Agro-industry as the ‘Mahayana’ of international cooperation: a world waiting to be born

A highly positive sum game awaits the community of nations if a cooperative international programme for rural industrialization in the developing world generally, through a boost to the agro-industry (supplier) sector world-wide, could be brought into play. The rural economy, which is the mainstay of the bulk of the population in most developing countries, is marked by a lack of industrial (value addition and off-farm employment) opportunities. That is the key feature underlying stagnation in the village economy – what may once have been a thriving, self-sufficient community able to meet all its needs through exchange based on harmonious and cooperative division of labour (a la Mahatma Gandhi’s vision of ‘Swaraj’, or selfrule, of village republics) has, with growth in population over the years (and compounded or caused, in some cases, by over-arching external factors such as adverse impact of self seeking colonial policies), been reduced to a narrow production base totally inadequate for meeting the expanding needs of its members from within at any but a subsistence level. Policy induced fostering of industry in modern times, in accordance with specific local characteristics and resource endowments, has changed the scene somewhat in most countries, in varying degrees.

The ‘bottom billion’ have been talked about but a ‘bottom up’ development strategy is yet to see the light of day – with relentless pursuit of a consumerism fed, top down, trickle down, approach ruling the roost as the dominant paradigm. Such a strategy will require “directing resources to the sector in which the poor work (such as agriculture and informal activities), areas in which they live (relatively backward regions), factors of production which they possess (unskilled labour) and output which they consume (such as food)”. A global agro-industrialization programme incorporating futuristic technologies would be a high contribution that the UN organizations could make, by virtue of their prestige and positioning within the overall global ‘development enterprise’, for inducing greater dynamism into the development process in the developing world to the common advantage of all nations.