SPAN: January 1979

JANUARY 1979 RUPEES 2.50

HOW FAR ANEW ECONOMIC ORDER?

A LEITER FROM THE PUBLISHER

SPAN

January 1979

VOLU M E XX NUMBER 1

Margaret Mead. who died recently at the age of77, was that characteristically modern American phenomenon, the Visible Scientist- one who by popularizing SCientific ideas vitally influences public opinion on important issues. Truly a pathfinder, Mead led a host of admiring fellow-scholars, devoted students, and ardent audiences through previously untrodden lands of cultural anthropology, feminism, internationalism, environmentalism, and generation-gap-bridging. For she was always both a part of her times and ahead of them, repeatedly anticipating issues and techniques that were to characterize the next decade.

Margaret Mead began by achieving an immediate reputation, both popular and scholarly, in her 20s with her first and still most famous book, Coming of Age in Samoa. It describes the process of sexual maturation in a remote primitive tribe that Mead had studied for three years-but. like everything Mead was to write and say, it was immediately perceived to have general application to groups and societies all over the world. The book became a best seller, and Mead never after lost sight of her world audience and world theme: "All branches of the human race have comparable capacities for cultural growth." Actually, she was very specific in this seemingly grand generalization: in a spate of books. lectures, seminars, radio and television programs she spelled out the implications. "All branches of the human race" included ancient civilizations as well as primitive tribes; developing and semideveloped nations, as well as developed ones; women, as well as men; children, as well as adults. All bad equal innate capacities for growth, given the chance. And Mead used "culture" in its social-scientific sense, which is not restricted to arts, dress, food, and ritual- she was talking of personal (psychological) growth- social, economic, national, and- ultimately-international growth.

Continually provocative, controversial, outspoken, incredibly swift in her responses to new situations and events, Margaret Mead was quick to use the full gamut of the new communications media as they became available. She was a communicator par excellence. Thus. of her presidential address to the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in 1978, she pointed out that it "was a multimedia presentation in which I used still photographs, films, and tapes to illuminate the discussion . It was accompanied by a translation into the sign language of the deaf as a way of expressing the concern of the AAAS for the handicapped and my own wish to demonstrate the necessity of always taking into account the multisensory nature of human functiomng."

The breadth of Margaret Mead's concerns and the acute pertinence of her perceptions were evident in all her observations.

Of communes she said di sapprovingly: "Communes are small groups of people who go off to live somewhere else as a criticism of society. When they break up, the children are left hanging or scattered ...

She was impatient with an interviewer who suggested that mankind could not win the race between overpopulation and the production of sufficient food: "I think it is a total mistake to separate these problems. ...

We have learned since World War II to deal with entire systems at once.... We have the means to think about the whole planet. ... You can't separate population from food, the protection of the environment and the design of human habitations."

Margaret Mead saw the world as the interdependent whole it truly is.

-J.W.G.

2 President Carter Reflects on Two Years in Office 4 U.S. Congressional Elections

5 How Far a New Economic Order?

An /mrfl'it•u· With A.K. Sen Gupta by S.R. Madhu

1 2 Edward BeUamy's Blueprint for Utopia hy Kns/ma Chaitanya

1 6 Citrus Industry: A Golden Harvest

2Q Seattle: Friendly City 2 8 Designing for Today

by Barbara Kindness

by Chidananda Das Gupta

Inventions: Technotec 34 Internationalizing C. ht• Rtchard

Schroeder

36 StoryteUer Isaac Bashevis Singer 39 Elka and Meir 44 On the Lighter Side

by Jaroh Sloan

A Story by Isaac Bashet•is Singe/

45 byU.S. Will Help Strengthen Third World Media 49 Kites Fly High Again John £. Reinhardt

Front co~er: It's fun time in Seattle as clown-faced residents take part in a parade during an annual wmter festival, their faces reflecting the general good spirits of this beautiful city in the American Northwest. Story on pages-20-27.

Ba.ck cover: Customers, young and old, look at the colorful variety of ingenious new kites available al California's Let's Fly A Ktte Store. one of the many that have mushroomed to meet the modem populari1y of this old pasltme. See also page49.

JACOB SLOAN, Editor; JAY W. GILDNER, PubUsher.

Managing Editor: Ch1dananda Das Gupta. Assistant Managing Editor: S.R. Madhu.

Editorial Staff: Krishan Gabrani, Aruna Dasgupta, Ninnal Sharma, Murari Saha, Rocque Fernandes. Art Director: Nand Katyal. Art Staff: Gopi Gajwani, B. Roy Choudhury, Kanti Roy. Chief of Procluc:don: A wtar S. Marwaha. Photo Editor: Avinash Pasncba. Photographic Senices: ICA Photo Lab. Publisbtcl by the lnlemational Communication Agency. American Center, 24 Kasturba Gandb1 Marg, New Delhi 110001, on behalf oflhe American Embassy, New Delbt The opinions expressed in Ibis magazine do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the United States Government. Printed byH.K. Mehta at Thomson Press (India) Limited, Faridabad, Haryana.

Pbol ........: lnsode rrool CO\tr NASA 1- Antony Do Gc•u. COurtesy Americiln Mu5eum of National Hmory.

3 except bottom, c:ourt..y U.S Nr•s & World lltf><AI II Arun Gangul) 13 A-.nasb Pasricba. 16-19 L)nn Pelham 22-23- Chrutopher Spnnamann. 24-25- Jo.tf Sca)lea 26 top to bottom Roloc Color Slides; coun ..y Fr~ntb maganne (2); ICA 27 ChristophcrSpnnamann. JO, 32-courtesy Nauonalln•ututeol Dcsogn. 34-Rocllard Saunc!us. 49 and be.:k CO>« - Jobn Zunmerma.n .

Use of SPAN artocleo on other publieati<>ns os encouru~ed. cxecpl when copyrighted. For permission. write to the !!.dolor. Proce ofmagn7.one: one ycar'ssu~rip!ion (12 OI$UC$}, 18 rupees: singlccopy, 2 rupees SO paise. For change of •ddress.sendanoldaddrcu from a recent SPAN enve1opcalongwith new address to A K. Milra. Circulauon Manaaer, SPAN Magazine. 24 K•slurba Gandhi Mars, New Oclho 11 OOOI . (Sce change ofaddreu form on pooge 48.)

PBISIDII! C.I.B!BB BIFLIC!S 01 TWO YB.I.BS II OFFICI 'I haven't found anything easy about this job.

But I didn't expect it to be easy . ... '

2

President Jimmy Carter nears the midpoint of his first terin comfortably attuned to the powers- and limitations- of his office.

He told a group of young men and women in Kansas City, Missouri, recently he had found it ''much more difficult to be a leader in a time of calm than in a time of crisis." ''Leaders are very popular in a time of crisis,'' the President noted, "because it is easy to arouse support for the interests of those who are concerned with the crisis itself. But to take action to prevent a future crisis that can't be easily detected or proven is a very difficuJt task indeed."

Mr. Carter feels the only way to strengthen people's trust in government, impaired by Vietnam and Watergate, "is for the government to be trustworthy, to be open and honest, ethical, committed to peace, epitomizmg the ideas and aspirations on which our country was originally founded."

Mr. Carter feels "the font .of power" in the United States must continue to rest upon "an informed public ... a public that is aware of the alternatives that we have available to us. (and will) explore those alternatives through open debate, through democratic processes, through freedom of speech and then shape common goals that are worthy of a great nation."

After the debate is over, after his advisers have contributed their thoughts and recommendations, Mr. Carter finds the American Presidency demands that "the toughest decisions, almost invariably ... must be made alone."

Yet Mr. Carter rejects the Jeffersonian concept of the Presidential office as a "splendid misery." " I might point out," he commented dryly, "that it is voluntary.

Nobody in my memory has been forced to serve as President ... in spite of the challenges and problems and sometimes disappointments and criticisms, I really enjoy it."

The most difficult chore of the Presidency, he says, is reconciling the "sharply confl icting ideas from worthy people."

Noting that easy problems are solved at a lower level of government, Mr. Carter added, " I haven't found anything easy about this job. But I dido 't expect it to be easy when I came here."

Despite the difficulties. despite the Constitutional limits on what a President can do, Mr. Carter wouldn't have it any other way. In sharp contrast to some of his recent predecessors who tried to expand the powers of the Chief Executive, Mr. Carter declares himself comfortable within the Constitution's limiting checks and balances. " I wouldn't want to change," he said in the interview. "The structure of the American Government is still the best that I can imagine."

Mr. Carter pointed out that the structure requires "a tremendous sharing of responsibility" between various levels of government within the Federal system.

"These balances have been evolved historically," he said, "and I think they have grown to their present state because in each instance when a change occurred, tests were made and the best arrangement triumphed .... I like the Constitutional arrangement."

In a democracy, the Pres1dent suggests, criticism is inevitable.

He believes it to be the ''fond hope ... of every politician to be universally admired, to have all of your themes clearly defined, to have everythmg packaged beautifully so it can be examined from all sides ... to have universal approbation of the people that you try to represent. All those things are hopeless dreams."

Further, he is convinced it is a mistake to even try for universal acclaim. "If you fear making anyone mad, then you ultimately probe for the lowest common denominator of human achievement," he said.

Mr. Carter says he had no particular concern about his showing in public opinion surveys earlier this year, noting that his standing had not fallen to the low level of the late President Harry S. Truman's, who is now considered by many historians one of the nation's great Presidents.

He believes that his "confrontations" with Congress over spending on defense and public works- his vetoes of Congr..:ssional funding levels were sustained- "established pnnciples that w11l be good" in dealing with the Congress that takes office this month (January 1979).

Now that his standing in the opinion polls is sharply up, Mr. Carter feels no difference within himself. "I don't feel that I am more competent or more aggressive or more sure of myself than I was before."

Suggesting that his standing seemed to have been boosted by recent ''difficult decisions" he had made, the President added that he had "made difficult decisions ever since I have been in office. It seems to me almost daily difficult decisions have to be made."

As Pres1dent, he said, he has learned some things about leadership. "One is that fear of failure is one of the greatest obstacles to progress."

0

â&#x20AC;˘

I

I

President Carter (facing page) going over papers in his swdy at the White House. sho1ring his catch after an excursion on the Yacht Gannet (top left) , playing softball (top right); taking a swim in the Atlantic (middle): singing " We shall overcome" with relatives and friends of the late Martin Luther King, Jr., at the White House in Washington.

SPAN JANUARY 1979

'Moderation, even in tax-cutting, seemed to be the voters' message.'

U.S. CONGRESSIONAl ElECTIONS

AVOTE FOR MODERATION Holl'ard Baker

Fifty-seven million Americans cast their votes in the November 7 mid-term elections to the U.S. Congress. Without redrawing the country's political portrait, they gave America's politicians much to think about.

Traditionally, the party in power suffers some reverses in the American mid-term elections. This time, the Democratic Party managed to minimize losses, retaining control of both houses of the U.S. Congress and of a majority of state legislatures. The Republican Party had reason for satisfaction too. lt managed to make deep dents in Democratic strongholds such as Minnesota (home state of the late Hubert Humphrey and of Vice President Walter Mondale) and the southem states of Texas and Mississippi.

The Republicans also developed a wider leadership base. Several winners in the mid-term polls are seen as future Presidential or Vice Presidential candidates.

These include Howard Baker, re-elected to the U.S. Senate from Tennessee; James Thompson, re-elected as Governor of Ulinois; Governor-elect Richard Thornburgh of Pennsylvania ; Philip Crane, elected to a fifth term as member of the U.S. House of Representatives from lllinois (he has already announced himself as a candidate for the 1980 Presidential elections); William Clements, Governorelect ofTexas; and Thad Cochran, elected Senator from Mississippi .

Among Democrats, three notable victors were California Governor Edmund (Jerry) Brown, re-elected by a 1.3-million vote margin, New York Governor Hugh Carey, re-elected by a comfortable 274,000vote margin, and Congresswoman Ella Grasso, elected Governor of Connecticut.

The 96th Congress, convening in January, will have 276 Democrats and 159 Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives (as compared with 288 Democrats and 147 Republicans in the previous House); 59 Democrats and 41 Republicans in the Senate (previous ratio: 61 Democrats, 38 Republicans). There will be 32 Democrat and 18 Republican Governors (previous ratio : 37 Democrats, 12 Republicans, one independent).

4

SPAN JANUARY 1'179

Jerry Brown

Ella Grasso

Women performed fairly well in the mid-term elections. The 96th Congress will have a woman Senator for the first lime in 12 years: Republican Nancy Landon Kassebaum, 46. Women also strengthened their ranks in state legislatures. There was mixed news for blacks.

They lost their only Senator, Edward Brooks of Massachusetts, but retained 15 seats in the House.

* * *

What were the issues that figured in the 1978 mid-term elections? At the local or regional level they were many and varied- cutting medical costs, curbing trade union powers, legalizing gambling, permitting homosexuality, banning nuclear power. But at the national level, bread-and-butter issues predominated: taxes, inflation, government spending.

Besides choosing their leaders, American citizens voted on a total of 200 referenda.

(A referendum is an electoral device by which voters express their views directly on an issue. A referendum is put on the ballot after citizens collect a certain number of signatures in favor of one.)

Referenda on limiting taxes and spending were proposed in 16 states; they were carried in 12.

On election-eve America had seemed to be in the grip of an antitax fever. Politicians of all hues promised voters tax-cut programs, and some liberals tried to live down their records in support of big government budgets. The Congress passed a bill slashing $18.7 billion in the Federal income tax.

The tax-cut fever had begun with the sensational "California tax revolt." On June 6, California voters had approved

by a big majority a Constitutional amendment to reduce all prvperty taxes by nearly 60 per cent, thus withholding $7 billion from the California Government. Soon, antitax movements had sprung up in other states, and petitions were successfully mounted to put tax-cut issues on the ballot in the November 7 elections.

The results of the mid-term elections have shown, however, that the antitax mood of Americans has been more cautious than what was predicted. Voters tended to reject radical solutions, and were markedly reluctant to "rock the boat." "The idea launched by Proposition 13 in California that all troubles can be solved by cutting taxes seems to have passed its zenith," said the Christian Science Monitor. "If anything, the voting pattern showed a healthy awareness of the fact that sovereign panaceas seldom work." Candidates who promised extravagant tax cuts were defeated. In Michigan, voters approved of a measure to cut state spending, but rejected a move to roll back property taxes by 50 per cent. ..Moderation, even in tax-cutting, seemed to be the voters' message," said Time.

American citizens of all classes apparently concluded that lower taxes need not necessarily mean a better life; it also means fewer government services, and reduced benefits for the elderly, the handicapped, the disadvantaged.

* * *

Evaluating the mid-term elections, the Baltimore Sun said: "Good old middleof-the-road centrism prevailed again."

Political researcher Michael Barone, writing in the Wall Street Journal, said that the mid-term elections produced a "broad consensus" on a basic issue-the relative sizes of the public and private sectors of the American economy. "This consensus is easily stated: the government should not get a significantly Larger share of the gross national product than it gets now, but it should not get substantially less either."'

Perhaps the Washington Pose best summed up the message of the American voter: ¡'It's time for caution and consolidation."

-S.R.M.

A

I NTERVIEW WITH A.K. SE

GUPTA BY S.R. MAOH U

The North-South dialogue-the talks between the world's developed and developing nations on reducing the disparities between them-bas made some progress. But the issues at stake- differences concerning trade, commodity prices, aid, debt relief, technology transfer-are too complex for simple solutions. The progress of the North-South dialogue is assessed here by a noted economist, A.K. Sen Gupta, in an interview with SPAN's assistant managing editor.

li.LUSTRATION BY B. ROY C HOUDH U RY

SPAN JANUARY 1979

NEW ECONOMIC ORDER continued

SPAN: In April 1974, the U.N. General aid has declined to 0.3 per cent of GNP Assembly urged the establishment of a of the donor countries. While aid flows New International Economic Order have declined in real terms, the debt-servic(NIEO). T his has since been debated at ing burden of the developing countries has various international forums by the coun- increased. Consequently, the issues of tries of the "North and South." Would debt redemption and debt rescheduling you like to summarize the progress of the have become urgent in many cases.

Some influential American economists North-South dialogue, the advance have been advocating a switch from official toward the new order?

SEN GUPTA: l t seems to me that no aid to direct foreign private investment significant progress has yet been made into the developing countries. Indeed the toward the so-called New International relative decline in foreign aid and the Economic Order. If you consider the continuous growth of the debt-servicing various demands of the developing coun- burden have forced many developing tries, none of them have been accepted in countries to invite direct foreign investthe form in which they were presented. ment on concessional terms and (parSome concessions have been made, the ticularly after the oil crisis) to rely on dialogue continues and one need not be borrowings from European and commertoo cynical about the future. So far, cial banking systems. These have raised however, few concrete steps have been fresh problems for the nonoil Third taken toward the evolution of the New World countries which have engaged the attention of international organizations.

International Economic Order.

Take the case of trade in labor-intensive Unless the Carter Administration reverses the trend, as it is now attempting to do, manufactures. What the NIEO sought1 doubt whether the volume of official what the developing countries wantedwas free access for exports of their manu- aid- bilateral or multilateral- will rise factured goods in developed country substantially in the futu re. Perhaps it is markets. A few tariff concessions-the because aid has not been rising fast enough so-called Generalized System of Prefer- that the developing countries are seeking ences (GSPs)-have been extended by the assistance in more indirect ways-for developed countries. They don't amount example, stabilization and indexing of to much. Indeed, at the moment, the primary commodity prices, linking aid tide of protectionism is strong in many with liquidity creation, debt remission and rescheduling, and other such devices. developed countries, including the United T he NIEO has also called for a radical States.

The second important trade issue con- transformation in the economies of the cerns the stabilization of commodity poor countries- a 25 per cent share of prices. Here again, the developing coun- world industrial production by 2000 A.D., tries' demand for a common fund, sub- which is a substantial increase from their scribed to by developed countries, for present 7 per cent share. This would conducting buffer stocks operations in require not merely substantial domestic order to stabilize export prices of (and efforts on the part of the poor countries earnings from) 10 to 18 primary com- but also massive resource t ransfer from modities, has not been accepted in the the rich to the poor. The aid-giving spirit or fonn in which it was originally capacity of the richer countries would presented. The need for stabilization is depend considerably on their balance-ofaccepted in principle. Debate, however. payments position and their rate of continues on the rationale of a common growth. Income transfers from the rich fund for many commodities and on the to the poor through fiscal and other issue of " indexing" - maintaining price mechanisms are difficult enough within parity between the primary exports of a country. In the international sphere such developing countries and the manu- transfers are even more so.

So, I do not really think that so far as factured goods imported by them.

On the third major issue- that of the basic objectives of the New Interdevelopmental aid to developing coun- national Economic Order are concerned, tries- there has been (unti l very recently) much progress has yet been made. But I little progress; in fact, some deteriora tion concede that the kind of confr.ontation has occurred over the years. The original which existed about three or four years aid target for the rich countries was I per ago between the developed and the undercent of their Gross National Product developed world- that kind of confronta(GNP) of which 0.7 per cent was to tion does not exist today. Relations are constitute official aid. Instead, official more amicable and friendly , there is 6

SPAN JANUARY 1979

a greater will ingness to cooperate, to give and take. UNCT"AD IV (1976) came up at a time when the United States faced special difficulties. That probably accounted for the somewhat hard stand which the United States took at that time against demands from the developing countries. The economic as well as the political situation in the United States has now changed for the better, and it may be willing to make more concessions now than it was prepared to do before.* The developing countries themselves are, as you know, a divided camp. They have disparate interests, and may not be able to operate as a bloc very easily.

Also, in such internationa l forums it often happens that the more extremist views on both sides of the fence gain predominance and the less extreme voices are muffled . But in actual policy making, rhetoric is usually laid aside and the muffled voices may be heeded.

SPAN: One theory has it that developing countries will account for more and more of America's exports: so the United States has a natural interest in promoting the economies of developing countries.

Could you comment on this?

Given the interdependence of the world's economies, would you agree that rich countries are genuinely interested in bringing the New International Economic Order into being, though they may have run into difficulties at present? Or do you think the strategy of the rich is irreconcilably in conflict with the goals of the New International Economic Order?

