Written by Laurence Brahm - Published by Review Asia on 12/01/2008

International relations will move beyond the nation-states dialogue and will bring a revolution in the changing values of our system and social conscience.

The Washington Consensus model of globalization has finally lost all credibility in the wake of the global financial collapse. Across the developing world, nations, non-government organizations, and ethnic or local interest groups have been rejecting the views of the Washington Consensus. But they have yet to find an alternative. What we need is a new epicenter, a new consensus that can offer an alternative to Washington's.

So let us get as far away from Washington as possible and come up with a new agenda. It is time for Asians to rake pride in their own ethnic values and realize the power their economies and social philosophies can have in creating a new epicenter and serving as a source of new age universal values.

Asians can draw upon values rooted in the historical and spiritual philosophies of the Himalayan region, fusing and integrating them into a new age value order that incorporates social, political and economic paradigms. This greater Himalayan region is interlinked by geography, sociology, economics and the powerful philosophies of Hinduism, Islam, Buddhism and Taoism that bring it together as Asia and are collectively called the Himalayan Consensus.

Its first pillar calls for an end to the blind application of the Washington Consensus economic fundamentalism, which bears no relation to local realities. Instead, it demands the adoption of indigenous solutions or pathways for economic development.

Each country in the region faces the same challenge of reducing poverty in relatively densely populated rural areas. In the case of China, an unabashed combination of planning and market-based solutions are combined as required. As India proved, economic solutions that start with the grassroots and move upward are as valuable as top-down economic stimulus programs driven by fixed-asset investments in infrastructure.

The experiences of each country in this region differ according to local conditions and cultures. For instance, while China's emphasis is on growth in its gross national product, Bhutan is calling for growth to be measured by GNH - gross national happiness. Bangladesh adopts micro-finance, while Nepal and Sri Lanka empower people through NGO initiatives.

Different approaches must be respected, applied and adopted to suit the unique circumstances in each country without adherence to any one model instead of the modular approach; countries should share their differing sets of experiences concerning development, and seek positive results through an emphasis on grassroots, micro-finance, and combined market and planning approaches. For this, new forums must be created.

None of these dismisses top-down infrastructure fixed-asset spending as an economic stimulus, as different approaches can be adopted in parallel. It has to be remembered that the power of grassroots movements is tremendous.

The second Himalayan Consensus pillar calls for positive engagement and social interaction without violence, vast egalitarianism and equality - aspirations shared by the region's four great philosophies, which share similar aspirations for equality, dosing the gap between rich and poor, the universal right to medical treatment, respect for the environment, and finding peaceful solutions to global conflicts as the basis of humanity's own sustainable development.

The Himalayan Consensus prioritizes poverty alleviation and the reduction of income gaps to create a more equitable world. Visit any Hindu temple in the evening and one will find food being provided to the poor. Likewise, compassion and alleviating the suffering of others are the most important pillars in Buddhism. Alms-giving is one of the five pillars of Islam, where it is considered not as a form of charity but of virtue. Everyone is responsible for everyone else, and the strongest in the community takes care of the weakest.

Himalayan Consensus values are based on the belief that you benefit more from giving than by taking. This is the opposite of the "no free lunch" concept, or the belief that only the strongest will survive because it is their right, or the Western notion that the weakest are in their position because they are not working hard enough or not determined enough to succeed.

The third pillar of Himalayan Consensus is that every country should have the right to develop its own political system. The right to self-determination, independent of any other country's external dictates, should be a universal value.

Just because a political system works for one people and nation, there is no reason to force it upon another, especially those who are less than interested. The role of each government should be to alleviate poverty, close gross income gaps, assure that health and social security systems are responsive to people's needs, and that labor is treated fairly and not exploited, as well as to protect the environment against desecration while stimulating sustainable economic growth through sound policies to guide commercial interests.

The key relevance of the Himalayan experience lies in the number of diverse ethnic and tribal groups in each country bordering the Himalayan mountain range. Most countries touching the Himalayas probably have over 50 different ethnic or language groups. This situation is readily shared with many African countries, large parts of central Asia, the Middle East and also Central and South America. None of these regions adopts the melting pot culture and each defends the ethnicity of its own people strongly, albeit often in different ways with sharp and sometimes even genocidal confrontations erupting between them. But this is the reality that many countries face.

Indigenous models of participatory government should be created based on the foundations of each country's local cultural, tribal, historic, political, and economic structures. To be responsive to popular needs, each body politic should incorporate representatively its own unique ethnic, religious, and social groups.

Evolution, rather than reform, should be the emphasis. While such ideas may be anathema to Washington, the reality is and has been continuously proven - that forcing an American model of government on the heads of countries that have no relevant historic, social, or cultural commonality with the country, transferring the system will only lead to ineffective government, political instability, and social humanitarian disasters. T his is what we continue to protest against.

As institutions such as the United Nations and the World Trade Organization continue to fail us, new ones will arise organically. They, too, will globalize. Transnational, regional and global conglomerations - whether economic, political or religious - are essentially what we are going to see in the century ahead.

Globalization is not a linear phenomenon bur involves the constant conversions of common sets of ideas. We will never see one global ideology; instead, there will be a connection of consensuses, conglomerations and gatherings around common ideas. The Himalayan Consensus is just one path towards the future. There will be other regional consensus - Andes. Islamic - one after another. The successful ones will become new institutions and those that fail will merge.

These movements will accelerate as we move into the post nation-state world, where nationalism becomes less and less a primary means of collective identity. As people begin to revert back to forms of self-identity, based on their own culture, religion and ethnicity, these kinds of consensus will become the primary mode through which relations on the global stage will be experienced.

International relations will go beyond the nation-states dialogue. It will take place with various forms of global transnational consensus, and the revolution will be in the changing values of our system and social conscience. The battles will be fought with the very tools of globalization - the internet and satellite television. Guerilla networks and bloggers will arise and unite. So tune in.

Laurence Brahm is a global activist, international mediator, political columnist and author. He is the leading advocate of a fresh development paradigm - The Himalayan Consensus - an innovative approach to development.

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