Nearly a third of the world's people live in the great arc of eleven nations that stretches beneath the southern rim of Russia and China. From Pakistan to Indonesia, the countries of South Asia seem, however, to have more than two-thirds of the world's problems: grinding poverty, ruinous population growth, feeble economies, the burden of colonial pasts and, in Southeast Asia, armed Communist aggressors. In a new book published this week, Asian Drama, Swedish Economist Gunnar Myrdal suggests that the bulk of South Asia's troubles lie not so much in history or lack of natural resources as in the Asians themselves and their attitudes to ward life and work.
Myrdal, whose American Dilemma, published in 1944, remains the classic study of the U.S. Negro, was assigned by the Twentieth Century Fund to undertake a definitive study of South Asia's problems and prospects. The job took him ten years, including three spent traveling in the area, and his findings fill three volumes and 2,500 pages. Impatient with the Western tendency to defer to the heightened sensitivities of South Asian leaders and thereby pull their critical punches, Myrdal tells it like he sees it. Many of his conclusions will not only depress Westerners concerned about the area's future, but will certainly upset many Asians.
Contempt for Manual Work. All the conditions usually blamed for Asia's backwardness—such as lack of capital, of resources, of education—certainly exist, reports Myrdal. But far more damaging to progress are what he sees as basic Asian character traits and attitudes. In one long sentence that amounts to a Doomsday Book, he lists them as: "Low levels of work discipline, punctuality and orderliness; superstitious beliefs and irrational outlook; lack of alertness, adaptability, ambition and general readiness for change and experiment; contempt for manual work; submissiveness to authority and exploitation; low aptitude for cooperation." The last, Myrdal notes ironically, is a legacy from Gandhi and other Asians who led the fight against colonialism by preaching noncooperation with authority. The battle for independence was won, but now the war for progress is being lost in part because of a noncooperation hangover.
Neither civilian rulers such as Indira Gandhi nor the generals who have taken over from the postcolonial politicians in many South Asian nations have had much success in changing these attitudes. The result is that the best-laid, often Western-tutored, economic plans consistently go awry. Whether military or civilian, nominally capitalist or self-styled socialist, "the various political systems in the region are strikingly similar in their inability or unwillingness to institute fundamental reforms and enforce social discipline. They are all in this sense 'soft states.' " And, adds Myrdal: "There is little hope in South Asia for rapid development without greater social discipline."