SEN GUPTA : It is true that more and more American exports are going to the developing countries, and a higher rate of economic growth in these countries would give a further boost to American exports. Similarly, an increasing amount of U.S. imports-about 30 per cent of her oil and much larger percentages of various industrial raw materials- come from the developing countries. The 1974-75 recession in the United States thus affected exports of the developing countries adversely, creating a lot of problems for them. Interdependence of this kind has â&#x20AC;˘ An American spo kesman notes that the U.S. Congress has before it a record foreign appropriations bill for the year ending September 30, 1979; the United States is also seeking, through the Multilateral Trade Negotiations and other forums. to liberalize trade. The United States bas also accepted in principle tbe question of a common fund for commodities. one of the main demands of the developing countries.

DEVELOPING COUNTRIES: SOURCES OF FOREIGN AID Major sources of economic grants, low-interest government loans and other forms of official assistance for developing countries (in$ millions) NONCOMMUNIST WORLD (1977) UNITED STATES FRANCE JAPAN WEST GERMANY CANADA GREAT BRITAIN NETHERl.ANI)S SWEDEN AUSTRALIA

AMOUNT

PERCENTAGF 01' GROSS NATIONAl PRODUCT

4,123 2,394 I .421

.22')'.

1,386

.2r.•

992

.s a~.

914

)8•.

85•• .99".

900 779 421

.63% .2l~ 0

.4s•.

COMMUNIST BLOC (197S) U.S.S.R. ROMANIA EAST GERMANY CHINA

WORLD'S ECONOMIC GROWTH BETWEEN 1970 AND 1976 Gross National Product in U.S.$ (1976) in billions

t,642 46S 277

.2S"• 1.7S% .42%

272

.09%

WORLD DEVELOPED COUNTRI ES !NONCOMMUNIST\ UNITED STATES COMMUNIST COUNTRIES DEVELOPING COUNTRIES

PERCENTAGE OF GROWTH BETWEEN t970 & 1976

t970

t976

5.490

6.970

26.9%

3,450

4.tHO

2l. l%

t.438 6 1.691.6

15.S.,tt

1.260

t.650

30.~.

78l

1.140

4s.s•.

Source: Organi7ation for Economic Cooperation and Development

Note: These figures do not include nongovernment loans or mi litary aid.

Sources: I. Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development 2. United Nations

The table above shows that lh e growth rate of developing coun tries was higher than thar of developed cou ntries between 1970 and 1976.

However. the per capita growt ll rate of developing countries for the sa me period would be lower than that of developed coun tries. because of the higher population of t he former.

always been present; it has grown recently in quantitative terms- particularly as the U.S. dependence on foreign trade and investments has increased. Pollution, population growth, and the global resource scarcity have further underlined the importance of global cooperation today.

While increasing interdependence is an undisputed fact, the developing countries advocating a New International Economic Order feel that there is room for a qualitative change in the nature of such interdependence. They feel that the current pattern of interdependence is loaded in fa~or of the more developed countries.

They point out, for example, that from 1950 to 1975, the per capita growth in the developing countries (excluding a few export-oriented small countries and, of course, the oil countries) was far less than that of the developed countries despite substantial flows of capital, technology and trade between the North and the South. T he developing countries feel that global interdependence must be organized on a somewhat different basis than exists today if the growing income gap between the rich and the poor can be effectively bridged. I think on this issue- how best and how soon to bridge the income gapthere are still differences between the rich and the poor countries, just as within a country the spokesmen of the rich and the poor differ on the same issue. In the richer countries, the problems of the poorer classes were taken care of by official intervention in favor, for example, of the farmers and the working classes.

The poor countries are similarly relying on international economic policy making to remove some of their disabilities.

SPAN: I think that leads us to one of the demands of developing countries: for a better voice in international decision making. What exactly does tills mean?

How has the structure of institutions like the international Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, and the General Agreement on Tariffs and T rade (GATT)how has the structure of these agencies militated against the interests of developing countries?

SEN GUPTA : Let us take these international institutions one by one. With the LMF the basic complaint of the poor countries is that any increase in international reserves or any change in their distribution- indeed, any change in the international monetary system-has to be voted by a 85 per cent majority in the Fund. The United States and the European Economic Community (EEC), by virtue of their large " quotas," command a veto power in the IMF. There is no doubt that the voices of richer countries predominate in international monetary policy making. How this goes necessarily against the interests of the developing countries is not always very clear. A lot has been and is being done by the IMF to help developing economies. A number of special credit windows have been opened exclusively for them in recent years.

However, recent changes in the international monetary system have hardly been to their advantage. The greater flexibility of the exchange rates has further increased the risks and uncertainties of trade for the developing countries.

Indeed most of them have sought partial relief by pegging their currencies to that of one or other of their important trade

partners. Flexibility of exchange rates, as Professor Henry C. Wallich has recently pointed out, helps stronger currencies against the weaker ones-and most of the developing countries have weak currencies. The economic instability from which they suffer on account of sharp swings in their terms of trade would be further accentuated by fluctuating exchange rates.

With their narrow and restricted foreign exchange markets, these countries have not been able to develop a forward exchange market to help their traders avoid the risks of exchange rate fluctuations.

Currency fluctuations also affect the real value of their meagre foreign exchange reserves. Even the oil-rich countries which quote petroleum prices in dollars and maintain most of their cash assets in dollar deposits. have been facing problems due to dollar depreciation. All these problems need to be sorted out before the new international monetary system can yield substantial advantages to the developing countries.

Regarding the World Bank and the l n. ternational Development Agency (IDA), it is again the richer donor countries that play the predominant role in deciding how much to lend, on what terms, to whom and for what purpose.

The developing countries plead for more multilateral aid, more soft loans (augmenting, for example, the resources of the 1DA), less project-tying of aid, and in general, less stringent scrutiny of project planning and execution. The concessional element in bilateral aid has often been reduced by the souice-tying of such aid.

The developing countries expect donors (that are members of the World Bank) to multilateralize their aid, passing it on to the World Bank for disposal. This would considerably reduce the political irritation and vicissitudes to which bilateral aid is subject. In the 1960s, U.S. Senator William Fulbright strongly advocated multilateralization of all foreign aid. Once fully multilateralized, better criteria for the supply of and demand for aid funds can be developed in course of time by the World Bank and its affiliates. Already, the World Bank has increased its resources and is taking steps to ensure that aid funds allocated to the developing countries flow more directly to the poorer segments of their population.

Th is is a step in the right direction. The resources needed to make a perceptible dent on world poverty are vast and the World Bank's resources need to be increased greatly.

SPAN JANUARY 1979

NEW ECONOMIC ORDER

Ulllti1111ed

The kind of confrontation that existed about three or four year!

8

As regards GATT, the complaint of the developing countries is that the cut in tariffs negotiated in the earlier rounds did not give any attention to those specific goods in which they are interested as potential exporters. For this the developing countries arc themselves partly responsible, because they do not participate in these negotiations and do not offer reciprocal tariff reductions to gain their objective. This does not mean that the general lowering of tariffs through successive GAlT rounds did not help developing countries. They did; the developing countries indeed got these advantages "free"without having to liberalize their imports.

They also secured preferential tariff treatment through the Generalized System of Preferences offered by the developed countries. But the more important fact is that many commodities are excluded from GATT negotiations because almost all developed countries favor relative selfsufficiency in agricultural products. in textiles, in footwear and in a number of other labor-intensive products which the developing countries may like to export.

Quotas and other nontariff barriers are often used by developed countries to limit such imports. The need for reducing nontariff barriers has engaged the attention of the GATT. and the Tokyo R ound is expected to start dismantling such barriers. Since GAlT has already accepted the principle of discrimination to the extent tha t "unequals should be treated unequally," I expect that the developed countries would be prepared to give easier access to developing country exports without expecting reciprocal concessions.

Thus 1 believe that in all the international economic forums there is room for reorganization and rethinking in the interest of global partnership. This must necessarily be a slow process. It should not be denied that developing countries have gained considerably from the operations of these international institutions.

On the other hand, no one should condemn the developing countries if, like Oliver T wist, they ask for more. One must, however, be realistic enough to appreciate that majority voting rights by the developing countries in these institutions would not necessarily mend matters. These international economic instituti ons have no supranational authority. Despite the closer integration of the world brought about by economic and technological forces, nationalism is still a very strong force in the North as in the South in the East as in the West.

T he nation state is under pressure, but

N

s hasn ¡1 begun to wither away yet.

SPAN: Shall we move on to a specific point in the North-South dialogue- that of commodity trade? Developing countries have mooted several proposals. One of them is the creation of a $5 billion fund which will finance the buying, stocking and selling of lO to 18 commodities. Now, why exactly is such a fund necessary?

It seems cumbersome for a single agency to operate such a big fund.

SEN GUPTA: Stabilization of commodity prices needs considerable resources and agreement among producing and consuming countries. Hence the need for an international agreement and financial support by richer countries in building up adequate buffer stocks for stabilization operations. T he help of the richer countries is solicited, because the developing countries do not have either the resources, or the "commodity power'' to go on their own. The institution of a common fund for a dozen or more commodit ies does not preclude the possibility of separate commodity boards to operate this fund. A common fund is supposed to be economical and self-replenishing, si nce the receipts from the sale of some commodities whose prices may be rising can be used to purchase other commodities whose prices may be falling. It is genera lly assumed that in a11y particular year some commodity prices may be moving up and others going down relative

ILLUSTRATION BY MICKEY PATEL

to their normal prices. This assumption may not be valid. T he prices of most of these commodities tend to rise or fall together reflecting industrial booms and recessions in developed countries. The fact that these commodities include both farm products and minerals does not necessarily make their price behavior divergent.

The crux of the problem seems to lie here. If many of these commodities experience price swings in the same direction over fairly long periods of recession and boom, such a phenomenon could put considerable pressure on the common fund . The divergent interests of different countries in commodities might make agreement on buffer stocks operationsand on the use of a fund to finance them difficult. Though some research has been conducted o n Lhe expected price behavior of these commodities, we still lack any conclusive evidence in these matters. lf price swings are large and in the same direction for most commodities and fairly sustained, the proposed $5 billion fund for over a dozen commodities would be hopelessly inadequate. r have read estimates that copper a lone would have needed a buffer stock of $6 billion to maintain price movements within a range of Âą IS percent a year during 1956-73.

SPAN: Copper a lone?

SEN GUPTA: Yes. copper alone. For copper and tin you would need a buffer

ago between the developed and the developing worlds . . . does not exist today. stock of about $9 billion. The tin agreement, which has been operating a buffer stock, has failed to stabilize tin prices because its buffer stock (never over 20,000 metric tons) was too low (compared with an estimated 120,000 metric tons needed) to maintain reasonable price stability during the period 1956-73. With meager resources. counterspcculation by the buffer stock authorities may well be destabilizing. Similar has been the experience of countries trying to support an overvalued exchange rate through official counterspeculation with limited foreign exchange resources at thei r disposal.

Where resources for countcrspeculation a re concerned, half a loaf may be worse than none.

Unstable commodity prices certainly jeopardize the interests of many poor countries that rely on primary exports for a major part of their national income, budgetary expenditure and industrial imports. (Some recent statistical studies have of course questioned this conclusion.

Export instability has been found to correlate significantly and positively with the rate of growth of investment and GNP in many countries. However, such simple correlation analyses, from which the influence of other variables such as governmental policies have not been eliminated. are not particula rly revealing.) Yet the past history of commodity ¡ agreements (except for a few arrived at comparatively recently) is replete with failure. l n principle, both producer and consumer countries arc interested in maintaining price stability for primary commodities.

However, the various N lEO proposals for commodity price stabi lization need careful scrutiny, so that future disappointment can be avoided.

SPAN: What is the current status of talks on the commod ity fund?

SEN GUPTA: UNCfAD IV did not take up indexat ion as a substantive issue, and thus a major issue in the North-South debate was avoided. I think the approach now is to go in for separate commodity agreements. The United States favors agreements in commodities in which it is interested, such as tin and copper. European countries and Japan would perhaps be more interested in other commodities.

Users of commodities would obviously be helped if import prices could be stabilized. But 1 do not quite know how commodity prices can be stabilized when the rest of the world economy- the forces of demand and supply- is unstable. Buffer stock operations have to be conducted

on a substantial scale to be effective.

Developed countries are not willing to bear such a heavy burden.

SPAN: Are developing countries still pushing the commodity fund idea hard?

Or has it undergone some modification?

SEN GUPTA : M y impression is that they are not pushing that idea very hard, because they have realized that a $5 billion fund is not big enough to handle the problem, and even this money may not be available. Many economists now realize that if buffer stock operations fail, the commodity market may become more unstable. The general feeling in developed countries is that thi s money is a kind of disguised aid; why not give it directly through the World Ba nk, for example, or through direct governmentto-government loans? The developing cou11tries realize also that mere commodity price stabilization would not ensure beuer terms of trade. Further, better terms of trade for primary exports may inhibit the process of industrialization by perpetuating dependence on such exports.

I think most developing countries are now willing to settle for separa te agreements for various commodities ra ther than insist on a general fund to stabi lize the prices of all commodities.

SPAN: How does the commodity fund help India? Have there been big flu ctuations in the prices of commodities that India exports, like sugar and tea? Or has India been a moderating force in the Third World on the demand for a commodity fund?

SEN GUPTA: Among the core commodities listed by the GAIT in this connection, India is a major exporter of tea, sugar and jute manufactures. Fortunately, however, lndia 's dependence on these exports has decreased over the years. I n 1960-61 , more than 40 per cent of our export earnings came from these three commodities; in 1970-71 less than 24 per cent. Manufactured goods form an increasing part of our exports, and India is much more interested in gaining freer access for these exports in developed country markets. There are of course substantial fluctuations in the prices of tea, sugar, and jute manufactures exported

by India. Of these, sugar was an unimportant export prior to the 1970s. In 1974-75, sugar became the most important export earner, contributing about 10 per cent of our total foreign exchange earnings through exports. But this was due to fortuitous circumstances, and was effected

by substantial cuts in domestic consumption. An increasing proportion of our j ute, sugar and tea is now being domestically consumed, and we are much less dependent on the export of these items now than we were. Regarding jute and tea a good part of our export problems can be sorted out through negotiations with neighboring countries that are important exporters. I do not, therefore, think that India has a big stake in the commodity price stabilization issue. She may well play a moderating role in the North-South dialogue on this issue.

SPAN: How vital are exports for the Indian economy ?

SEN GUPTA: India has stressed the need for import substitution ever since the First Five-Year Plan was inaugurated.

She has, however, learned from experience that industrialization- particularly the setting up of heavy industries-demands considerable import of capital equipment over a fairly long period. If foreign aid and private foreign capital inflow a rc not enough, part of these imports has to be financed by exports. Yet a ny a ttempt to build up import-competing industries behind a taritr wall really implies a tax on exports. This was increasingly realized in the 1960s, when there was an attempt to remedy the discrimination against exports inherent in import substitution policies by increasing export subsidies. There is some ambivalence in the I ndian Government's policy in this respect. It is difficult to pursue import substitution and export promotion simultaneously over a wide front as long as resources are scarce.

Broadly speaking, the two policies operate at cross purposes; resources cannot be shifted into both these sectors simultaneously-one can only grow at the cost of the other. Of course, relatively narrow segments o f both the sectors can be simultaneously expanded by diverting resources from other sectors. Unfortunately in India's case, while there has been selectivity, both import substitution and export subsidizing have tended to become indiscriminate a nd pervasive i11 course of time.

Exports constitute a small proportion of India's national income- no more than about 4 per cent of her GNP . I doubt if a country like India can depend on exportled growth; it relies far more on the expansion of the internal market and on indigenous technological progress. The recent emphasis on exports probably reflects our poor performance on both these fronts. Mass poverty and unemployment keep the domestic market narrow

NEW ECONOMIC ORDER continued

Despite the divergence of interests among Third World countries, Indo-U.S. relations for many industrial goods. The export sector thus provides a useful vent for surplus production. But exports of the developing countries are vulnerable. Apart from primary commodities in which export pessimism persists, the market for labor-intensive manufactures in the developed countries is limited by trade barriers. For some exports, productive capacity is limited, the quality is poor and costs are too high. Considerable subsidies are needed to sell such goods abroad . A reconsideration of India's production priorities to suit the needs of the masses would probably decrease the need for both imports and exports. Quicker technological progress is also needed to reduce dependence on imports- and exports to finance them.

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SPAN: Let's discuss another area of commodity trade. The Third World wants better access for its manufactured goods in Western markets. Now, the United States, Europe and Japan, all have tariff preference schemes for developing countries.

Would you like to evaluate the usefulness of the GSPs, particularly the American GSP, for the Third World, particularly India?

SENGUPTA: The GSPs offered by most of the developed countries during 1971 -76 fall very far short of the demands made by the Third World at UNCTAD forums. The schemes are not general-they apply to limited lists of products and vary from one donor country to another. Many sensitive products are excluded; in some others tariff preferences do not mean much because nontariff barriers continue to limit Third World exports. Duty-free access under the GSPs is often subject to an upper limit and no country is allowed an abnormal share of this overall quota.

To qualify for duty-free entry, rather stringent rules of origin have to be observed-the products exported must be substantially indigenous, with low import content. The tariff preferences have been extended for 10 years only.

The preferences themselves are not quantitatively large because nominal tariffs in developed countries had already fallen to as low as 9 to 10 per cent ad valorem, on the average, after the Kennedy Round of tariff reductions. Further tariff reductions in the Tokyo Round would further erode these preferences. Some estimates made in the early 1970s suggest that increases in Third World exports to developed countries made possible by the GSPs would not exceed $100 million

annually. Divided among a large number of countries, this does not amount to much.

Regarding the American GSP (which took effect from January I, 1976), India is one of the dozen or so countries (mostly Asian), that have benefited handsomely from it. They are likely to appropriate about three-fourths of the gains resulting from the American GSP. The total potential gains in Third World exports may be as large as $250 million. Some investigators have pointed out, however, that much greater gains have accrued to developing countries from a minor change in U .S. tariff law. If a developing country imports American materials, processes them at home and re-exports them to the United States, duty is now levied by the U.S. Government only on the "value added" and not on the entire value of U.S. imports. [t has been estimated that this relatively minor change in U.S. tariff laws has benefited Third World cou11tries 10 times as much as the U.S. GSP.

World export earnings- about 10 times the estimated effect of the GSPs. If the Tokyo Round succeeds in dismantling some of the non tariff barriers (along with the reduction of nominal tariffs), Third World gains would certainly be much larger. Nondiscriminatory tariff reductions do not suffer from many of the limitations of the GSP, and confer substantial advantages on developed and developing countries alike. As the level of nominal tariffs falls, however, nontariff trade barriers tend to get more complex and sophisticated-nullifying to a certain extent the potential gains from tariff reductions. Judging by current trends, I feel that unless developing countries take a more active part in the GATT negotiations and offer reciprocal concessions themselves, it may be difficult to move vigorously toward free trade in agricultural products, textiles, footwear, petroleum products and a number of other labor-intensive items in which they have a comparative advantage.

SPAN: It is said that the U.S. GSP SPAN: What is the scope for tariff concovers some 2,000 items which India could cessions on the part of developing counexport. Has any study been made of the tries? Is it substantial? amount to which Indian exports have SEN GUPTA: In many developing counbenefited from the U.S. GSP? Are there tries like India, some industries do not drawbacks that prevent Indian exporters operate efficiently simply because they enjoy a sheltered market. Again, some Third from taking advantage of this scheme?

SEN GUPTA: I am not aware of any World countries, including India, have detailed empirical study on this. The now been able to accumulate substantial country quota is not probably a restrictive foreign exchange reserves and can afford factor, for it is doubtful whether India has to liberalize imports a bit. We need not yet reached the quota limits in any of reduce our tariffs or quotas on sensitive these tines of export. Also, the mere fact items ; we ought to allow imports to the that there is a GSP does not mean that extent that they introduce greater effiIndia or any particular Third World ciency and lower costs through compecountry may be able to take full advantage tition. of it. This implies that when developing countries demand tariff concessions, they SPAN: Here is a speculative question . have to be sure about their capacity to India is one of the leaders of the Third export to large markets. Further, they have World, and the United States is the foreto compete with one another for the U.S. most of the developed countries. Do you market; no one country can take advan- think bilateral relations between India and tage of the GSP with regard to all the the United States will influence the prolines of production. This is an area on gress of the North-South multilateral which 1 think more empirical work sh~mld negotiations? be done. Export possibilities should be SEN GUPTA: l am sure it would. explored by India more thoroughly to Though one of the poorest countries maximize possible gains. in terms of per capita income, India has nevertheless been able to develop a large SPAN: How far have the Kennedy and more-or-less sophisticated industrial Round and the Tokyo Round improved sector. By virtue of this peculiarity, India may be in a position to bridge the gulf the exports of developing countries?

