LexisNexis(TM) Academic - Document LexisNexis™ Academic Copyright 1999 Newsweek Newsweek December 6, 1999, Atlantic Edition SECTION: WORLD VIEW; Pg. 4 LENGTH: 910 words HEADLINE: Whose Cause Is It, Anyway? BYLINE: By Pranay Gupte; Gupte is editor and publisher of The Earth Times. HIGHLIGHT: As the Seattle trade talks open, it's not always clear that NGOs speak for their constituencies BODY: During the heyday of Islamic rule in India, the Mogul Emperor Jehangir decided that he needed to better connect with his people, majority Hindus and minority Muslims alike. So he installed a bell outside his palace. Commoners with grievances could ring that bell day or night, and the emperor would emerge to meet his citizens. Because of the large numbers of individuals wanting to petition Jehangir, however, he eventually urged that people form groups and send their representatives instead. And in this way Jehangir fostered civil-society activism among his subjects--centuries before NGO, the modern-day abbreviation for nongovernmental organizations, became a buzzword in the international community. Jehangir's gesture is worth recalling as tens of thousands of NGOs descend this week upon Seattle to protest against the World Trade Organization. In the spirit of accommodation and openness, the WTO invited representatives of civil society to come and express their views at trade talks that would set the stage for a new round of international trade and tariff negotiations. Unlike the Mogul emperor, the WTO must be ruing its decision--for prospects of any civil discourse between petitioners and potentates are being smothered by the incessant clanging of NGO bells. Meanwhile, the WTO's proposed agenda--an agenda aimed at strengthening globalization in ways that create fewer victims--appears in jeopardy because of disagreement among rich and poor nations over protectionism, child labor, subsidies and environmental security. The NGOs' agenda is focused on linking trade to social issues. Some radical NGOs want the WTO to be dismantled altogether, accusing it of being a handmaiden of recharged capitalist neoimperialism. Most activists, however, would have to scramble to marshal plausible arguments against faster economic growth, foreign investment, more affordable imports and the lowering of trade barriers--all of which would help alleviate global poverty and promote desperately needed economic growth in the world's 130 developing countries. There's increasing recognition that poverty, deprivation and desperation lead to political instability, says Steven W. Sinding, who's leading a new Columbia University study on foreign aid. There's a definite connection between poverty and instability in developing countries and our own well-being in affluent societies. Is linking trade to social issues sensible, then, and is the WTO the most appropriate entity to expedite progress on issues such as social justice and environmental protection? NGOs need to be freshly reminded that in today's increasingly interdependent world economy, continued resistance to globalization is self-defeating. A retreat to doctrines like self-sufficiency and import substitution--once the most devoutly advocated prescriptions for economic progress in poorer countries--today would virtually assure that backward economies would stay that way, says Prof. Ralph Buultjens of New York University. Besides, it's time that many NGOs grasp the reality that today's globalized world is not only about saints and sinners. If questions about the legitimacy of the WTO are considered relevant by NGOs, it is also appropriate to raise some inconvenient but timely questions about civil-society organizations themselves: How representative of local grass-roots people are the NGOs that man the barricades at places such as Seattle? Over the last decade, many NGOs have been transformed from no heels to extremely well-heeled. Private foundations and donor governments in the West hand out billions of dollars to such groups. A new conference class has sprouted, with familiar faces turning up at global meetings at luxurious resorts or in pleasant Western cities. Of course, it helps that these NGO representatives are fluent in international languages such as English and French, and also demonstrate agility with jargon favored by bureaucrats. It's hard to imagine a Sri Lankan peasant or a Zimbabwean weaver at such talkfests--other than at special grass-roots exhibits. Is the international NGO system becoming a self-serving coterie of elitists? Like bureaucracies everywhere, a conspicuous mission creep characterizes the work of many NGOs. For example, many activists who espoused environmental causes at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro now agitate on behalf of other issues as well; donors seem to like such connectivity. But once these conferences are over, rarely are their topics sustained in national conversations back home. Should activists also be negotiators? Many national delegations to governmental global conferences now include NGO representatives. They inevitably tend to be well-informed, well-funded and well-connected players who bring vested interests into the back rooms of diplomacy. But it's not at all clear that such access has improved the quality of global negotiations on thorny issues such as climate change, desertification, trade rights and galloping population growth. Indeed, many negotiations have been slowed down because of the fractiousness of the nondiplomatic participants. All this is not to suggest that the NGO community ought to be restricted to the grass roots. But it would be nice if NGO representatives who seek headlines and face time at global carnivals occasionally went back home again to reconnect with their constituencies. Gupte is editor and publisher of The Earth Times. GRAPHIC: PHOTO: Ringing the bell: Protesters in Seattle LOAD-DATE: November 30, 1999