Issue No. 1, Travel - Le Tiers-Monde by Andrew Ferris

We travel to India. On a patch of monsoon-cracked concrete along Napier Road, just off one of the major intersections of the old city of Pune, sits a small, grey-haired woman with a round face. She doesn’t have a stand or sign or even a lock-box for the money she collects; laying her goods out on the shady pavement, she tucks the coins she gets right into a fold in her sash. She sells assorted things: candy wrapped in shiny foil, baked snacks, rolls of tangled thread. Items go for 5 or 10 rupees, equivalent to 10 or 20 cents. Her location is hardly ideal: a thoroughfare mostly populated by children walking on their own to school, or rickshaws ferrying their passengers to other parts of town. On a good day, she’ll make 2 or 3 dollars. This woman produces little money and spends little money. Is this the Third World?

In retrospect, one of the blessings of the Cold War was that both of the major powers felt compelled to economically support lesser states in order to maintain power and influence. The American Marshall Plan and the Soviet Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (Comecon) dolled out millions of dollars in aid and infrastructure support to poor and war ravaged countries. However, all this philanthrophy was politically motivated and therefore limited: nearly all the money ended up in the battlegrounds of the Cold War.

Walking a little further down Napier Road, we come to an intersection: telephone booths, internet cafes, and barber shops, line the sidewalks while cows, dogs, and the homeless lie on the sidewalk. Rickshaws and mopeds make way for Land Rovers and Rolls Royces. There is no doubt: money is abound.

Pune, an academic town called the “Oxford of the East,” once small is now burgeoning with a population of nearly 5 million. The growth is due to foreign investment: IT companies and Coca-cola plants employ the youth. But one shouldn’t confuse investment with aid, or cash with infrastructure. The “Developing World” is hard to find, because development takes generations and the pay off is never quick. It happens from the streets up. India, like many Third World localities, is splitting down the middle. Two parallel economies are being formed: one fed from the outside and one sucking on the bottom. The woman selling little for little will spend what little she has on food and shelter. She doesn’t starve, but nor does she save. She exists entirely in a local economy. However, floating inches from her is a global economy that she passes every day but can’t be a part of: an economy that sells cars manufactured in Germany and MP3 players designed in Silicon Valley, all at prices directly commensurate to West because, essentially, it’s the same market as 5th Ave.

There are fewer and fewer geographic places that conform to our vision of the Third World, and what few remain are slowly joining the global economy, but it would certainly be a fallacy to suggest that we are in one united world. The Third World exists in the eyes of the old woman, who can see, but not see into, the First World around her. It’s in the outlook of people who have limited means and limited room for growth.

The gaps growing in Third World countries between local and global economies are deeply problematic and have long term consequences. We should not forget that as the global economy unifies, and as the bottom rises to meet the top, the top must lower itself to the bottom. This will involve not just investment but traumatic sacrifice. Cheap labor may be the beginning of the opening of Third World economies, but competition will follow. Competition not only of individuals or ideas, but of entire systems of value.