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Correspondent

23 August 2024 at 4:29:04 pm

Street Circus

The NEET-UG paper leak was a genuine grievance. Millions of students who spent years preparing for one of India’s toughest examinations deserved answers, accountability and justice. But what unfolded at Jantar Mantar was no movement for educational reform. It was a spectacle of rage, abuse and performative rebellion that often appeared more interested in viral clips than viable solutions. The Cockroach Janta Party (CJP), which claimed to represent the anger of students, ended up exposing...

Street Circus

The NEET-UG paper leak was a genuine grievance. Millions of students who spent years preparing for one of India’s toughest examinations deserved answers, accountability and justice. But what unfolded at Jantar Mantar was no movement for educational reform. It was a spectacle of rage, abuse and performative rebellion that often appeared more interested in viral clips than viable solutions. The Cockroach Janta Party (CJP), which claimed to represent the anger of students, ended up exposing itself, revealing itself to promote a culture of outrage without responsibility and more troubling, have aspersions cast on its funding sources. Besides the fact that just how many of those gathered were afflicted NEET students, the ugliest part of the protest was the language. Videos from Jantar Mantar showed protesters hurling the most obscene and personal abuses at Prime Minister Narendra Modi. One can dislike the PM or oppose his policies, reducing political disagreement to filthy personal abuse against an elected Prime Minister is gross cowardice and at the basic level, a sheer failure of basic civic etiquette. No entity cannot claim to be fighting for the dignity of students while abandoning all standards of dignity in public discourse. The irony was impossible to miss. A section of this self-proclaimed progressive generation speaks constantly about equality, feminism, tolerance and justice. Yet the very same voices displayed extraordinary intolerance towards anyone they decided was an enemy. Journalists were targeted, political opponents were dehumanised and anyone carrying a different opinion was casually branded with labels designed to silence rather than debate. Social media has created a dangerous illusion among many young activists that a viral video is a victory, and that shouting louder is the same as achieving something. A few Instagram reels, borrowed revolutionary imagery and slogans can create the appearance of rebellion. But governing a country and reforming institutions and fixing broken systems require far more than theatrical anger. The government, however, cannot escape responsibility either. The crisis was allowed to grow because of delayed communication and inadequate political management. A prompt response, transparent investigation and early intervention could have prevented a limited controversy from becoming a national embarrassment. Instead, the government was forced into damage control, and Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan, a capable minister, became the political casualty. For the citizens, it was a colossal waste of time. After weeks of noise, confrontation and disruption, the students gained little. The examination system remains under scrutiny and larger problems remain unresolved. The only visible outcome is the removal of a minister. A protest that begins with a genuine grievance but ends as a contest of abuse and attention-seeking has not strengthened democracy. It has weakened the very standards it claims to defend.

Matsya Nyaya, Alaska and the New World Order

As America turns to resource extraction, India seeks to steer a multipolar world away from predation.

In November 2024, as the US Presidential election campaign reached its peak, American social media chatter in support of Donald Trump began drawing overstated comparisons between his political journey and ‘The Hero’s Journey,’ a monomyth of an archetypal hero and his life trials, articulated by the renowned American literary scholar Joseph Campbell. India loomed large during the US elections, owing to the apparent proximity of Trump to Indian-origin team members, and another reason was Kamala Harris’s partial Indian origin. That being so, the chatterati began discussing Campbell’s ‘Philosophies of India’ in the context of India’s growing stature. It began examining the primordial Hindu concept of ‘Matsya Nyaya’—the law of fishes—where big fish eat small fish.


The public sentiment in the US, including among educated Republicans, is bleak about the US’s geoeconomic stature. Dark clouds of protracted economic depression loom over that country. Making some of the same chatterati also believe that if the US loses its global superpower status, the world will enter a phase of multipolarity, marked by Matsya Nyaya. However, they overlook that the US would be the first to grapple with Matsya Nyaya domestically.


The US-led world order that emerged after 1945 was designed to allow only two major powers to exist: itself and its archenemy, against whom they would never go to war. Thus, it prevents other players from rising. Initially, it was the Soviet Union, a manufacturing giant and a fossil fuel superpower. Later, China became another manufacturing giant and a rare-earth superpower. Now that China’s growth is stabilizing, the US expects India to rise, potentially becoming an archenemy like the Soviet Union was and China has been. However, India, despite its inherent geoeconomic optimism and assertiveness, does not see a Group of Two (G2) with the US. India is neither interested in confronting China at the US’s urging nor eager to see wars in Asia affecting its sphere of influence.


Additionally, India has stated it will be the third-largest economy by the mid-21st century, shying away from acknowledging that it could move up to second place. It has never openly wished for the US economy to decline, which, in reality, may be inevitable. India genuinely supports multipolarity, and the US is unable to engage effectively in this game. There is no Kissinger today to visit India as he did in 1971, nor anyone in US circles influential enough to persuade India to be the other pole of the new G2.


It is quite clear that, following the 50 percent tariffs announced by US President Donald Trump, the US is uninterested in India’s growth story. India’s economic rise is inherently peaceful, but global reactions to its ascent will not be that way. As economic clout shifts from the G7 to the BRICS, India’s rise will meet military and economic pushback. Even if Washington accepts the dollar’s decline, it will wage a material war of attrition, seeking control of key resources.


Joseph Campbell is known to have influenced George Lucas’ ‘Star Wars’ (1977). Likely, the Trump establishment is also influenced by ‘Star Wars.’ The galactic economy depicted in that cinematic series revolves around hypothetical minerals like Aurum, Quadranium, Hrucium, Kyber crystals, and Donium, among others, with most conflicts in the movies centred on controlling these resources.


The US, under the MAGA redcaps, aims to develop an ‘extractive natural resource economy,’ similar to China or Arab kingdoms. Trump is more focused on commodities and natural resources than on a valuation-based tech-driven economy. His tendency to gold-plate the interiors of the White House’s Oval Room is not without reason; he wants the President’s and American oligarchy’s spaces to be gold-plated, like Czarist palaces and Middle Eastern palaces. India’s former Minister of State for External Affairs, M.J. Akbar, recently said that Trump is the most socialist president of the United States. And if we are to learn what socialism begets, it is - resource oligarchs.


Where South and Central America are a no-go zone, thanks to the tirade against Mexicans and Brazil now strongly in the BRICS grouping, the resource oligarchs are eyeing the abundant minerals and fossil fuel resources in the frigid northern wilderness of Canada, Alaska, and Greenland. President Trump taunted the Canadians and Danes with a territory grab early in his second presidential term. Still, for him to demonstrate his executive capabilities, Alaska is the place to do so.


There is a history to the scheduled August 15 meeting between Trump and Vladimir Putin in Alaska. An apparently innocuous tweet, made in 2023, showing how possible it is to travel on a ship from Mumbai to Alaska without touching a single piece of land, garnered a curious reaction from none other than Elon Musk. Of course, Musk’s inclination for fossil fuels, particularly LNG, is because it powers his methane-emitting xAI facility in Memphis, and his new SpaceX Raptor engines are powered by cryogenic methane. Alaska has large fossil fuel reserves, so his curiosity is comprehensible. Just before 2024, Trump publicly told Musk he would begin extracting the long-controlled enormous fossil fuel resources in the Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). He was honest in his intent.


After assuming the presidency, Trump passed an Executive Order and a Secretary’s Order both titled ‘Unleashing Alaska’s Extraordinary Resource Potential,’ opening up nearly 82 percent of the 23-million-acre National Petroleum Reserve in the state and the entire 1.56 million-acre coastal plains of ANWR. What becomes particularly intriguing is that every conflict the President claims to have resolved has a connection to LNG exports from the US.


Trump asserts he has ended the Congo-Rwanda conflict. Rwanda is an importer of American LNG, while Congo is an exporter of cobalt and rare-earth metals to the US. Thailand, whose conflict with Cambodia was recently claimed to be resolved, is exploring options to buy LNG from Alaska.


Following the resolution of the India-Pakistan conflict, GAIL India has begun preliminary discussions for long-term LNG imports from Alaska. Now, as the Ukraine-Russia conflict is about to cease, President Putin is visiting Alaska to meet President Trump. The discussions on August 15, coinciding with India’s Independence Day, could involve the start of Alaska’s commercial oil and gas extraction, and perhaps easing of sanctions on Rosneft and enabling the Vostok Oil project in Siberia. It’s important to note that the Alaskan oil and gas leases opened by President Trump’s administration during the 2017 bid received limited interest from bidders. This may be an opportunity to turn his Alaskan dream into reality, without much regard for environmental concerns or local communities.


Alaska’s oil and gas reserves may be modest beside West Asia’s, and America can meet most of its needs from the mainland. Yet Trump, shunning a consumer-led model, envisages an export economy built on extraction. As his base drives out much of the tech diaspora, jobs will shift to oilfields and mines - Texas, Louisiana and Alaska for petroleum; California, New Mexico, Colorado, Florida and Idaho for rare earths.


Why has Matsya Nyaya, as discussed in Campbell’s writing, been promoted in the US now? Perhaps, with the diminished global influence of the dollar and a decline in technology exports, the US will turn toward kleptocracy, where the rule of law essentially means ‘big fish eat small fish.’ Oligarchs depend on global demand for such resources and on their control over them.


Suppose both Russian and American presidents strike a deal; especially now that Western Ukrainian minerals are under American control, it’s not surprising that the next conflict resolution might involve Americans negotiating regulations over natural resources extracted in that country. It could be some agreement concerning Iranian natural gas or Chinese rare-earth minerals. A Pakistani field marshal is eager to demonstrate that the country has rich fossil fuel reserves in Sindh, Balochistan, and offshore Makran coast. Mar-a-Lago is no Beijing; it does not build Belts nor Roads. It simply extracts.


Matsya Nyaya is not the most favourable situation for the world nor for any country. Of course, India would eventually need to play a leading role in establishing the next set of global rules. Dharma must overpower Matsya Nyaya. Until that Dharmic strength is achieved, India must attain the Matsya Avatar, giving refuge to the Global South, in the great flood expected to come in world geopolitics.


(Dr. Chaitanya Giri is a Space and Emerging Technology Fellow at the Centre for Security, Strategy and Technology, Observer Research Foundation, Mumbai.)

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