What we have been witnessing via Modi, Brexit and Trump is the revenge of the global South. Global North and South are now cultural categories rather than areas on maps. The Trump supporters and Brexit supporters, like the Modi supporters, include a noticeable proportion of those who were outsiders to the cult of globalisation. It is ironical that Trump, a New York billionaire, is the one who managed to position himself as the protector of the American working class.
People usually look forward to December 31st as a day to party and bring in a new year. This year, though, the day has acquired a different significance: It is the day when the 50-day period sought by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to smooth out the hassles caused by demonetisation comes to an end.
It is unlikely that the hassles will have ended by then. From all across India, stories of varying degrees of inconvenience being borne by ordinary citizens will probably continue to pour in, as they have so far. What will also continue to pour in will be stories of the daily raids and arrests of corrupt businessmen, bankers and government officials.
Economists are, and have been, divided about the likely impact of the move. Which group of economists is actually right is a matter of speculation that time will sort out. Once the finance minister reads out the Budget for next year, a lot of things will become clearer.
The undeniable impacts of the move, already beyond speculation, are not economic but political.
It is beyond debate that demonetisation has made the issue of corruption the central issue of Indian politics. Before demonetisation, the nation was arguing over issues such as beef bans, cow vigilantes, nationalism and caste-based reservations. Now all those issues have been relegated to secondary or tertiary status. The main national issue from end to end of the country is demonetisation. There may be local or regional issues of comparable significance, but as a national issue, nothing else comes close.
Congress scion Rahul Gandhi has tried to climb on to the corruption plank by accusing the Prime Minister of corruption. Aam Aadmi Party chief Arvind Kejriwal, who had risen to prominence as part of an agitation against corruption, has tried to prevent Mr Modi from running away with his plank by alleging that demonetisation itself was aimed at helping corrupt industrialists who have defaulted on massive bank loans.
With elections approaching in Uttar Pradesh, and Mayawati of the Bahujan Samaj Party coming under the corruption scanner yet again, it will be interesting to see how caste politics fares against Mr Modi’s version of the anti-corruption plank.
At the moment, it is clear that the Prime Minister has the whip hand. The plank is his, and so is control over the levers of power. Since all legacy parties and many big business houses have almost mythical quantities of graft associated with them, their protestations against demonetisation do not appear to be eliciting much sympathy from the public at large. The ordinary person has appeared harried, but also uncharacteristically patient. That patience speaks for itself.
A corollary to the centrality of corruption as an issue is the class divide that comes with it. The division is between an assumed corrupt rich – exemplified by the arrested businessmen and bureaucrats – and a patiently suffering honest poor.
It is ironical that the most masterful practitioner of class politics in India today should happen to be from the Bharatiya Janata Party, a party usually characterised as Right-wing Hindu.
I have long argued that the categories of Left and Right lost relevance after the worldwide fall of communism following the end of the Cold War. The power of theories and analysis based on old categories of Left and Right to explain the contemporary world is largely absent. Part of the reason that most pundits were wrong about three major events – the election of Mr Modi, Brexit, and the election of Mr Trump as US president – is because they were thinking in terms of categories of Left and Right that are at least 20 years out of date.
Globalisation has shrunk distances, physical and mental, and everyone broadly agrees that this is so. A further effect of globalisation has been the greater diffusion of a certain kind of neoliberal culture from the Anglosphere as the default ‘cool’ global one. All other cultures are left to try and survive as best as they can against the onslaught of the McCulture.
The association of that McCulture, whose main centres are New York, London and California, with a superiority bordering on arrogance has not passed unnoticed elsewhere. No wonder the countries around New York, London and California voted differently from them.
Here in India, we have long had a colonial relationship with the Anglosphere. The local, derisively called ‘ghati’ in Mumbai, was contrasted against the sophisticated Angrezi culture of SoBo from colonial times. The fashionable elites of South Bombay took their cues and their college degrees from, well, New York, London, or California. They were, like the cool people of Lutyens’ Delhi, a part of the global North.
What we have been witnessing via Modi, Brexit and Trump is the revenge of the global South. Global North and South are now cultural categories rather than areas on maps. The Trump supporters and Brexit supporters, like the Modi supporters, include a noticeable proportion of those who were outsiders to the cult of globalisation. It is ironical that Trump, a New York billionaire, is the one who managed to position himself as the protector of the American working class.
Similarly, here in India, it is ironical that Mr Modi has assumed the mantle of protector of the poor more successfully than the Left. The Left should have had no dearth of support in a poor country such as India where examples of exploitation of workers in every industry abound. For instance, many companies do not respect, or even give, contracts, let alone permanent jobs. Hire and fire policies are rife.
In such a situation, if an allegedly Right-wing politician is able to position himself as the only true protector of the masses, the Left should perhaps disband itself.
Or the citizens, who divide themselves into Left and Right, should start thinking of their place in the global North or South, because those are the categories that operate in the contemporary world.