SEN GUPTA: It has been estimated- in between the developed and the developing terms of 1974 trade data- that the economies. India represents in a sense Kennedy Round of tariff reductions have both the strength and the weakness of the added about $ 1 billion per year to Third Third World. Any understanding that

may operate as a useful balance wheel in the complex mechanism of international economic relations. of negotiation between the donor governments and the aid-receiving countries.

Loans received from the World Bank (and in particular the IDA) are relatively soft, and there is less difficulty in servicing these debts. The IMF and the World Bank keep constant watch on the debtservicing capacity of the developing countries. Accommodation-cum-stabilization programs are often initiated by the IMF in countries which face serious debt-servicing problems. [n general, the debt-servicing problems of Third World countries should not be serious if aid flow continues, if the loans are properly used, if their terms of trade do not deteriorate and if industrial recession or protectionist policies do not cut down Third World exports to developed country markets.

So far as commercial banks are concerned, they are prepared to reschedule their debts. They aren't overeager to get their money back ; they want to keep it on loan as long as possible, provided they are sure that the debtor will be able to repay, with interest, sometime or other.

SPAN: Another issue in the North-South Sometimes these banks offer new loans, dialogue is that of debt relief. One estimate killing off the old ones: that's really a kind of the debts piled up by developing of rescheduling. countries ranges from $180 to $200 Loans to India have mainly been official, billion, and this is something that agitates because India hasn't had much access to them greatly. Now, what has been the commercial loans from the Euro-currency progress on the question of debt relief market. Rescheduling in periods of stress afforded by the developed to the develop- hasn' t been a serious problem. ing countries? And how serious is this Today there is no talk of developing problem to India? countries repudiating their debts. You SEN GUPTA : About 60 per cent of the can't really repudiate debts i.mless you Third World debts are official ; a.bout 40 shut yourself off from the international per cent would be private debts. The scene. It has been found that even if you official debts are again divided into two repudiate debts and cut yourself off from parts-bilateral aid secured directly from the international mainstream, sometime donor governments, and multilateral aid or other you will want to rejoin it and you received from international organiza- will have to repay your debts at that time. tions like the World Bank and the There is no question of unilateral debt IDA. Most of India's debts represent repudiation by the developing countries. bilateral official aid rather than multi- What disturbs many of them is that new lateral aid or private loans from European debts they incur merely service old debts. or American commercial banks. Such This perhaps means either that the old bilateral aid has been mostly for specific debts should have been on softer terms, or projects, their use being supervised by that they were not properly utilized. D isileither the donor governments or the lusionment with official aid stems partly World Bank acting on their behalf. Some from the fact that it hasn't really helped the of these official loans were rather harddeveloping countries to grow as fast as despite the concessional element in them- they should have- despite the careful and should have been granted on softer scrutiny of such loans and their uses by terms in the first place. Some donor gov- donor countries and agencies. Perhaps ernments have agreed to reschedule or the aid relieved certain pressures on the cancel a part of their loans to the Third economy and thereby encouraged governWorld- including India. If aid fiow stops, ments to put off difficult but essential more debt rescheduling or debt cancella - reforms. Substantial food aid may have tion may follow. U ltimately this is a matter deferred land reforms and scientific farm-

India reaches with the United States will probably lead to closer cooperation between the two camps. Indians and Americans have a lot of good will for each other and the possibilities of greater economic and cultural cooperation between them are bright. T he impact of such clost:r ties cannot but be beneficial for the North-South dialogue. Of course, India and other Third World members- the Latin American countries, for exampledo not face identical problems. The prices of primary commodities is an issue that concerns the Latin Americans much more than it concerns India. Instruments of economic policy in India are plan-oriented rather than commercially oriented. while many Third World countries are more integrated than we are with the Western market economy by way of trade and investment. Despite the divergence of interests and conditions among Third World countries, Indo-U.S. bilateral relations may operate as a useful balance wheel in the complex mechanism of international economic relations today.

ing in India. Necessary internal adjustments may not be carried out because concessional aid has been o btained on somewhat easy terms.

SPAN: Developing countries want more aid, and on more generous terms than in the past. Is this true also o f India'?

SEN GUPTA : lthink i ndia'sattitudeon aid has changed in recent years. Ind ia probably would not attach much emphasis to foreign aid now. But it would like the SDRs- the special drawing rights of the lnternational Monetary Fund-to be linked with multilateral aid. That kind of aid does not really hurt anyone. It does not come out of the pockets of taxpayers of developed countries. Developing countries have been demanding that the first use of this new international money be given to the developing countries, because they need it much more than the industrialized countries to whom most of the SDRs have been allocated . Professor Robert Triffin of the Yale University recently deplored the fact that only about 3 per cent of the SD Rs created during 1971-74 have gone to the developing countries.

SPAN: A view often expressed by economists from the United States and Europe is tha¡t what develo ping¡ countries expect from the New International Economic Order should be effected by internal economic transformation rather t.han by transfers from the rich to the poor. How much substance is there in this argument ?

SEN GUPTA : You mean that the developing countries should do more for themselves either unilaterally or in cooperation with one another than simply demand concessions from the developed countries? I think this argument is quite valid. What is needed first and foremost in many of the developing countries is a New Domestic Economic Order. Person0 ally, I have no doubt on this point.

About the Interviewee : A .K. Sen Gupta is a Reader of Economics at Calcutta University He studied at Harvard Graduate School during 1954-56 and later worked with the research department oft he International Monetary Fund. He has specialized in international economics and economic history and written on these and other subjecTs for economic journals in India and abroad.

RECONSIDERATIONS

Edward Bellamy's Blueprint for Utopia

by KRISHNA CHAITANYA

An Indian scholar takes a fresh look at a book that in 1935 was rated as one of the most in-

fluential works of the preceding half century, but is in oblivion now. 'We owe it to ourselves,' he notes, 'to read the book, for its basic inspiration has a message relevant for today.'

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In 1935, when the philosopher John Dewey, the historian Charles Beard, and Edward Weeks (editor of the Atlantic Monthly) were invited by Columbia University to list the 25 books of the preceding half century which they though t had most influenced thought and action, Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward (1888) was second in all three lists. From this high rating, the book has fallen into near oblivion today. T he weaknesses of Bellamy's blueprint for utopia account for this general amnesia. But we owe it to ourselves, and not only to Bellamy, to read the book, for its basic inspiration has a message relevant for today. .

Edward Bellamy (1850-1899) was born in New England. He rejected the legal career for which he was trained, took to journalism, and in 1880 started his own paper, the Penny News, which shortly afterward became the Springfield Daily News. Bellamy's fictional writing is didactic and allegoric, the plot being sugar coating for the message. He himself frankly admitted this; and he follows the same method in his utopian fantasy . But while the classical utopia has no strict locale in space and time, and is discovered or chanced upon rather than created, Bellamy has a definite space-time frame.

In the story, J ulian West, an idle-rich young citizen of Boston, goes into a trance in 1887, travels forward in time to the year 2000, by which date a utopia is already established in America. His host, Dr. Leete, gives him a long account of how this transformation was effected .

Converted and inspired, Julian West returns to the Boston of 1887 to begin the work of national regeneration in the light of the principles and arrangements conceived as already realized in the fantasy.

There are some striking affinities in personal background and maturation of ideas between Bellamy and Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche. Nietzsche, son of a religious minister and a Puritan mother, revolted against Christianity. Rejected for active service in the army, he had an adolescent's admiration for its outward magnificence; in fact, he recorded that his enlightenment about the Will to Life and Will to Power occurred when he came upon a troop of cavalry passing with clatter and display through Frankfurt. Nietzsche also worshipped Bismarck, who imposed an iron will on the social and political scene to achieve order.

Similarly Bellamy was the son of a Baptist minister and had a strong heritage of New England Calvinism. But he renounced formal Christianity in favor of a "religion of

humanity." He was rejected at West Point because of tuberculosis. In his fiction An Echo of Antietam, which first appeared in 1889, there is an excited description of a column of soldiery sweeping past like a river in flood: The mind is slow to realize that this great dragon, so terrible in its beauty, emitting light as it moves from a thousand burnished scales, with flaming crest proudly waving in the van, is but an aggregation of men singly so feeble.

Transforming the anarchic crowd of the populace into a disciplined Industrial Army was Bellamy's basic prescription for achieving utopia. Preceptor Leete proudly tells Julian West that the utopian working force can best be compared to the "fighting machine" of the German army in the time of Von Moltke.

The impact of Bellamy's book seems incredible in retrospect. The first Bellamy Club was formed in 1888 to spread the gospel of the new nationalism. By 1890 there were some 500 nationalist clubs in the United States. But the movement suddenly collapsed in the economic crisis of 1893 and the depression that followed. So great was Bellamy's faith in the Industrial Army that he had pulled back the date of the achieved utopia from the original 3000 A.D. to 2000 A.D. , that is, within about a century of the release of the book, instead of a millennium. General disenchantment with the blueprint as a basis for political campaigning took only five years, though it continued to enjoy high academic prestige right up to the 1930s.

The main reason why Looking Backward met this fate was the totalitarianism that was definitely implicit in the social arrangements it proposed, in spite of its humanistic inspiration. In Bellamy's utopia, the entire populace is transfonned into an Industrial Army. He seems to have been bemused by Goethe's dream of a polity managed by Elders, and Plato's drea~-r: of philosopher-kings. His social order is severely patriarchal. An elite with a record of distinguished achievement manages the society. It is assumed that it is loo high-minded to dream of abusing its power. The rank and file, not yet risen to such heights, have no franchise. The hierarchical levels in the Industrial Army are identical with such levels in the civic administration of the state, for each officer of the Industrial Army is a civic official too. The ultimate social goal becomes production for plenty. Education tends to become mass training for industry. Government ceases to be deliberative and becomes purely managerial, for there is nothing left to make laws about. The populace is expected to become so devoted to the ideal of socially useful labor that only

,

Looking Backward zooo

BLUEPRI NT FOR UTOPIA continued

In Bellamy's rejection of communism, there is nothing of the ambiguity of his unconscious drift toward fascism. He totally rejected violent revolutions for reforming the social order.

14

managerial problems will remain, which the elite will easily solve.

The weaknesses of Bellamy's euphoric utopia become starkly clear in this summary. The assumption that there will not be, and should not be, pluralist thinking about the goals of social existence, as also their means, is totalitarian. Disenfranchisement of the rank and file of the population is even more so, because totalitarian polities maintain at least a facade of universal franchise. The enormously complicated problems of running an economy smoothly, matching demand and supply, avoiding cyclical depressions, have been casually ignored. Bellamy recognizes that reaching unanimity will take time; therefore he retains the system of incentives and saoctions which are the positive and negative conditioned reinforcements of B.F. Skinner's Walden, but not of Thoreau's. Since the state will disappear only when the conditioning is universal, the consummation is postponed to as indefinite a future as in the Marxist vision.

Though Bellamy's blueprint for utopia has to be rejected in its details, Looking Backward still deserves to be read afresh. For it can offer cues for us who have yet to solve the problems he confronted. In some areas we will discover that while his ends were humanist, the means he proposed were such that serious doubts would emerge about his humanism. But we shall discover that the complexity of the problem leads to such paradoxes even today. ln other areas, the genuineness of his idealism will emerge with no ambiguity whatever; he could not anticipate the problems that confront us today and that were gestating even in his time.

Bellamy sails dangerously near to fascism in his pivotal proposal regarding the elitist management of the state.

The Italian economist and sociologist Vilfredo Pareto (1848-1923) believed that people are always governed by an elite. Though elites go on changing, this indicates no steady change for the better. For it is merely a case of new groups, driven by ambition and closely studying the opportunity structure of politics (in the manner analyzed by" Arthur J. Schlesinger, Jr.), manipulating the masses in order to ascend to power and displace the old groups.

Pessimists would see in Pareto an inviolable, iron determinism; even optimists have to recognize that redemption in the light of Pareto's view involves a very difficult, though not impossible, moral regeneration of man, which has to be a moral self-generation. But, paradoxically, freedom has its determinants, or at least needs congenial ambiences; and tight regimentation and centralization of decision making are not congenial ambiences for the emancipation of the human spirit.

Bellamy believed in the self-transformation of the elite through the euphoria of social idealism. Such beliefs cannot be dismissed as obviously naive, for they continue to emerge._ln our own times, Daniel Bell, the Harvard sociologist, has advanced this analysis (The Coming of Post-Industrial Society, 1973). Bell argues that with the extreme complication of the economic situation, the postulates of Adam Smith's classical economics will break down completely, and no "invisible hand" will create

social harmony out of the pursuit of self-interest by individuals. We shall have to move on to a "communal ethic," choosing our goals through the political system rather than the free market. Only highly trained persons would be competent to take decisions on "alternative futures" - decisions that can be worked out by computer simulations. "The norms of the new intelligentsia, the norms of professionalism, are a departure from the norms of economic self-interest which guided a business civilization," Bell writes. While there is no salvation for society if the elites do not manage a moral self-regeneration, salvation is more likely in an ambience where there is extensive decentralization of decision making. The essential morphology of fascism will linger under facades, alike in Bellamy's utopia and Bell's projection, because of the tight regimentation, though the intention of both authors can be conceded to be the exact opposite.

A passing reference to the ideas sketched by Mahatma Gandhi a few days before his death and further developed

by Jayaprakash Narayan is relevant. For Gandhi and Narayan too, the elite is a moral elite, like Bellamy's.

But the Gandhi-Narayan elite devotes itself to educating the masses in thinking correctly and using the political process for sober decisions and sane development. That is, the elite does not claim that it has attained the ultimate truth; it accepts pluralism and provisionality, and leaves decisions to emerge from the deliberations of the community; and it withdraws itself from the power system.

In the Dewey-Beard-Weeks rating of 1935, the work which got precedence over Bellamy's as the most influential was Marx's Capital. But in Bellamy's rejection of communism, there is nothing of the ambiguity of his unconscious drift toward positions of fascist taint. He totally rejected violent revolutions as means for reforming the social order. In his Duke of Stockbridge, Bellamy says: "As a fever awakes to virulent activity the germs of disease in the body, so revolution in the political system develops the latent elements of anarchy." In visualizing a regime where social good, and not selfish advantage, was the motivation of man's productive activity, he had implicitly rejected Adam Smith's reading of man and model of capitalism which placed each individual in an adversary role against his brethren. He noted that communism, while claiming to reject this type of capitalism, had accepted its basic philosophy, regarding adversary confrontations of classes as inevitable, and claiming human thought to be incapable of emancipation from its class origin and bias .

Hubbard, the forerunner of the modern labor agitator in the Duke of Stockbridge, summarizes this philosophy which Bellamy cannot accept. Hubbard tells the workers: "It's all in a nutshell. If we don't give them the devil. they'll give us the devil. Take your choice." While Bellamy's sympathy for the working class was undeniable, he warned against confusing true social progress with its sectarian gain.

Here Bellamy anticipates the analysis of Erich Fromm, who has pointed out that instead of transcending capitalism, socialism has been absorbed by its spirit. In Fromm 's words, 'The humanistic aims of socialism were forgotten,

when it has become dangerously late. With ecological thinking even for the national region thus missing, we cannot seek in Bellamy the world perspective of Buckminster Fuller, who wants an utopian planning of the whole earth for the benefit of the whole of mankind on the basis of a world inventory of resources and their equitable sharing. . .

But Bellamy's basic message redeems the defic1encJes of his details, transcends the steady drift toward the "diminishment of man" (to use a pregnant idiom of Archibald MacLeish) and is forward-looking. The diminishment of man has been the work of scientism, which is to be distinguished from science. The scientistic concepts of matter as inert, of organisms as reflex marionettes, of human beings as motor mechanisms driven to activity only by self-interest, have destroyed the primacy of the person as the architect of personal and historical destiny. An integral and systematic reconstruction can expose th~e fateful fallacies. But there is a time lag in the integratton of a new outlook from fresh cues, and even today the old, dismal reading of man persists. When Bellamy called for a revolution "more radical than if it had been political," he was seeking to restore the primacy of the person.

As Reinhold Niebuhr has shown, for redemption of Edward Bellamy personal life and history, the self has to stand apart from itself, evaluate its involvements, motives and actions. or only paid lip service to, while, as in capitalism, all the The Mundaka Upanishad has a great image, expressing emphasis was laid on the aims of economic gain" - and the same perception. Two birds, "known by the same of the working class only. Bellamy rejected the Marxist name," are on a tree; one lives a self-centered life in the rejection of ethical motivations as bourgeois illusions; pursuit of happiness; it tries the berries, rejoicing in the he rejected Marxist historical determinism; he was a sweetness of some, chagrined by the bitterness of others; humanist seeking synergy. the other is serene. The first bird too attains its serenity In sketching a utopia for the year 2000, Bellamy was when it looks up, sees the other, and finally sees itself as doing an exercise in futurology. But he does not seem to identical with it. have succeeded in anticipating the problems we are facing 1 find that the best annotation of this Upanishadic in our own futurological thinking with only 20 years left parable is the independent meditation of Bellamy in his for his deadline. Mankind has now reached a predicament Religion of Solidarity. written when he was only 24. He~e where the problems of progress, and of fulfilling the he speaks of what at first seems like a second soul, ~ut IS historical destiny of the human race, have to be postponed really the infinite part of our being. When we expenence till after the problems of survival have been solved. This the identity 7 "the individuality becomes objective to the is because man stands in real danger of annihilation in the universal soul, that eternal subjective." If Bellamy started crater of a nuclear bomb, or of being starved to death due like Nietzsche, here be moves far beyond the latter's to the depletion of the life support resources of the planet. terminal for he discovers a road to Superman through Perhaps one cannot blame Bellamy for not having Calvary' which Nietzsche missed. " Unselfishness is but anticipated the development whereby weapons would the sacrifice of the lower self to the higher self." Elsewhere become so appallingly destructive that over a hundred he says: "The only prayer that is never unanswered is the million people would be destroyed within a matter of hours prayer to be lifted above self." Man has to be the ~eeper of after the outbreak of a nuclear war. But wars have splattered his brother; there is a moving passage where Juhan West with blood page after page of the book of history, and the realizes the guilt of his neglect of his fellowmen: " I found scale of destruction has been steadily increasing. The reaupon my garments the blood of this great multitude of my son why Bellamy forgot this basic problem is that his is a brothers. Every stone of the reeking pavement found tongue closed system thinking. In proposing utopia for one nation, and called after me as I fled, What hast thou done with thy and not for mankind, he forgot or ignored the problems brother Abel?" of friction, coexistence and cooperatim. between nations.

The recovery of this identification of each man with Even as regards the national economy, t'1ere is no sense humanity is the primary guarantee of possible redemption; of the small being beautiful; consumeris.n is assumed: without it all blueprints will fail; if it is achieved, all the there is an endless supply of goods in tis utopia. To argue errors of past planning can be corrected.

0 that he lived and died long before the time when ecological thinking would begin to dominate an anxious world is no About the Author: Krishna Chai1anya, who was recently awarded the alibi. George Perkins Marsh's Man and Nature had appearJawaharlal Nehru Fellowship, has published a nine-volume history ed in 1864 and there is no ecological perception of today of world literature, several books on Indian cui/tire, and four volumes o( a five-volume 1rork on freedom-Physics and Chemistry of that is not anticipated there. John Wesley Powell's proposFreedom. Biology of Freedom. Psychology of Freedom and Sociolals for the arid regions of the American West had appeared ogy of Freedom. He is a frequent contributor to SPAN. in 1877; the unheeded suggestions are being recalled now

IS

t

CITRUS INDUSTRY

A happy blend of nature's bounty and modern technology is the key to a spectacular growth of the citrus industry in the United States.

The luscious orange, whose beginnings are lost in antiquity (some say it was the golden apple of Greek mythology), is the most popular fruit of all in the United States. A spokesman for the Florida Citrus Commission says that half of all Americans drink orange juice at least once a month, and almost a third of them drink it daily. Thanks to nature's bounty and modem technology, the country produces about one-third of the total world supply of citrus. The 1976-77 yield totaled more than 240 million 41-kilogram boxes of citrus and another 70 million boxes of grapefruit-enough to provide 45 kilograms of fruit fqr each man, woman and child in the United States.

