I frequently meet conservatives who defend nationalist regimes as being good for business. Next time I meet one, I’ll be sure to ask how business in Russia is doing these days.
Bloomberg has a good article on how Hindu nationalists are turning on India’s highly successful tech companies:
For a growing number of Hindu nationalists, home-grown tech companies are not national champions but enemies within: the agents of a global culture bent on dissolving traditional values by allowing women to work instead of staying home to have children (Infosys boasts that 39% of its employees are female); where people are promoted on merit rather than confined to their caste identity; and in which cities expand at the expense of villages. . . .
The original founders of Infosys are now not only billionaires in their own right but godfathers of the next generation of Indian tech, taking young entrepreneurs under their wings and investing in dynamic new companies. But for all that, both they and their families are no longer exempt from the anti-globalization forces that are raging across the world. And the general business atmosphere in India is getting colder, with private investment falling and the economy slowing even before Covid struck.
I suspect that Hindu nationalists are correct that companies like Infosys are “agents of a global culture bent on dissolving traditional values”. Where I differ from them is that I believe that abolishing caste and patriarchy is a good thing.
PS. Here’s another perspective:
All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind. The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the entire surface of the globe.
Let’s hope this is correct.
READER COMMENTS
Pierre Lemieux
May 11 2022 at 11:03am
Scott: You’re making an important point, made by both Hayek and (in a different way) Buchanan. I love your second sentence.
Michael Sandifer
May 11 2022 at 1:45pm
I add that China has also cracked down on this big tech sector, having crushed the market value of companies such as Alibaba, Didi, and Baidu. China, as Scott has correctly pointed out before, is closer to fascist than communist these days, with “Communist” in CCP being largely a misnomer.
Those who think Trump would not represent a similar danger, as he dissolves the rule of law and companies increasingly compete for the favor of the new elite rather than their customers are welcoming much more corruption than we have today.
Centralization increases opportunities and incentives for corruption, whther on the left or right. Kleptocracy nearly inevitably occurs.
raja_r
May 11 2022 at 3:49pm
The article talks about (a) anger in the UK directed at an Infosys family member for (legal) tax avoidance, (b) anger in India at Infosys mishandling a large Income Tax software project, including an article in a Hindu nationalist newspaper, and (c) Infosys’ struggles in the west due to increased immigration restrictions.
There is an assertion in the article about Hindu nationalists attacking Infosys, but no links or references are provided. The “the agents of a global culture bent on dissolving traditional values” is not a quote from any Hindu nationalist article, but the author’s opinion.
A careless reader might assume, from reading Scott’s summary, that this quote was from Hindu nationalist.
How we go from these points to a broader critique of nationalists in India is a not a mystery to me.
In 1998, after the nuclear tests by India, I started following western newspapers. The availability of the internet in India during that time, of course helped with this.
What I saw was journalist after journalist making wild assumptions and leaps from what they read or knew about India.
There is definitely anti-Muslim sentiment in India, especially in the North. But, we also went from 2-3 riots/year with multiple deaths in my city (Coimbatore, TN) to no violence in the past 10-20 years. We went from Babar-Masjid and Sikh slaughters to no major incidents in the past 10-20 years (the last one was the pogrom in Gujarat in 2001).
We also went from political lawlessness (Indira Gandhi’s emergency, center cancelling election results – S.R.Bommai case, etc.) to rule based (at least for Indian standards) political process where politicians are regularly sent to jail – an unimaginable scenario for people like me who grew up in the 80s and 90s.
Reading a few news articles about a country does not give you the knowledge to make sweeping statements about what’s happening in the country. I left India in 2001 assuming it will collapse in 10-20 years. It is doing better than ever and I’m starting a business there soon.
Scott Sumner
May 12 2022 at 12:16pm
India has improved in several respects over recent decades, but under Modi the country has taken an unfortunate turn toward anti-Muslim bigotry and authoritarianism.
“Reading a few news articles about a country does not give you the knowledge to make sweeping statements about what’s happening in the country.”
I’ve read many hundreds of news articles on India, from a variety of sources.
pootam
May 12 2022 at 11:58pm
I left India a couple of years ago after spending almost all of my 40 years of life there, at least partly because of Hindutva and Modi, but I still have to say..
The author is just making stuff up if he’s saying there’s an important strain of Hindu nationalism that is trying to confine people to their caste identities. Caste is a thing that could kill Hindutva as a movement. With the infighting that’s bound to follow any attempt at reinstating it in the public sphere – for Hindus to maintain their muscular majority, they need to pretend at least in public that caste isn’t a thing anymore.
Note that I’m not saying that caste is not important to individual hindutvavadis. They’ve not transcended it. But they definitely know they don’t have a movement if they make caste-based categorisation any part of their program or public messaging.
(I was born Hindu, I know my caste, I speak two Indian languages other than English, and have consumed a fair bit of media for and by hindutvavadis in my time).
Scott Sumner
May 17 2022 at 2:14pm
Thanks for that information.
Prakash Chandrashekar
May 18 2022 at 9:01am
The assumptions that the author has made are laughable.
The most recent gender related laws pushed by the government were to stop the validity of verbal divorce (initiated by the man) for Muslim women and to increase the marriage age for all women.
Also, the government is trying to bring a uniform civil code. This will finally end the polygyny that is currently being practiced by the Muslim community and cement equal shares of ancestral property to men and women as a default.
This can’t be called traditional or conservative.
Raja’s point about street violence being reduced and Pootam’s point about caste being a factor that could break Hindutva are both correct. Hindutva seeks to unite Hindus, not subdivide them in the name of caste.
Raja’s other point that is also valid is that the government is trying to bring in a rules based order. There was a proposal to have a wide community among the executive and legislature vet judges, similar to what you have in the US. The judges cancelled it for maintaining their own cushy positions (Currently the judiciary appoints itself). You can google the terms NJAC and collegium. This cancellation was done inspite of the judiciary being perhaps the worst in the world. There are 40 million pending cases in India.
Comments are closed.