Look at what Parnab Bardhan says in the Boston Review-
Late on election night, November 8, 2016, Paul Krugman wrote in the New York Times: “. . . people like me, and probably like most readers of The New York Times, truly didn’t understand the country we live in. We thought that our fellow citizens would not, in the end, vote for a candidate . . . so scary yet ludicrous.” About two and half years before that night, many liberals in India felt something similar at Narendra Modi’s massive victory—though one should say, Modi is scary but not ludicrous.Krugman was commenting on the surprise victory of a rank outsider- one who had never held any elected or other Government office and whom Bookies were once offering 150 to 1 odds of winning. Thus he wasn't really saying 'liberals like me are stupid and don't know anything about our own country' but rather 'liberals like me thought voters would not trust an inexperienced and volatile man of proven bad character'.
Bardhan however is saying that Liberals in India were stupid, ignorant of their own country, and had convinced themselves that Modi couldn't become Prime Minister only because they themselves had said he shouldn't despite the fact that he was the only candidate any Party had nominated for the top job.
Bearing this admission in mind, let us parse his next sentence-
The right-wing populist challenge to the liberal order is by no means limited to Donald Trump’s America or Modi’s India.Modi is carrying forward the policies of Atal Behari Vajpayee- a very successful Prime Minister. There has been no 'challenge to the liberal order'- rather governance has improved somewhat as overt corruption at the highest levels has been curbed.
The Congress, prior to the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi, had been the muscular representative of High Caste Hindu majoritarianism, which is why it consolidated the Hindu vote and marginalised the Hindu Mahasabha as early as 1946. That this tradition continued was made all too clear when well educated, socially 'liberal' Congress politicians- like Jagdish Tytler- personally conducted a violent pogrom against Sikhs in 1984. By then, Congress had thoroughly marginalised Muslims, greatly curtailing their recruitment to the administration or the military, squeezed out the Urdu language, imposed a ban on cow slaughter in many states, and concentrated power in the hands of a dynasty of Brahman origin.
Congress was far from representing a 'liberal order'. It was corrupt, nepotistic and, uniquely among Indian political parties, had suspended the Constitution in order to jail its opponents in a naked display of Fascism of a dynastic type.
Bardhan may believe that America is similarly corrupt and nepotistic- that Bush Senior rode roughshod over the Constitution to make his eldest son President and that the dynasty would perpetuate itself through a younger son this time round. Their rival was the Clinton dynasty but somehow the appearance of a 'wild card'- the charismatic Obama in 2008, and the volatile Trump in 2016- wrecked the carefully laid plans of the Dynasts. In both cases, according to this view, some deep economic malaise- the crash 10 years ago, or the suffering of the Rust Belt two years ago- caused an upset.
I suppose Obama and Trump could be considered to be populist politicians who made big promises- Obama was supposed to end discrimination against African Americans and other minorities and redistribute Income from the 1% to ordinary folk- but that their period in office were or are marked by increased polarisation and strategic bungling.
However, Bardhan has a more sweeping generalisation to make regarding the
'rise of Trump in US, Orban in Hungary, Brexiteers in UK, Putin in Russia, Kaczynski in Poland, Babis in the Czech Republic, Erdogan in Turkey, Modi in India or Duterte in the Philippines. There are indeed several common factors that apply to these cases, like widespread anxiety from job insecurity, a surge of ethnic nationalism that tries to legitimize majoritarian repression of minority rights and due process, a hankering for supreme leaders offering seductively simple solutions to complex problems, and so on.The problem with this view is that Erdogan has been in charge since 2003- and was initially seen as liberal- Putin has been in power since 1999, the BJP first formed a Government in India in 1998, anti Common Market feeling has always existed in the UK with the Euro-scepticism peaking in the early Seventies and again the mid Nineties, and Lech Kaczynski became President of Poland in 2005. Babis was always an insider- born into the nomenklatura and enjoyed a cozy but highly questionable
relationship with Czech Premier Milos Zeman since 2001.
What about Duterte? Does he have any similarity to Trump? No. He is a professional politician- a long serving Mayor- not a property developer.