So large a consumption of orange juice is a comparatively recent phenomenon. Until about 50 years ago, citrus growing in the United States was primarily a local business, with a relatively small number of growers in California and Florida producing a total of about 25 million boxes a year. The perishability of oranges restricted geographical distribution.

In 1946, however, carne the biggest breakthrough of all: the successful production of orange juice "concentrate."

Basically, this process involves extracting virtually all water from the juice with high-vacuum concentrators, and quickfreezing the remaining essences for packaging and marketing in frozen form. At home, the buyer simply mixes three parts of water to one part of concentrate, and he has a pitcher of delicious orange juice.

Although citrus is grown in California, Texas and Arizona, the heart of the U.S. orange industry is Florida, the Southeastern peninsula state whose sunny days, cool nights and rich soil make it the world's most productive spot for citrus. Twothirds of all U.S. production comes from Florida; the state produced some 180 million boxes of oranges during the 1976-77 ¡ Left: At Tropicana Products, sample boules are inspected for quality every 30 minutes at the production lines. The _u.S. Department of Agriculture conducts its own quality checks at the plant.

Inset: A Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services scientist looks for signs of viral disease in the tip of a sprout from a healthy tree that has been grafted to a test-tube citrus seedling.

season, and lost an additional 50 million boxes during a crippling three-day freeze in January 1977. Florida's orange groves today cover more than 195,000 hectares, with 30 million fruitbearing trees, some 100 or more years old, and another 23 million young trees that will yield fruit when they are five to seven years old.

Besides an ideal climate and knowledgeable growers, the most important ingredient for the success of the citrus industry in the United States is the application of science and technology, symbolized by Tropicana Products dfFlorida-one of the biggest and most successful citrus-processing companies in the country.

Although the bulk of any year's citrus harvest is sold as frozen concentrated juice, very little of Tropicana's is. The multimillion-dollar company is convinced that there is no substitute for freshly squeezed orange juice. . At Tropicana, operations, which are fully mechanized and automatic, begin when oranges arrive from the groves in 15-meter open gondola trailers pulled by tractor trucks. The rigs drive up a ramp, sometimes four abreast, tilt backward, release their rear gates and spill oranges into hoppers. The fruit rolls into washing troughs where stiff brushes scrub the skins clean and jet,sprays wash them thoroughly. Elevators then carry the oranges up four stories and tumble them onto metal rollers to be sorted for size and quality. Next they cascade at the rate of 700 a minute down hoppers to the juice extractors, which instantly slice each orange in half and move the halves into centrifugal rubber squeezers that press out juice without damaging the skin.

The juice then falls into one of 17 underground pipelinescapable of transporting 3,800,000 liters of juice per day-to tanks below, where it is chilled instantly to preserve the fruit's fresh flavor. Between the squeezing and bottling, juice is frozen into huge slabs and stored in massive warehouses at temperatures of minus 31 degrees Celsius. To bottle the juice, the slabs are thawed and blended to ensure uniform sweetness and flavor. Tropicana has facilities to store approximately 150 million liters of orange juice, which is sold in Canada, 15 European countries and the West Indies, besides the United States.

No part of the orange at Tropicana is wasted. After the oranges are squeezed, the leftover pulp, seeds and rind are whisked into huge 27-meter evaporators that remove liquids and cook the remainder. Because of the pulp's excellent milkgenerating qualities, the remainder is converted into feed for dairy cattle and other livestock.

PHOTOGRAPHS BY LYNN PELHAM

SPAN JANUARY 1979

PBIIIDLY CITY

by BARBARA KJNDNESS

The author describes her family's happy move from Washington, D.C., to Seattle, a 'city where time doesn't stand still for anyone, but somehow seems to move more slowly.'

to

I am sitting comfortably in a lounge chair on the deck of my home near Seattle, Washington, with brilliant sunshine and clean, clear air all about me. Before me are giant evergreen trees and beyond, to the west, the snow-capped Olympic Mountains, jutting out above distant, low-lying clouds. Puget Sound lies between the mountains and the nearby trees, and a ferry glides effortlessly across the blue water of the Sound toward Kingston, on Kitsap Peninsula. Time doesn't stand still for anyone- not even here-but somehow it seems to move more slowly in this beautiful region known as the Pacific Northwest.

Seattle hasn't always been my home. My husband Gary, daughter Karin, Pepiour miniature poodle- and I moved here ¡ from Arlington, Virginia, in June 1973, but the freshness of our first impressions lingers on, while the memories of our frenzied past on the East Coast grow ever dimmer.

But Jet me begin at the beginning. Why would we puJI up stakes-leave a good job, a lovely home and familiar surroundings- and travel almost 4,800 kilometers to a section ofthecountrywehardly knew?

Well, it was not exactly a spur-of-themoment decision, but even so it was made with no little apprehension. For much more than the distance involved was the completely different environment and lifestyle that we would experience there. Dave, a friend of ours who already lived in Seattle, had launched a one-man campaign to convince us that life was just plain more enjoyable out there. He would call us occasionally from his office in downtown Seattle and describe the panoramic view of mountains and water from his window, while casually mentioning that he had been salmon fishing that morning before work and was going skiing under floodlights that evening after dinner. On weekends, he would go camping in the mountains.

We had to admit it did sound inviting.

Living near Washington, D.C., had been exciting for a time, especially during our single years when weekend trips to the beach, dancing at discotheques and going to movies had filled our leisure hours. But in recent years, we found it lacking in the variety of family-oriented activities we wanted.

The first thing we did was to set down on paper a list of the pros and cons of moving. What would the advantages and disadvantages be: socially, financially, and with respect to work, climate and recreational activities?

I had recently resigned my job as an editor in order to give birth to our baby daughter, so we had only to consider Gary's profession. For him, it would mean leaving a law partnership that had grown over the years- both in professional respect and personal regard. It also would mean "starting at the bottom of the ladder" again, as he would be the newest member of a prestigious, seven-man firm.

But, on the other hand, he would start at the same salary he was making in Arlington, and the professional opportunities seemed almost limitless.

Socially speaking, the disadvantages of moving west far outweighed the advantages-or so it seemed at the time. For we had many dear friends on the East Coast whom we would miss.

As for the difference in cost of living, we learned that consumer commodities were about the same in Seattle as in the Washington, D.C., area. But as for real estate, we heard that one got far more living space for one's money in Seattle than in Arlington.

The climate? Well, we would miss the distinct change of seasons of the East Coast, but would not have to suffer through its bitter-cold winters or searinghot summers. Seattle's average temperature in the summer is 17° C. In winter,

temperatures below zero are not unusual in the east, whereas it seldom gets below 5.5° C in Seattle and snowfalls are few and far between. Now, rain is something else again. The Pacific Northwest is extremely wet, which accounts for the lushness of its vegetation. But, surprisingly, total annual precipitation is less than that of Washington, D.C. It's j ust that there it rains buckets at a time during a few short months; in Seattle it drizzles practically all year long!

As for recreational activities, the Pacific Northwest again had the greatest number of pluses, not only in variety but proximity.

Our family's favorite pastimes are skiing and sailing. For the former, it was necessary to drive from our home in Virginia for two-and-a-half to three hours to the state of Pennsylvania in order to find the challenging slopes we sought. To go sailing on Chesapeake Bay was nearly as far. We knew that there were several ski areas within an hour's drive of Seattle, and pleasure boats on Lake . Washington and Puget SouJld were as common a sight as tourists streaming in and out of the White House in Washington, D .C. What's more, mountain climbing, back-packing, fishing, scuba diving and hunting- for everything from duck to elk-all were within a short drive of Seattle. And this brings me to our last, but perhaps most im-portant consideration in movingwhere best to raise a family? We realized that with all the outdoor activities available practically at our doorstep, the Pacific Northwest would be a healthier atmosphere in which to bring up our children.

So, after a few weeks of mulling it over, we decided to make the move. We contacted a realtor in the Seattle area and told Alighting from one o_( the buses which is part of Seat tie's free mass 1ranspor 1, a young residen 1 projects 1he mood ofihe city: vital energy.

SEATILE cominued

him what features we wanted in a home, among them four bedrooms and a fencedin yard for Pepi. In March, Gary went to Seattle and spent the next four days looking at some 25 or 30 homes for sale. 1 talked with him on the phone daily and he gave me a rundown on the houses he had seen and liked. We were delighted when we discovered that the home we liked best out west, located in Edmonds, just north of Seattle, cost only$ 550 more than what we had sold our home for in Arlington and yet was three times its size.

We had decided to combine our auto trip westward with a three-week vacation in Wisconsin to visit Gary's parents, so this meant leaving the baby and dog there for a couple of days while we flew out to Seattle to meet the movers, who had already taken our household effects there.

I was finally going to see my new home !

Arriving in Seattle by air was a thrilling experience, especially the spectacular sight of towering Mount Rainier, third highest peak in the United States. Even the airport was impressive- one of the most modern io the world. We were whisked from the area where our plane had landed via a sleek subway- computerized, driverless, smooth and comfortable-to the main terminal. There we rented a car and followed Interstate 5 north to Edmonds. Our two-day stay was jammed full of activity as we carefully checked ofr each item as it was deposited in the house; opened bank accounts; purchased a new refrigerator and clothes dryer; and called the various utility companies (telephone, water, electricity and gas) to arrange for service once we moved in. We were also able to sample Puget Sound's famed salmon when two of Gary's future law associates took us out to dinner.

We flew back to Wisconsin and two I. The .famed Monorail symho/i:es Seattle's imto1â&#x20AC;˘arive approach ro mass rransir which has helped reduce t111to traffic and air pollution.

2. A night-rime 1â&#x20AC;˘iew o.f some o.f rile new buildings that have come up in rhe past 10 years. In the foreground is the Space Needlea 185-meter toll'er topped ll'ith a rei'Oiving restaurant-that \\'OS built ro symbolize the 1962 World's Fair. 3 & 4. A jet plane and a fleet o.f 747s (below) being readied for delivery50 per cenr o.f the world's commercial jer liners are made in Sea((le. 5. A bom parade celebrates rhe opening oft he lasr leg of a ship channel that allows deep-water vessels ro go from Puget Sound ro Lake W(lsftingron. Sealfle lies between the two. 6. Seaflle's waterfront is doued with sailboats and houseboats. 1. A mother and daughter relax 011 the deck of their houseboat. 8. A primary school class reflects the city's racial a11d etlt11ic dil'ersiry.

weeks later began the long drive westward. This turned out to be an adventure in itself as we were able to visit places we had heard and read so much about: the Badlands National Monument in South DakotH, where giant reptiles roamed in prehistoric days and wind and water had carved strange rock formations for centuric ; the beautiful Black Hills, where the heads of four American Presidents arc carved in the sheer granite face of 2,011-meter Mount Rushmore ; and, of course, the Chief Crazy H orse Memorial, ongoing project of Korczak Ziolkowski.

It was snowing when we reached Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming and, yes, the panhandling bears were much in evidence, as were elk, deer, antelope and bison. The wide open spaces of Wyoming and Idaho- with an occasional herd of buffalo grazing in the distance- made the imagination roam to an earlier time in U.S. history.

We drove only seven hours a day, so it took about seven days to reach SeatLie. To eyes accustomed only to the monotony of plains or urban concrete, the Pacific Northwest is an awesomely beautiful place. This time, we approached the city from the east, crossing the picturesque Columbia River, the Cascades mountain range and, just outside the city, the floating bridge with pontooulike moorings from Mercer Island.

Even in downtown Seattle, the feeling of openness and isolation prevails. Yet this sense of remoteness belies a good natured charm. For Seattle is indeed a friendly place. I had sensed that earlier when I talked on long-distance telephone with a relocation counselor from the real-estate company which sold us our house. She had asked what our interests were, and within a few days we received a packet of information for the newcomer.

There was a checklist for moving; a summary of the various taxes imposed on residents of Washington State; numerous brochures on Seattle's cuJtural attractions. including the Seattle Center, which features music, opera, theater, and several art galleries and museums, surrounding ski areas, recreational boating facilities; even a grocery ad from the local newspaper, so we could compare prices.

When we had been settled less than a week, l received a visit from a volunteer in Welcome Wagon, an organization sponsored by local merchants. She brought a basketful of information about our new community and gifts, including a pound of coffee from a nearby market.

Two days later, a neighbor down the street invited me and my six-month-old

2

24

daughter to her home for a coffee gettogether to meet some of the other neighbors.

It's not just the neighbors who are friendJy in the Seattle area. One of the city's leading citizens, William Speidel, is a proud native son who spends practically every waking moment expressing his affection for the "Queen City," either orally or in print. His daily Underground Tours, conducted in Pioneer Square, where the city was born, provide entertaining commentary on Seattle's early history.

Many of the streets are named after founding fathers. On the tour, one learns that Yesler Way was named after Henry Yesler, " Economic Father," who established the first sawmill in 1853 ; and Mercer Street after Asa Mercer, 22year-old pioneer educator at the University of Washington, who decided in 1864 to do something about the lack of

marriageable young women for the loggers: he passed the hat to cover expenses and traveled east to Lowell, Massachusetts, where he found 11 young ladies willing to accompany him to Seattle.

The trip was an unqualified success, as all the girls except one, who died en route, were whisked into holy wedlock in no time at all. Here, too, tourgoers learn that a fire destroyed most of Seattle in 1889, and the city planners decided that the streets of the new, rebuilt Seattle should be 3 meters higher. Thus, the waterfront area became the foundati0n of the new construction.

Speidel's colorful weekly, Sea/tie Guide, welcomes tourists with glowing descriptions of everything from where to find the best seafood to all the nooks and crannies along Seattle's renowned waterfront. A section on what-every-visitorshould-know includes the fact that inter-

national arrivals at Sea-Tac Airport (Seattle-Tacoma International Airport) are greeted in their native tongue by students from nearby colleges and universities working as multilingual port receptionists. They assist with entry formalities, escort visitors to continuing flights, and generally smooth the way for foreign travelers. A list of " halfemergency" phone numbers aids the transient whether be wants to know the correct time or where to go in case of a bad toothache.

For people who want an instant glance at Seattle's history, Speidel's Seattle Guide offers such tidbits as bow Seattle got its name: from Chief Noah Sealth, an American Indian friendly to whites, who nevertheless took them for a bundle of money. " It was Chief Sealth's contention," writes Speidel, " that he would roll over in his grave everytime his name

was mentioned after his death and he should be paid in advance for this inconvenience. The chief may be spinning through eternity, but there's a smile on his lips. The settlers paid him an aggregate of about $16,000 for the use of his name."

Speidel also describes a mischievous "Seattle-spirit" that is a combination of playfulness and practicality, which originated when "one of the founders gave somebody else's land to the first new arrival!"

It is citizens such as Bill Speidel who whet the appetite of newcomers like us.

One can hardly wait to go exploring, especially along the waterfront. One of my favorite spots is Ye Olde Curiosity Shop, a waterfront landmark since 1899.

Indian-made totem poles ranging in height from 5 centimeters to 9 meters, handcarved elephant and wa lrus ivory, a

30-kilogram snail, a 3-meter rattlesnake skin, and thousands of curios from all over the globe, are among the fascinating contents of this unique shop.

Our leisure-time activities in Washington, D.C., were usually confined to theatergoing and visiting the city's monuments and museums. Since moving to Seattle, we have met people who have lived here for years and gone somewhere new just about every weekend and still have not exhausted the .seemingly endless supply of things to see and do.

Even riding the ferry is an exciting adventure. To commuters, of course, it is a daily means of transportationfrom nearby Bainbridge and Vashon Islands to Seattle- but even they find it a source of continued enjoyment. As Bill Speidel notes in his Seattle Guide , some fly kites from the stern; others play bridge.

But, he warns, if you're driving on boa rd,

Above : As dusk falls , Seattle's placid Lake Union reflects the light of downtown buildings.

remember the speed limit on a ferry is eight kilometers an hour and has been ever since an unfortunate couple drove on one end and right off the other I If you're a tourist though, unless you're biking up Mount Rainier or dining atop the towering Space Needle, whose restaurant revolves 360° every hour, you're not likely to savor the rich scenic splendors of Puget Sound Country more easily than from the swift and modern Washington State Ferries.

One of the most delightful ferry rides is the one carrying passengers into the heart of the enchanted San Juan Islands, about 130 kilometers north of Seattle.

The ferry cruises among jewel-like islands in winding channels, past inviting coves and bays and hidden little beaches. Stops

2

ATILE COillillllt!d

are made at the four largest islands, each with its own particular charm.

As one enjoys the natural beauty of the Pacific Northwest, the inevitable q uestions arise: Can it last? What is man doing to preserve the quality of the environment'? Seattle served as a glowing example several years ago when she showed the rest of the nation that large cities can, if they want to, achieve whatever goals they set for themselves. For years, Lake Washington had been a glistening playground for swimmers, boating enthusiasts, water skiers and fishermen. The lake, which extends 2.4 kilometers wide and more than 6.4 kilometers long to the east of the city, was also a dumping place for raw sewage from the surround ing communities. In the late forties and early fifties, the emergence of The Boeing Company as the leader in production of jet aircraft created a population explosion in the Seattle metropolitan area. Existing communities burgeoned, and new ones sprouted around Lake Washington. The sewage problem got out of hand. us did the ecological balance of the lake. In the interest of public health, the City Council, under the direction of J<unes Ellis, had ''No Swimming" signs posted along the beaches while it set to work on the monumental job of cleaning up the lake. The citizens were asked to respond to the crisis by authorizing $ 145 million worth of revenue bonds, which they did. Extensive treatm'ent plants were then established at key locations. Over the next decade, Lake Washington gradually became cleaner and at the end of the 1960s was completely cleansed of sewage, making it possible to swim safely anywhere in the lake.

This giant feat coming at a time when the whole nation was awakening to the problems of pollution- brought wide prominence to Seattle. But Ellis and his council didn't rest on their laurels. They set up a committee of bankers, labor leaders, housewives, businessmen and architects who would establish priorities of local government spending over the next 12 years. Their recommendations for civic improvement called Forward Thrust were presented for approval to the voters at an election in February 1968 and 7 out of the II proposals passed. Forward Thrust has now been extended to 1982. As of autumn 1978, its record is certainly impressive. Fifty-eight thousand trees and shrubs have been planted along new and improved streets. For children there is a new zoo, an aquarium with an underwater room for visitors, and 10 new parks and playgrounds. Sports facili ties

are another major field of expansiona 65,000-seat domed stadium opened in March 1976. The city has many more tennis courts, indoor swimming pools and a youth service center; 30,480 meters of beach along rivers, lakes and Puget Sound were purchased for public use and for hiking and biking.

Another major achievement is the separation of the sewers to protect Lake Washington and other clean waters from sewage overflows.

One thing common to both Washington, D .C., and Seattle is their international fl avor, though it is manifested in different ways. Aside from being the ho me of foreign embassies, the nation 's capital is a natural stopping-off place for any visitor to the United States. Seattle, on the other hand, is a world-renowned port, and ships flying many different flags frequent her docks.

Though the sense of history is strong both here and in the District of Columbia, Seattle's past is barely 120 years old.

Rapid growth followed the 1897 Alaska gold rush, for which the city served as jumping-off point. And yet today, even with its 530,000 inhabitants, one can consider Seattle a modem frontier.

There is still the feeling that this is a ¡'land of opportunity"- that the city is growing and her citizens can grow with her.

We still miss our friends back east, and we even subscribe to the Sunday edition of The Washington Post to keep abreast of the local news in the capital.

But we feel we did the right thing by moving west, and continue to thank Dave for opening up a whole new world for us. Here, we appreciate a more harmonious balance between man and nature. But above all, people out here take more time to be kind, helpful and friendly. That was one of the nicest discoveries we made about our new homethe icing on a very delectable cake.

0 1. America's third highest peak , tire 4.400meter Moulll Rainier, a glacier-capped I'Oicano. dominates Seattle's landscape. 2. Two of the thousatuls of Seattleites who live on their boars all the year round, giving Seattle the name Floating City. 3. The Olympic National Forest is the narion's wettest, situated as it is in a city where it always rains, or at least dri::zles. 4. A grinning yachtsman toasts tire end of another race on Puger Sound. Tire Sound gives the city's 200,000 boat owners unlimited recreational opportunities. 5. A professional foorballteam in action at the domed sradium, where games C(ln be played even in rainy weather. Sports-minded Seattle has professional basketball, tenn[s. baseball and soccer teams, as ll'ell. 6. Typical of Seattle is this tree-shaded residential district.

