[Reader-list] Fwd: Letter to the editor (for publication)

[Waquar Ahmed]

>Date: Thu, 16 Oct 2003 14:21:05 -0400
>To: letters at guardian.co.uk
>From: Waquar Ahmed <ahmed.109 at osu.edu>
>Subject: Letter to the editor (for publication)
>
>
>Sir/Madam,
>
>It is not surprising to find the news ' Catching a train to Crewe? Call 
>Bangalore' by Andrew Clark (October 15) receive front page attention in 
>The Guardian. In fact, it is a reflection of what tends to outrage public 
>opinion in the west in the domain of international trade and commerce. As 
>capitalist economies like that of Britain and the United States forcefully 
>(pun intended) promotes free trade and commerce throughout the world, they 
>limit their understanding of free trade to movement of capital and goods, 
>which it possesses in surplus. Free movement of labor, which is available 
>in surplus in countries like India, China, etc., does not feature in its 
>agenda. As the developed countries use the World Trade Organization to 
>push its trade agendas of free flow of capital and goods, public opinion 
>is not outraged or news papers in the ' West' do not even devote the 
>smallest of columns to the fact that small scale manufacturing units in 
>countries like India are forced to shut down as these are not able to 
>compete even against the obsolete goods that are dumped in their 
>countries. Do newspapers like that of yours contribute to public opinion 
>about the loss of jobs in India on account of indigenous industries being 
>replaced by cheaper imports from the United States, Germany, Japan or Britain?
>
>Cost cutting has become the buzz word in Firms in the West, especially 
>since the world has not been able to wriggle out of the economic 
>rescission. Thus, out-sourcing of jobs to third world countries which lead 
>to reduction in cost on account of the low wages that need to be paid to 
>employees there is now being employed as an effective strategy. Why there 
>is resentment against such moves and talks of how many workers would loose 
>there job in countries like Britain when no such thoughts were or is 
>spared for those loosing their job in India or China on account of the ' 
>West's' idea of free trade? The ' First World' already employs innumerable 
>barriers to movement of labor from regions where there are in surplus or 
>where there possess the requisite skill in the form of visa restrictions 
>and quotas. The tenor of ' Catching a train to Crewe? Call Bangalore' 
>suggests that there exists public opinion (or news papers are trying to 
>create public opinion) in favor of bringing about legislative changes or 
>otherwise that could restrict out-sourcing of such jobs to countries like 
>India for the ' Welfare of there own people'. Will the 'West' ever stop 
>employing such double-standards?
>
>
>
>Yours faithfully,
>Waquar Ahmed.
>Ph.D. Student,
>Department of Geography,
>Ohio State University,
>Columbus,
>United States of America.
>
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>
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