There are no commonalities here at all. There was no 'widespread anxiety about job security' in America or Britain or Poland or Turkey or India but there was and is concern in France which still voted in Macron who is trying to push through even more drastic reforms.
What about 'ethnic nationalism'? Where has this surged? Turkey? But Erdogan is an Islamist- as Iqbal said 'Watan (Nationalism) is the Kafan (Shroud) of the Islamic community. What about Britain? How is it that the current Home Secretary has the distinctly foreign sounding name of Sajid Javed? This is the highest office a coloured person has ever held in Britain.
Turning to India, it must be said that Sonia Gandhi's victory in 2004 showed that 'ethnic nationalism' does not matter. Only good Governance does. Congress lost because of corruption and incompetence. Modi won because of his record as an administrator.
Bardhan is correct to assert that voters don't want 'due process' rights to be an impediment to 'getting rid of the bad guys' or, indeed, to preventing minorities from asserting a separatist agenda. However, 'liberal societies' have always been prepared to bend the rules when it suited them as did indeed happen after 9/11.
Bardhan thinks there are
special characteristics of developing-country populism which are qualitatively different from those in rich countries. Keeping this in mind may help in calibrating a nuanced response to the populist challenge in different cases.What are they?
1) finger-pointing at the backlash to globalization.
Bardhan is forgetting that third world 'populism' was always about 'import substitution' and feather-bedded 'infant industries' that never grow up, and saying 'Boo to Coca Cola & McDonalds and prattling on about the 'materialistic West' and the 'spiritual qualities' of the indigenous culture.
The reason people like me and Bardhan didn't like the RSS and the BJP was because we thought they'd always revert to this brand of idiocy. Modi managed to appear pro-Globalisation without actually letting in any predatory Enron type multi-nationals.
2) immigration is a searing divisive issue mainly in Europe and the US
Immigration is not particularly important- what is important is that the 'sons of the soil' get priority. Furthermore, they would always want the franchise to be restricted so as not to lose control of the levers of power or the rents that might accrue to them.
In the short run, a regime may get away with increasing immigration and diluting the entitlements of the indigenous population but, medium to long term, there is a backlash.
Bardhan does recognise this because he writes of
the tension right now in Assam in northeast India where a right-wing government is trying to disenfranchise supposedly illegal Muslim immigrants from BangladeshWhat he does not mention is that the Assamese are being turned into a minority on their own land. Rajiv Gandhi signed the Assam Accord in 1985 thus agreeing to identify and deport illegal migrants. However, Congress considered Muslims a vote bank and did not proceed. By an earlier act, it had made it virtually impossible to remove illegal migrants. The present C.M of Assam challenged that earlier act which applied only to Assam and it was struck down by the Supreme Court which observed that it had been used to increase illegal migration. However continued foot dragging by the Centre caused this politician to join the BJP. It remains to be seen whether any action will in fact be taken. However a modus vivendi might involve striking illegals from the electoral register in marginal seats so that the 'sons of the soil' feel more secure. After all, the fate of non Muslims in Bangladesh and Pakistan and Muslim majority Kashmir Valley is well known. Indeed, it is noteworthy that the former C.M of Assam, Tarun Gogoi claims that the NRC process which his party paints in diabolical colours was actually his brainchild.
The NRC is my brainchild. There was no such demand in the state, there was nothing even in the Assam Accord about the setting up of NRC.During the Congress regime, there were objections that multiple illegitimate people were given the right to vote,that is why the NRC was set up.
3) Bardhan thinks populist leaders are favoured by older, poorer, voters in developed countries whereas
Many of the supporters of the populist leaders in India or Turkey are from the rising middle classes, from the aspirational youth, and at least as much from urban areas as from rural. In India, Pakistan, Indonesia, Turkey, Poland or Russia symbols of illiberal religious resurgence have been used by the leaders to energize the upwardly-mobile or arriviste social groupsOne reason why this may be happening is that the 'liberal order' represented by Bardhan's own generation (the man is 80 years old) was stupid and incompetent and offered nothing but platitudes and policy paralysis while always seeking to centralise power and create a vast rent seeking bureaucracy riddled with crony capitalism and increasingly imbecilic political dynasties.
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