By Isabella Gyau Orhin
A Lecturer at Department of Political Science Dr. Amos Anyimadu has said the independence of India in 1947 directly shaped the Ghanaian independence of 1957.
Speaking at New Delhi, India on the theme, “Ghana at Fifty, India at Sixty: The Challenge of the Democratic Developmental State” on March 7, 2007, Dr. Anyimadu said “It is fair to say that we shall not be celebrating Ghana at fifty today had India at sixty not been sown.”
It was organised by the Ghana’s High Commission in India in collaboration with Nehru Memorial Museum and Library on Ghana’s Golden Jubilee.
He said the first President of Ghana Dr. Kwame Nkrumah was clear about the importance of the Indian experience to the struggle for freedom in Ghana.
Thus in his autobiography he wrote: “After months of studying Gandhi’s policies and watching the effect it had, I began to see that, when backed by a strong political organisation, it could be the solution to the colonial problem”.
According to him, the Nkrumah-Gandhi axis was driven much more deeply.
“I would suggest that it is not simply incidental that Gandhi’s favourite hymn was “Lead Kindly Light” and that this also became Nkrumah’s, and his party’s, favourite.”
He also said that it is not simply coincidental that Kwame Nkrumah’s most famous aphorism “Seek ye first the Political Kingdom and all things shall be added unto you”, is attributable not simply directly to the Christian scripture but, perhaps more directly, to Gandhi’s fundamental position that:
“You cannot serve God and Mammon is an economic truth of the highest value. We have to make our choice. Western nations are groaning under the monster-god of materialism. Their moral growth has become stunted … Under the British aegis we have learnt much, but it is my firm belief that, if we are not careful, we shall introduce all the vices that she has been prey to owing to the disease of materialism … Let us first seek the Kingdom of God and his righteousness, and the irrevocable promise is that everything will be added unto us. These are real economics”
Dr. Anyimadu said what may be considered the three cardinal emphases of Gandhian thought, to rely on the reckoning of Hugh Tinker: “the cooperative society where intellectuals and manual workers find a common purpose”; “the attempt to give self-respect to those whom tradition had handicapped”; and “the philosophy and technique of non-violence” all resonate in the Ghanaian freedom struggle and our post-Independence march for democracy and development.
Dr. Anyimadu who is also a director of the African Next Knowledge Brokerage and Interaction said the personal electricity between Nkrumah and Nehru, which clearly shoots out of the dramatic photograph of the two icons unveiled in Ghana’s High Commission to India, carried these high principles into practical politics and was perhaps most successful in the International Relations precept of Positive Neutrality and organizationally in the Non Aligned Movement.
Erica Powell, Kwame Nkrumah’s long-serving private secretary, in her important book on Kwame Nkrumah captures in different ways the deep personal friendship and political engagement between Nkrumah and Nehru.
“Thus, we are told, as Nkrumah set off for a much colder part of India during his 1961 visit, his ever thoughtful friend and ally, Nehru, realizing that Nkrumah did not seem to carry adequate protection against the elements, fetched a comforting coat and gloves which he personally delivered to Nkrumah on a trot.” Dr. Anyimadu said.
The days of Nkrumah and Nehru according to him were charged with visionary politics. “Today, our challenges appear much more mundane,” he said adding, “It is clear that the distance between Ghana and Indian has widened.”
Recently the BBC World Service focused on India under the rubric “India Rising”. Today the same focus is on Ghana under the decidedly low-tempo, somewhat backward-looking rubric “Winds of Change”
India confidently embraces Globalisation. Ghana struggles to humanize Globalization for basic survival, Dr. Anyimadu said.
The Economist newspaper recently said the Indian economy was overheating with near ten per cent growth. “This, we are told, presents its own problems which the politics of your recent budget, I understand, seeks to address,” Dr. Anyimadu said.
He also said that Ghana seek all growth without the luxury of fine qualification.
