[Reader-list] matters to consider

[Monica Narula]

Good call Craig - and strangely enough this is the one figure that i 
was discussing with a friend - how in the world do they know such 
detailed data for the last 600 years - how can this be real?? what 
are the measuring indices?...

However, a thing I find fascinating is the litany of numbers that 
quantify the quality of social life - and how that becomes necessary 
as a category in a world which is driven and given meaning by 
numbers. The discourse of progress, too, is weighted by these wars of 
numbers. Does anyone even take seriously now a non-numerical 
evocation of the quality of life? And these numbers are so closely 
linked to maps...

It is true that many of those figures are of/from USA, but 
interspersed amongst those are others non-north american. For me, it 
was not an anti US exercise, but much more a kind of numerical tract 
on the world, which by its "factual" juxtapositions created new 
meanings.

The distribution of wealth in India is as awry, if not more, than in 
other parts of the world - no matter how much we may speak of the 
burgeoning (in absolute numbers) of the middle class. And as far as i 
know, the spending by the govt. on armaments here is as askew as the 
U.S.. I make no defence of one nation state amongst others. Perhaps 
the 'anti-U.S.' feeling (a kind of in-opposition to...) seems to come 
across strong in view of the events of the world today...

best
Monica

At 9:45 PM +1100 10/11/01, Craig Bellamy wrote:
>Hi,
>
>Thanks for this Monica, I always like these things, but when you 
>take these figures out of any historical or socio-political context, 
>they don't really mean that much.  This is just anti-American 
>rhetoric, if we are going to be critical of this political entity, 
>lets be a little more sophisticated. The world is unequal, yes, but 
>take for example this one fact that you circulated.
>
>In 1998, the global starvation rate
>among children reached its 600 year peak.
>
>Source: UNICEF,
>State of the World's Children, 1998.
>
>The obvious questions here is what was the world's population 600 
>years ago, indeed what was India's population at the end the start 
>of the 1950's? How has life expectancy lifted in India in this time, 
>or in Western countries? I don't know the answers to these 
>questions, but I certainly can't reduce 600 years of global history 
>to two sentences and one fact. I am interested in all sorts of 
>global perspectives, this is what I study, I am politically minded, 
>but am more interested in searching for the truth. The US is an easy 
>target, and yes it has many social fractures. But how does this 
>intersect with the equally disturbing problems with distribution of 
>wealth in India? I would be interested on your opinion of this, how 
>do the networks of power work, how are they transferred?
>
>best regards,
>
>Craig Bellamy
>Melbourne, Australia.
>
-- 
Monica Narula
Sarai:The New Media Initiative
29 Rajpur Road, Delhi 110 054
www.sarai.net