This is a pleasant though dangerous game, this playing with world order models. The Club of Rome has made the game popular. Their first report on Limits to Growth (1972) and then their new Gospel of Z.P.G. plus Z.E.G. (Zero Population Growth plus Zero Economic Growth) as the only option left for mankind have now become more academic curiosities than authentic world models. Mankind at the Turning Point (The Club of Rome's Second Report, 1974), while more sure and balanced, yet provided no blue-print for the world of the year 2200. By the time the Club of Rome came to its third major meeting in Algiers last autumn, they had practically abandoned the game of world models and of cybernetic prophecy. The Leontieff Report and the Tinbergen Report now before the U.N. use a more ad hoc, problem-solving approach in preference to a model-building approach. They are both refusing to play the game of world order models.

To what extent are we justified in building world order models at all? Only to the extent to which they can illuminate the way we have to move ahead from where we are. We do not build human societies from whole cloth. Most of the time we can only do maintenance and repairing: even remodeling is beyond our reach. Humanity is not metal and cement out of which reinforced concrete can be shaped to order. Human engineering is so totally different from civil engineering that it is quite perilous to apply the principles of the latter to the former.

I

To deal with human beings as if they were merely commensurable units of production and distribution seems one of the fundamental follies of our unimaginatively metric minds and our woodenly cybernetic imaginations. Social structure is more than an aggregation of individuals as the family is more than a contract between individuals. Human freedom is the element that makes human beings different from sheep or goats. In many ways human beings do behave like sheep and goats, but there are times when they assert their freedom and refuse to be led. Human beings are also different from snakes and foxes in their greater capacity for deception as well as for self-deception.

But then it is equally misleading to regard human beings as simply individuals. We are all prone to this characteristic middle class temptation. Even a most benign and erudite prophet like Abraham Maslow falls into this middle-class or bourgeois error of seeing human development primarily as individual personal development. His hierarchy of needs as diagrammed in Gerry and Pat Mische's new book suffers from the distortion that the individualist optique supplies. Even when they speak of the meta-needs including the concept of "integral unity with the Great self" or realization of the "God within'' the old fallacy of the alone with the alone as the scenario of the mystical union shows through. To quote the Misches' version of Maslow's theory, "Highly self-actualized persons are highly individualized in the development of their uniqueness as persons and by the very same process of deeper inwardness share deeper unity and harmony with all other persons and whole of life"

So long as we keep individual models like Jesus, Gandhi, and King as our goal for human development, we are likely to remain within the strait jacket even in our effort at bonding, coupling, unity with all, and search for global structures. Both Maslow and the Misches admit that "we need a healthy social framework within which to become --individually and as a species-- all that we can be." But they do not always see that social framework as more than an instrument. It is itself the expression of what human bergs are, and human beings cannot afford to conceive the social structure as merely instrumental to personal growth and development. The social structure is part of what human beings are. They do not exist apart from it or independently of it.

I am not sure that point I am making m his first part of my talk is sufficiently clear. First, human engineering or the shaping of human society should not be seen on the analogy of civil engineering. We do not make a blue print, specify measures and materials, and construct a global society as if it were a bridge or a dam. The human material cannot be objectified and manipulated as if they were building-materials for a house or a school. Second, social structure, whether familial, local, national, or global, is not an instrument subsidiary to human development. Social structures are not things to be objectified, computerized, or manipulated. They are part of human existence. Change in social structure is change in the Social being of humanity, and not merely ancillary to it. A human being is not an individual who grows into an adult, and then seeks relationship with others. It is in that relationship that he or she is shaped and that structure is part of his or her being. Social values are the matrix of and not and appendix to personal values.

Making the good society is thus not a simple act of making something out there outside of ourselves. A global system or a human world order means a new kind of humanity. It in not to be constructed as something like a house or even as a voluntary association. It is a corporate self-discipling of humanity by itself. Such self-disciplining involves setting visions of a new goal, and setting one's mind and heart and will to pursue that goal. It is in the sense of seeing a vision that we can think of world order models. It has the value primarily of motivating people and giving them an orientation. When we actually get nearer to the goal, it might look quite different, because what we are doing is actually restructuring ourselves. Man is not an object, but a subject.

