17/10/2024
Most articles need to be planned. Even those that are “reactive”—those with current or very recent context.
Some articles just get triggered.
For a long time, for years, given the resource grabs of the state and its favorite businesses, I have been wanting to write about local elites as micro colonists. But I wasn’t getting the “flow”.
The trigger was yesterday’s E-mail from the Centre for Science and Environment. Titled “The Rise of the Neo-Locals-Author: Sunita Narain”. Her current book. mirrors chants of deglobalization by the political and business elite in the mainstream and social media,
From that mail: “Born in the pre-globalisation era, environmentalist Sunita Narain argues that the developments of the past four decades, including India’s environmental movements, the climate emergency, the sweeping protests and the rise of centre-right political forces, indicate that localisation may herald a new norm. And it may not be an entirely undesirable situation.”
My counter take is that the local elites are the new micro colonists. Their calls for economic nationalism and cultural authenticity often serve as a smokescreen for maintaining their privileged positions within both local and global power structures, effectively perpetuating systems of inequality under the guise of decolonization and deglobalization.. https://countercurrents.org/2024/10/the-globalized-elite-are-perpetuating-local-neo-colonial-plunder/
