A Playbook for the 2020s

AS THE SECOND decade of the 21st century comes to an end after a volatile year, the question inevitably arises as to what the next year (and the decade) may bring with it for the world. If 2019 was anything to go by, the coming decade may very well mark an inflection point in the global order and the forces that drive it. With the global community becoming increasingly fractured and insular, we may indeed be looking at a very different world in the next decade.

At an ideological level, in the last few years, we have seen the rise of far-right, populist and often times illiberal political forces across the global order, all the way from the US (once seen as the core anchor of the liberal order), extending itself to Central and South America, and then across the pond to Europe, where a cluster of conservative right-wing nationalist parties have found recent success across the continent. These include several that have risen to the status of principal opposition party in their countries, including in France and Austria, as well as the rise of the neo-Nazi Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) in Germany, which many had viewed as the stronghold of the European liberal order. The results from the recent elections in the United Kingdom that gave Boris Johnson’s Conservative Party a significant mandate for Brexit have only reaffirmed this trend away from liberal cosmopolitanism to xenophobic nationalism.

At the same time, geopolitically, we are also dealing with a vacuum caused in the wake of the US’ abdication of its prominent role in world leadership under President Donald Trump and its preoccupations with its tussles with China, with the ramifications felt as far away as in Afghanistan, where the Taliban lies in wait, with the lethality and violence of its operations growing by the day, or in the torpedoing of US relations with Iran, which are now beyond acrimonious. Russia has reasserted itself in Syria, where it has helped preserve the once-collapsing government of Bashar al-Assad, while China is keeping its powder dry in Hong Kong but could strike at any time.

And at a humanitarian level, such events have, in turn, served as an untimely distraction from—and come at the cost of concerted and coordinated action against—ongoing global calamities like climate change. Whether it is in the US, which pulled out of the Paris Climate Accords, or in Germany, where the AfD has openly embraced climate change denial, or in Brazil where under President Jair Bolsanaro the Amazon is being wiped out at a rate like never before, or even in Australia, the European Parliament, and recently in the United Kingdom, the issue of climate change appears to have, in many quarters, been reduced to a contentious question. The Madrid climate talks have collapsed as these words are written, in the process losing precious time and ceding ground that the world thought it had already made.

These events have cast a spell of uncertainty over what the next decade will bring with it. We are after all living in a world marked by the paradox of both convergence and disruption. First are the forces of globalisation, irresistibly transforming the world, and the information technology revolution that brings to our breakfast tables and our living rooms, and increasingly our computers and our mobile phones, snippets of information and glimpses of events from every corner of the globe. These are the forces of convergence that have made the world one village, one market, one audience.

And then there are the forces of disruption that challenge this phenomenon—the Western backlash against globalisation and cosmopolitanism, the flourishing of fundamentalist terrorist groups, and the rise of populist ethno-nationalists in various countries, including ours. Democracies, once seen as the engine of globalisation, are now internally facing a crisis of confidence on the one hand and a growing preference for authoritarian alternatives, on the other. As the crisis manifests itself, it goes deeper, breaking up communities along the lines of traditionalist and elite. The British philosopher David Goodheart has written of the growing cleavage between ‘somewheres’ and ‘anywheres’—those localists rooted in a specific place, community, religion, identity and way of life, versus those cosmopolitans who are literally at home anywhere in the world, flitting comfortably across borders. Today, the ‘somewheres’ seem to have the upper hand.

The growing backlash against globalisation that has grown in the last decade has taken two forms. First is an economic backlash, driven by the inability of our systems to distribute the fruits of globalisation and in turn a deepening disparity between winners and losers—the poor and the unemployed in Western countries, who have seen ‘their’ jobs exported to Shanghai and Shenzhen, began to feel that they had no stake in the globalised system. They condemned the political establishment for pursuing policies that outsource their jobs and their futures to faraway lands like China and India. And they demanded a return to the old economic order, and thus to the fading promise of the hallowed ‘American Dream’, that each new generation would earn more and live better than the last.

In turn, this also inspired an attack against cultural globalisation—encompassing cosmopolitanism, multiculturalism and secularism—driven by those who seek the comforts of traditional ethnic, religious, or national identity. In his recent book Right Here, Right Now: Politics and Leadership in the Age of Disruption, former Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper borrows Goodheart’s distinction to typify the present problem as a clash between the two groups, where the ‘anywheres’ have failed to understand the genuine concerns of the ‘somewheres’, which has led to the larger faultlines within political ideologies, the loss of confidence in democracies and the larger backlash against globalisation.

