Left unchecked, populist nationalism will undermine the liberal democratic market system that has brought developed countries the prosperity they enjoy.
While global corporations setting up GCCs in India continue to express confidence in availability of skilled AI engineers, the panel argued that India’s real challenge lies elsewhere.
Without a Congress revival, there can be no challenge to the BJP pan-nationally. Modi’s party is growing, and almost entirely at the cost of the Congress.
Today’s world is closely interconnected by ease of travel and communication, therefore boundaries of the thinking of different peoples are porous. Jumping of photons of thought from one mind to another across all geographies is happening all the time. In such a world, any nationalism almost by definition has to be narrow minded. And all narrow minded nationalisms thrive on bigotry. The leader of such minds, as a corollary, has to be a bigot. I don’t know about other parts of the world, Turkey etc as mentioned in this article, I am talking specifically of the nationalist surge we have seen in India in the last five years.
But that’s only half the story. In the above I mean the nationalism based on the superiority of a race as perceived only by the members of that race, as espoused, for example, by the RSS and its affiliates in India. There is yet another type of nationalism which is based on resource crunch and has its own dynamics. Dr Rajan’s very well written and thought provoking article pertains to this kind of nationalism. He very rightly says here:
“Surveys of values across developed countries suggest that people tend to have greater trust and affinity for strangers, as well as more concern for the wider world beyond their immediate families, when they are economically secure. As their economic security and social status become more fragile, the moderately educated become less able and willing to accommodate change.”
With this we can understand President Trump’s election and Brexit.
Dr Rajan sets too much store by the research done by one of his Chicago colleagues. I find it puzzling that professor Luigi Zingales had to study “ancient” Italian society (Athens?) to conclude that Democracy inculcates confidence due to freedom of choice, and thereby a sense of responsibility, and a capacity for a community to look after itself better with …”The state would monitor community governance lightly…” (Quote from Dr Rajan’s present article). It is a correct observation by prof. Zingales, but why couldn’t he draw the same conclusion from studying the present American society itself? A few hundred years old democracy is a good enough sample; in fact a millenniums-old society couldn’t be a good example because decadence too sets in with time. (I think we can safely postulate that only wine becomes better with age!)
But either way, we are talking about a democratic milieu that is tens or thousands of generations old. It would be too much to expect the same group behavior in shorter time spans from people of real flesh and blood who live a FINITE lifetime marred throughout by shortage of resources. For that reason Dr Rajan’s article appears to be dreamy… in a utopian sort of a way. For such people, there’s a constant tug between what I would call, “this wish to be good, yet win”. Kindly allow me to slip in a Haiku I wrote long ago:
“This wish to be good
Yet win; conscience like a dim
Bulb in a flour mill.”
But win we must! The ultimate challenge for an individual and the society is to find the delicate balance between the interests of the self and compassion rather than sulk into the second type of nationalist cocoon. A balance must indeed be striven to be found — that in the final analysis is the touchstone of our courage and culture. That, despite all odds, we have managed to emerge as good humans!
Today’s world is closely interconnected by ease of travel and communication, therefore boundaries of the thinking of different peoples are porous. Jumping of photons of thought from one mind to another across all geographies is happening all the time. In such a world, any nationalism almost by definition has to be narrow minded. And all narrow minded nationalisms thrive on bigotry. The leader of such minds, as a corollary, has to be a bigot. I don’t know about other parts of the world, Turkey etc as mentioned in this article, I am talking specifically of the nationalist surge we have seen in India in the last five years.
But that’s only half the story. In the above I mean the nationalism based on the superiority of a race as perceived only by the members of that race, as espoused, for example, by the RSS and its affiliates in India. There is yet another type of nationalism which is based on resource crunch and has its own dynamics. Dr Rajan’s very well written and thought provoking article pertains to this kind of nationalism. He very rightly says here:
“Surveys of values across developed countries suggest that people tend to have greater trust and affinity for strangers, as well as more concern for the wider world beyond their immediate families, when they are economically secure. As their economic security and social status become more fragile, the moderately educated become less able and willing to accommodate change.”
With this we can understand President Trump’s election and Brexit.
Dr Rajan sets too much store by the research done by one of his Chicago colleagues. I find it puzzling that professor Luigi Zingales had to study “ancient” Italian society (Athens?) to conclude that Democracy inculcates confidence due to freedom of choice, and thereby a sense of responsibility, and a capacity for a community to look after itself better with …”The state would monitor community governance lightly…” (Quote from Dr Rajan’s present article). It is a correct observation by prof. Zingales, but why couldn’t he draw the same conclusion from studying the present American society itself? A few hundred years old democracy is a good enough sample; in fact a millenniums-old society couldn’t be a good example because decadence too sets in with time. (I think we can safely postulate that only wine becomes better with age!)
But either way, we are talking about a democratic milieu that is tens or thousands of generations old. It would be too much to expect the same group behavior in shorter time spans from people of real flesh and blood who live a FINITE lifetime marred throughout by shortage of resources. For that reason Dr Rajan’s article appears to be dreamy… in a utopian sort of a way. For such people, there’s a constant tug between what I would call, “this wish to be good, yet win”. Kindly allow me to slip in a Haiku I wrote long ago:
“This wish to be good
Yet win; conscience like a dim
Bulb in a flour mill.”
But win we must! The ultimate challenge for an individual and the society is to find the delicate balance between the interests of the self and compassion rather than sulk into the second type of nationalist cocoon. A balance must indeed be striven to be found — that in the final analysis is the touchstone of our courage and culture. That, despite all odds, we have managed to emerge as good humans!