Ian McDonald THE GAP between the rich and poor countries is widening every hour. That has been written and broadcast so often that there is a real danger of it being heard but not understood, like those church litanies. I remember from my youth in which God and the holy Virgin were praised in words which had come to mean nothing after 1000 years of chanting. "The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer". We nod our heads and some of us point out that the good book long ago said that would always be the way of the world and we pass on to other things and, life being what it is, hope to have a good time or two before the prophecies of world-wide disaster come true at last.
Concentrate your mind on unpleasant realities. The average per capita income in the Third World has remained static at not much more than 6 per cent that of the industrialised countries for a long time. However, the absolute gap between developed and developing countries has increased hugely, even where Third World growth has been most rapid.
The algebra of gaps explains this crippling situation.
It is a very simple mathematical rule but I wonder how many people appreciate its implications in the North-South relationship. Even in those cases where a developing country is growing faster than the industrialised countries that absolute gap will continue to widen until the per capita national product of the developing country reaches half that of the rich countries. Thus, if historical growth rates are maintained, only eight poor countries will close the gap in the next 10 years, 16 will close it in 1,000 years, and most will never close it at all!
Those are the interesting but desperate mathematical facts. And contemplate another telling statistic. The primary products of the poor world such as cocoa, coffee, and sugar buys in 2000 a mere 20 per cent of what they used to buy in 1960.
And yet there is a trap in concentrating all our thoughts on the crude statistical evidence of disproportionate wealth. If we look only at that we will not focus on what is more deeply serious in our situation. The tremendous and rapidly growing technological gap is the really vital thing to examine. This is known, of course, but it seems to me that the problem is subtly underplayed and under publicised. It is as if we stare always at a neighbour, comparing his steadily improving habits of dress with ours growing shabbier and shabbier, and never take time to look more deeply at what really lies behind his increasing success and our growing failure.
The stark reality, the bitter truth, of what is happening was brought home to me by what may seem a small and insignificant story. For some reason it struck me more forcibly than some example of immense technological triumph like space shuttles or the latest example of computer wizardry compared, say, with our dilapidated efforts (do you remember?) to start up a small bicycle works or our past well-known difficulties with a factory to make ordinary glass bottles or the series of botches we have made of electricity generation.
The story I read was the simple, everyday one of the increasing need to maintain dust-free conditions in modern manufacturing concerns. Everyday air contains some 10 million microscopic dust particles per cubic foot. Now, do you think anywhere in Guyana any technical effort is being specifically devoted to the problem of how dust in the air can be reduced? Perhaps even more importantly, do you think any such effort is in fact needed, given the backward, hammer and chisel nature of our technology which can go happily along, dust or no dust, 10 million specks per cubic foot or not?
But in the rich countries today, dust concentration in factories is typically kept below 10,000 particles per cubic foot and American, European and Japanese manufacturers are now investing heavily to make their factories 100 times cleaner even than this. They are making an exact science of it. Equipment now being installed is so sensitive that pulling out a handkerchief to suppress a sneeze is a potential source of dust contamination. Writing on a sheet of paper with a ball-point pen creates a serious dust problem, so more and more companies are providing special pens for use in their cleaner and cleaner rooms.
The main point is that we don't need all that. Such sophistication almost seems ridiculous. I am sure I will hear it said that we will do better with our appropriate technology. But even if that is so, we should be very clear in our minds about the implications. These are that in the technological race we are more and more becoming helpless also-rans. Appropriate technology really means technology appropriate to poverty and I am not at all sure we should be proud of achieving that. To me it smacks a little too much of the old, discredited attitude of "know your place and mind your manners."
I personally don't particularly want to live in a world where I have to be careful about writing with a ball-point pen or pulling out a handkerchief for fear of stirring up a contaminating dust-room. I much prefer my familiar and well-loved Guyana air floating freely with 10 million specks of dust per cubic foot. But I'm afraid the lesson is that such technology differences, multiplied a thousand-fold, increasingly these days gives the true measure of why the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.
n Ian McDonald is a regular contributor who lives and works in Georgetown, Guyana.
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