In the light of the dramatic see what can be done. She market. Mohammed Siddique acceleration with which change works out some variations on Khatri now employs and trains is taking place in India and the the traditional designs; even- many other printers.

Vasna, a village on the seriousness of the basic problems tually, these are not required, involved, we recommend that and it is the traditional designs outskirts of Ahmedabad, is without delay there be a sober which are made popular by the where a community that used to investigation into those values and marketing effort. But, according live in slums on the riverbed those qualities that Indians hold to Mr. Bhassin, director of and got flooded out was important to a good life ... 1rith GHHDC, Madhurima acted as resettled. The problem was to a restudy of the problems of a catalyst. Today, the number find some employment for the enl'ironment and shelter, to look of families engaged in namdah displaced women. Chandra upon the detailed problems of making has grown from one to Razdan (now Bhattacharya), a student of NID doing her services and objects as though forty.

The GHHDC director quotes diploma project, was asked to they were being attacked for the first time; to restate solutions another instance of interaction find a solution. She decided to to these problems in theory and in with NlD. In the village of introduce the craft of making actual prototype; to explore the Dhamadka, an effort was colorful patchwork out of rags, evolving symbols of India . ... made to extend the market for traditional in Kutch and SauOne suspects that much ben,ejit traditional Dhamadka prints. rashtra. "Every woman:' says would be gained from starting Sulekha Goolrey, a senior Aditi Shirali of NID's textile this search at the small village NID student in textiles, took up faculty, speaking in one of the the project. Working with one gentlest voices one has ever le1•el.

- From th< opcn•rt~ ~tion of printer, Mohammed Siddique heard, ''knows how to stitch the Eames Report.

Khatri, she was able to re- something torn. So Chandra introduce the use of traditional reasoned that a craft like patchlt was in 1958 that Charles vegetable dyes and the produc- work could be taught to the and Ray Eames, invited by the tion of material by the yard for community. A Muslim woman, Government of India, made use as saris, bedspreads and Roshan, came forward to learn their report on design develop- garments, for which GHHDC it and in tum taught it to a ment, leading to the foundation found a ready urban and export group. As they had no previous of the National Institute of Design in Ahmedabad in 1961.

For the two decades since then, the definition of the task of-NID has been emerging, alongside the physical products of a developing philosophy of design.

The perception that began with a great designer's vision remains an ongoing process, helped by Eames himself who, with his wife and cothinkerworker Ray, continually revisited the institute until his death TEXT BY CHIDANA NDA DAS GUPTA late last year.

DESIGNING FOR

TODAY

* * *

1976. The village of Gagodar in Kutch. A bleak part of northem Gujarat. People have kept the hostile land tamed somehow, and wrested a living out of it for generations. One of the traditional crafts is making the namdah, a kind of ·decorative felt carpet. But the demand for the product has been steadily falling; the number of families engaged in the craft has dwindled to one.

Trying to find a way to save the tradition and create employment, the Gujarat State Handicraft and Handloom Development Corporation (GHHDC) sends Madhurima Patni, citybred faculty member of NID, to

PHOTOGRAPHS BY AVINASH PASRICHA

skill in this work, Chandra gave them simple geometrical patterns to do; but the patterns are such that in following them, they learnt how to use colors."

The colorful cushion covers which resulted have found a ready urban and export market.

As the women sit there against the wall stitching the patches, the mass of blazing colors spread before them makes a strange contrast to the drabness of their lives. Children play in the verandah of the community center, while mothers labor at a new trade to make that extra rupee.

* * *

There was a time when crafts produced beautiful things for the villagers themselves. Today, the things tend to go more and more to the city, or abroad; the villagers themselves are drawn to synthetics, glossy millmade fabrics. Craft tradition is revived. but acquires a hot-house quality. decorating the backs and the homes of the urban sophisticated. The brass Iota, held up as a shining example of superb functional design by Eames, sports flowers on a side table. The cheap plastic mug finds its way into the homes of those that make the Iota, in a strange (but mercifully not yet complete) reversal of roles.

Will this urban neo-perception of traditional design become national one day, when all craftsmen will want, and be able to afford, their own products, so that " the crafts can be returned to the people'·?

"The problem is overwhelming.'' says Ashoke Chatterjee, director of NID. " It is a part of the whole value world obtaining in the country; but we cannot duck it. We try to make our students and the authorities understand that crafts have everything to do with functions, they are not decorative and they are not novelties or fancy goods with 'artistic touches.' We at the institute are as interested in harvesting implements as in durries. If one has a respect for functions. one cannot de'>ign an ashtray in the form of a veena for a state emporium.

Here we have a responsibility

SPAN JANUARY 1979 2~

DESIGNING FOR TOD/\ Y

('1illti11ued

and our alumni may be able to do something. We should be even more concerned than we a re today with sustaining the tradition of making local products for local use weaving things for oneself, one's family and one's neighbors. Eame talked about institutes like ours producing the Iotas of the future .

I don't think ll'e will. Hopefully our students will, and that is not something we will sec in the next five or ten years. It is a r>rocess that may take a generation."

* * *

In the meantime, continuing to present the village to the city dweller, hoping to make him aware of it, Nl D faculty and students in association with some well-known designers in thecountry (likc Bansi Chandragupta, who conceived the very popular diorama) planned and built two large exhibitions at the Agri-Expo 77, in New Delhi.

Here, all the training in docu-

mentation and collection of rural crafts and the audio-visual talent came into its own in an elegantly presented. clearly developed flow reflecting the history of agriculture and the relation of man, plant, habitation and nature. For the student of NID, it was a learning experience not only in exhibition design but in awareness of rural reality. "At first, the reaction was: ¡1 am a student of graphics; what am I doing collecting pots and pans in a Bihar village?

What docs it have to do with my education?' But gradually, through the unfolding of the work itself, what it had to do with his education became clear to him."

The most ambitious rural project that NID has yet attempted is at Jawaja near Ajmer in Rajasthan, a very backward block with some 200 villages and a population of about 85,000.

The area is drought flood prone

DESIGNER EXTRAORDINARY Charles Eames (right), wide-ranging genius of American design, well known in India for his close association with the National Institute of Design, died in August last year a t St. Louis, all he age of71. He was there supervising u botanical gardens project.

The son of a St. Louis photographer and painter, Eames started life as a grocery delivery boy, then went on to work as envelope folder, steel mill laborer. and apprentice draftsman before winning an architecture scholarship to Washington U niversity. Later, he joined the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan. There, with Ecro Saarinen, later to become the leading architect of his generation, he designed a molded plywood chair that won two prizes offered by the Museum of Fine Arts, New York.

The commercial succes!t of his plastic chairs gave him the freedom to do what he liked.

And what he liked was everything. Eames was eq ually fascinated by the perfect ion of functional design in lhe Indian low, the wing structure of a Boeing 747. and the interior chemistry of jelly fish. In l959lhe United Slates Government asked him to make a film for showing al !he U.S. exhibition in Moscow. Eames produced a twelveminute seven-screen multimedia show on how Americans live, which

30

SPA

JANUARY 1979

became a smash hit with Soviet audiences. He went on to make several olher films, and these are today considered works of art in themselves. l n 1964. he designed the famous Nehru Memorial Exhibition at NlD, which traveled to many countries.

To Eame), art and technology were one. Architecture. film, graphics, furniture, exhibitions- he turned his hand to anything he liked, and was able to create somethi ng new because of the unity and freshness of his vision. "Give a student two rupees," he said at NID when lhe studems' hostel was being commissioned, "and ask him to buy something to fill up his room.'' One bought balloons; the other, a light bulb.

and has very little arable land or irrigation. T he Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad. and NID have joined hands to launch a project aimed at improving the rural situation.

Economically disadvantaged villagers arc helped to start enterprises of their choice.

Technology and designs are made available; a national bank provides loans. The project tries to make the villagers selfreliant and capable of resisting exploitation . NID students work as a part of a team consi~ting of' management special-¡ ists. marketing men, bank managers, representatives of governmental institutions- a whole cross-section of city folks with modern skills working with the villagers. The designers found that they had to tackle drought and flood problems.

Design training would have no meaning for people who were worried about a tomato crop that had been flooded out, their bank loans now in peril. N ID faculty and students lived in the village; they had to deal with the total reality, learn how to intercede with the bank - useful to them because the same bank also financed their own project with the weavers. " In other words, they had to deal with problems quite outside the training we had given them . In time they came to be trusted more than those who lived in the dak bungalow and came to the village to work." says Chatteijee.

Das Gupta : What did they use for a lavatory'?

Chatterjee: That's just it. They had to do what the villager does.

Das Gupta: But most of your studentS come from well-placed families and are used to hvmg in comfort.

Chatterjee: We arc trying to get more of the young people from other strata. the ones that haven' t been to public schools it will need more stipends and scholarships whtch we arc trying to work out but even those from well-off families come under the influence of the work they do in the five-and-a-ha lf years th at they arc here . In fact that is the most cncouragmg thmg I have seen here.

Righ t, above : Village women of Vasna at their newly learned craft of patchII'Ork. Right, below : Students at the campus with ll few articles designed and produced at the institute.

DESIGNING FOR TODAY cominued

They do want meaningful careers, and don't go solely for the money at the end of their training.

When I first went to Jawaja. o ne of' th e weavers asked me: " What can you doT' The power of the question took my breath away. I had to sit down with one of the students and learn to make red dyes and to light a fire with damp wood ... there was no other way to be accepted in that environment.

Inside the institute's red-brick and plate-glass building overlooking lush green lawns, much goes on besides the documenting and activating of rural crafts.

Bearded young men and jeanswearing girls scurry back and forth working at type composing. product design and the making of prototypes, ceramics and furniture design, photography and filmmaking, etc. The two basic programs, either of which a student can choose, are (a) industrial design. (b) visual communication. Students graduate after five-and-a-half years.

Who teaches? What qualifies him to teach? Here NID has been luckier than many institutions engaged in training in new fields that have, whether from choice or necessity, utilized whatever readymade personnel they could find, even if inadequate, right from the beginning.

Only H. Kumar Vyas, chairman of NlD's industrial design faculty, was a trained designer.

The founders of NID had the vision to train the rest of their own faculty, and the luck to be able to sustain that training for seven years in the face of the natural desire in a developing country to see quick results. "A large team of internationally reputed designers;' to quote Vikas Satwalekar, chairman of the Professional Education Program,

"came from the United States and Europe with the assistance of the Ford Foundation, the JDR IJl Fund, which funded this process of giving the best talent to India. The foreign team got together with their Indian counterparts to analyze the lndian design problem and identify the kind of curriculum and teaching methods that would be suitable. The first trainees for the cadre of teachers were drawn from among people with backgrounds in engineering, architecture, and the fine arts. They were exposed to design curriculums and training methods developed in the United States and Europe. Besides Eames and his wife, we had Alexander Gerard, a famous textile designer from the United States, Helena Perheentupa from Finland, Arvin Hoffman from Switzerland, D eborah Sussman from Pratt University in the United States and so onit was a very rich input, of very high quality." Chai,rman of the visuaJ communication faculty , Mahendra Patel, was one of the products of this unique program.

Bicycles, wheelchairs, insecticide sprayers, harvesting implements, corporate symbols, type design in Indian languages, animation films-experiments are going on in many areas. Some of it goes beyond experimentation and is done on order from various institutions and governments; the Government of Gujarat distributes a map of Ahmedabad carrying information both for tourists and local people designed and printed at NID; the International Airport Authority uses signs devised by the institute. In all of these,

n " 'sqciPTlT n ••

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there is an attempt at useful innovation, not always entirely successful, but educative as student exercises and often effective as a product.

S. Balaram, a member of the faculty who went to the Royal College of Art in England on a Ford Foundation scholarship, was responsible for the development of a new bicycle design.

Most bicycles in India go without a lamp at night because too often it gets stolen. So instead of a fixed lamp as in marketed brands modeled on foreign manufacture, the NID bicycle provides a bracket for inserting a flashlight that can be taken off when you get down, and put to other use. In rural areas, the wheels often slip in the mud when you put the brakes on, so a back-pedaling brake engages the hub. The wheelchair is also innovative. Its height can be adjusted for adult or child, and the retractable seat can be used as a floor seat for spastic children. Besides, the cost, one is told, is about onethird of the existing models.

The only industrial designer in one of India's largest engineering firms is a graduate of NID, faculty members mention with pardonable pride.

K.J. Vijayamma came to the institute with an engineering degree, so she can talk to engineers in her company in their own language. Interface with engineers has obviously worked in her case, because she has now been charged with the responsibility of setting up design units in all the plants of Hindustan Machine Tools.

Other alumni are working for large- and medium-scale in-

dustries, making domestic appliances and various engineering products ; one is the head of design at Calico Mills, Ahmedabad; some have become successful free-lance consultants.

* • • Of the 17 years of its existence, the institute spent 7 training its faculty; with a five-and-ahalf-year course, the first graduates began to come out in 1975.

So no one at NID is prepared as yet to talk about the impact which their institution has had.

In the meantime, demand for designers in industry and in the crafts outstrips the output, and the placement of graduates does not present a real problem .

NID faculty set up the curriculum for industrial design at the Indian Institute ofTechnology at Pawai and this is their (liT's) sphere of emphasis. In any case, the organized industrial sector in India has some access to foreign know-how and the resources to develop and hire some design ability to meet at least its minimum needs. The advertising and the audio-visual agencies can also somehow train their own designers as they have done so far. But it is the '"480 million pairs of hands" in ruraJ crafts that truly await the designer. He alone can help them to redeploy their skills to the needs of today.

0 Far left: K.J. Vijayamma, NID alumnus, is in charge of industrial design at Hindus tan Machine Tools. Middle: Hindi type.facescreaJedat NID, which also designed Indian TV's symbol ( left ) . Facing page: I. Mahendra Patel (right ) teaches typeseuing.

2. Ceramics cla.1s in progress. 3. H .K. Vyas (right) , head offaculty of industrial design, with a srudent designing a dry-cum-wet grinder .for a Bombay manufacrurer. 4. Lalit lAd ( leji), l'isual communication swdem, u·ith N.R. Moorthy of film famlty .

5. Sulekha Goolrey, NID alwnnus in 1extiles, a/ II'Ork. 6. Aditi Shirali (left ) of lex tile faculty with student.

7. The diorama at Agri-Expo 77.

8. Vikas SaiH'alekar ( riglu), chairman, professional education program, ll'ith studefll Mansur Badri. ll'orkinl{ on teaching aids for the deaf and the blind for some Bombay instilutions.

9. Arvind Merchant ,final year studenl in produc/ design, experimenting with a new type <!1' harvesting implement.

10. Students in the metal II'Orkshop.

INTERNATIONALIZING INVENTIONS

by RICI-IARD C. SCHROEDER

This computer network unites buyers and sellers of technology-ideas, processes and systems-thus giving developing countries easy and inexpensive access to the work of the world's inventors and scientists.

34

Lady professor at Canadian university has new idea for preserving milk products in tropical climates_ Seeks person in need of same. Object: mutual profit.

A classified advertisement like this probably will never appear in the local newspaper. But each day similar ''ads" are being transmitted by telephone lines, telex and satellites to businessmen, inventors and government officials in a dozen or more countries around the world.

The "ads" are a service of a new technology information exchange called "Technotec," a creation of the Control Data Corporation of Minneapolis, Minnesota, one of America's giant computer firms_ The idea of Technotec is deceptively simple: to put together "buyers" and ''sellers'' of technology anywhere in the world. Behind the simple idea, however, is a multimillion-dollar computer network, with some 5,000 terminals in more than 150 cities in 15 countries.

From a data base of zero in September 1975, Technotec has grown rapidly to more than 16,000 separate entries today.

Control Data officials say this is only the beginning. The potential for ideas, processes and services that may be included in the Technotec system runs into the hundreds of thousands, perhaps even into the millions.

Right now, a technician searching through the system can find an impressive array of technologies applicable to such widely divergent fields as, agriculture and electronic communications, fishing and metallurgy, and woodworking and open-heart surgery. Most of the information stored in Technotec's huge computers comes from the developed countries, but the inventions are often of value in developing countries.

Recently, for example, a fishing boat owner in Caracas, Venezuela, began to run into trouble with excessive spoilage of his catch. He contacted Technotec and put in a "quest' '-a standing order for information- for better methods of preserving fish. Within a short time, be received a call from a research group in Modesto, California, which had developed the very process be was looking for. Result : a technological sale by a U.S. firm and a satisfied customer in Venezuela.

Technotec springs from the personal interest of Control D ata President William Norris in speeding the worldwide transfer and exchange of technology. Over the next three decades, Norris notes, the world population will double to more than 8,000 million people. There will be a corresponding explosion in the demand for goods and services. Technology is one key to assu1i11g the production increases needed to satisfy the growing

world need for food , shelter, medical care, transportation and many other items.

But technology, like natural resources, is not evenly distributed across the globe. There are technolo!,ry-short countries, particularly in the developing world. As one example. Control Data officials say that current agricultural technology is capable of growing food to supply from 10,000 to 20,000 million people.

But advanced agricultural technology exists mainly in the developed countries, many of which produce far more food than they can consume, while the developing countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America experience chronic deficits in food production.

The developing countries could, at great cost and sacrifice, develop their own agricultural technologies, and indeed, in many cases are doing so. But to a large extent, this is needless

duplication of work already done. A technology exchange service, such as Technotec, can provide the means for rapid and effective transfer of existing technology from one area to another.

In the words of Ralph Sheehy, a Control Data spokesman, Technotec aims at preventing the waste of time involved in "a reinvention of the wheel."

Obtaining a Technotec listing is a relatively simple and inexpensive process. An inventor of a new process or technique can list his idea with Technotec for a first-year fee of $100, and can renew his listing each year for $60. Persons looking for a particular technology pay a similar yearly fee and are billed a modest time charge- usually $8 to $10- each time they search the computer data bank. A third category of users includes consultants and technical experts who offer their services through Technotec at a yearly charge of$800.

To find a particular technology or process, a Technotec subscriber "talks" via telephone or telex with one of three Control Data Cybernet computers located in Washington, Brussels or Melbourne. To start the conversation, the subscriber dials the nearest Technotec computer terminal and, using a keyboard device much like a typewriter and certain prearranged code signals, puts his request to the computer.

Within seconds, the computer searches the thousands of entries in its memory bank, and prints out a brief description of those that most closely fit the user's request. If the brief description interests the user, he can then ask for a longer text-usually about 1,000 words-and finally, for a pre-set fee , obtain the name and address of the person who entered the process in the data bank.

From that point on, the subscriber is on his own to contact the inventor or consultant listed in the data bank. Control Data officials emphasize that Technotec does not act as a broker among its clients.

At a recent Washington demonstration of its system, T.P. DOJ;tOhue, eastem area manager of Technotec, appeared with what resembled a portable typewriter, weighing in at six kilograms and measuring no more than 40 x 38 x 10 ems. Donohue dialed a computer terminal in nearby Rockville, Maryland, and then inserted the telephone handset into two rubber cups mounted at the top of the typewriter. There followed a rapid clatter of keys as the computer asked Donohue for his coded identification and then ·'welcomed" him to Technotec.

Donohue asked the data bank to search for technology relating to cardiology.

The computer replied that the data bank had 10 entries which came under the dual headings of ..H eart" and ''Cardiology," five entries under "Heart" alone, 74 under "Cardiology" and four under "Test." His next request was to see a brief description of the entries under "1-!eart'' and " Cardiology.'· In lightning fashion, the computer spewed them out.

One item briefly described a technology entered in the data bank. Donohue could have requested a fuller description of this technology, together with a thumbnail description of the firm offering the technology for sale. The computer also told him it would cost $50 (contact price) to obtain the name and address of the firm. In a second case, Donohue called up an information request or query from someone seeking a technological entry. If he had been a manufacturer with such technology for sale, he could have made contact with the seeker for $25.

However, the symbol " RC" appeared, which told him that the seeker wanted to remain anonymous, at least for the moment. ·'RC'' stands for ·'Reverse Contact," and indicates that Donohue's "interest" in the request would be passed on by

Technotec, and he would be contacted by the person seeking technology.

When the demonstration ended, the computer provided some interesting figures on bow much time had been spent.

Donohue was ..on line" with the computer, talking constantly for 27 minutes and 26 seconds. But in the nearly one-half hour of "on-line" time, he had used only 31.6 seconds of actual computer time. While the computer was answering his questions in mini-second bursts, it was simultaneously dealing with hundreds of other queries from Cybernet customers.