A thoughtful and balanced piece written by Michelle Faul of the Associated Press from Accra, and carried by many newspapers around the world on Ghana’s independence day notes that Ghana’s “Golden Jubilee on Tuesday is prompting some sober reflection on why Africa has failed to translate its dreams, and its bounty of mineral and agricultural resources, into wealth”.
The Economist newspaper’s online says that Ghana “is an example of much that has gone wrong, and then right, in Africa”.
Again on the homepage of the World Bank, The Country Director of Ghana Mats Karlsson reports that the last five years brought higher economic growth (6.2 percent in 2006), after a steady two decades of moderate 4 percent growth. Inflation is lower (10 percent, down from 40), and so are interest rates (15 percent, down from 30), and poverty (33.4 percent in 2005, down from 39.5 percent in 2000, and 51.7 percent in 1990.”
Dr. Anyimadu said while the statistics, may tell different stories it may be clear that from the perspective of an Asian tiger it would seem that the African lion is meek indeed.
He also explained that while the idea of the Developmental State has often implied authoritarian governance, India presents an interesting challenge of a Democratic Developmental State.
This is the agenda that the government of President Kufuor has set for us in Ghana as well under the grand promise “Development in Freedom”. What happens to the state in Development has arrested conceptual attention for centuries. The current history of India belies many of the general conclusions that have been assumed. Agrarian social structures were not supposed to yield democracy. Responsive politics in poor countries was not supposed to yield good economics. Here in India these received assumptions have been turned upside down, he said.
According to Dr. Anyimadu, it is refreshing that the evolution of Ghana—India relations clearly points to a practical approach to the challenge of the Democratic Development State. India’s support to Ghanaian development today is distinguished not only by its surprising large size but also its strategic quality of having a clear potential to fundamentally uplift our march to democracy and development.
He said for Africa as a whole, India has extended more than one billion dollars worth of technical assistance. I am particularly taken by the promising Pan-African e-Network Project recently begun by India for Africa. The Project envisages connecting the 53 African Union countries by satellite and fibre optic network, and once completed, it would provide tele-education and tele-medicine facilities from India to regional centres in Africa and also individually to each of the member countries.
It would also provide effective communication and connectivity to all the AU countries including voice and video conferencing facilities among the Heads of States. This is an excellent example of South-South cooperation for meeting the challenges of the new Knowledge Economy in our shrinking world.
Ghana he said is also a member of India’s Team-9 initiative. It is under this arrangement that Ghana has received concessional credit for the Presidential Complex. Near the State House in Accra one finds a gleaming temple to the future. The India-Ghana Kofi Annan Centre of Excellence in Information and Communication Technology was established with $2 million dollars assistance from India.
] This facility has fast become a crucial component of our digital future in Ghana. India’s fascinating emergence as a telematics giant is powerful instruction to us in Ghana. I am even happier that our relationship in this area is beginning to more fully cover the content side of this equation.
According to Dr. Anyimadu, the most important point that the took away from the BBC’s India Rising season was the well-based transformation of the Indian public sphere through application of new as well as old communication technologies.
“I note the importance of your local language, including its press, in public life. The force of Indian television and film is truly remarkable. I understand India is one of the few places on our planet where the press is truly deepening.”
According to him, all these factors have significant pecuniary implications. They also have implication for mind and thought.
“They must be good for the quality of democracy in India. It is not difficult to see that these factors form a crucial component of the seminal observation of Amartya Sen, the great Indian intellectual, that famine does not occur in democracies. “
“It is for all these reasons that, even as I conclude my exploration, I am happy to report that we had the first official Indian Film Festival in Accra this year. I look forward to similar, mind-led conclaves linking our two countries in the near future.”
Ghana celebrated its golden Jubilee on March 6, 2007 with a big ceremony which was attended by several heads of states across Africa and dignitaries all over the world.
Source: Public Agenda Ghana
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