Mainstream Weeklyby Kamal Hossain
The following is the paper the author presented on November 5, 2013 at the last session of the two-day conference held in New Delhi in honour of N.C. on his birth centenary.
I am privileged to have the opportunity to honour the memory of the late Nikhil Chakravartty, our Nikhilda. I remember him with profound respect and affection ever since we came into close contact during the early years of Bangladesh. His deep commitment to independent Bangladesh, and his wise counsel was invaluable in meeting the many challenges we faced in consolidating our dearly won independence by developing our foreign relations in a world still divided by the Cold War. The importance of not becoming involved in the competition among contending powers through adherence to non-alignment was a course which commended itself to us. Nikhilda supported and encouraged our quest, along with other developing states, for a global order in which people could live free from want and free from fear in a peaceful and stable world. This had continued to be an elusive goal, even though it was recognised in the United Nations Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as reflecting legitimate expectations of all peoples.
In the seventy years since the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights the world’s population has more than doubled, the number of states more than trebled and the world’s real GDP quadrupled. The process of liberalisation of the global economy has accelerated over the last five decades.
While some rate this as a period of progress for developed countries, the impact on developing countries has been negative in significant respects: