The Hindu : Karnataka News : Eastern Europe finds much in common with Asia

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Oct 06, 2004

Karnataka

Karnataka

Eastern Europe finds much in common with Asia

By Alladi Jayasri

BANGALORE, OCT. 5. Eastern Europe is slowly waking up to the idea of Asia and beginning to find many similarities between the two continents, especially in the approach to problem-solving and awareness about global problems, says Ondrej Liska, a councillor in the Czech Republic's second largest city, Brno.

Common cause

Mr. Liska, who has been vice-president of the Green Party in the Czech Republic and currently advises the party in the European Parliament in Brussels, was in Bangalore last weekend.

He is on a lecture-tour of Asia, making common cause with NGOs and social activists in Vietnam, Cambodia and India. He is actively networking with the Asian Regional Exchange for New Alternatives, a network of academics and intellectuals across Asia trying to make politics minority-sensitive.

"I was an activist working on minority issues when I realised that being in politics can give one a better grasp of the realities of the inequities that minorities of every kind face in my country and in all of the EU," Mr. Liska, who was earlier in India to take part in the World Social Forum, told The Hindu .

Social justice

Mr. Liska advises the European Union (EU) Greens on social justice and is helping the Federation of Green parties in Europe draft regional policy that aims at social cohesion.

Though not familiar with the situation of the farmers in India, he feels he can make a fairly accurate guess: Just like strife and conflict-ridden Eastern Europe, which, incidentally, regarded India and most of Asia in the perspective of the more advanced Western European nations, has come to realise that the poor and the minority groups are in the same less-privileged class as their world.

"EU's budget, 50 per cent of which goes to service the subsidy-driven agricultural policy, is creating an artificially competitive regime that needs restructuring. EU will reform its restructuring mechanisms, and the Green Party will nudge Parliament towards this," Mr. Liska says.

What he has seen in India, at least so far, is no different. In the matter of energy use and equity, for instance, there is a high degree of awareness of the global consequences of indiscriminate energy use and, at the same time, the urge to address those problems and find solutions locally is very strong, be it in Europe or Asia.

Networking then is the key.

Resistance

EU, for instance, has put up a strong, and largely successful resistance to the onslaught of the genetic engineering lobby and has constantly battled the U.S. for its more "easygoing attitude towards concerns of bio-safety" and ethics involved in any genetic engineering experiment.

That has not been the case with India, and even a perfunctory analysis can make it very obvious, he says.

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