Small is beautiful. Let's have small states with no artificial borders separating the stream of humanity. This afternoon at home I was glossing over "Letters From a Father to his Daughter" - a series of letters written by Nehru to Indira while he was in prison. I could see how race, religion, caste, creed, nations, continents were carved out to create artificial barriers to the free flowing stream of humanity. These segregations made it easier for the rulers to dominate the governed.
To visualise a borderless world order may seem Utopian but the latest phase of globalisation, i.e. Technological Globalisation, is inching us towards that direction. The compression of time and space, technology being a great leveller, the democratic potential of the social media, will hopefully one day not only provincialise the world as in Europe, but flatten the globe even further rendering it transparent and visible from every possible corner.
I must admit that the issue of Scottish independence never seemed a big deal for me even a week ago. Europe being a provincialised continent, the possible break away of Scotland seemed more of a nuance of nationalism, but its extrapolation on a global canvas added greater intellectual flavour to it.
Do we need states, borders, boundaries in a 21st Century world order? Possibly there is no straight answer to it. As technological development and free flow of capital make the world flatter, intrinsic identities are spearheading. As class as an intellectual project becomes relatively less relevant, caste situates itself at the very heart of important discourses.
Weakening of nation states makes way for nationalism, ultra-nationalism and even parochialism to grab the centre stage. As the distinction between the global and local become blurred, local issues project themselves as sand dunes amidst the vast desert of globalism.
It is challenging to identify the possible reasons that changeth the world, nonetheless it is a very interesting moment in our history.
Tirthankar Bandyopadhyay is a journalist and media consultant.
He can be contacted at tirthankarb@hotmail.com
All comments are personal.
