Extreme Divisions Fracturing Our World

2024 happens to be an epic year of elections around the world. It is said that more than half the world will be electing their governments this year. If there is one thing they have brought into sharp focus once again, it is how divided we are as a people. This is not a new development but one that has been brewing for several years. If there is a watershed year, it has to be 2016, when politics had been changed forever it seemed in the advanced world.

2016 was when millions of disillusioned people in the US and UK elected not just right-wing parties, but political leaders who were promising them a better world. In the US, white, non-college educated folks who had lost their jobs after the financial crisis and couldn’t reskill for new jobs fell for the Trump trope that globalization had stolen their jobs and sent them to China. That immigrants were “invading” America to take away more jobs and benefits, and that the country would have to build a wall to secure themselves. That narrative of fear, resentment and a superpower under threat manifested itself in myriad ways, including in initiating a trade war with the other economic superpower, China, that then rippled out across the West.

Across the pond, similar left-behind folks fell for the Tory nonsense that Britain was being dictated to, by Brussels and Brexit was the only solution. After many years of agonising negotiations, Britain finally found its freedom in 2020, when unfortunately, the Covid pandemic struck. Today many Brexiteers regret their decision, it is reported, but the damage has been done. And the dream of “global Britain” has yet to be realized.

We now have a situation where Trump could be back in office by the end of 2024 with who knows, what other hare-brained and toxic ideas, and it is a Labour government in UK after a landslide win. In Europe, the continent has just about managed to stave off far-right parties from a majority in parliament, but there’s no doubt the far-right are on the ascendant.

It isn’t just the West. Polarisation is becoming commonplace everywhere. In India, we had a marathon election this year, where the ruling party, BJP, is back for a third term but with a coalition government. We don’t know exactly why people voted the way they did, but it appears that issues such as inflation, high unemployment and falling living standards might have finally forced large parts of the electorate to demand better policies. That doesn’t mean our country isn’t divided or polarized; it is just that economics trumped other social, cultural and religious issues that have been kept on the boil for decades. People have just about had enough.

The polarisation and divisions are of different kinds. In the western advanced economies, it is fuelled by a backlash against globalization and immigrants who they believe have taken away their jobs. While the core reasons are economic, they get layered with so much of social, cultural and religious issues that together help politicians fuel identity politics. This only helps to further divide people.

The truth is otherwise. From what one reads the facts suggest that immigrants have helped boost the innovation quotient of many western economies, especially the US, and their productivity. These are the educated and highly skilled immigrants, of course. Then, there are less educated and skilled immigrants who actually are employed in low-skill and even menial jobs, that locals wouldn’t be willing to take up anyway. One of the first big outcome of Brexit was the sudden shortage of people in transportation, farms, logistics, retail and construction in the UK.

The question worth asking is if politicians gain from playing identity politics during election time, how do they govern once they are in power? Once in office governments are expected to devise sensible policies that work equally for all their citizens, irrespective of identity politics. Though sometimes, even in the process of ensuring that economic development reaches everyone, our politicians can argue to make identity politics the only basis for policymaking.

In a large and culturally diverse country like India, for example, polarization and divisive politics takes a different form. Here elections have been fought for decades on the basis of religion and caste, and these were at work even in this election. Having realized that caste reservation that the Indian constitution provided for at the start was not adequate, the Indian government increased its scope widely to include OBCs (other backward castes) in the early 1990s, which has now become other backward classes. Almost every state in India has exceeded the limits of reservation prescribed on these grounds, since.

It has reached a stage, where there are now calls for reservation in private sector jobs as well. And while we have not had our population census in India due in 2021, there are political parties clamouring for a caste census in state after state. This is what I mean by politicians resorting to making identity politics the only basis of policymaking, in the name of economic development. Almost every caste in India wishes to be included in OBCs, making India reservation nation.

One has to wonder how India will progress at this rate. How will India’s private sector invest and grow the country’s economy with onerous conditions like these being imposed on them? How and why will foreign investors invest in India, if they have to hire people based on caste and religion? And we are now making matters worse by states insisting on job reservations for local residents vs those from outside.

With already high and raging unemployment, imposing such conditions make it worse for the millions seeking jobs in India and for their employers. And then we talk of ease of doing business!

While the West is seeing greater polarization between the political left and the right, in India we don’t have that problem as our political parties lost their ideological moorings decades ago. Which is why the INC has faded into irrelevance and why the BJP now courts the poor with freebies and sops rather than productive employment. The INC has recovered somewhat thanks only to its INDIA alliance partners, when INDIA is still a rag-tag alliance. You only have to hear the debates in the Indian parliament that are reported in the news to see how muddled and inane their arguments are. These days the INC leader of the opposition, Rahul Gandhi, resorts to metaphors and references from Hindu mythology and religion to make his arguments in parliament!

The more I think about it, uniting people especially in a culturally diverse country like India requires focusing on the issues that matter most, and these are usually of the economic kind. If political leaders – whether in the ruling government or in the opposition – can stay focused on the job that needs to be done and go about it, based on facts and consultation in a timely manner, it would help. In the first place, it requires giving up extreme positions and a willingness to engage in a consultative process.

Not very different from what it takes to work with other countries at a multilateral level, if you think about it. And the world too has seen its share of polarisation and division in recent years. We have two wars still raging in Ukraine and in Gaza. The strange thing is that the same politicians who are willing to engage with their global counterparts on the world stage are not willing to do so within their own country.

An opposition party is always expected to oppose, but no one said it shouldn’t engage and contribute with its ideas and solutions. Politics is broken, not the people.

And while we’re discussing the fractured state of politics in countries around the world, spare a thought for the country hosting the Olympics right now in Paris. Its elections threw up the most divided results ever, and they still don’t have a new government in place.

The animated owl gif that forms the featured image and title of the Owleye column is by animatedimages.org and I am thankful to them.     

This article was first published on my blog on August 12, 2024