THIS MAY HELP explain the rise of the Bharatiya Janata Party in India and the success they have enjoyed in the last six years. Despite of five years of economic mismanagement, acutely felt in the decision to demonetise 86 per cent of our currency overnight and the botched implementation of the Goods and Services Tax regime, the voters of the country returned the BJP at the helm of Government with a thumping majority. In their second innings, the new Government has been quick on the uptake—fulfilling an election promise to criminalise triple talaq to put Muslims in their place, removing the special status of the state of Jammu and Kashmir, which they did by abrogating Article 370 in August, and now passing the divisive Citizenship Amendment Bill that will further disenfranchise Muslims in India. Even as this legislation continues to burn fires across the country, holding much of the Northeast under siege, setting campuses on fire even in the nation’s capital and causing rapid outbreaks of violence in many other parts of our country, the leadership of the party has been caught up in their own victory, with little being done by word or action to stem the culture of fear that is spreading.

The sad reality is that for many of the party’s admirers, such flagrant authoritarian displays simply don’t matter. In their view, after decades of too much ‘soft-hearted democracy’ and pandering governing coalitions, a ‘tough’ Indian leader in the form of Narendra Modi was long overdue. Those of us whose faith in India’s democratic system was absolute now face the sobering realisation that its roots may be shallower than we had allowed ourselves to believe. India is now in the throes of a fervent nationalism that extols every Indian achievement, real or imagined, and labels even the mildest political disagreement or protest as ‘anti-national’ or even ‘seditious’. Almost every independent institution has been hollowed out and turned into an instrument of the Government’s overweening dominance. As the scholar and commentator Pratap Bhanu Mehta recently noted, “it is difficult to remember a time” when the “premium on public and professional discourse marching to the state’s tune was as high.”
We may yet be able to weather this turbulent phase. Governments, at the end of the day, come and go. But there are larger questions about the political leadership and economic systems that the liberal order has traditionally promoted that need to be answered as we move forward. The events of the last decade have made it clear that for all the good the globalised world stood for, it certainly may not have been representative of, or even genuinely cognisant of, all interests and concerns, which only accentuated the scathing rejection it has faced in the last decade. Equally, it would be far too simplistic if we sat back and dismissed present-day populism as an all-or nothing phenomenon rather than try and work towards understanding the concerns that motivate it and work to address it.

If we are to revive the liberal global order in the coming decade then we will have to strive to develop a new blueprint for it, one that is motivated by a new spirit of mutual accommodation and willingness to bridge these divides. The entrenched powers must make room for the emerging ones even while carrying out a campaign of education within their own societies on the advantages of internationalism and co-operation, to counteract the forces of hostility and division that mar the ‘post-truth’ era.
The auguries are not promising. At the regional level we have the coming into force of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), from which India abstained, reflecting its fears (of China) rather than aspirations (of its entrepreneurial young). India’s absence will mean that both the pact and the country will miss a transformative opportunity. Those fears seem less in evidence, however, in the political relationship between the two Asian giants, which despite the significant strategic challenges posed by China, seem to be on a reasonably even keel after the Xi-Modi summit in India in late-2019. I expect the two leaders to maintain the pattern of regular interactions in 2020. There may be no great congruence of views, but they will be able to contain potential diplomatic hostilities by staying engaged with each other. Yet the persistence of the unresolved border dispute, and China’s strategic commitment to Pakistan, should make every Indian wary.

Tensions with Pakistan are high and show no sign of being defused; the risk that they may worsen and erupt even in conflict, perhaps over Kashmir or in reaction to another cross-border terrorist attack, cannot be discounted. While the South Asian subcontinent is otherwise at peace, there is understandable disgruntlement in Bangladesh and Afghanistan about the way their countries have been demonised by India’s Government in justifying its controversial Citizenship Amendment Act. Sri Lanka, meanwhile, has just installed a government that seems to replicate much of the tough-guy majoritarian chauvinism and militarism of its Indian counterpart. That might mean better mutual understanding between New Delhi and Colombo, or, since ‘like poles repel’, accentuate problems between them.

When I contemplate the new world disorder and think of ways to restore global calm, my metaphor is that of the World Wide Web. The old binaries of East and West, and even of North and South, have given way to a networked world very much like the Internet, one in which we are all connected, with some links overlapping and others not. The new networked world should welcome every nation, every worldview and every voice, and still manage to find a way to look beyond our differences. Relationships are contingent and overlap with others; friends and allies in one cause might be irrelevant to another (or even on opposite sides). The networked world is a more fluid place than the old world order was. Countries use such networks to promote common interests, to manage common issues rather than impose outcomes, and provide a common response to the challenges and opportunities they face.

If we manage to build such a blueprint, if our political forces and institutions can work to offer a new leadership within our communities and offer an unwavering commitment to a set of values that seek to bridge our divisions, the next decade may yet heal the world, and even finally bring a solution to the painful divisions in our fractured polity. But if our ruling establishment continues its heedless rush into belligerent bigotry and enforces it with the strong arm of the law, then all bets are off. In India, and in the world of Trump and Johnson, the worst may be yet to come.

2020 New Year Double Issueglobal orderglobalisationIndia-China relationsnetwork socitiesRCEPregioinal cooperation