Guest Post: The Emergence of Virtual Nations

The Emergence of Virtual Nations

In 2006, when the farmer suicide epidemic in India peaked, I found myself severely distressed at their plight. Even more distressing was the apathy of the Government (especially the then BCCI chief, visionary educationist and industry czar Sharad Pawar, who also held the union portfolio for Agriculture and Food), the media and the society. My anger and distress was impotent – there was nothing I could do, and this frustrated me even further.

Then, during a morning walk in late 2008, I suddenly realized I didn’t care. The suicides continued unabated, but it began to hurt me less and less. I was alarmed at my disinterest: was I transforming into another Sharad Pawar (without a fraction of his wealth, of course)? Why didn’t the deaths move me as they did before? But the question returned and has haunted me ever since: Why should I, a software engineer in Bangalore, worry about farmer suicides in Vidarbha? I don't get troubled by deaths in sub-Saharan Africa, for me it's another continent, another culture. Logic, patriotism, humanity, etc. imply that I must, however, be troubled by my countrymen’s deaths in Vidarbha. But it is as good as another continent for me, I have no connection with them. And yet, not being troubled by the farmer deaths also does not feel right: it violates humanity and empathy.

Upon some reflection, I am beginning to get a feel for an answer: the farmers of Vidarbha and the software engineers in Bangalore inhabit different countries, and as a citizen of a country does not bother too much about the travails of another in a far-far land (how tormented is your soul over the recent deaths of citizens in Urmqui in Northwest China?), the epidemic of suicides in Vidarbha – or say Hassan, or UP – needn’t trouble me at all. The epidemic could have as well occurred in Rwanda, occupying a few column inches of space in the international pages of the newspaper. (As P. Sainath has shown, the epidemic of suicide received even lesser coverage in our mainstream media.)

The answer to my question is neither startling, nor, I fear, original, but I would like to codify the thoughts behind it and pose a few more questions.

a) The increasing pace of Globalization since the 1980s has meant nations interact (or have to) much more frequently than ever before and though the interaction is mostly driven by the needs and channels of commerce, cultural exchanges are on the rise. The process of learning from other societies occurs much faster, and values begin to change.

b) The awe-inspiring development in ICT (Information and Communication Technology) in the recent years means physical distances matter less and less for interpersonal transactions. Thus, de-territorialization begins to occur, and the ‘social space’ for communication is no longer dependent on the physical space for such communication.

c) The rise of mammoth Transnational Enterprises, whose reach of power and influence spans across several nations at once, further encourages this proximity. Coupled with the exchange of values outlines above, this gives rise to large interest groups who identify with a common cause, agenda, and increasingly, identity. I call these emerging social structures/interest groups as virtual nations.

d) A ‘physical’ nation like India (and especially India!) can be a host of several of these virtual nations. The set of professionals staying in gated communities in Indian metros, who celebrate the US Independence Day and Halloween, is an example of a virtual nation.

e) An individual can be a citizen of several virtual nations at once and can derive his/her identity from an interrelationship of each of these nationalities. I am at once a software engineer working in a large MNC, a member of the great Indian Middle Class, a practicing worshipper of the deity of consumerism, a reader of Marathi books, a failed blogger and writer of terrible prose, etc. Some of these identities clash with each other and some reinforce each other: the point is, there are tens of more identities available to me than to my father.

f) The 1648 Treat of Westphalia, which "establishe[s] the important principle of sovereignty that remains the foundation of contemporary international politics…” can be thought to apply to these virtual nations as well. This means the virtual nations are pretty much on their own when it comes to managing their own affairs, with minimum interference from the physical/geo-political world. Two examples would suffice: consider the virtual nation comprising of the super-rich, some citizens of which inflected great misery on the world economy by creating and trading toxic financial instruments. Till date, none of these citizens have been penalized for their actions, rather, most developed nations have bailed out the institutions inhabited and managed by these citizens, because ‘they are too big to fail’. The virtual deeply impacts the physical.

As another example, consider the virtual nation of Marathi fascists, spanning from Mumbai to New York. A citizen of such a nation, originally belonging to suburban Mumbai but now settled in Brisbane, has no qualms supporting Raj Thakre (the President-for-Life of this nation) and his MNS goons (an instance of virtual nations having an army) bash poor migrants in Mumbai from UP (these inhabit the great virtual nation, the Other/Real India, as our news TV anchors like to say). And yet it is this very migrant to Brisbane who will feel threatened when Aussie racists (nothing virtual about them!) thrash Indians. Again, the virtual contradicts the physical.

If this trend about the emergence of these virtual nations is true, then it raises some philosophical questions:
- Are ‘old’ moral values, the foundation of our civilization, valid?
- Does the notion of justice hold any good?
- Does national loyalty mean anything anymore? Do we need it?
- What are the boundaries of humanity and empathy? Are these values dispensable? What economic purpose do they serve?