Technotec's value can easily be seen in terms of the benefits to individual users. A California businessman recently listed an immersion freeze-heat peeling process for fruits and vegetables.

The listing cost $68 and a few phone calls. Within a few months, the businessman had negotiated licenses for the new process in Norway, Poland, Spain, Japan and the United States. He estimates that his $68 investment will eventually earn between $200,000 and $300,000 a year from sales of his quick-freeze immersion machine.

By far the greatest value of the system lies in its potential for enhancing technology transfer between the developed and developing nations. At one point in the demonstration, Donohue searched for technologies of specific interest to developing nations in Africa. Among the items turned up- in a purely random fashion - were: (I) a means of •·uprooting by mechanical means of vinestock, tree stumps, coffee or cacao plants, and the like" (contact price $50); and (2) a U.S. Department of Commerce report on business opportunities in Nigeria (contact price $0).

Among the countries currently supplying technological inputs are the Soviet Union, Sweden, England, Germany, France, Israel and the United States. Technotec is negotiating with Japan to include that country in the system. While these are all developed countries, developing countries are little by little beginning to enter their own processes. India, for example, lists techniques for producing baby food from buffalo milk and caffeine from tea waste.

Most of the entries in the Technotec data bank are in English, although the system can handle any language that uses the Roman alphabet. Russian entries must, however, be translated into English because the Cyrillic characters would be meaningless to Technotec computers, as presently designed.

The bulk ofTechnotec's current activity involves technology transfers between industries and corporations in the developed world. But the time is not far off when developing nations will find the system a useful tool for research and development work.

In 1976, the United States exported more than $4,000 million in technology-patents, trademarks, licensed processes and the like. Of that amount, nearly $1,000 million went to the developing world. Even at that, most experts believe the surface has barely been scratched. They foresee a virtually insatiable market for developed-country technology in Africa, Asia and Latin America in the next several decades. Much of the technology already exists. It needs only to be commun icated to potential users around the world.

The United Nations has scheduled a World Conference on Science and Technology for mid-1979. One of its primary concems will be to find ways to speed up the transfer of technology to developing areas. Based on its brief, but impressive record, Technotec will be there as a welcome guest.

0 About tbe Author: Richard C. Schroeder is a free-lance writer and frequent comribwor to SPAN. He has published a number of books, including The Politics of Drugs and Dateline Latin. America.

3

STORYTELLER

ISAAC BASHEVIs· SINGER

by JACOB SLO,\N

•'

saac Bashevis Singer. the 1978 Nobel Prize winner in literature, is an anomalous figure. Born in Warsaw seventy-four: years ago, he migrated to the United States in 1935, became an American citizen, and contributed a stream of remarkable stories and serialized novels to a small New York Jewish newspaper (The Jewish Daily Forward) that caught the attention of general publishers. Singer writes only in Yiddish (though he has a good command of English by now); it is by translation into the lingua franca of English that he has achieved his reputation as one of the outstanding writers of our time.

Singer is the son ofa rabbi who belonged to the ultra-orthodox Jewish Hasidic sect, and for a while be himself studied at a talmudic seminary. Like many other Jews of his generation, he gave up his religious studies for secular interests, but his writings are full of religiousphilosophical speculation. His elder brother, I.I. Singer, was a talented novelist; to escape from his brother's shadow, he adopted his mother's name, Bashevis, when he too joined the Bohemia of artists and intellectuals of Warsaw of the decade before World War II preoccupied with revolutionary and nationalistic movements. But Singer shied away from bothhe was too skeptical, too much of an individualist to commit himself to a social or political ideology.

Yiddish, the language of central and East European Jewish communities from the time of the Middle Ages, had for fifty years before World War IJ -since the immigration of Jews to Western Europe and the United States-been regarded as a dying language. With the genocidal destruction of six million European Jews

by Nazi Germany, Yiddish too was threatened with extinction. It has lingered on, in cultural pockets, principally in New York and Israel. So the readers of Singer in the original number no more than perhaps a few hundred thousand, though there has been a renewed interest in Yiddish during the past few decades, as young Jews, like members of ethnic and racial groups in the United States, search for their "roots."

On the face of it, Yiddish, a highly idiomatic vernacular, would seem to be untranslatable. (Cognoscenti are fond of citing examples of typical Yiddish vigor and wit- hacken a chanik, literally, "walloping a tea kettle," means to talk nonsense.) Yet Singer has been translated so successfully that his readers, worldwide, have been estimated in the millions.

I

Other paradoxes: Singer writes primarily, and best, of the experiences of a small national-religious group with a very special history. Yet, as the Swedish Academy of Arts noted in the Nobel Prize citation, his "impassioned art ... with its roots in a Polish-Jewish tradition, brings universal human conditions to life.'' His view of the world is an essentially amoral one ("It is all chance and an event of nature,'¡ he has an imprisoned demon exclaim unanswerably), and his writings clearly assert the prevalence of Satan ic evil spirits. Yet Singer's hero among classic authors is the transcendent Russian moralist, Leo Tolstoi ; and indeed, the Academy in its citation accurately compared Singer's rife

Son of a rabbi, writing in Yiddish, a language spoken only in cultural pockets in Israel and America, with the Jewish minority of Poland as his main subject, Isaac Bashevis Singer produces fiction of a universal sweep and meaning, undimmed by translation. imagination with the "apparently inexhaustible psychological fantasy" of Tolstoi. His plots often verge on oldfashioned soap opera kitsch; but they also have a hard core of narcissistic sexuality; many of his heroes and heroines are compulsively self-involved, sexual adventurers, like those of Henry Millerthough there is no explicit sex in Singer.

(When he was told that he had won the Nobel Prize, Singer said that he thought that Miller had deserved it "because of his fight for freedom ofliterature. '') So, like many superior writers, Isaac Bashevis Singer is a mass of paradoxes.

Like Dickens, who also wrote for the popular press, his writing has both the common and the uncommon touch. Like Dickens, too, he is a dedicated, conscientious craftsman, who never misses a daily deadline. (When I was translating Satan in Goray, Singer told me never to call him until afternoon-he was not to be disturbed at his daily Forward episode.)

His gift for sharp characterization is Dickensian; he can place a character for the reader with a few brilliant, telling,

memorable strokes. A strong-willed. troubled scholar is described in two memorable gestures: Rabbi Benish grasped between his index finger and thumb the thick eyebrow that hung over his right eye, li fted it the better to see . ..

From time to time Rabbi Benish would sit down at the table and press a key to his forehead so as not to doze off: nevertheless. he would soon be snoring heavily.

A scatter-brain is sketched in a few Balzacian lines: Ozer was tall. stooped. rapid in his movements. and quick-tempered. His rumpled velvet hat was always askew, his sh irt open. his vest unbuuoned and s tained. He had a nose like a beak, two large bird eyes. and a straw-colored. unkempt beard.

Singer is masterly in identifying social types, and then individualizing them for us. Here is his lightly malicious portrait of a respectable woman collecting money for a worthy cause: Everywhere the woman tasted preserves which di ligent housewives had put up in the summertime: blew ber c rooked, rabbinical nose; and with the silken tucks of her sleeve wipe.d the tears that slid brightly down her withered cheeks to shine among all the ornaments on the voluminous satin coaL The woman sme lled of honey cake and holiday, of remote Jewish cities and good tidings .. . . Wealthy folk presented her with gold pieces, which she painstakingly and piously bound into a kerchief. as though she were collect ing donations for strangers .. . . He r ram's horn nose was red with the co ld and the fear of God.

This is the classic style of a master of fiction, applied to classic subjects, and the tone is classically detached and lively at the same time. We recognize immediately the style and tone and subjects of Cervantes and Defoe. This fiction springs from folk experience; the characters in Singer are recognizable types, and indeed they have been recognized as such all over the world. (An American linguist tells me that Isaac Bashevis Singer could well be translated into Urdu, since Urdu literature is abundant with stories such as he tells, and in the same manner.)

Singer knows that his strength lies in his closeness to his culture-and that he does not write folk apologetics. Jn a recent New York Times interview, he was asked why he thought his stories, about so special a group as the Jews, (at any rate, they regard themselves and are regarded as such) should be so popular with other peoples. He replied, as is his wont, directly and expressively: l will tell you: When I sit down to write a story rm not saying to myself rm going to write a Jewish story. Just like when a Frenchman builds a bouse in France. He doesn' t say he"s going to build a French house. He"s go ing to build a house for his wife and children, a convenient house. Since it's SPAN JANUARY 1979

SINGER cominued

built in France, it comes out French.

When I sit down to write a story, I will write the kind of stories which I write. It's true that since I know the Jewish people best and since I know the Yiddish language best, so my heroes, the people of my stories, are always Jewish and speak Yiddish.

I am at home with these people. But just the same, I'm not just writing about them because they speak Yiddish and are Jewish. I'm interested in the same things you are interested in and the Japanese are interested in: in love, and in treachery and in hopes and in disappointments.

Singer has no illusions about the basic function of the writer of fictions: it is to entertain.

Q. :Do you ever feel that, like a photographer, you're preserving rhe last part of a vanished culwre?

A. (Singer): People tell me this. and while they tell me this, I have a moment of feeling. yes, it is so.

But I never sit down to write with thls idea.! wouldn't be a writer ifl would sit down to preserve the Yiddish language, or life in Poland, or make a better world or bring peace.! don't have all these illusions.

1 know that my story will not do anything else but entertain a reader for half an hour. And this is enough for me .... l'm . still connected with the reader. And my readers .... judge a writer from the point of view: Is he interesting or not interesting?

Also, although some of them are ignorant people and primitive people, they know that a writer's not going to redeem the world, as some of the young writers think ....

Singer is as wary of critics and farfetched interpretations of his work as is every artist, but is more philosophical than most about this necessary evil.

He tells this anecdote: Once I wrote a book called The Magician ofLublin.

The hero repents at the end, hardens himself against the temptation of running after women. So once a psychoanalyst called me up, and he said : ¡â&#x20AC;˘J was .delighted to see how you made your hero go back to his mother's womb." This had never occurred to me. But then 1 said to myself: He is just as good a reader as anybody else. and if he sees this it's just as good.

(I know from my own experience how careful Singer is not to get involved in quarrels over the interpretation of his work. In my Translator's Preface to Satan in Goray-Singer's novel about satanism and messianism in a 17th century Polish Jewish village- ! praised the book as a "vivid detailing of the convulsions that rend human beings when the fabric of a stable society is torn to tatters by a revolutionary drive toward the Impossible."

Irving Howe, a fine literary critic, gave the book a rave review, and Satan in Goray's publication was the beginning of Singer's American, and later world, reputation. But Howe, a political dissenter, now the leading representative of Old Left Marxism m the United States, took umbrage in his review at what he considered to be my simplistic "neo-conservative" animadversions against revolutionary messianism. Characteristically, Singer refused to take sides

with either party, since both were obviously on his side.)

Indeed, detachment and hardheadedness are notable features of Singer's writing. Here he describes a foolish, puny charity scholar being manhandJed by his fellows for denying the authenticity of a Messiah (who, in fact, is false-irony is an important element in Singer, as it is in Yiddish popular culture as a whole):

Singer as a mere latter-day epigone of the 19th century masters, merely a celebrator of a world gone by. In many ways, he is extremely modern. His fascination with Satanism may have its roots in his study of Kabbalistic mystical demonology ; but it is part of the late Romantic Agony, now upon us, as described by the Italian critic Mario Prazone characterized by the sadism, perversion, and surrealistic obsession with Several young men ran over to Chanina, grabbed hold of his shirt and began to drag him off. Chanina torture, death and corpses reflected in opened his mouth, shouted, tried to tear himself our popular culture (The Exorcist, Jaws, loose from their grip, twisted his long neck back and things of that ilk!). and forth , and flailed about with his arms, like a "Gimpel the Fool" was translated redrowning man. His coat was lorn, his skull cap well by no less a personage markably fell off. Two long, tousled earlocks dangled from his shaven scalp. He tried to defend himself, but than Saul Bellow, and there is a tendency the charity st udents were quick to hold his head, to try to link the two recent Jewish Nobel punehlng him with their weak hands as they helped Prize winners. But Bellow, with all his deep earry him, as though they were kneading dough. awareness of the Jewish tradition and his Singer's clarity about the brutality sophisticated alertness to the European of the weak is matched by a straight- background, is quintessentially American: forward acceptance of the malice of the "I am an American, Chicago-born ... " vulgar. A terrified, crippled girl, later to as Augie March introduces himself. New be possessed by (and exorcised of) a York figures in many of Singer's stories; but it is (inevitably) the New York of demon, is gossiped about in the village: immigrants, survivors of the European A neighbor that lived behind Reb Eleazar's brick Holocaust, forever traumatized by that house in a dwelling that had half settled in earth whispered that Rechelc never went into the yard tragedy of 'the atrocious murder of six to relieve herself. million brethren, while they live on.

But Singer can also be movingly tender.

Perhaps the closest analogy to Singer Compassionately, he shows us Rechele's is Sholem Asch, another immigrant from despair when told that she must marry Eastern Europe who wrote in Yiddish and achieved a more modest, though an old religious fanatic: not inconsiderable reputation in English Then did Rechele, she who was reputed to be halftranslation a generation earlier. Asch witted, cover her face with her delicate hands, bend over and begin to cry softly, bewailing her fortuneanticipated Singer (as well as Singer's and she wept as one who has all her wits about her. elder brother) with a monumental trilogy Her long hair nearly touchlng the floor, her girlish dealing with the lives of generations of shoulders quivered.

Jewish families in the great Jewish settleHow often has one seen this sight in ments of Europe (Three Cities). But Indian films! even this comparison does not hold, Isaac Bashevis Singer'sconnectionswith for Singer is at his weakest in his family19th century European literature-with city trilogies; his strength is in the tale, Dickens and Balzac, and Gogol, as wellnot the saga. are apparent. To those who have read The New York Times interview conthe Yiddish literature of the same periodcludes with Singer explaining with his in which Sholom Aleichem, Mendele usual candor, sanity, and humor what Mocher Seforim and l.L. Peretz are the he considers to be "the central idea in chief figures- the indigenous quality of the world of l.B. Singer" (academically his writing is apparent. For the best speaking): Yiddish writing is notable for the same Spinoza says in his Ethics that everythmg can skillful combination of wit, fancy, in- become a passion, and I know that th is is true. telligence and folksiness that is so There is nothing that cannot become a passion. attractive in Singer. Singer's best story, Especially if they are t.:onnected either with sex "Gimpel the Fool," is in the direct or with the supernatural - and I would say for me sex tradition of these authors' holy innocents: and the supernatural go very much together. I feel Sholom Aleichem's Tevye (the hero of the that the desire of one human being for another is not only a desire of the body but also oft he soul. The two Broadway musical Fiddler on the Roof), -a man and woman. or two men, or two women Peretz' Bontshe the Silent (who could when they embrace and they say they cannot live one conceive of no higher reward in heaven without the other, and they fall one upon the other than a soft roll), and Mendele's Benjamin with a madness, that this is not just an act of flesh, III (who undertook a quixotic journey to it's more than the flesh.

Q.: So. in other words, your topic would be emotion the Holy Land with no knowledge of and excess in the work ofisaac Bashe1â&#x20AC;˘is Singer? either geography or politics).

A. (Singer): Yes, and if I would be the dean I D But it would be a mistake to regard would give you the Ph.D. right this minute.

GÂŁEKA

GMEIR,

A story by Isaac Bashevis Singer

0

n the nights that Meir Bontzcould allow himself to sleep, his head would hit the pillow like a stone and, if undisturbed, he could pound away for twelve hours straight. But this night be awoke at dawn. His eyelids popped open and he could not close them again. His big, burly body heaved and jerked. He felt overcome with passion and worry.

Meir Bontz was hardly a timid man.

In his youth he had been a thief and a safecracker. In the thieves' den where the toughs congregated, he demonstrated his strength. None of tbem could bend his arm. Meir would often bet on his capacity for food and drink. He could put away half a goose and wash it down with a dozen mugs of beer. On the rare

occasions when he was arrested, he would snap his handcuffs or smash the door of the patrol wagon.

After he married and was given a job at the Warsaw Benevolent Burial Society, which provided shrouds and burial plots for the indigent dead, Meir Bootz went straight. He received a salary of twenty rubles a week so long as the Russians ruled Poland, and later, when the Germans came in, a comparable sum in marks. He stopped associating with thieves, fences, and pimps. He had fallen in love with a beauty, Beilka Litvak, a cook in a wealthy house on Marszalkowska Street. But with time he perceived that he had made a mistake in his

mar~iage.

For one thing, Beilka didn't become pregnant. For another, she spat blood. For a third, be could never get used to her pronunciation - "Pig Litvak," he called it. She lost her looks as well.

When she got angry, she cursed him wi'th oaths the like of which he had never heard. She could read, and each day she read the serialized novels in the Yiddish newspaper about duped ladies, scheming counts, and seduced orphans.

During meals, Meir Bootz liked to listen to the gramophone play theatre melodies, duets, and cantorial pieces, but Beilka complained that the gramophone gave her a headache. A quarrel would often break out on Friday evening just because Meir liked his gefilte fish prepared with sugar as his dead mother used to fix it, and Beilka prepared it with pepper.

The few times that Meir hit her, Beilka fainted, and Zeitag the healer or Dr. Kniaster had to be called.

He would have run away from Warsaw

39

ELKA AND MEIR continued

Refugees converged upon the city from half of Poland. The black car was constant if God hadn't sent along Red Elka. It was Red Elka's job in the Society to look after the female corpses, sew their shrouds, and wash them on the ablution board.

Red Elka had no luck. She had trapped herself in a union with a sick husband who was surly and half crazy to boot. In addition, he turned out to be lazy. His name was Yontche. He was a bookbinder by trade. On Bloody Wednesday, in I 905, when the Cossacks killed dozens of revolutionaries who had converged on the town hall to demand a constitution from the czar, Yontche caught a bullet in the spine. Afterward, he bad a kidney removed in the hospital on Czysta Street, and he never completely recovered. Elka had two children by him, both of whom died of scarlet fever. Although Elka had already passed forty - she was three years older than Meir-she still looked like a girl. Her red hair cut in a Dutch bob didn' t have a gray strand in it. Elka was small and slim.

Her eyes were green as a eat's, her nose beaklike, her cheeks red as apples. Elka's power lay in her mouth. When she laughed, you could hear her halfway down the street. When she abused somebody, words and phrases shot from her sharp tongue until you didn't know whether to laugh or cty. Elka had strong teeth, and in a fight she would bite like a bitch.

When Elka first came to the Society and Meir Bootz observed her antics, he was frightened of her. She bantered with the dead as if they were still alive. ·'·Lie quiet there, hush!" she would admonish a corpse. "Don't play any of your tricks. We'll pack you in a shipping crate and send you off. You danced away your few years and now it's time to go oighty-night."

Once. Meir saw Elka take a cigarette from her mouth and stick it between a corpse's lips. Meir told her that one must not do such things. " Don't fret your head about it," she said. ' Til get so many whippings in Gehenna anyhow, it' ll only mean one lash more."

And she slapped her own buttock .

Elka. She made fun of his size and bulk, She blasphemed, made fun of the Angel his enormous appetite, his huge feet , his of D eath, the destroying angels, of Gerumbling voice-all in good nature. She henna, and the saints in Heaven. One called him " buffalo," " bear," " bull ." time Meir heard her say to a corpse, Playfully, she tried to plait braids in his "'Don' t fret, corpse, rest in peace. You mop of bristly hair, as Delilah had done to left your wife a pretty dowry and your Samson. It wasn't easy for Meir and successor will be in clover with her."

Elka to have the time with each other And she gave the dead man a tickle they wanted. He couldn' t come to her under the armpit.

It wasn't Meir Bootz's way to think house or she to his. They tried to seek out rooms where you could spend the too much. As soon as he started to night without registering. Often they concentrate, his brain would cloud over couldn't even do this; before they left and he'd get sleepy. He realized w~ll their houses they would be summoned enough that EJka 's conduct toward the to the scene of a tragedy-someone dead came from some idiotic urge stuck had been run over, or bad hanged him- in her mind like a wedge, but he reminded self, or jumped out of a window, or himself that every woman he had known been burned to death . In such cases had had her peculiarities. Meir bad even autopsies were demanded by the police, had one who ordered him to beat her who had to be outwitted or bribed, with a strap and spit on her. D uring his since autopsies were against Jewish law. few stays in prison, he beard stories from Red Elka always found a way. She other convicts that made his hair stand spoke Russian and Polish, and after the on end.

