Episode #200: Battling Oppression with Economic Stability (Bonus Shorts)
“I am an Indian and American, and I carry both in my blood,” says Jagdish Dalal, who goes by the name Jag. “I am one of those with a Western mind and Eastern soul. So whenever I think about Myanmar, or I think about other Asian countries, I have a personal feel for it.”
With over fifty years of leadership advising Fortune 100 companies, Jag’s business work has been documented in case studies at Harvard Business School, and he is in high demand as a speaker on information technology management and “futurism” (guiding businesses through an ever-changing world).
Jag emigrated to the United States in 1965, and became a full citizen on July 4th, 1976, America’s bicentennial anniversary. His appreciation for diverse cultural perspectives has led him to examine effective business strategies in developing countries. For example, he supports “impact sourcing,” which is when a corporation decides to source their material or services to make a greater impact on local communities. However, he notes that while a step in the right direction, more is needed—in Jag’s words, “an infrastructure in place that can take advantage of the incoming wealth and incoming value from the corporations.” He stresses that developing economies leads to a growing middle class, which itself has the added benefit of reducing violence, as in his reading of history, civil strife is often caused by growing social inequality.
This perspective informs Jag’s approach to the current problems in Myanmar. He sees how “suppression creates the organizations to create protests,” which are themselves suppressed, and the cycle repeats itself; all the while, people struggle to find jobs, food, housing, and even seek out basic safety. Like past podcast guests, Jag is concerned not only with Myanmar’s widespread, acute problems, but also the long-term implications of how future generations will be impacted. “Unless there is an ability to create stability and have a political environment that encourages growth, and not suppression, we're going to see Myanmar falling behind its competition.”
One statistic that caught Jag’s attention is that Myanmar currently has the seventh largest percentage of working-age population in the world, but is on pace to be second by 2050, which is both a problem and an opportunity. “It is a problem in the sense that unless that working age population is fully prepared to compete on a global basis, and unless that community is fully developed to provide the services and the manufacturing, and what the world needs, they're going to fall behind economically dramatically,” he warns. “In order to do that, first thing you're going to need is a stable environment where the working age population have the stability and economic wherewithal and political support to get themselves growing.” This is why Jag has put so much work into his nonprofit, Wells Mountain Initiative, which funds US-based education opportunities for promising students from developing nations, who commit to returning to their home countries to give back.
Another issue that Jag calls attention to is highlighted in a study conducted by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), concerning Myanmar’s falling GDP. “[It] means that it's not producing the sources of income, not only for the government, but also for the people, which is again going back to my whole cycle thing, that that's going to create a bigger cycle of suppression, bigger cycle of protests, bigger cycle of killing and forced migration, and that's not the way to really change the environment.” And as someone who brings a global perspective to crises, Jag emphasizes that such problems will likely result in large-scale, social unrest that then has the potential to spill over the border and destabilize the societies of neighboring countries. Moreover, given that foreign investment has dramatically decreased since the coup, there is little hope on the horizon for being able to reverse this dynamic.
Jag explains that he approaches the conflict not from a humanitarian or political perspective, as many past podcast guests have, but from an economic one. Referring to his theory about the likely outcome of an unraveling Burmese economy, he believes that greater unrest will likely result in more oppressive regimes, which, in turn, will align themselves with other such regimes around the world—and result in a net loss for a democratic future. “Which means that unless we go and think at the root of the issue, which is the economy, which is the suppression of the rights, which is the prevention of liberty and democracy, that's just going to create a continuing problem, not only for that country, in this case Myanmar, but also in adjoining countries and then eventually the world.”
Jag’s economic perspective also informs his view on sanctions, which he likens to penalty clauses in contracts. He advocates for incentives, instead. He feels that sanctions force the targeted country into economic responses that may not always align with the desired goals of those imposing the sanctions. Furthermore, he finds that sanctions often stimulate a more negative political environment that hinders diplomatic efforts.
Jag closes by affirming that people the world over should be following—and concerned—about what is now happening in Myanmar. “The challenge is that that issue is in the back of the mind, so I think the more and more you do to bring it to the forefront, it's going to help,” he says. Jag references Insight Myanmar Podcast as an effective example of creating engagement through education. “I was concerned about [Myanmar] at one point in time, and I would have done something about it if I could,” he says. “[But this podcast] really put Myanmar ahead on my thinking platform. There are a lot of things out there that I'm thinking about, but now it is higher on my platform to be thinking about, and I really appreciate the opportunity.”