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Things Fall Apart, The Centre Cannot Hold

"THINGS FALL APART, THE CENTRE CANNOT HOLD"
                                              U. JAYACHANDRAN

AUTHOR’S NOTE: This article was written a few years ago for a social science magazine (I apologise for not remembering its name) in India. If some of the facts and figures have altered beyond recognition during the lapse of seven years, kindly forgive the writer.
U.J
L
ong before debates and seminars such as this on globalsation became fashionable in India, Noam Chomsky wrote thus: " the framework of post-war global planning entailed that colonial relations must be re-established in new forms and 'ultranationalist' tendencies suppressed, particularly if they threaten 'stability' elsewhere; the destiny of the South remains much as before." (Chomsky, 1993)

Seeing further into future from 1993, when the G8 was in fact only G7, Chomsky observed correctly that a process of recolonisation was underway in a more sophisticated and ruthless way than it has ever been in history. The term 'globalisation' is an extremely ambivalent expression for that. In 1990, George Bush and his Secretary of State James Baker called for a "New World Order". It was actually the beginning of this 'globalisation', 'global village' and global Macdonald's, global pornography etc, etc. Bush had to take care of the Petrodollars, and even at the cost of a war, he was prepared to do it. The catchwords of the 1990's were "I.T", "globalisation", "New World Order", "Information Revolution", et al. India and Indian middle class, waiting to jump into any bandwagon that would protect them (us) from the real India with her slums of Dharavi and Surat took these upon. In 2000, Bill Clinton came a-visiting to India. Weeks before "His" arrival, the Indian government signed some interesting trade documents with the U.S.A. According to one of them, the government lifted import restrictions on 1400 items of commodities, including perishables (read vegetables), milk, sugar, cotton and grain to India...