by partners of a network comprising different constituents or sub-systems. Its operation is regulated by the psyche which is unique to each society and country, and constitutes its driving force.

The role model of each constituent and its operator is informally devised in response to the psyche which itself develops in the social and cultural milieu of the society. The driving force of each sub-system and the system itself determines the overall impact on the governance system and on the governing hierarchy.

The present chapter will draw parallel between the processes which led to development of the psyche of the governing hierarchy in Pakistan and a few developing and industrialized countries. It will make an attempt at showing that it is the psyche of the governing hierarchy that determines the intensity of the driving force of social pollution and that is what makes a difference in the soundness of the system of governance among various countries.

The previous chapter described the driving force of social pollution to be essentially the get-rich-quickly psyche, observed in developing countries, as against enjoy-the-richness psyche suggested to be operational in the industrialized countries. The level of corruption is different in the two cases, the former have the eyes of the corrupt set on accumulation of wealth while the psyche of those in the latter group revolves around enjoying the richness and the amassed wealth is used for playing with it. The former, it may be reiterated, is not only characteristic of the feudal system in Pakistan and other countries but is also the underlying principle of the clinging-to-power in India as well as Russia and that of the military bureaucratic or authoritarian psyche in South Korea, Indonesia and Latin America countries.

The industrialized world, in accord with the psyche i.e. to enjoy-the-richness and resourcefulness, consumers twice as much in term of food, energy and other goods and services as it did 25 years ago. A survey in 1998 found that in Britain, the average spending on children’s toys and clothes has trebled during the last 30 years. The price of this consumerism is paid by those who have been left out in the developing countries and that is done through degradation of their land, rivers, air, forests, and oceans. An average child in the industrialized country consumes and pollutes more than what 30 to 50 children do in the developing countries. The richest fifth of the world population use 58% of the total energy, produce 53% of the carbon dioxide emissions and own 87% of the world vehicles, while the poorest fifth of the world population consume 3% of the total energy cause 4% of total emissions and own less than 1% of all the cars. The world resources and environment have thus been put under tremendous pressure of consumerism. The vicious circle of consumption has been set into motion instead of sharing of resources.

Developing countries have in their turn done the same things to the people in the lower strata of their economic grouping as the industrialized countries have done to the developing countries. In the case of Pakistan it has already been suggested that the four socio-economic transactions starting from the late 1960s, and the continuum of transitions through which the country passed and is still passing, have benefited the top and seriously constrained the benefits from reaching the lower down strata of the society. This has since caused a drift in the objectives which had been set by the leaders of Pakistan Movement and stated by the First Prime Minister of Pakistan in 1949: “Pakistan came into existence because we wanted to create a society which is based on justice, equity and the brotherhood of man __ in other words a society which has no inner conflicts, where a man gets a just reward for his toil, and where there are no parasites existing on the labour of others”.

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