II

My second point is to refer to a possible error or fallacy in our conception of the role of governments, both in national and global visions. It is not simply the question of the National Security State, which is indeed a very illuminating concept helping in a fresh understanding of the problem.

There was a time when the symbol of the state was the sword and the sceptre. Today it is bureaucracy, the desk, the office, the chair of authority, the board, the committee. But bureaucracy is by no means a monopoly of the state. We all have our little bureaucracies, and perhaps the most powerful bureaucracies is the industrial bureaucracies, most of them privately controlled. They posses the power of production and distribution. We have thus to cope with two sets of bureaucracies -- one governmental, and and the other private, related to industrial production and distribution. Even the churches have built up their own strong bureaucracies in imitation of the industrial bureaucracies.

The fallacy in our thinking is our assumption that the Government bureaucracy controls the other bureaucracies and other citizens as well. We presume that the government is an umpire between the various power forces in the country. The fact of the matter is that the industrial bureaucracies have immense power, enough power to resist the power of the governmental bureaucracy and sometimes to control it substantially.

This problem has its implications for a Global World Order. If there is a global world order today, which has its own bureaucracy, this World Order bureaucracy will have to function in the context of other powerful national government bureaucracies
the big bureaucracies of the Transnational corporations the cartels of parallel private bureaucracies in the nations who are organizing themselves internationally now.

It is at this point that we have to take a fresh look at the concept of dependence, independence, and interdependence. The slave is dependent on the master, but the master is also dependent on the slave. In this situation, however, the interdependence is based on an unjust relation in which the power is unevenly distributed. In this situation, interdependence is to be avoided, and independence is to be striven for. Interdependence in a relation of injustice is unjustifiable. The colonial relation is typically one of inter-dependence. The relation between the countries exporting manufactured goods and those exporting primary commodities is also one of interdependence, but it is not on that ground be justified. Interdependence among unequal partners is not to be encouraged at all.

Interdependence without justice stands condemned. A world order that puts the demands of inter-dependence before the demands of justice also for that reason stands condemned. The point is recognized by most people, but is often over-looked in some discussions.

This is precisely the issue between the developmentalists and the liberationists in the current world discussion. In Latin America, where the pattern of dependence of many economies on the North American economy is obvious. Developmentalism means the ideology of the exploiter, who wants the victim of injustice to develop and produce more in order that the exploiter can appropriate larger and larger shares of the labour of the dependent economies. The priority in such a situation is not either for development as such or for world orders of inter-dependence, but for genuine independence, and for the forgoing of healthy economic relations following liberation and independence.

But the problem is not simply between national economies. Even within each economy, there is a pattern of interdependence between the Government machinery ad the production distribution machinery which operates for the mutual benefit of the people who control the two machineries, but often to the detriment of the interests of the people of the nation whom the two machineries are supposed to serve.

Our situation in India is not so much in terms of the National Security strait jacket as in terms of the interdependence between the governmental bureaucracy and the bureaucracy of production and distribution. A small but significant part of the latter is controlled by the former. But we know that the Private-sector and its bureaucracy has a telling impact on the governmental machinery. Their mutual interdependence, which may work to the mutual benefit of the people involved in the two sub-systems, however, leaves 60% of the nation very much at a disadvantage. We have the heavy defence expenditure syndrome, with concern for balance of weapons, balance of payments, and scarcity of resources, but that does not make “National security state" the right term to describe our situation. Our problem is that the people are powerless.

This situation can be duplicated at the world level by any premature emergence of a world order. The world order if conceived as an economic reality, has already emerged with its own bureaucracy, committees, conferences, trade agreements, aid arrangements and all the rest of the paraphernalia of interdependence. The Whole point of the current debate is that this economic order is unjust, and hence the cry for a new international economic order. The new international economic order will involve a new global arrangement for division of labor, new terms of trade, new controlling mechanisms etc.

