Taking cue from my last column, the year 1991 was not only a landmark year for India but also for the world. As this year marked the end of Cold war and the global power got polarised with the United States of America. With this, the western propaganda machinery completely wrote off the concept of communism and markets were made to rule the roost. Post 1991, what followed was a new world order which left devastating footprints of the American hegemony, almost everywhere. Across the world the market philosophy were pushed through aid, diplomacy, phony democracies, principles of free trade and even war.
Amidst all this, there had also been another interesting development. The left ideology which was almost written off by the west has been resurging stronger than ever before. A visible revival is observed for sure, be it at home with West Bengal and Kerala or the new poles of anti Americanism like left leaning governments of Venezuela, Mexico Bolivia and Brazil as unlike earlier, when the revolutions were brought about by a handful of icononic leaders, this time it has been through citizen's mandate i.e. through democratic elections. As the fact remains, whatever might be the ideology, without the creation of jobs, every government can be toppled (be it an elected or a nominated) and that is why even the likes of Chavez or Lula Silva have intelligently embraced the concept of market economy (by marginalising its ills) even when they have strongly held their left ideologies. And more interestingly it is also been observed that this resurged left is constantly challenging the market philosophy on their very own turf. Today if on one hand the Chinese have succeeded in generating mass scale employment and take out almost two thirds of their population out of abject poverty and thus comprehensively dominate the global trade (trade surplus of $102 billion in 2005), Venezuela on the other, under Hugo Chavez acknowledged that their real strength is economic resilience and in turn trying to attain the same by judicious application (earmarked 44.6% of the 2007 budget for social investment) of his country's vast natural resources, much to the dissatisfaction of the Americans.
The rest of Latin American countries also know that they would reduce to irrelevance (as irrelevant as the Africans who were made to squander their precious natural resources in the guise of continued civil wars) without that economic prowess which can only be reaped from by the ongoing globalisation and that's why they are wooing investors from all over the world (including the Indian ones) to invest and at the same time scouting for markets for their products. This is enabling them to become a commendable economic bloc to reckon with. And the most amazing aspect of the new found prosperity is that, for all these countries, the citizens have been the biggest beneficiaries as there had been incremental investments in social interventions.
Who said the 'left' was history? Ask the Chinese, Venezuelans, Bolivians or Brazilians and if you still don't get your answer then ask the Americans!!