Germans occupied Warsaw in 1915 she Well, since be had commenced his learned to converse with their policemen affair with Elka, thoughts assailed Meir in German-Yiddish. She would flirt with like locusts. Tonight, he slept at horne the krauts and skillfully slip banknotes - he in one~bed and Beilka in the other. into their pockets.

He had slept several hours when sudRed Elka eventually managed it so denly he awoke with the anxiety of that Meir Bootz became her assistant one who bas fallen into a dilemma. and her coachman, and later her chauf- Beilka snored, whistled through her nose, feur. The Society· had acquired a car sighed . Meir had proposed a divorce- he that was dispatched to bring in corpses offered to go on supporting her- but from the outskirts and the resort towns Beilka refused. In the dark, he could see on the Otwock line, and Meir learned only Elka before his eyes. She joked with to drive. Sometimes the couple bad to him and called him outlandjsh names. ride at njght through fields and forests , Elka was far from virtuous. For years and this provided them the best op- she had worked in a brothel on Grzyportunity to make love. Red Elka would bowska Street. She had undoubtedly had sit beside Meir and with the eyes of a more men in her life than Meir had hairs hawk search out a spot where they could on his head . She bad enjoyed a passionate lie down undisturbed. She would say, affair with a panderer, Leibele Marvicher, "The corpse will have to wait. What's who had been stabbed to death by Bljnd Feivel. Elka still cried when she talked his hurry? T he grave won' t go sour."

Elka smoked as she kissed Meir and about thi s pimp. Just the same, Meir was at times even as shC? gave herself to ready to marry her if she was free from him. Her time for childbearing bad passed, Yontcbe. Someone had told him that in but lust had grown within her over the America there were private funeral parlors years. When Meir Bontz was with her, and one could get rich there from operathe wanted to forget that he worked for a ing such an enterprise. Meir had a fantasy": burial society, but Elka wouldn't let him he and Elka went to America and opened forget. She would say, " Oy, Meir, when a funeral parlor. Yontche the consumpt wasn 't long before Meir Bontz fell you kick the bucket what a heavy corpse tive died, and Meir got rid ofBeilka. l n the in love with Elka, with a passion he you'll be ! You'll need eight sets of New Land no one knew of his criminal would not have thought possible. He pallbearers.,. activities or of Elka 's whoring. The whole yearned for her even when they were '"Shut your yap!" day they would be busy with the corpses, together. He could n ever get enough of " You're trembling, eh? No one can and in the evenings they would go to the her spicy talk. avoid it. " theatre. Meir would become a member As a boy, and even later, Meir Bootz Red Elka developed such power over of a rich synagogue. They had sons and had often boasted that he would never Meir that things which had once seemed daughters and lived in their own house. be tied to a woman's apron strings. repellent now attracted him. He used her The wealthiest corpses in all New York When a wench started to play hard to get expressions, began smoking her brand of were brought to their funeral parlor. A or to nag him, he would tell her to go to cigarettes, and ate only her favorite dishes. wild notion flashed through Meir's brainblazes. He used to say that in the dark Elka never got drunk, but after a drink they did not have to wait. He could make all cats are gray. But he couldn't resist she became more flippant than ever. away with Beilka in half a minute: all

I

ruse collecting corpses. Meir and Elka couldn't give up even an hour to pleasure. he had to do was give her throat one squeeze. Elka could slip Yontche a pill.

Since they were both sick a nyhow, what difference did it make if they went a year sooner or a year later?

A fear fell over Meir from his own thoughts, and he began to grunt and scratch. He sat up with such force that the bed springs squealed.

Beilka awoke. " Why are you squirming around like a snake? Let me sleep !"

"Sleep, Litvak pig." " You've got the itch, have you? So long as I breathe she'll never be your wife.

A tart is what she' ll stay, a slut, a tramp, a whore from 6 Krochmalna Street, may she burn like a fire, dear Father in Heaven!" ·'Shut up. woman, or you're a dead one on the spot!"

"You want to kill me, eh? Take a knife and stab away. Compared to this life, death would be Paradise." Beilka began to cough, cry, spit.

Meii got out of bed. He knew that Elka had waJiowed in a brothel on Grzybowska Street, but 6 Krochmalna Street was news to him. Apparently .Beilka knew more about Elka than he did. He was overcome with rage and a need to shout, to drag Beilka around by her hair. He knew the brothel at 6 Krochmalna- a windowless cellar, a living grave. No, it couldn't be-she's making it up. He felt about to retch.

T

he years passed, and Meir Bontz didn't rightly know where. Beilka suffered one hemorrhage after another. and be had to put her in a sanatorium in Otwock. The doctors said that she wasn't long for the world, but somehow there in the fresh air they kept her soul flickering. M eir had to pay her expenses.

He now had the apartment to himself, and Elka was free to come to him. Elka's husband Yontche ailed at home. But the lovers didn't have the time to be together. After the war broke out on that day of Ab in 1914, the shootings, stabbings, and suicides multiplied. Refugees converged upon the city from half of Poland. The black car was constantly in use collecting corpses. Meir and Elka couldn't give up even an hour to pleasure. Their affair consisted of talk, kisses, plans. When the Germans occupied Warsaw, hunger and typhus emptied whole buildings. Still , Elka lost none of her light-mindedness. D eath remained a joke to her- an opportunity to revile God and man, to repeat over and over that life hung on a hair, that hopes were spiderwebs, that all the promises about a world to come, the Messiah , and Resurrection were lies, and that whatever wasn't seized

now was lost forever. But to seize you needed time. Elka would complain, " You'll see, Meir, we won'teven have time to die."

Elka had almost stopped eating. She nibbled on a cookie, a sausage, a bar of chocolate. She drank whiskey am:! smoked.

Meir got along on uncooked food . In the middle of the night the telephone would ring and they would be summoned to police headquarters, to the Jewish Hospital on Czysta Street, to the Hospital for Epidemic Diseases on Pokoma Street, to the morgue. They no longer even took off Sabbaths and holidays. The other employees of the Society got summer vacations, but no one could or would substitute for Elka or Meir. They were the only ones who had established connections with the police, the civil authorities, the military, the officials of the Gesia and the Praga Cemeteries.

Meir's apartment had grown dusty and neglected . .Plaster fell from the walls.

Since tenants had stopped paying rent, landlords had ceased making repairs.

Pipes that burst from the frosts were not fixed. Toilets became clogged . On the rare occasions Elka prepared to spend the night at Meir's, she tried to straighten up, but the telephone always interrupted her. The couple was called in to attend victims of shootings, of fires, of heart attacks in the street. As the telephone rang, Elka would exclaim, "Congratulations. It's the Angel of Death! " And before Meir could ask what had happened she would be throwing on her clothes.

I

n Russia, the czar had abdicated. The Germans had begun to suffer setbacks at the fron t. Somehow between a yes and a no, Poland had become independent, but this didn't slow the sicknesses and deaths. For a short time peace prevailed; then the Bolsheviks invaded Poland, and once again refugees from the provinces invaded Warsaw. In the towns they captured, the Bolsheviks shot rabbis and wealthy men. The Poles hanged Communists. Elka 's husband , Yontche, died, but Elka didn't observe shivah. * Meir couldn't read or write, and she was needed to read documents, to sign papers, and mark down names and addresses. Because the two worked long hours, they earned a lot of money, but inflation bad made it wort hless. The several hundred rubles Meir had saved up for a rainy day were now worthless and lay in an open drawerno thief would bother to touch them.

Elka had bought jewelry, but she had no opportunity to wear it. When Meir. asked

• seven days of mourning.

one time why she didn't put on her trinkets, she said, ·'When ? You 'II place them in the pockets of my shrouds."

She was referring to the proverb that shrouds have no pockets.

Meir had long since gathered that Elka didn't only make fun of other corpsesher own death too seemed to her a game, a jest, or the Devil knew what. Mcir disliked to talk of death, but Elka brought up at every opportunity that what she was doing would undoubtedly be done to her. She had already arranged for a plot at the Gesia Cemetery-the Society had given her a bargain on it. She had made Meir vow that when he died he would be put to rest not next to Beilka but next to her, Elka. Meir would often lose his temper at her: she was just beginning to I ive; what kind of talk was this?

But Elka would counter, " You're scared, eh, Meir? No one knows what his tomorrow will be. Death doesn't look at the calendar." Everyone in her family had died young- her father, her mother. her sister Reitza, her brother Chaim F ish!.

How was she any better than the others?

Meir received a phone caJI from Otwock telling him that Beilka had died. She had eaten breakfast that morning as on any other day. She had even tried reading the novel in the Yiddish newspaper, but at lunchtime when the nurse came to take her temperature she found Beilka dead.

Meir wanted to go to Otwock by himself, but Elka insisted she come with him. As always, she got her way. Since Meir bad arranged for a plot for himself next to Elka, Beilka was buried in Karczew, a village near Otwock. Although the women of the Karczew Burial Society considered this sacrilege, Elka fussed over Beilka's body, washed her with an egg yolk, and sewed her shrouds.

She shouted down into Beilka's grave, " We will come to you, not you to us. May you intercede for us on High!"

It seemed now that M eir and Elka would immediately marry. Why keep two apartments ? Why maintain two households? But Elka kept putting it off. She refused to marry until a year had passed.

She had read somewhere that until the first anniversary the soul still hovered among those close to it. After the year passed, Elka found new excuses. She wanted to change apartments, to buy new furniture, to get herself a wardrobe, to take a long leave of absence (she had years of vacation coming) and go to Paris. She talked this way and that- now seriously, now in jest. Meir Bontz hadn't forgotten his fantasies about America, but Elka argued, " What do you need with America? You don't live there forever

41

ELKA AND MEIR cominued

Linen had gone up, the community demanded more mone

42

either:¡ One night when Meir and Elka managed to get away and Meir was staying at her place, Elka took Meir's hand and guided it to her left breast. "Feel. Right there," she said.

Meir felt something hard. "What is it?''

"A growth. My mother died of the same thing. So did my Aunt Gittel."

"Go to the doctor first thing tomorrow." ''A doctor, eh? If my mother hadn't rushed to the doctors, she would have died an easy death. Those butchers hacked her to pieces. Meir, I'm not such a dunce."

"But it may turn out to be nothing."

"No, Meir, it's a summons from up there.''

These words served to arouse her, and the petting and kissing commenced. Elka liked to talk in bed, to question Meir about his former mistresses, his adventures .. with married women. She always demanded that he compare her with the others and describe in which ways she was better. At first, Meir hadn't liked this interrogation, but as always with Elka he got used to it.

This time, she talked about the fact that neither the Society nor Meir would be able to get along without her. She would have to train a woman to replace her, teach her the trade. And while she was at it, the new woman could take Elka's place with Meir too.

Meir laid a heavy hand over Elka's mouth but she cried, "Take away your paw!" and she bit his palm.

From then on, by night and even by day as they drove around, Elka kept up her talk about dying. When Meir complained that he didn't want to hear such gabbing, Elka would say, "What's the big fuss? I'm no calf to be afraid of the slaughterer."

Elka didn't stop with words. Suddenly a cousin of hers materialized- a girl from a small town, who was black as a crow and slanty-eyed as a Tartar. She told Meir that she was twenty-seven, but sbe appeared to him to be past thirty. Like Elka, she drank whiskey and smoked cigarettes. Her name was Dishka. It was hard to believe that she and Elka were related. Where Elka was loquacious and playful, Dishka measured her words. No smile ever showed on her ¡mouth or in her sulky dark eyes. Meir hated her on sight. Elka took her along to the funerals. She helped Elka wash down the corpses and sew shrouds.

Dishka had been a seamstress in the sticks where she came from and she was even more skillful than Elka at tearing the linen-scissors were not allowed- and basting with broad stitches. One time when Elka had some business to attend to in the city, Dishka accompanied Meir in the

hearse to a suburb where a slain Jew had been found. The entire way there Dishka didn't utter a word. Suddenly she laid her hand on Meir's knee and began to tickle him and arouse h'irn. He took her hand and put it back in her lap. That night, Meir lay awake ttntil dawn . His skull nearly burst from all the thinking he did.

He both sweated and felt chills run up and down his spine. Should he force Elka to get rid of Dishka? Should he leave everything behind him and run off by himself to America? Should he wait till Elka passed on and then slit his throat over her grave?

Should he leave the Burial Society and become a porter or teamster? Without Elka, the thought of everything seemed to be hollow. Meir had never drunk by himself, but now he uncorked a bottle in the dark and downed half of it. For the first time, he felt terror come over him. He knew that Dishka would bring misfortune upon him. No one could take Elka's place. Meir stationed himself by the window, gazed out into the night,and said to himself, 'The whole damned thing isn"t wo11h a penny anymore."

E

lka was confined to bed. The growth in her breast had spread and the other breast had developed growths as if overnight. Elka suffered such pain the doctors kept her going with morphine. Professor Mintz tried to persuade Elka to enter the Jewish Hospital, where she could be treated with radium therapy.

Maybe she could be operated on and saved from a quick death. But Elka told him, "To me, a quick death is better than a lingering illness. I'm ready for the journey."

Sick as she was, Elka remained employed by the Society. Meir had to report every corpse, every burial to her. Even though he despised Dishka-tbat country yokel-he had to admit she had her good points. When Elka became bedridden , Meir moved in with her, while Dishka moverl into his place. She swept the rooms, took it upon herself to throw out all the old dishes and broken pots Beilka had left- she even persuaded the landlord to have the place painted, the ceiling patched, and new floors laid.ln the mornings, when Meir met Dishka at the Society or at work, she always brought him food - not the cookies or chocolate on which Elka sustained herself but chicken, beefsteak, meatballs. Elka needed only one drink to commence babbling her nonsense, but Dishka could drink a lot and remain sober. Meir could never make her out.

How was it that such a piece could emerge from some godforsaken village? From where.did she draw her strength? His own

experience had taught Meir that small town creatures were all miserable cowards, foolish mollycoddles, always snivelling, complaining.

One day the woman who watched over Elka became sick herself, and the one who was supposed to substitute for her had gone to spend the night with a daughter in Pelcowizna. Elka had got an injection from Zeitag the healer, and Meir sat by her bed until it took hold. Just before she fell asleep, she demanded Meir's solemn vow that after her death he would marry Dishka, but Meir refused. Early in the morning he was wakened by the telephone.

An actor who for many years had played the role of a lover on the Yiddish stage, first at the Muranow Theatre and later at other theatres and on the road, ¡had died in the sanatorium in Otwock. On Smocza Street an alcohol cooker had caused a fire, killing five children. A young man on Nowolipki Street had hanged himself and the police wanted his body for dissection. Meir washed and shaved. Elka heard the news and wanted details. She had known the actor and admired his acting, singing, and jokes. All those deaths in one day revived her spirits, and for a while she conversed in a healthy voice. The woman who watched over her wasn't due till ten and Meir was loath to leave her alone, but Elka said, " What more can happen to me?" She smiled and winked.

The whole day, Meir and Dishka were so busy they didn't have time to eat.

Meir tried to speak to her about the tragedy of the children. Oishka said nothing. Meir remembered that in similar circumstances Elka was always ready with an appropriate comment. He couldn't live with a grouch like Dishka for even two weeks.

The custom in the sanatorium was to keep a corpse all day in cold storage and release it late at night in order not to alarm the other patients. The whole day, Meir and Dishka were occupied in the city and it was late evening by the time they started out for Otwock. The night was dark and rainy, with no moon or stars. Meir tried again and again to strike up a conversation with Dishka but she replied so curtly that soon there was nothing left for him to say. What does she think about the whole time, Meir wondered. Surliness- it's nothing else. Doing you a favor by sitting beside you.

They drove past the Praga Cemetery. Against the big-city red sky the tombstones resembled a forest of wild toadstools. Meir began to speak in Elka's tone: " A city of the dead, eh? Wore themselves out and lay down. You believe in God?''

for the plots, the headstone carvers had raised their prices.

"I don't know," Dishka replied after a long pause.

"Who then created the world?"

Dishka didn't answer and Meir became enraged. He said. " What point is there in being born if this is how it ends? On Karmelicka Street there's a workers' house, that's what it'scalled, and a big shot was giving a speech there. I happened to be walking by and 1 went inside to listen .

He said that there is no God. Everything had made itself. How can everything just come from itself ? Stupid!"

Dishka still didn't respond, and Meir resolved not to say another word to her that night. He felt a deep longing for Elka.

"She dare not die!" he mumbled. ''She dare not! If it's fated that one of us must go, let it be me."

The car passed Wawer, a village full of Gentiles; then Miedzeszyn, which was being built; then Falenica, where rabbis, Chassidim, and plain pious Jews came out for the summers; and later Michalin, Jozefow, Swider, where the intelligentsia gathered-Zionists, Bundists, Communists, and those who no longer wanted to speak Yiddish but only Pol ish.

Elka 's sickness had stirred Meir Bootz's brain and he began pondering things.

What, for instance, had this Dishka done in that village she came from?

No doubt in the war years she had been a smuggler or a whore. Suddenly he thought of Beilka. At first she hadn't wanted him, and he had knelt before her and sworn eternal love. He had found her Lithuanian accent especially endearing. Years later, when she got sick, every word she spoke irritated him. He had one request of her: that she be silent. Yet with Elka the more she talked the more he wanted to hear.

Meir drove up to the cold-storage room at the sanatorium. Everything went off quickly, quietly, like a conspiracy.

A door opened and two individuals transferred a box into his hearse. He didn't even see their faces. Not a word was spoken . In the brief time the door to the cold-storage room stood open, Meir caught a glimpse of two more such boxes.

Before a long table on which burning candles spluttered and dripped tallow sat an old man reciting Psalms. A blast of cold like that from an ice cellar issued from the room. Meir grabbed the bottle of vodka he carried in his pocket and in one gulp drained it. As he headed back toward Warsaw, his life Rashed before him- the poverty-stricken home, the thefts, the fights, the brothels, the whores, the arrests. " How was I able to endure such a Gehenna ?'' he asked himself, and he recaJied a saying of his mother's: 路'God preserve us from all the things

one can get used to.路路 The car entered a forest. Meir drove fast and in zigzags. He wanted Dishka to plead with him to slow down but she sat obstinately silent. staring out into the darkness.

Me1r said, " Don't be afraid. I won't kill the corpse."

A whim to be spiteful came over him, along with an impulse to test his luck, like the reckless desire of a gambler who grows tired of the game and risks all he possesses. The headlights cast a glare upon the pines, houses, gardens, pumps, balconies. From time to time Meir cast a sidelong glance at Dishka. " Life is apparently not worth a pinch of snuff to her," he said to himself.

The hearse came out onto a stretch of road running through a clearing. It skidded as if going downhill, carried along by its own impetus. At once Meir felt gay and lighthearted. Nothing to worry about. he thought. Things will take care of themselves. He almost forgot his sullen passenger. It's good to live. One day I may even go to America. There is no lack of females and corpses there. He drove and dreamed.

Elka rode with him, disguised as someone else, joking and frolicking, challenging his prowess. Suddenly a tree materialized before his eyes. A tree in the middle of the road? No, he had gone off the highway. lt's one of her tricks, Meir thought. He wanted to step on the brake, but his foot pressed the accelerator. ' That's it!" something within him shouted. He heard a tremendous ciash and everything went silent.

T

he next day, a peasant going to work early found a smashed car with three dead. The back door of the hearse had been tom off and the box containing the actor's body had fallen out.

A crowd gathered; the police were called.

From Warsaw the Benevolent Burial Society sent out two other hearses to pick up the bodies. The president and the warden decided not to let Elka know, but a female member who was watching over her learned the news on the radio and told Elka. When Elka heard it she began to laugh and couldn 't stop. Soon the laughter turned into hiccups. When they had stopped, she got out of bed and said, " Hand me my clothes." fn the two days it took to arrange the funerals Elka regained her strength.

Everyone in the Society observed her liveliness with amazement. She cleansed D ishka and prepared shrouds for her and Meir. She ran from room to room,

slammed doors, issued orders. She talked to the bodies with her usual teasing : " Ready for the journey? Packed away in the shipping crate?''

Warsaw had two big funerals. Actors, writers, and theatre lovers gathered around the actor's coffin . Around M eir's and Dishka's came the thieves, pimps, whores. fences from Krochmalna .

