LPG to Imperialism

The trajectory was logical, but the world hardly cared. LPG was uniting the world and enriching people everywhere, but vested interests sabotaged the evolution. We are now back to the age of empires or the times of imperialism 2.0. The actors have already abandoned multilateralism for unilateralism. The smaller countries and poor people are now in more trouble, and so is the world.

Niraj Kumar Jha

National Interest

National interest is the pivot on which everyone's personal interests rest. For a couple of decades, a large number of Indians have emerged out of abysmal poverty, and the middle class has managed to lead a comfortable life. This is a recent development after almost a millennium of dehumanised life for Indian commoners. India's fabled precolonial wealth was limited to a minuscule number of households. The current somehow livable life for the middle strata and hope for the impoverished folks come from what is now an out-of-currency acronym, LPG, and the demographic dividend that India is reaping now. The matters of concern, which nobody seems to be bothered about, are that LPG is on the back burner and demographics now may be headed downwards. This is the time for concerted efforts for maximal liberalisation of business processes, sweeping privatisations, and systematic facilitations. For working out these critical tasks, the professionalization of administration is a need of the highest order. Preliberalisation queues for rationed sugar and wheat, and beggars sitting and roaming around every pavement and street corner may not be a distant reality again.

NIraj Kumar Jha

Democracy: Slide or Surge

Observers note that there is a democratic slide globally. This I find a misdirected approach. Such observers fallaciously identify democracy with the values and norms of a particular ideology, the parameters of political correctness of a historical period. On the contrary, what I see across continents is a populist swell. Demos become more demanding. The reality is that there is a democratic surge around the world. 

At the same time, one can not deny that problems are getting severe internationally and within nation-states. Climate change, for instance, poses an existential challenge for many people. Among states, irredentism is back in fashion. There are strifes and upheavals in many corners, and even metropoles see fires blazing frequently. 

The problem is not with democracy but with the global political-economic ecology. The autonomous and logical trajectory of democratic evolution, which led to the collapse of Communism and was channelling human agency through LPG to international harmony and prosperity, was stalled rather deliberately. Democracy was riding neoliberalism to become global, but as it threatened the entrenched forces and vested interests, the threatened ones broke the vehicle to which the naive academia lent moral support.  

Aspirations that neoliberalism led to rise now become pent-up feelings seeking outlets. 

Niraj Kumar Jha