Against Corruption
Partha Desikan
The United Nations Organization against Drugs and Crime (UNODC), had the nucleus of an idea for a convention aginst corruption all over the worldd, in 2000. Between 2003 and 2005, the convention has taken birth and started circulating among governments and NGOs of several contries.
Here is a link: /unodc/en/treaties/CAC/index.html">http://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/treaties/CAC/index.html
It will be of great interest to watch this initiative grow and strengthen. Anyone knowing of any useful developments is requested to share the knowledge.
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written by karigar, 2008-07-25 09:28:21
Dear Partha
I will try reading up the link. I don't really have much to add, except quoting from Amitava Ghosh, whose latest novel has a well researched backdrop of the 'Opium Wars', and how much of British Economy was dependent on Opium (Drug!!) trade.
Not to take away from the seriousness of the issue, but...
From http://specials.rediff.com/new...slide1.htm
Ghosh identifies opium as a 'foundational commerce' of the 19th century. He alludes to the book Opium City, by the Delhi-based historian Amar Farooqui, which holds that Bombay, without a proper hinterland, had to be entirely financed from Bengal and became so prohibitively expensive for the British East India Company to maintain that only the opium trade, fed by the poppies grown mostly in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, saved it from being shut down. The British, Ghosh insists, were exporting opium out of India until the 1920s. In an interview with the BBC, he said, 'It is not a coincidence that 20 years after the opium trade stopped, the Raj more or less packed up its bags and left. India was not a paying proposition any longer.'
It was opium then, it is heroin now.
How has the 19th century opium trade influenced today's global economy?
I don't think today's drug trade is even a tenth of what opium was in the 19th century. Opium was really a foundational commerce of that period. We hear people going on about the industrial revolution. Certainly, those technical innovations were quite important but so much of it was underwritten by the opium trade, which -- if you think about it -- is a third-world product produced by illiterate peasants who are paid a pittance for their labour, and it is taken to another Asian country and sold there for enormous profit.
...The world's biggest port today -- Hong Kong -- was entirely a product of opium. It was founded as a result of the Opium Wars and for the first seventy or eighty years of its life it was primarily an opium distribution port.
(Laughs) In fact, some of the world's biggest banks were founded by merchants who made their money in opium. In India, there's virtually no 19th century money that isn't opium money!
So, all the morality attacks we're having today on account of the drug trade are unfounded?
No, drugs are a serious concern. And to me as a parent, of course, it's a very serious concern. But what you see (laughs wryly) in this whole Victorian Empire thing is also an incredible hypocrisy -- on the one hand, incredible Puritanism, and on the other, absolute cynicism.
A very well-known British policymaker had said, 'Opium is the tool with which we will prise open the Chinese oyster'. It was completely out in the open -- it was not something they were embarrassed about.
....
I will try reading up the link. I don't really have much to add, except quoting from Amitava Ghosh, whose latest novel has a well researched backdrop of the 'Opium Wars', and how much of British Economy was dependent on Opium (Drug!!) trade.
Not to take away from the seriousness of the issue, but...
From http://specials.rediff.com/new...slide1.htm
Ghosh identifies opium as a 'foundational commerce' of the 19th century. He alludes to the book Opium City, by the Delhi-based historian Amar Farooqui, which holds that Bombay, without a proper hinterland, had to be entirely financed from Bengal and became so prohibitively expensive for the British East India Company to maintain that only the opium trade, fed by the poppies grown mostly in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, saved it from being shut down. The British, Ghosh insists, were exporting opium out of India until the 1920s. In an interview with the BBC, he said, 'It is not a coincidence that 20 years after the opium trade stopped, the Raj more or less packed up its bags and left. India was not a paying proposition any longer.'
It was opium then, it is heroin now.
How has the 19th century opium trade influenced today's global economy?
I don't think today's drug trade is even a tenth of what opium was in the 19th century. Opium was really a foundational commerce of that period. We hear people going on about the industrial revolution. Certainly, those technical innovations were quite important but so much of it was underwritten by the opium trade, which -- if you think about it -- is a third-world product produced by illiterate peasants who are paid a pittance for their labour, and it is taken to another Asian country and sold there for enormous profit.
...The world's biggest port today -- Hong Kong -- was entirely a product of opium. It was founded as a result of the Opium Wars and for the first seventy or eighty years of its life it was primarily an opium distribution port.
(Laughs) In fact, some of the world's biggest banks were founded by merchants who made their money in opium. In India, there's virtually no 19th century money that isn't opium money!
So, all the morality attacks we're having today on account of the drug trade are unfounded?
No, drugs are a serious concern. And to me as a parent, of course, it's a very serious concern. But what you see (laughs wryly) in this whole Victorian Empire thing is also an incredible hypocrisy -- on the one hand, incredible Puritanism, and on the other, absolute cynicism.
A very well-known British policymaker had said, 'Opium is the tool with which we will prise open the Chinese oyster'. It was completely out in the open -- it was not something they were embarrassed about.
....
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The Office UNODC , by its very name has its work cut out against drug trafficking and crime and internationally at that. But , if you read the specific convention that I am referring to, you will find that the focus is on corruption, and on the mechanisms proposed to empower and enable the nation states of the world to identify sources, incidents of corruption, especially among persons in zones of political power and influence and go about both preventing it and when it is already present, apprehend and take action against the corrupt exemplarily.
While a large number of centers of power could have been created through organized crime and drug-trafficking, the assumption here could be that transparency among state administration officials and in administrative machinery can lead to such prevention and exemplary action.
Have referred your fair doubt to an official in UNDOC and hope that she has the time to answer us.
Regards. Partha