Ziād Bahā‘ al-Dīn: Innovative solutions on how to deal with Egypt

The Indian Council for Inter-cultural Cooperation invited Ziād Bahā‘ al-Dīn to India to attend a conference surrounding ways to achieve social justice and incorporate poorer classes of society into the national economy. Despite India’s manifold achievements since its independency, Indian society still suffers of social and religious cleavages.

This situation worsened in the nineties, when India’s open door policy created a small business elite and globally competing entrepreneurs in the service and industrial sector on the expense of growing poverty in the slums and countryside. Even though it is emerging as a major player in the global economy with impressive growth figures, India is not able to stop growing inequality.

Concerning India’s fight against these problems, Ziād Bahā‘ al-Dīn writes about three fundamental approaches: charitable organisations, state-owned banks, and development cooperation organisations.

Regarding the first, he underlines the necessity for promoting economic autonomy through vocational training rather than direct financial support of small businesses. The director of the charitable organisation which al-Dīn visited expressed his willingness to visit Egypt and set up his project there too.

Writing about the cooperation of small scale farmers and milk producers, the author again points to the fact that they developed an extremely productive industry and suggests that by implementing an adequate legal framework for this purpose, Egypt could succeed in such an endeavour likewise.

With regard to state owned banks that help successfully financing and providing expertise for SMEs in India, al-Dīn notes that a similar idea was discussed but then dismissed in Egypt after the revolution.

In light of his experiences, Ziād Bahā‘ al-Dīn therefore concludes that the question of social equality and fairness needs to go beyond charity and should rather address comprehensive social change that allows economic participation for all classes.

(24 March 2015, CNN Arabic, Ziād Bahā‘ al-Dīn)

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