If the world order that is being talked about is a political order whose intended purpose is to regulate the emerging economic order in the interests of justice, it is of course to be commended. But the risk is that the economically powerful will dominate the political world order to the extent that they may use it not only to bolster up the unjust economic order, but also to enhance the efficiency and the strength of an exploitative system. The powerless, instead of becoming empowered, may become even more powerless and helpless with the emergence of a world order. It is admitted that the global arena is today largely jungle territory, without grace or government. But simply by giving the jungle into the more ordered control of the lions and the tigers, the weaker animals may not be able to achieve any greater security.

I have already spoken about the role of government. Government is not the nation. In India we are in desperate need of realizing that the Government can solve only some of our problems. India is people. Who represents the people in a world order framework ? Can we leave it to the governments alone? Especially if the governments are in league with feudal aristocracies or industrial bureaucracy? Who would make sure that the people's interests are not trampled upon or over-looked in world order parleys, in favour of the interests of one or more privileged groups in the nations? The world order that emerges must have direct participation of the people, and that is a machinery that is quite cumbersome to evolve.

III

My third point relates to the values in an emerging world order. A good starting point for reflection is Richard Falk's fourfold valuational system:

V1. the minimization of large scale collective violence (my Catch word, peace and disarmament)
V2. the maximization of social and economic well-being (my catchword—human development)
V3. the realization of fundamental human rights and of conditions of political justice (my catch word, rights and justice)
V4. the maintenance and rehabilitation of ecological quality (my catch word, ecological sustainability)

Falk's book gives an additional list of values which have to do with the quality of human life and the full realization of the human potential, but he does not believe that these fall properly within the purview of Government. Falk as a classical liberal, sees the role of government as minimal, and would therefore regard the four sets of values as adequate as far as World Order Models are concerned. Falk also points out that these values come into conflict with each other. The demands of justice may come into conflict with the demands for peace and disarmament. The demands of economic well-being may come in conflict with the demands of ecological sustainability. In different situations, value weightings wi1l have to be decided on an ad hoc basis. Quite often some values will have to sacrificed in order to protect others which seem more “valuable” in the situation.

Falk then proposes a new measuring rode for human development different from the usual GNP criterion. It is to index these values. That is, the optimum would be 500 points for each of the 4 values, thus positing a total of 2000 on V1 to V4. There will be a calculus of negative and positive indicators for value achievements, and a good society is one that has come to 300 points in each of the four values. The World Order will then have to assess all the states and see how the average stands for the whole world.

This is a very practical solution in which there is much to commend. We are desperately in need of Quality of Life Indicators that are objectively ascertainable, and any help in this direction is to be welcomed. The question however, is whether these are the only four sets of values about which a government should be concerned. Prof. Falk, a confessed liberal believes that the least Government is the best government, and that other values like harmony, joy, creativity and freedom should be fostered non-governmentally. (A Study of Future Worlds, p-31)

Here is the major difficulty. Can we delineate the realm of Government effort from that of the people‘s effort so neatly? We are in danger of much confused thinking at this point. In India we distinguish between Public Sector and Private Sector. What the Government does is public, and what the people do is supposedly private. But this is patently false. The relation between what the Government does and what the people do cannot be so neatly separated. Government has to be an enabler for people to achieve values which are commonly held by the people. Government work when alienated from the people, becomes disastrous to the nation.

Let me now Speak as a Christian. From the perspective of my Christian understanding of reality, I have always to deal simultaneously with two sets of values: One set of personal and community values, and another set of political, economic, and social values. The second value-Set can be undergirded by State legislation, by state-controlled rewards and punishments and can be built into national planning. In this category are the four sets of values noted by Falk. These values are always provisional and change from time to time in the course of history. The personal and community values are mainly for voluntary groups; they cannot be legislated. For a Christian these values are love, joy, peace, toughness, gentleness, goodness, trustworthiness, modesty and self-restraint. Gal:5: 22-23 lists these as the fruit-- singular of the Spirit. I would add at the top of this list, from Eastern Biblical-perspective, the value of “freedom”, and make it a round 10. I would add that all these values have a personal and a community dimension. Communities can be tough, gentle, good, trustworthy, self-restrained etc.

