I am honored and overwhelmed to get this opportunity to speak before you. Many people say that we are now living in a unipolar world. I don’t subscribe to this notion. I believe we are living in a bipolar world. At the one side, we see global hegemonic forces connected with each other through visible and invisible strings; on the other side there is a growing superpower, ‘the world public opinion’. We need to nourish it, promote it and sharpen it.

We live in a dynamic environment. There is no dearth of issues. The society is pluralistic, while regimes are often monolithic. Communities strive for freedom, while power brokers strain them with their own agenda. Producers toil to earn a living, while the non-producers who laze around create theoretical postulates and regulatory frameworks to legitimize their own positions. So social and political institutions are created that encroaches in freedom of individuals and prevail in the name of governance. Now we talk about good governance.
In this world we live with plants, animals and rivers. We live with peoples and their diverse cultures. We live with different perceptions and ideologies. We live under the dictums of State.
People need a government in terms of services it delivers and they do not want a government to control and regulate their lives. Most of the people are poor and they do not want a government with a very high overhead cost. So government should be small in terms of authority and can only be rationalized if it can maintain and sustain services needed by the people. The next important question is where the government should be located. It is now being widely agreed that people should be empowered at the local level to plan and manage their own affairs. At the higher level, i.e. the central level, the role of the government can only be rationalized in terms of its facilitating role and the central government in whatever form we conceive must not be the central focus in the chain of governance. The central focus should be on local government and community management based on the principles of stakeholder participation. The central government should work as a catalyst to create an enabling environment where local level stakeholders can play their role without any obstruction.
In the art of governance, the notion of authority has increasingly being replaced by the concept of participation. People’s participation has become a buzzword. Its connotation goes beyond consultation process and it also incorporates within its frontier the role in decision-making in all stages of an intervention that affect livelihoods. Here the key word is partnership that steers the wheel of progress. This partnership evolves through meaningful interaction and convergence of interests. Such partnership requires a facilitating mechanism that would ensure critical balance among different stakeholders.
It is also important to note that there are different interest groups or stakeholders with competing and conflicting objectives and strategies. In the context of an enabling institutional environment, conflict management and consensus building are two critical areas that need special attention.

It is widely accepted that culture is the “totality of the way of life of the people in a society in a particular period”. It is generally manifested in a number of forms including ideology, tradition, art and literature, which grow and prevail through different mediums.

Ethnic and religious chauvinism is increasing in our world. The State is provoking chauvinism in many respects. The conflict between different faith groups, caste apartheid, discrimination and persecution of the minorities by the majority community, all are manifestations of a civil society, which can hardly claim itself civil.

In the absence of healthy social development, violence of the dominant groups is unleashed to weaker groups in terms of language, religion, ethnicity, caste and gender. The powerful sections of the society with their strong grip on the State and its institutions impose their own brand of ideology and statehood to oppress and plunder the people through both ‘constitutional’ and extra-constitutional modes. They use a system of a highly centralized planning and administration, which are top-down, bureaucratic, coercive, exploitative and immoral. The overwhelming majority of the population is diminished to a body of taxpayers, without any right of participation in the determination of their own destiny.

As religion has become more and more instrumental in shaping a collective psychology, States are increasingly at loggerheads, which obstruct free flow of information and of the people. Rights are being curtailed in the pretext of ‘national security’.

Asia is the birthplace of many religions. This is a region where people from different faiths have lived together in peace for centuries. Despite its historical rise and fall, the region has also succeeded in safeguarding some of its secular institutions. Some of the values, beliefs and practices of such institutions have made a significant contribution to human civilization. Those days are gone.

We talk about building an intellectual community, a constituency of concerned intellectuals. We are trying to develop a conceptual approach for social transformation that would have important implications in terms of building such a community. We have been undergoing a process of global interdependency. We are also striving to articulate sort of a ‘third world psyche’ and ‘Asian entity’. What does these mean in the modern world with all its complexities and contradictions? We are in a quest for an alternative vision and praxis. This is what we have been looking for through ARENA.

Despite successes and failures, people tend to reject ideas and processes that are not compatible with their aspirations. They use a different language to express their condemnation, anger and hatred. Language ranges from vocal resentment (slogan), to written articulation (manifesto), to physical reaction (uprising), to armed encounter (war). Proponents of each action have their own justifications. There cannot be a standard solution for all the predicaments.
Protest is a manifestation of the injured mind. It indicates the extent of injury that one suffers. If the injury is far too grave, the injured mind may explode. Anti-globalization rallies in Seattle, Genoa, Prague, Florence and Hong Kong are recent examples where the youth have registered their protest against the forces of global power brokers.
Role of a conformist is to emulate, while a rebel ponders to create. A rebel never gives in. When Prometheus retorted to the servant of the gods, Hermes, he said:
Be sure of this, I would not change my state
Of evil fortune for your servitude,

Than to be faithful boy to Father Zeus. 
(Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound)
While undergoing studies in the universities, fingering around books in the library, we might not have forgotten or overlooked that more than half of the children in this world have no access to education, safe water and sanitation. While preparing ourselves for the future, shouldn’t we spend some time to think about this imbalance? Shouldn’t we challenge the notions that create such imbalance? Shouldn’t we work hand in hand to erase this imbalance from our society?
I hope we all shall grow up as decent human beings, as good souls. One day we all shall die. As long as we are alive, we fight for life. Here I like to dedicate a poem to you.

In too many fronts I am in strife
I have been fighting all through my life
I have been fighting ever since the dawn
I have been fighting since I was born

I fought for Spartacus inside the dome
I fought for slaves to retain their home
I fought for truth and freedom of speech
I drank Hemlock with Socrates