India and a World Losing Its Moral Compass

Times are worrying, and they demand worry. Internationalism, or at least its façade, is fast receding from the world; the UN looks increasingly defunct, and the WTO is toothless. Concerns for the global commons, existential threats to humanity, terrorism, and now cybercrime have all been pushed to the back burner. Citizens everywhere are more vulnerable today than in the recent past.

Instead, what is pushing forward are the crass imperial campaigns of the powers that be. These are now conducted openly, stripped of their old moral and diplomatic covers. The irony is that the former global imperial powers are themselves now at the receiving end of these new pressures, squeezed from both sides of their geography.

We Indians, each of us, must recognise the scale of these emerging threats. The moment demands far stronger unity and purpose, infused with rationalism in both thought and action. We must compete for organisational efficiency in every domain of the public and private sectors so as to gain an edge over other powers, and we must invest in research and development not only in technology but across all walks of life, for instance, in the reconstruction of our own society.

India, as the lone continuing civilisation that has consistently upheld the finer human values, bears a greater responsibility to humanity: to defend and promote democratic ideals in the world. For that too, national strength is the basic need.

Niraj Kumar Jha

A World of Humanity

 While global politics reverberates with polemics and manoeuvres of a century-vintage, global life leaps farther into the future. Times push individuals to be their own and, at the same time, expose the pitfalls of collective impositions and the grave dangers they pose to humanity. To the saner souls, the gigantic human formations do not inspire awe but engender disgust. They wish for a rule-based global order and barrierless borders. Nonetheless, they do not wish nations to go away but see them countervail any possibility of global tyranny. Internationalism, not globalism, they wish for.

Humanism is in the offing to define humanity in its true spirit.  Everything and being would be reduced or enlarged to their exact size. Larger-than-life images and life-dwarfing ideas overwhelming human consciousness so far would not be able to delude human eyes. We can see a world of humanity in the foreseeable future. 

Niraj Kumar Jha 

Liberating Libra

Technologies facilitate and necessitate seamless transactions throughout the world. The new and fast advancing technologies create templates which automate scripting of ever renewed internationalism, and so of humanism. There are indeed regulatory issues but for that the need again is to institute international regulatory mechanisms empowered enough to enforce the rules of global good against the gigantic powers, political, economic, and of their combinations. The negative part of the story is that all the big players seek to curb any new thing that negates their role. The answer is a new Comprehensive Global Social Contact having provisions harmonizing the interests of the individuals, of all sorts of groups and of the global community. The sovereign entities must cede some portions of their powers to create a space for the sovereignty of the global community, and for the global citizens. The sovereigns of the world must allow another sovereign to come up, though of a different genre.

Niraj Kumar Jha

Commanded Internationalism

After global empires and wars, the global leaders worked for internationalism, but by and large, what they have worked is a commanded internationalism. Now, the command of the international order is being contended and an economic war of attrition has already been unleashed. The incumbent command has responded by de-globalising, which is rather ironical as the technological advances have reduced distances among persons and peoples considerably, and even nullified it in so many ways. Multilateral internationalism is the pathway to a new peaceful and prosperous world, but is now being blockaded. The rest must unite for facilitating economic internationalism so that all the peoples of the world can reap the harvest of the the Fourth Industrial Revolution and the world is not forced to wait for another half a century for the new dawn.

P.S. The Western imperialism was also a form of internationalism, which was sort of controlled internationalism. The Great Wars showed that this system was not viable and they shifted to commanded internationalism. The West indeed promoted internationalism but kept it under its command through the West dominated multilateral agencies, military alliances, and by their national military machines. Now the same command is being sought by China with its measures like OBOR, SCO.

Niraj Kumar Jha

Internationalism is orphaned

The great powers have abandoned internationalism. And there is no mobilisation among the rest to facilitate internationalism. Earlier, at least, there was some pretension. Hitherto, the West under the US tutelage has worked a commanded internationalism and now China seeks the same, and hence, the inevitable clash. The economic internationalism is necessary for mitigating poverty and instances of violent clashes among groups and nations but post-Cold War world is sinking into greater anarchy. This is the weirdest irony of the times.

Niraj Kumar Jha