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Opinion    
Back to the Future
The Eastern Scene

Shall we then turn indiscriminately to the East for a solution? Rutter and Smith’s study remarks that Japan appears to have much stronger informal social controls on the behavior of its youth than other developed countries. Malaysia’s prime minister Mahathir Mohamad asserted after the first Asia-Europe summit in 1996, “Asian values are universal values. European values are European values.”

Asia’s economic strength has its roots in children who defer to parental authority and in parents who stay together and invest their time and money in their children’s future. The Philippines are pointed to as a warning of a US style democracy run amuck. Lee Kuan Yew, veteran Prime Minister of Singapore, points to the collapse of the western family structures as the symptom and cause of much of what has gone wrong with western societies. According to him, what a country needs to develop is discipline more than democracy. The Confucian Little Tradition of harmony, civic duties, deferring to societal interests, attachment to the family as an institution, hard work, savings, deference to age, authority and hierarchy, paternalistic relations between husband and wife, father and eldest son, elder and younger children, are emphasized. [[1]03]

Lee KuanYew argues that a “Confucianist view of order between subject and ruler helps in the rapid transformation of society…in other words, you fit yourself into society—the exact opposite of the American rights of the individual.”[[1]04]

In Malaysia the JUST WORLD TRUST (JWT) has been set up which, in its international conference entitled “Rethinking Human Rights”, questions the Western paradigm in which civil and political rights are given pre-eminence over economic, social and cultural rights through a concept of individual rights not inherently linked to corresponding responsibilities. Dr. Chandra Muzaffar, Director of the JWT, stated in his opening remarks in that conference, “a concept of rights which is not founded upon a coherent, integrated, holistic vision of spiritual values must lead inevitably to moral chaos and confusion.” In much of the third world rather than individual-centered morality it is family and society-based morality that holds people together, nourishes their roots and makes for stability. [[1]05] The Kuala Lampur Declaration by the fourth Asian-Pacific Conference of Ministers of Education in 1993 placed renewed stress on moral values in education.

Professor Zhou Nanzhao, Vice-President, China National Institute for Education Research, points out ‘Over the centuries, Chinese intellectuals upheld the moral ideals of “bearing the worries of the world before anyone else and enjoying the pleasures of life after all others”…Traditional Chinese culture, based on Confucianism and Taoism, was essentially ethics-based, stressing moral cultivation of the personality…the realization of an individual’s value depended on his interaction with the collective (the family and the state)…in efforts to modernize, the building of both “spiritual” and “material” civilizations is made the twin goal of national development in many Asian countries.’ [[1]06]

As for India, where else do centuries coexist simultaneously cheek by jowl? Where else in the world will one see a Rolls Royce coming to a halt because of idle cattle sleeping on metropolitan roads? And, “in the same family the granddaughter specializing in the most sophisticated branch of nuclear physics while the grandfather spends six hours a day in the family temple. Where else does one see an electronic scientist beginning the day’s work by putting flowers and vermilion mark on his equipment or offering a silent prayer at the assembly line?” [[1]07] This is the country where the king was reminded by counsellors that the individual has to be sacrificed for the family, the family for the village, the village for the country.[[1]08]

In Japan a new beginning is being made. In the Matushita Institute of Government and Management the goal is to provide the nation with a new type of politician who believes in honesty, teamwork and attending to the needs of ordinary people. The students chant in unison daily, “We will truly love our nation and the people, pursue principles of politics and management based on a new concept of humanity.” The company song goes:

“To build a new Japan

Let us put our strength and minds together.

Endlessly and continuously

Like water gushing from a mountain

Grow, industry grow

Harmony and sincerity – Matushita Electric.”

The management philosophy of the company rests on seven principles:

1. national service through industry;
2. fairness;
3. harmony and cooperation;
4. struggle for betterment;
5. courtesy and humility;
6. adjustment and assimilation; and
7. gratitude.

Matushita holds that organizations inherently prefer clarity, certainty and perfection whereas human relationships involve ambiguity, uncertainty and imperfections. Hence, reinforcement engineering is needed to honor, balance and integrate both. Matushita says, “Profits should not be a reflection of corporate greed but a vote of confidence from the society that what is offered by the firm is valued…I believe that the mission or principal role of business management is to respond to and fulfill the desire of human beings to improve the quality of their living…peace, happiness, prosperity would come from open-minded people with humanistic values.” [[1]09] The fact that 15 of the alumni managed to break the stranglehold of family connections on Japanese politics to get elected to Parliament in July 1993 ushers in hope for the future. [[1]10]  Again, while two decades ago half the Japanese youth preferred their fathers to concentrate on work rather than on the family, now only a quarter of them still feel the same way. The Japanese value of gaman (“toughing it out”) to preserve the family is virtually a family trait that has withstood the onslaught of the Western adulation of individualism. Unfortunately, similar movements are yet to be seen elsewhere in Asia.[11[1]]

– Pradip Bhattacharya
February 16, 2003

Back To The Future

–  Westerners on the West 
–  The New World  
–  The First World  
–  The Western Response  
–  The World Situation 
–  The Eastern Scene 
–  Changing Asian Values 
–  India Darshan 
–  Urbanization, Globalization and Consumerism
–  Possible Solutions 
–  Bureaucracy in India  
–  The Counterpoint  
–  India's Heritage  

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