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“In the world economy, there must be freedom for people and ideas to move”

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Roberto Unger: “IBSA’s significance for the future depends on whether we can transform it into an instrument for the shared development of a model of social inclusive growth.”

It was at the end of the IBSA (India-Brazil-South Africa) summit in Tshwane (Pretoria) that one met Roberto Mangabeira Unger, a don at Harvard University, author of numerous articles, and Brazil’s Minister for Long-Term Strategic Planning. Prof. Unger says he is searching for a progressive alternative to the dominant political and economic project, “sometimes called neo-liberalism or the Washington consensus.” His thoughts must be understood in conjunction with proposals about the possible direction of a progressive alternative in different regions of the world. Excerpts from an interview:

The relations between Brazil and India are already intense and have produced dramatic results. For the first time in the world, the directions of negotiations about world trade have been influenced by the association between large developing countries, especially India and Brazil. Though this relation has become intense, it has a narrow base.

To take it to the next level, we have to progress in two large areas of importance for both our countries. One is to collaborate in the construction of a mode of development based on dramatic expansion of economic and educational opportunities as well as popular participation.

At least 90 per cent of the population in India and over 60 per cent of the population in Brazil is in the disorganised sector.

The great revolution in the two countries by the powerful resources of the state would be to transfer opportunity to this excluded majority. They can’t achieve that obligation without reorganising the economic institutions. So long as our countries continue to oscillate between a socially exclusive economic pseudo-orthodoxy and periodic outbursts of populistic distribution, we will not be able to solve our fundamental problems.

The greatest possible significance of the collaboration between our countries lies in the development of practices and institutions that offer an alternative to this oscillation.

This would not only be an achievement for India and Brazil. It would be an intervention in the world situation to change the universal political and economic orthodoxy like the one that is prevailing.

By universal, I mean many things. Both countries have to work on a set of ideas and initiatives that have relevance for the whole world. Second is to develop a shared geopolitical vision. India and Brazil have a shared stake in a world that is safe for a plurality of power and vision. Such a world can’t be a world that is organised either around duopoly of power of the U.S. and China or a state of latent belligerence between the U.S. and China. Our basic stake is to make the world situation more complicated and richer in sources of thought, of capability, of power.

One of the manifestations of this shared geopolitical vision would be to act in collaboration in the field of defence technology. And to ensure a dramatic increase in our cooperative efficiency in the peaceful use of nuclear power. It would be a fundamental mistake to reduce the potential of this relationship to a circumstantial partnership in tactics of trade negotiations. Even with respect to the world trading system, we must work towards a future in which the commercial principle of the world trading system is not maximisation of free trade but gradual opening of the world economy that allows alternate trajectories of national development to co-exist.

The real freedom in world economy can’t be simply freedom for things and money to move. There must also be freedom for people and ideas to move.

IBSA is a vehicle that has great significance for the simple fact of having been invented and persisted [with]. But its significance for the future depends on whether we can transform it into an instrument for the shared development of a model of social inclusive growth and of geopolitical vision that serves the goal of a plurality of power in the world. These two objectives are interlinked. Each has to acquire a force in association with the other. Diplomacy is never enough without ideas. We should resist the temptation to retreat as professional diplomats sometimes do to a world of power politics bereft of ideological proposals. In a world of democracy, the politics of power and ideas are inseparable. There is a vital burning question for India and Brazil. What will we do to rescue the majority imprisoned in the disorganised economy? The future of our countries and IBSA will turn on the answer we give to this question.

The premise of the non-proliferation regime from the outset was nuclear disarmament of the great powers. Let us not allow the disagreement among our countries about rules of non-proliferation to overshadow this fundamental issue. No non-proliferation regime can last that accords censorial powers to a small coterie of nuclear weapon countries that refuse to disarm.

It is movement from a regime in which trade rules are determined by rich countries to a new stage where broader interests of humanity will have to be taken into account.

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“In the world economy, there must be freedom for people and ideas to move”

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