Joseph Stiglitz's lecture in Chennai

Professor Joseph Stiglitz's lecture on "Making Globalization Work," delivered under the auspices of The Hindu, dwelt on the opportunity before India to structure its participation in the globalization process according to its terms, rather than on the terms of profiteering international capitalists.

The tone of the Nobel laureate's talk was a mix of informed persuasiveness and experienced caution.

Here are some highlights, which should be familiar to those who have read his recent book on which the lecture topic was framed:

Number of people in poverty in Africa has doubled in the last 25 years.

China and India have benefited out of globalization, but Africa has neither the education resources or market resources to take advantage of the opportunity.

There is a gross assymmetry between the way capital and labour have been liberalised. There is lot of interest in liberalising flow of capital, but not labour. Consider a scenario where capital was frozen, but labour could flow freely. That would mean we would be a lot more concerned about improving our environment and education systems to a degree that would help leverage such an opportunity.

The impact of patents under TRIPS is likely to be severe on prices of drugs in developing countries, as also in the more developed ones. HIV/AIDS is the most visible example, where advanced drug formulations are going to cost about 17,000 dollars against 10,000 dollars for branded first generation drugs and even 200 dollars for generics.

Generally, the TRIPs agreement is bad for science, US science and international science.

Capital market liberalisation is unlikely to create economic growth in developing countries. It will only lead to more instability.

Globalization is being used as a pretext in many countries to roll back social protections. We have not learnt how to temper globalization. To make it work, we must change the international rules that govern the process of globalization. Secondly, we must be able to manage the changes arising from globalization.

When the 2001 development round of trade talks was held, the US and Europe reneged on their promises. The US doubled its agro subsidies.

The problem with TRIPs is that it imposes a single intellectual property regime on all countries. All countries are asked to pay similar prices despite their different development status.

More points to follow....