The State of the Republic
By Bhabani Sen Gupta


When politics is reality TV, profiling a country or a nation gets complicated.
The world community has nearly 200 sovereign national units, but not more than
a quarter of these are privileged to be noted by the international media that make
as well as market images of nations . Dominating the market, the image-making
industry now is a many-splendoured behemoth, spreading out upwards and downwards
but keeping the limelight focused on the centres of power, political, economic, military
and technological. The centres are still what is stubbornly called The West----the United
States, Western Europe, and Britain.
The masters of image-making have divided the nations of the world as it stands
in the first decades of the 21st century into three groups---the developed rich of “The West”, emerging economies of Asia, Latin America and Africa, and poor countries
of these three continents. They are ambivalent about labeling Russia and the Eurasian
states that occupy the vast space of the former Soviet Union. Canada, Australia and New
Zealand belong to the “West”. but not Japan which is seen as Asian.
There is a great deal of concern in the West about the on-going shift in global
global economic power from the West to combination of emerging powers symbolized
by the acronym BRIC----Brazil, Russia, India and China. The combination leaves out
South Africa, but nevertheless stirs fears of a worldwide power polarization between
the West and the Rest!
The Economist, in its issue of February 27 offered its own comparative narrative of the ‘economic power’ of the ‘West” and the East. The narrative noted the
spectacular upsurge of Asia’s economy since the 1990s. Measured by perchasing
power parity (PPP), Asia’s share of the world economy has risen from 18% in 1980
to 34% in 2009. By this gauge, Asian economy “will probably exceed the combined
sum of America’s and Europe’s within four years. In PPP terms, three of the world’s
four largest economies(China, Japan and India) are already in Asia, and Asia has
accounted for half of the world.s GDP growth over the past decade.” In consumer spending accounted for in plain U.S. dollars, the Asian population, though three-fifths
of the world’s, Asia are much behind America, but in capital spending, “Asia is
undoubdtedly the giant. In 2009, 40% of global investment (at market exchange rates)
took place in Asia, as much as in America and Europe combined.” The Economist
also recalled that “Asia accounted for over half of world output for 18 of the past
20 centuries. And its importance will only increase in the coming years.” (emphasis
added).
By all credible accounts, the world economic balance is steadily shifting to
Asia. The principal spectacular Asian actor is of course China whose emergence
is seen by some Western writers as a big threat to Western dominance of the
world. What truly alarms the ruling power elites of the West as well as the captains
of the West’s military-industrial-intellectual complex is the image of a transcontinental
combination of economic and political power of BRIC.
The rise of the West over the last two centuries has been at the cost of the
overwhelming majority of humanity. In terms of human development, BRIC-4
includes the immense landmasses of Asia inhabited by a huge humanity mired in poverty
and squalor for two centuries of the West’s global empires. The long imperium created
a mindset that nourished convictions that the White Man’s global might would remain
alive and well for all time; that any attempt to terminate the imperium must be nipped
in the bud, if necessary with military power. The doctrine of imperial domain derived
its sap from the combined power of the State and the Church, particularly after the
two great seats of power agreed, with the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648, to a dynamic
détente of peaceful co-existence. Not long thereafter was born, out of European minds,
concepts and ideas of the Modern State .Conflict and war became
the staple of relations between and among the imperial powers. But the aggressive hunt
for commerce and territories, also for slave and enslaved human labour, shifted to the
continents beyond Europe--- across the oceans to America, Asia and Africa.
The 21st century will be witness to the great reverse in world history---the focus
of human development set on the non-Western world. Its leaders---China, India, Russia,
Brazil and others--- are not anti- Western. They aim and ask for cooperation with the
West on terms of equality with an unavoidable emphasis on their own accelerated
development. They have to help themselves to the utmost of their transferable and
exchangeable resources. They must also join their minds to churn out concepts and
theories of a new world order that. in this very century, will replace the Western order
that is sloping into history.
At bilateral as well as quadrilateral summits and other high-level confabs, India,
Russia, China and Brazil now need to inaugurate a large confluence of thinking together
outside governments about how to conceptualise , as well as promote, a truly new global
order in which the West and the Rest can make life together with true equality and full
cooperation. Public knowledge of how each of the four are trying to navigate the gigantic
challenge of blending growth and development so that mass poverty can be conquered
in the next few decades. This has been achieved to a very large extent in China; it has been missed in India which remains the homeland of the planet’s largest mass of poor
people . Rapid social and economic development also needs to be informed with increasing legalization of human rights to the basic demands of democracy---liberty,
dignity and equality.In short, how the social, economic and political development can
move on together on a mass scale and reach aspired targets in a century without
colonies, wars, and hegemonic doctrines and behaviour.
It is a gigantic task waiting leaders of the Non-West. The barriers are many.
Language is a major barrier. Information and communication channels need to be
opened with courage and conviction. The academic and media communities need to be
mobilized to the historic task of creating an inclusive world order which the West
has failed to do. The first steps are still waiting to be taken.////