A test for populism

The new wave of far-right nationalism sweeping Europe comes across a new test when Italy's government presents its budget to the European Union (EU). The new government has stuck true to its election pledges by suggesting major investment in infrastructure and reducing the pensionable age both of which puts pressure on fiscal deficit. As was the case with the United States, everyone's asking how will this deficit be bridged. The concept is more jobs, leading to more taxation to fill the coffers. The issue is that the deficit spirals beyond the percentage points agreed to be the EU. The Italian government, therefore, is challenging the EU on a governance issue based on what its people want. The EU has long been of the opinion that the math must add-up before populist measures can be put in place.

In a way it isn't too different from what donor agencies are asking of developing world governments; better governance and meaningful spend. A third equation is raising funds domestically as a sort of match. Countries are too easily falling dependent on the doles of the wealthy while pushing agendas that do not address inefficiencies and corruption. Where democracies are not fully integral to society the citizen has no platform to seek redress but Europe is different as politicians are finding out. Angela Merkel, who just about cobbled together a government with the Christian Democrats, now finds that the same opposition is losing grounds with its voters after a disastrous showing in `Bavaria that saw their absolute majority cut sharply down to 35 per cent.

Non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and donors are having to tow similar lines mainly because their funds come from the same group of wealthy nations whose voters are asking what is all this foreign aid doing to their welfare back home. Declining populations are matching up with fewer jobs and where jobs are available real wages are lower than ever before. And when the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation ask for more structured streamlining of the Foundation's activities there the resemblance with the EU stamp on budgets is strikingly familiar.

The Foundation focuses on health, education and opportunity creation in tackling the obvious overtly that looms in Africa with a stiff 4.5 per cent population growth. After an investment of $9.0 billion the Foundation is now coming face to face with an annual $5.0-billion fund if the objectives are to be met. Ms. Gates has emphasised on governments to invest in digital economies because that's where the new ideas and job opportunities are likely to evolve from. And she has done so at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) meetings in Bali where Finance experts grappled with poverty and the inevitable next recession.

The Foundation is now pinning more resources on documented reports in family planning, HIV prevention and integration, education and Agriculture. These, in turn, intervene with priorities that are set differently by government but that which must be aligned if further assistance from the Foundation is to be forthcoming.

Human Capital is the next frontier for investment and goes beyond basic education as we know it. The global education portfolio requires a wholesale revamp of education systems such as that of Bangladesh where perfectly respectable pass rates in SSC and HSC examinations end up with embarrassing results at the University levels. Education must shift from what we believe is necessary to what is needed in the coming world-Artificial Intelligence (AI) one of them, town-planning another and renewable energy yet another burning topic. Populism is as much engrained in these as anything else.

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