INCLUSIVE GROWTH
Inclusive growth: Naive optimism or call for revolution?
©Hong Kong Tatler/Kalun
Chandran Nair CEO and Founder Global Institute For Tomorrow*
“Inclusive growth” has been transformed from a pressing global challenge into a social cause parroted by everyone, including multilateral agencies, business people, politicians and NGOs. As with all well-meaning slogans–other examples include “green growth,” “carbon neutrality,” “shared value” and “the end of poverty”–the appeal of inclusive growth lies in the fact that it means all things to all people. And for multilaterals, corporations and developed governments, it has become a means of assuaging their guilt and reassuring the West’s increasingly squeezed middle-class that the current economic crisis is just a passing blip and reminding them that others have it worse in Asia and Africa. But the truly insidious thing about inclusive growth and its partner falsehoods is that they are words of submission being spoken by some of the most powerful people in the world. As with other forms of propaganda, “feel good” phrases and lazy analysis have replaced the need to look for solutions and the hard decisions necessary to achieve them. To be clear, the OECD, as one of the most influential and respected organisations in the world, is fully capable of effecting real change. It can be at the forefront of turning what are currently just “catchphrases” into a roadmap for the 21st century. But to do so will require a radical rethinking of the status quo. This is because “inclusive growth” as presently defined is bound to fail because it is not radical, does not bring bold new ideas into the mainstream, and fails to address the root causes of what makes today’s growth exclusive. For
anyone that cares to look, it will be obvious that the current western model of economic growth, which has been adopted the world over, depends in no small part on excluding the majority in order to create wealth for a few. This has been the case since the colonial era. The same exclusion that was once practised by the East India Company is now practised on Wall Street and its excesses are accepted as part of the system by far too many governments. Developed world politicians, however, are all too happy to “include” others in the world economy by outsourcing them cheap and dirty jobs or polluting industries. Crucially, this exclusion also extends into the media and cultural narrative. Whatever the issue, the only people with answers appear to be Western educated, “cosmopolitan” celebrities, all of whom seem to care and have access to the global media. They are the chief spokespeople, and if they are challenged, it is invariably by members of the same club. Inclusive growth never seems to extend to actually inviting
It is high time to promote a radical rethinking of the way we govern our economies people from the groups inclusive growth is meant to benefit, to speak at the exclusive forums where the good and the great extol its virtues. You cannot bring everybody into an economic system, which by design depends on keeping the majority of people out, just like we will not eradicate poverty in our lifetimes or “fix” climate change and heal the planet. Indeed, the system is increasingly failing to provide even for the majority in the Western world whose incomes have stagnated, while inequality reaches levels not seen for a century. It is high time to put an end to the doublespeak and promote a radical rethinking of the way we govern our economies. Call it a revolution, if you will. What exactly might this revolution look like? Here are just three propositions. First is to accept that the current system of global capital flows is one of the primary obstacles to sustainable development and has repeatedly brought promising economies to the brink of disaster. Central banks in developing countries can and should lead the charge against the belief in “trickle-down” where enough
OECD Yearbook 2014 © OECD 2014
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