But then what is the relation between Falk’s values V1 to V4 and this list of ten personal and community values? Can we leave all these latter things entirely to the “private sector"? I submit that such a division is hardly tenable. The value system of a society is neither an epiphenomenon to the system of production and distribution; nor can it be seen as an upper floor constructed on the ground floor of economic relations and not something constructed on top of the relations of production and distribution. The challenge for human social structure today is to construct a system of production and distribution which will generate and sustain the desired value-system. This means that the value-orientation has to be built into the system of production and distribution. Power and profit is one value-orientation for economic relations. Social development of the people is another value orientation. This is a basic historic choice. It seems most nations are today choosing a percentage of both together. What we in India call a mixed economy (unfriendly critics call it the mixed up economy) is a reality in all societies. Even those societies which strike a radically socialist pose, eg. China or Tanzania, have at the same time to pay attention to power and profit for the nation. In fact recent changes in China point to the pressure for a more pragmatic power and profit oriented line suppressing the more clearly socialistic, ideological orientation. In the Soviet Union, power-and-profit incentives are used even to coax the individual peasant and factory worker. One can arrange the various nation-states of the world on a scale of a mixture of different proportions of the two basic motivations. The main point is that value-orientation cannot be tacked on to a system of production and distribution.

But is it not true that in a basically capitalistic system, where the fundamental orientation is for power and profit, one still sees other values flourishing despite the pressure of the system? Is it not a fact that Gandhism can flourish under the umbrella of capitalism, to take one concrete example? Did not Martin Luther King spring out of a system in which the basic relations or production were power-and-profit oriented ?

We need at this point to recognize again the factor of human freedom which often blossoms in the mud. A structure that is evil can thus produce good values because this human freedom frequently manifests itself best under adverse circumstances. Even a good structure can, because of this element of human freedom, give rise not only to evil values, but also to alternate values of goodness which are not fostered by the structure itself.

But we should also look at the other side of the coin. True, Gandhism flourished under capitalism. Martin Luther King flourished in the American system. But is it not also true that neither of the two movements has managed to strike roots in the society in which it arose, precisely because the socio-economic structure was inimical to its values? It is one thing to throw up an occasional Gandhi or King, and quite another to have their values more enduringly embodied in the structure of society. There may be no role at all for a Gandhi or a King in a society which is free, just, and racially integrated. One cannot judge a society by the criterion of how many great saints or moral heroes it has produced. A more dependable criterion is what happens to the awareness of ordinary people, their purposes and aspirations. It is in this sense that I insist that value-orientation has to be built into the system of production and distribution. In India we are still in a situation where we try with increasing ineffectiveness to superimpose a set of altruistic values over an economic system which engenders and promotes the values of greed and acquisitiveness.

But the problem today is a little more than the issue between socialism and capitalism. They are both systems thrown up by a post-Christian civilization in Europe, and responds more directly to European socio-economic reality. We in India have a different perspective on reality. A different heritage, a different cultural personality, different from that of European nations and even from China. Our own value orientation cannot be exactly the same as that of Western socialism or humanism.

It has to be different not because we think everything European is wrong. Rather, we are under obligation to learn everything we can from the experience of the rest of humanity. However, our own culture embodies a different perception of what it means to be human. Our Western educated liberals often overlook this heritage, because their training has not given them an opportunity to understand and appreciate it. Our masses are still in touch with this heritage, and the Indian liberal will do well to sit at thefeet of the masses and learn from them what our own true humanity is. Three values which are of cardinal importance are Renunciation (including the concept of niskamakarma and the idea of simplicity), Unity with the cosmos, and the perspective that transcends time and space, Objectivity and Quality.