In short: how does globalization impact ethics? Are there any immutable values left?

Any thoughts?

Possed by Bhushan Y. Nigale

Inviting your submissions

Dear Readers,
I would like to announce that this blog invites your submissions on topics of your interest. We invite you to share your ideas, observations, your perceptions of state policy in the respective fields you work in.

If you need to submit a post, please do so by sending an e-mail to searchforsolutionsindia[at]gmail.com. Your e-mail should contain the post, your name and e-mail address.

Happy posting!

Landscape after the Battle

I was only a by-stander during the recently-held LokSabha elections and had only two predictions. I expected that the ManMohan-led UPA would just about scrape through and if that did not happen regional parties and bosses would hold the trump cards; consequently, the PM would not be from the north.

But, like most previous elections, this poll also had its own surprises and the UPA did well enough to find itself dazed by success. Good. Here is how I look at the outcome.

The people want a learned, decent, efficient and clean PM.

It is excellent that the economist-PM will not have to run a three-legged race with frigid partners (left parties) and will be able to expedite economic policy making.

All the self-appointed king-makers and self-proclaimed candidates to the PM's office have been shown their place-at the bottom.

Maharashtra is getting freed of the cloak and dagger politics of Pawar and the West Bengal political milieu might be liberated from the double-talk of the Left.

I see only one negative signal at the moment--behind Dr. Manmohan Singh the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty is looming very assertively. But that is in the future.

The aftermath was expected to be dull and has not proved me wrong; the PM has gone Shakespearian--forget and forgive, and got together most of the old-gang in the same roles. So the agenda is going to be old-wine in new bottle and we must pull up our socks.

Also , let us not be carried away by the popular interpretation that the age of coalitions is over and the national parties are coming back. Both major national parties have fared well or badly mainly due to strong regional factors and splits or alliances--The MNS in Maharashtra, Praja Rajyam in AP, TMC in WB, the grand(so-called) Yadav-Paswan alliance in UP and Bihar to name the most prominent.

So our job on this blog calls us in a slightly different scenario. Let us start by making an attempt to draft a fresh agenda for the new PM.

Our intent

WHY this Blog?

'Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world...
The best lack all conviction, while
The worst are full of passionate intensity.'--W B Yeats

The above lines, composed 70 years ago ,still hold good for the Indian predicament while the country is faced with a Lok Sabha poll and power-obsessed politicians lay bare the worst inside them. Leadership tends to degenerate into populism, governance into corrupt status quo, media into hype and hysteria, discourse into cacophony, radicalism into compromise (sleeping with the enemy ?). Intolerance, regionalism, nursing narrow identities hold the people and the system (such as it is) to ransom at almost without notice.

The democratic Tantra has been mastered to (im)perfection, while the mantra is lost.

Do we really deserve all this ? Should we have allowed the present politicians and their chamchas to hijack the agenda for a new, vibrant,secular,democratic and liberal India. Is it not high time that we came out of our self-imposed helplessness and applied, committed ourselves to the task of defining the agenda and taking it to the people so that elections will cease to be an expensive rigmarole of
replacing one incompetent coalition by another?

Politics has to be taken to the real issues of the people - poverty, disparity, unemployment, ill-health, illiteracy,lack of opportunity and subjugation to the touts and brokers of the establishment. For this the entire political economy has to be redrafted. The key fields of agriculture, industry,trade, communications,infrastructure development, energy, education have to be properly studied and rejuvenated with practical innovations.

Aping the so-called developed societies should stop forthwith; so should cease the glorification of images from the past. We need not look far behind; nor need we look far ahead; we must look discretely into the' here and now' and come up with practical, creative solutions to the problems of India.

I am launching SEARCH for SOLUTIONS-INDIA as a humble beginning to end the isolation of intelligentsia from the steering of the country.

HOW?

Let us start with sharing our ideas,observations,our perceptions of state policy in the respective fields we work in. Let us not separate this exercise from our livelihood or our liking--because we have to start the reassessment of the system at the point of our interaction.

Use this blog space to communicate with like-minded ,restless members of your profession so that over a period of time (hopefully not too long) a comprehensive critique of the policy will emerge and pave way to the draft of a new policy which can then be taken to the people with the help of the various media.

If we do this exercise for a period of three to six months, we may
presumably have a separete blog for each field -searchforsolutionsindiaagriculture- for example.

There are no conditions to the membership. Experience, knowledge, an analytical mindset, brevity and lucidity of expression should suffice.

A positive outlook and a strong belief that the search for solutions
exercise is certain to succeed is a must--though skeptics are also
welcome as they will always help to raise the standard of ideation.

Let us start the march to ensure a FUTURE for ALL.