Smocza, Pocezjow, and Tamki Streets.

The war, the typhus epidemics, starvation had almost destroyed the city's underworld . The Communists had taken over their taverns, their dens, the square on Krochmalna Street, but enough of the old-timers remained to pay their final respects to Meir. Elka rode with them.

She looked quite youthful and pretty in her black suit and black-veiled hat.

Meir Bontz and Red Elka were still remembered. The droshkies stretched from Iron Street to Gnoyna Street. Meir Bontz had supported a Talmud School. and a teacher with dozens of students walked before the hearse crying, "Justice shall walk before him."

At the cemetery, two coachmen lifted Elka up onto a tombstone and she made a short eulogy: 路'My Meir, stay well.

I'll come to you. Don't forget me, Meir.

I've got a plot right next to yours. What we had together no one can ever take away from us, not even God! " She addressed herself to Dishka: " Rest in peace, my sister. I wanted to give you everything, but it wasn't fated." With these words, Elka collapsed.

She was finally taken to a hospital, but the cancer had spread too far for there to be any hope of saving her.

Elka sat up in bed propped against two pillows while the women from the Burial Society came to ask about her and to pass along word of what was going on.

New people had been hired, but the Angel of Death remained the same.

Linen had gone up, the community demanded more money for the plots, the headstone carvers had raised their prices.

Jewish sculptors had begun to carve all kinds of designs on the tombstones of the rich- lions, deer, even faces of birds, almost like the practice of the Gentiles.

Elka listened, asked questions. Her face had turned yellow, but her eyes remained as green as gooseberries. N ow that M eir was in t he beyond, Elka had nothing to regret. Everything was ready for her- a plot, shrouds, shards for her eyelids, and a branch of myrtle with which she, together with Meir. would dig their way through the caves and roll to the Land of Israel when the Messiah came.

0 ( Trtmslmed,/rom 1he Yiddish, by Joseph Singer.)

4

U.S. WILL HELP STRENGTHEN THIRD WORLD MEDIA

by JOHN E. REINHARDT

Addressing the recent Paris conference of UNESCO (the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization), the Director of the U.S. International Communication Agency offered America's professional and technological expertise in meeting the communications needs of developing countries. Excerpts from his speech are published on these pages.

U

NESCO hos showo us tho way o"' tho past two years by its significant achievements m the field of human rights. It has adopted the strongest procedurel> of any U.N. agency for the handling of human rights complaints, thereby guaranteeing full and fair international review for the rights enshrined in the UNESCO

constitution. This represents an important landmark of UNESCO's work in this, the 30th anniversary of the Umversal Declaration. We have also made a very important contribution to the international struggle to eliminate racism by adopting, through a consensus of the tolergovernmental conference held last March, a draft declaration on race and racial prejudice.

When confirmed by this General Conference, that declaration will become a major weapon 10 the continuing struggle, to which we are aU dedicated, against racism. This new instrument of our unity should command the fullest support and adherence of all governments devoted to human rights. It will contribute to our common endeavors not only at this conference but for generations to come. The United States urges unanimous support of the declaration. UNESCO has also been making progress in other important areas. It has begun 1ts own preparations for major participation in the U.N. Conference on Science and Technology for Development, a conference on which my government places great significance. During the past two years, UNESCO has sought to strengthen its programs to enhance the status of women.

It has always been the view of my government that it is on these matters- the E, the S, and the C of UNESCO- that our major emphasis should be placed. Today, however, 1 shall of necessity concentrate my attention on the questions that we face in the field of communications. For here we can see the clearest challenge to the continued "spirit of Naarob1 ...

What are the most pressing communication needs of the various developing countries?

How can they best be met- through restrictive

declarations or pos1llve cooperation'! What are the best ways of addressing those troubling questions'? I shall try here in my statement to deal with each of these unresolved problems.

In his introductory remarks on the mass media declaration, the Director General made reference to the horrors of racism inflicted on the world through the State~mrolled media of the Nazi regime; and he reminded us that UNESCO was created in part to prevent any repetition of such acts. This reflects the U.S. Government's position precisely that it is state controls that have been primarily associated with the propagation of war and hostility and racism. and that for UNESCO to sponsor a return to this stifling of human conscience would be to turn liS back on its own charter Cootemporaf) examples of this basic point are not difficult to find. The governments in

Southern Africa have reacted to demands for full enjoyment of political and economic rights by closang down newspapers owned by or sympathetiC to black Afncans. They have also moved to prohibit the circulation of information about the extent and the effects of rdcism in that region. We have recently witnessed similar attempts by governments in other regions to suppress the circulation of documents that draw attention to the violation of human rights.

It seems clear from these Illustrations that it IS freedom of mformation, and not its control by the state, that is best calculated to achieve the elimination of raci&m and to promote the attainment of economic and political rights.

Of course freedom must be coupled with justice. We have been learning that ourselves in the Untted States. America is not a single, monolithic society, and its diversity cannot

Satellite telel'ision makes possible diSsemination of infornumon to the remotest areas. The United States has offered the use of its communications satellites to developing countries to promote basic literacy for children and adults. health care, and rural development.

SPAN JANUARY 1979

4

U.S. AND THIRIJ WORt D MCIJIA

be full}

ctllltlllll('t/

repre~nted

by the maJor newspapers or networks. And so we have been making major efforts 111 recent years to encourage ov.nership and operation of medm outlets by blacks. by women, b)' Hispamcs. and others- to the end that the dtsunctive votcc of each ofthesedevelopmg groups w11hm our own societ)' can make ttself heard 111 tiS ov. n way It ts slow work sometimes. but tt i' development with and tOward freedom Let me invite your attenuon at this pomt to two statements from the report of a task force on the intcrnahonal flow of news, issued just a few days ago. Thts group of distinguished communication practttioners and scholars, drawn I musl emphaMze from both the developed ~md the developtng worlds, had this to say: First: .. It 1s our unantmous and deeply held belief that freedom of 111format1on and economic and pohucal development arc inelttricably mtertwined and mutually remforc111g.'· Second. and as the concludmg words of that report: .. We reject out or hattd the v1cw that freedom IS something that onl) the developed nations of the West can afford - and that 11 ts a superfluous lultur) for the de,·elopang nations. The practices of a free press may be enauc. even 111 the West. but the aspirations of freedom should ultimately serve to untte the West and the Third World ••

We ourselves would hope ulttmately to persuade many other countries of the merits of this pomt of vtew. But we do not now seek to impose that vtew on other governments. We know how dynamteally vanous are the relatiOnships of these governments to their own mass media, and how insusceptible they are to being captured within any single formula or code.

If there is diversity, let it continue in the spirit voiced by J ohn F. Kennedy 15 years ago, when he issued a call to "make the world safe for diversity." UNESCO is par excellence a home for diversity, a shelter for many creeds. Let it so continue. and let us work constructively with each other to strengthen cultural pluralism and to enrich the variety of information and pomts of vtew that are exchanged.

Th1s movement toward constructtve and principled and umfying action IS in the contmuing spirit of Natrobt. So also ts what I have to say today on the subject of practical cooperation.

As I satd (m Natrobi) 111 1976, •·the central tssue is to achteve growth wtth equtty and to pay special attention to the poorest of the poor wtthm nations and among nations."

I

ntcrnal and international dtsparities often go hand in hand. Of the 400 million telephones in the world, for example, only 40 million- a bare I0 per cent arc to be found in all of Africa, Asia, and Latin America combined. W hat does this imply for the scope or participation Jl1 the life of those societtes, or for two-way information flows within them?

A presently pendmg UNESCO report to the General Assembly devotes stmilar attention to the unevenness of communications development within soctettes. and also points up the existence

46

SPAr-. JAI'>vAR\

197~

of gross quantitative disparities among the nations of the world. It reveals that 30 developing countries still have no televtsion service at all, nor the tech meal skills to develop one; 111 about 40 develop111g countries. fewer than 5 per cent of the people ever sec a newspaper. and 111 more than 60 countnes, where radto broadcasung may be the instrument chosen for nationbuilding, more than half the population has no radio sets. To this must be added a pervas1ve shortage of skilled technictans and teachers to build up and extend communication capaciues. lt should be apparent from thts brief description that the challenge of communications development is not one that can be met by simple or random infusions of assistance, or by the immediate adoption of any formula for a new world order. l fwe are to have any serious impact, we must proceed in a far more systematic, long-range, and concerted fashion than we have previously pursued. And we must attract cooperation from every quarter the more prosperous nations, the private sectors in tho~ nations, the multiLateral inMitutions, and the disadvantaged countries themselves.

Why should we collectively take on thts burden? First, because information ts mcreasingly recognized as a baste resource intangtble and inexhaustible, but otherwise akm to energy and raw materials that IS essenual to full parttctpation in the modem world. Second, because in the face of this recognition it would be unthinkable for us to allow our nations and our peoples to drift by neglect into two separate and distinct camps, the "information rich" versus the "information poor." Third, there are some common goals on which we do agree and around which we can construct an action agenda that draws us together and that emphasizes the value of our common institutions, like UNESCO. Those goals include the steady reduction of disparities and dependencies and imbalances in communication capacities, and the progressive fostering of many-sided dialogues rather than monologues in mternal as well as international communicatton structures.

What can be done, then, to get things Started?

Two years ago, at Nairobi, l suggested a collegial effort. The responses we have been hearing at this conference thus far are heartenmg. More wtJJ no doubt be heard, and a great deal more is required if we are to move appreciably toward the attainment of our goal; let me begin my own contribution by recountmg what the United States Government has been doing in this field since Nairobt.

Our regular foreign assistance program has, m the course of the past two years, commmed $18 million to the cooperative improvement of basic telecommunications infrastructures in developing countries. A further $19 million has been committed to the communications and information components of some 70 projects throughout Africa, As1a, the Near East, and Latin America in the fields of education, population, health care, nutrition, agnculture, and disaster relief.

We have expended another $4 million on two-way exchanges of communicatiOn students,

teachers. and practitioners, on studtes and conferences. and on media materials-all atmed at improving mutual understanding of communication perspectives. These efforts have dtrectly engaged approltimately 1.000 participants from 88 developing countries.

We have continued our technical asststance with commumcations satellites, of which the most prominent example is the Indian SITE project. Its value has been underscored by the recent decision of the Government of India to establish its own domestic communications satellite system, INSAT , to be launched in 1981.

A number of U.S. Government agencies are engaged in sharing communication resources and information-system design capacity with their developing country counterparts in specific fields of common interest. T hese include scientific and technical information, weather and disaster warning, health and environmental data, and agricultural information.

Other agencies have been working on a regional basis. We have, for example, assisted in the development of regional health information centers in Latin America and the Middle East, 111 cooperation with local governments and with the Pan Amencan and World H ealth Organtzation.

We provtde professional consultation by, and practical training in, U.S. communication institutions at the request of foreign governments or under the auspices of the lntemattonal Telecommunications Union.

0 "' p,;~'"

"''"' h" also b«o hdpiog.

On the media side, there is one press group that was formed as a result of the Nairobi General Conference, with broadly international participation, that has now raised more than half of its projected million dollar treasury for a variety of projects to assist T hird W orld media development.

Our two major wire services have S1m1larly volunteered their services to help in the establishment of national news agencies. On the very important telecommunications side, we have no comparably specific or coordinated data, but clearly the development potential of this industry's export and investment transactions ts very large.

We also need to recognize the contributions of the U.S. private nonprofit sector, principally the foundations and the universities. Some of them serve in a consulting capacity to UNESCO, others underwrite the work of such scholarly bodies as the International Institute of Commumcations and the Intemattonal Association of M ass Communications Research, while still others actually produce the studies and conferences and reports that will help us gain a better understanding of the communication issues we are now faced with. In the United States, there is an effort now underway for the first time to design a comprehenstve and readily accessible clearing house of a11 communication policy research undertaken in the various relevant disciplmes; upon eventual completion,

this should be suitable for interconnection with national research centers in other countries through the UNESCO-affiliated network known as Comnet.

There are other institutional developments taking place at the government level in the United States, with definite implications for communications development. One of these ts the creation in April 1978 of the International Communication Agency, which has been specifically charged by President Jimmy Carter to promote two-way communication between our people and those of other lands. The new agency has been asked to engage in the "development and execution of a comprehensive national pohcy on international communications ....

Such a policy," President Carter stated, "must take into conSideration the needs and interests of others, as well as our own needs." This represents, I submit, a significant evolution in the attitude of the United States toward communications development-and one that has taken place since we last met in Nairobi.

A

"'<X>nd â&#x20AC;˘nd "'"ally ;mponâ&#x20AC;˘m ;nst;to-

tional development was. as many of you know. announced by President Carter in a speech to the Venezuelan Parliament in Caracas in March 1978. This involves the creation of a United States Foundation for International Technological Cooperation. As its name suggests, the Foundation will work on a cooperative basis to build technological selfreliance within developing countries. It will work to end dependencies at the same time as 11 lessens disparities. Since President Carter's announcement, the process of creating the new Foundation has moved forward steadily. We expect it

to be in operation during 1979. I am pleased to tell you today that one of the key programs of the Foundation will be devoted specifically to cooperation in the field of information and communications. 1 personally have high hopes that its efforts with other nations in this sector can make a substantial contribution to our common goals.

These developments reflect a genuine commitment on the part of our new U.S. administration_ So do the two specific new projects growing out of that commitment that 1 wish to announce to this conference. The first will devote American assistance, both public and private, to suitably identified regional centers of professional education and training m broadcasting and journalism in the developing world, where such assistance could help the centers equip themselves to produce fully qualified practitioners for the media in the region.

Our role will be to work with the faculties and the institutions on their premises. We will undertake to send a senior faculty member or dean-Dean of Communications- to each center for a year's service as a faculty adviser on curriculum or resource development. Private U.S. news organizations will underwrite the visit to the centers of senior correspondents and editors, on rotating three-month assignments, to demonstrate professional skills. As equipment needs are Identified, efforts will be made to locate available consoles or studio facilities or printing presses that can be donated to the centers. Institutional funding needs, if any, will be reviewed and assistance offered in presenting them to suitable funding agencies.

The vis1ting professors and journalists will stay no longer than requested; but so long as they are there, they themselves will be learning about Third World development needs and perspec-

tives, in a way that will stay with them when they return to their regular jobs as teachers and gatekeepers of American journalism.

This should be a broadly cooperative undertaking. We have assurances of positive participation from media organizations. We solicit the advice and will welcome the partic1pation of other experienced countries. Of course, it must be the developing countries themselves who identify the regional centers that seem best qualified to serve the joint purposes we would be pursumg. We are working actively with UNESCO to implement the necessary processes.

The second new United States project is a major effort to apply the benefits of advanced communications technology-specifically communications satellites- to economic and social needs in the rural areas of developing nations.

Th1s program will be implemented with the funding of the U.S. Agency for International Development. using facilities oflntelsat or other appropriate satellite systems, and will enable nations in the developing world to disseminate valuable information to people in remote areas.

My government- in cooperation with officials in developing areas-will work to design projects to promote basic literacy for children and adults, and to share information on health care and rural development.

The basic result should be to take Important information- much of which is already available in urban centers of developing nationsand distribute it to remote sections where people have little or no access to knowledge that can improve their way of life.

The project I am announcing today will build on the lessons- and the hopes-which have come out of the Indian satellite project and similar smaller experiments in recent years.

A major part of the American contribution

SPAN JANUARY 1979

4

U.S. AND THIRD WORLD MEDIA continued

will be the provâ&#x20AC;˘ston of technical assistance, equipment, and training to promote fully informed use for satellite capacity in the developing nations.

We expect to Jearn much from this project.

But it is much more than a technological demonstration. It is a committed United States effort to build communication skills and experience which wtll enable developing countries to strengthen their own global, regional and national communications systems. The programing will be managed by the recipient countries themselves, to help meet the basic human priorit1es which they identify. The project will be aimed at building permanent communication technological skills in these countries. At tts conclusion, all aspects of management and control will be turned over to the recipient nations. And throughout all of this, we hope that the project will develop expenise that will be transferable to other parts of the world.

We believe that this can mark an innovative, productive approach to urgent problems of rural development and communications, and we are pleased that this project will be moving forward in the months ahead.

A '""'

P"' of oommuni03Ho"' dovelopment is now accomplished through bilateral cooperation. H is in this sector that collaborative consultation could serve to detect gaps and overlaps. and to strengthen the presently fragmented process. The bilateral character of such activities need not be changed, but ways should be found to focus them on priority needs in a cooperative way with identifi-

able goals and measurements of progress. Our study has suggested to us that the international community may nave already discovered at least a partial precedent for what is required, in the organization and work of the consultative group on international agricultural research.

The applicabiljty of this precedent to our purposes is not perfect. The agricultural research centers had been in existence for several years before their funding was coordinated, so that the sponsoring institutions took over a fully proven concept. We have nothing like that at present in the field of communications assistance.

But is the analogy nonetheless perhaps worth purslling? My government believes that it is.

The present consultative group is jointly sponsored by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the World Bank, and the United Nations Development Program (UNDP). We could substitute UNESCO for FAO as a sponsor. Like the existing group, we could establish an integrated and effective membership consisting of both developed and developing countries, the regional banks, concerned multilateral agencies, and nonprofit foundations. Other appropriate international organizations could certiDnly be invited to participate.

Out of the meetings and studies ofa communication consultative group there should emerge a shared sense of development priorities and of the effectiveness of existing and proposed remedies. More than that, we would with the help of the sponsoring institutions- including UNESCO-engender cooperation on a scale that simply is not possible under presently existing arrangements. My government would invite our fellow members to consider this possibility with us.

The chief obstacle to this kind of constructive endeavor, as I see it. has been the introduction of extraneous political elements. I hope that will change, 1 hope we can discover and display the seriousness of purpose that alone will attract the sponsorship of serious international bodies.

Therefore, I invite the Director General to convene a planning meeting within the next six months at which government delegations can seek to reach agreement on a specific proposal that can be presented on behalf of developing and developed countries alike to the institutions whose coordinating sponsorship we would seek.

My government is prepared to take full part in these deliberations.

My concluding hope is that we will come to agreement-on the communication issues and on all the others we confront-so that together we can move toward making UNESCO a more effective instrument for meeting historic challenges. For it is through such strengthening of our common purposes that UNESCO makes its contribution to the cause of peace and international understanding. The minds of men and women are stirred by purposeful participation in programs of effective action-not by mere rhetoric or political posturing. This is UNESCO's rrussion: to provide the means for .enhancing practical cooperation in education, the sciences, culture, and communication. Let 0 us get on with that job.

About the Author : John E. Reinhardt. Director of the lnternational Communication Agency, has been U.S. Ambassador to Nigeria and an Assistant Secretary ofState. He fed the American delegation to the recent confere11ce of UNESCO in Paris.

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SPAN JANUARY 1979

24 Kasturba Gandhi Marg New Delh1 1 10001

KITES FlY HIGH AGAIN PHOTOGRAPHS BY JOH N ZIMMERMAN

A little boy desperately trying to keep aloft a simple kite as it inevitably gets entangled in trees, telephone lines and tall buildings. That sight is still a part of the American scene, especially familiar to readers of Charlie Brown comics. But kite flying in America is no longer only a child's wind-time play.

With the amazing innovations that have gone into them, kites have broken age and weather barriers. You don't have to wait for a stiff March or October wind, or be young and fit enough to run after a kite. For the new American kites not only look good, but also know how to look after themselves. They are light. very responsive and can clear obstructions easily. Americans, in a national rediscovery of this old sport, are rushing to the dozens of stores specializing in kites whose variety and prowess thrill the flier and the spectator. Kite festivals draw enthusiasts ranging from schoolchildren to middle-aged businessmen. who spend their weekends constructing elaborate creations based

Age barriers come down as kites go up during a California kite meet which attracted the illtent six-year-old at right and the older flier with his tiger-faced celllipede at far right. Crowding the sky are six longtailed diamond kites on a su1gle string (above) , a 25-meter cemipede ( top left) , and a profusion of deltas, dragons and aircraft kites ( top right).

on aerodynamic principles. Among the popular kites are the long-tailed dragon or snake kite; the crashresistant octopus made of long-lasting polyester-resin film; the superbly maneuverable fighter kite, which you can even get to follow a bird closely; the graceful, easy-to-fty long-distance delta kite; the all-cloth parafoil, which not only resembles a parachute but can also be folded up like one. With such a variety to choose from, little wonder that Americans are looking up againand so is kite flying.