Ready To Lend A Hand

The humanitarian response to the 2004 asian tsunami was swift and global. But of all the tasks outside relief agencies and foreign soldiers undertook, none was as grim as that assigned to the Indonesian volunteers in Banda Aceh dubbed "the body-snatchers." Their mission: to clear the provincial capital of putrefying corpses, both to preserve the dignity of the tens of thousands of victims and to prevent epidemics among survivors. For weeks, they inched quadrant by quadrant through the wrecked cityscape, freeing decomposing remains from the rubble for burial in mass graves. "It was very, very surprising," says Hasballah M. Saad, an Indonesian human-rights commissioner. "We never imagined that people would come spontaneously."

The volunteers' sacrifices were emblematic of an underappreciated force in modern Asia: the power of community. Time and again, the region's globalized youth are cast as money-grubbing me-firsters--which is to say, the 21st century's version of America's post-World War II baby boomers. In Japan, leaders castigate the "parasite singles" who live at home in suspended adolescence; in Singapore, they fret about the younger generation's propensity to avoid the costs and cares of child-rearing. Everywhere the premise that an Asian "me generation" has emerged is seldom if ever challenged. After all, study after study has plotted the rise of millions of new consumers across the region, noting that global economic growth increasingly hinges on the buying power of well-to-do households in places like Shanghai, Jakarta and Mumbai. One would think that all they want to do--and all the world wants them to do--is spend, spend, spend.

Such observations aren't so much wrong as one-dimensional. History shows that industrializing countries evolve--often radically--with each successive generation. So in light of Asia's breakneck modernization, it's little wonder that values are changing fast. But alongside the spread of unbridled capitalism and conspicuous consumption, the region is also experiencing a profusion of new nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), a religious resurgence and rising nationalism. There are estimated 2 million NGOs in India, and China now has 2,000 registered "green" groups--up from zero in the early 1990s. In Indonesia, students from the top three universities in the country were surveyed on their career plans in 2004. An astonishing 73 percent said they would prefer to work for an NGO than for the government, and about the same number said civic organizations could do more than government to improve the country. In these Asian countries and others, the operative pronoun is "we"--the power of groups to enhance the common good.

In fact, the interplay between individualism and collective action underpins much of Asia's dynamism. One example is modern-day Bangladesh. Infamous for bad governance and incessant civil unrest, the country of 145 million has nonetheless become the least-developed world's overachiever. Its gravity-defying economy is expected to grow by 6.7 percent this year, and the country is on track to meet its United Nations-mandated millennium development goals on poverty reduction, gender equality, literacy and rural development.

But how? One growth driver is the millions of grass-roots enterprises funded by small-scale loans extended without collateral to poor households. The other: a vibrant, youth-oriented NGO community that bolsters educational and health services. "The government is wobbly and ineffective," says micro-credit pioneer Muhamad Yunus, founder of Dhaka-based Grameen Bank and winner of this year's Nobel Peace Prize. "But our NGOs are strong and getting stronger, and they focus on the issues we need them to."

Disorienting change can inspire what looks like selfish behavior, to be sure, as rapid economic growth destroys traditional social structures faster than new ones can be built. One example is the magnetic pull boomtowns like Guangzhou, Ho Chi Minh City or Bangalore exert on the best and brightest young talent in their respective countries. Often, the rural migrants who make good in the city find themselves disconnected and alone. "Initially, a lot of their riches go to satisfying selfish demands," says Shalabh Sahai, a 30-year-old resident of Mumbai who received his M.B.A. from the prestigious Indian Institute of Rural Development in Anand.