Part Two

The Nobel Prize-winning Indian economist Amartya Sen offers a noteworthy historical truth that drives home the relationship between freedom and prosperity, especially in the developing world: Of all humankind’s terrible famines, none has ever occurred in a functioning democracy with regular credible elections, healthy opposition parties, and an unfettered media. Famines historically have been associated with one-party states such as the Soviet Union in the 1930s, China in the 1950s, Cambodia in the 1970s, and North Korea this past decade; military dictatorships such as in Ethiopia and Somalia; or colonial arrangements such as in pre-independence Ireland and India. Notably, not just rich countries avoid famines; poor societies that are open and democratic have never experienced famine either.

Newly independent but democratic India underscores the point. Colonial India experienced a devastating famine just four years before independence. Desperately poor on achieving independence in 1947, India had a huge population, suffered erratic monsoon rains and regional droughts, and relied heavily on traditional agricultural methods. You would have thought the nation was ripe for famine. Yet it never happened. Sure, times remained difficult but there was no collapse. I submit to you that a key reason was the openness of India’s society and adequate market mechanisms based on a free flow of information. Accordingly, surpluses found areas of deficit, and basic food was available throughout the country.

In stark contrast, the horrific three-year famine suffered in China beginning in 1958 tragically demonstrates the other side of the point. An estimated 30 million people died during that period in the wake of the Chinese government’s “great leap forward”, Statist economic policies were disastrous, but the Chinese government refused to face facts. The famine unfolded and the government did not adjust its disastrous policies for three more years. Intolerance of dissent inside and outside the party ensured the party could not adjust. Steered by its own propaganda and reports from local officials hoping for credit with senior authorities, many even believed that the country had millions of metric tons of food that in reality never existed.

In elaborating on this tragedy, Amartya Sen noted that no less a personage than Chairman Mao himself later spotlighted the insidious role played by the suppression of information in the famine. In a 1962 speech, Mao told party cadres that “without democracy you have no understanding of what’s happening down below. The situation will be unclear. You will be unable to collect sufficient opinion from all sides. There can be no communication between top and bottom. Top-level organs of leadership will depend on one-sided and incorrect material to decide issues. You will find it difficult to avoid being subjective.”

When governments attempt to control information throughout society, economic “strategies” tend to be top-down prescriptive exercises that produce little because those most affected have little real input. When prices are set by cumbersome bureaucracies with imperfect information and political agendas instead of by innumerable motivated buyers and sellers responding nimbly to ever-shifting market information, then disinvestment, shortages and black markets inevitably occur. And with distorting artificial scarcities of knowledge, everyone cheats - from the farmer who buys scarce inputs from the black market and sells outside unremunerative government channels to survive, to the elites who access scarce inputs at subsidized prices and exploit the black market to resell those cheap goods for a huge, quick profit. In short, look behind nearly every economic dysfunction and shortage in this country - unavailability of fertilizer and fuel, underutilization of land, burgeoning corruption - and you will likely find some impediment to a free flow of information or the freedom to act on that information.

Such statist systems - with their obsession to control political and economic information - didn’t work in 1930s Soviet Union or 1950s China and it seems doubtful that they’ll ever work elsewhere. Recall Chairman Mao’s caution: “You (i.e., government) will be unable to collect sufficient opinion from all sides. There can be no communication between top and bottom. Top-level organs of leadership will depend on one-sided and incorrect material to decide issues. You will find it difficult to avoid being subjective.” In other words, operating in an information vacuum, any government - even with the best of intentions -will get it wrong under the best of circumstances. Remembering the experience of China and the conclusions of Chairman Mao on the central importance of information flow is, I submit, ladies and gentlemen, an important lesson and a real benefit to be learned from a policy of “Looking East.”

Today we are in an information revolution that holds profound implications for politics and economics throughout this ever-smaller planet. I cannot predict where the Internet revolution and the attendant dynamism of web publishing, blogging, and mass communication on an unprecedented scale will take us. But I can predict with some confidence that 50 years from now, as you students of today are finishing your own illustrious careers, you will look back to 2006 and hardly recognize it, the changes will have been so vast. Those who learn to use the power of this revolution will benefit enormously. In that vein, to unharness that power and maximize societal benefit, governments will need to trust and empower their citizenry in both political and economic spheres. Those who stand in the information revolution’s way, who try to block, control, squeeze and limit information, will - to borrow Mr. Khrushchev’s line - simply be buried, buried under the ashes of history and consigned to irrelevance.

Some final parting thoughts to all of you in the School of Journalism - Remember Bacon: knowledge is power. As developers of knowledge, you future journalists will be critical developers of power in our society. Remember Spiderman: with great power comes great responsibility. You have an obligation to use your power, and to use it responsibly. Indeed, societies who fail to exercise the power of free speech risk having it taken away by those who fear it. Free speech is a self-reinforcing asset; expression of dynamic ideas in and of itself contributes to an environment that encourages wider freedom of expression and all its attendant benefits. In short, use it… or lose it!

 Excerpts from remarks by U. S. Ambassador Christopher W. Dell to the School of Journalism at the National University of Science and Technology, Bulawayo, Zimbabwe.