The Indian contribution to the world order would include the embodiment of a value-system of this kind built into the socio-economic structure, This requires a lot of further reflection and study. We will also have to figure out more clearly how much of the value system is directly thrown up by the system of production and distribution and how much by other factors.

IV

The problem of world order, seen from the perspective of education in India, comes to three major thrusts :

(a) Class-room education i.e. textbooks, teachers, curriculum, testing etc.
b) non-institutional education i. e. mass mobilization and education
c) the dialectic between the two.

a. Class-room education.
In relation to this one can only indicate points at which reform is required, like
1. examination of the teaching of world history and world culture, and correction of the bias towards Graeco-Roman, West European overemphasis bringing in more appreciation and understanding of Asian and African cultures and history ;
2.. relating all subjects to human problems and current human aspirations all over the world ;
3. providing more opportunities to learn social cooperation and the organization of work for the common benefit, without personal profit motive.
4. giving more encouragement and recognition to qualities of social cooperation, e. g. willingness to subordinate personal interest to social interest, ability to settle tensions in the community, skills of making the community mobile for undertaking common projects etc. These qualities should be tested and marks given for these also.
5. teacher training which includes the ability to develop social skills and to work with people in the villages; also developing interest in world order questions like international economic justice, disarmament, aid and trade problems, resource conservation etc.

b) Mass mobilization and Education.
In a country like India, the educational system is defective both quantitatively and qualitatively;
1.. Half the illiterate people of our country are still unreached by programmes of literacy;
2. those who have received an education are constantly grumbling about its quality.

We cannot therefore depend upon the expansion of the present educational system as the solution either to the problem of literacy or to the related problem of the powerlessness of the masses vis~a-vis the twin organized powers of governmental bureaucracy and industrial bureaucracy.

What we need is therefore an alternative system of education which supplements the present system of schools. This would be a system of mobilization of mainly rural people, but also of dispossessed urban people. It would be a programme in which the people organize themselves for thinking in literacy, skills, culture, and social cooperation for production and distribution. This is an enormous programme, and the trained manpower for this should come largely from the present educational system. The boys and girls who have finished 10 years of schooling can be sent to the villages to assist in these village development programmes, under the guidance of teachers specially trained for this work. Thus the school system will interlock with the alternative mass-education system and will transform and reinforce each other.

The two-year pre-degree programme will relate itself to the two-year experience of working with the mass education movement, and to the human problems encountered there. University training will be given to people chosen from among pre-degree students who show aptitudes for:
i. academic and technical work,
ii. social engineering leadership, and
m. innovation and creativity in the various fields.

(c) The dialectic between the school system and the mass-organization system is bound to throw up many conflicts and hopefully also create a dynamic of social change The world order system towards which all of this will be oriented will be one that affirms cultural diversity as well as the organization of the power of the voiceless of the world. The inability of institutional education to meet the demands of this dialectic will itself lead To a transformation of institutional education. Real large-scale contact Between our students and our rural and urban masses may turn out to be the catalyst that sets in motion a process of change with lasting results.

V

1. A just world order model cannot be conceived until the powerless of the world have been better organized for making their own contribution to it.
2. A world order that is truly human cannot be constructed by first creating a model and then building it up. It has to evolve from the pressures for justice and solidarity that are already operative in human society. An artificially constructed world order may become an additional tool for the powerful to oppress and exploit the underprivileged.
3. A world order model cannot be an association of Governments alone. It must devise a means of drawing into it the contributions of all segments of the public. This requires a tremendous amount of imagination and creativity.
4. A world order model will also have to devise a different way of organizing local societies for production and distribution, so as to generate, foster, and sustain genuinely human values.
5. Economics and education are two key points in building a world order. Negative factors are the national security state, the world market system and the patterns of exploitation and oppression that distort human social existence everywhere. Dealing with these problems is more urgent and perhaps more important than building world order models in a situation of international injustice. Creating a dialectic between the educated elite and the illiterate or semi-literate masses may generate a social dynamic of vast proportions.