Column : Bombs, bankers and us

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: The remarkable outcome of India’s election was fundamentally driven by domestic considerations. It could prove far-reaching in its implications for India—for the design of policy under the new government and for the restructuring of the political landscape.

However, it also has a significance that is global in reach. The Indian electorate has provided a sophisticated rejoinder to the seemingly rising tide of polarisation in the world. This is further linked, I believe, to the soul-searching around the management of capitalism. In this there is a bridge to other major democracies in the world. The two major crises of our times revolve around violent polarisation religious or ethnic identity and the functioning of capitalism. These have separate dynamics but also have links. And they have both global and local dimensions.

At the global level, polarisation and an attack on capitalism were symbolically joined in Al-Qaeda’s choice of the Twin Towers as one of their targets in 9/11. This set the stage for the US’s polarising response, the reciprocal embrace between President Bush’s “war on terror” and jihadist ideology, and the deepening economic and political crises from the Middle East to Pakistan.

But polarisations with quite distinct origins, of caste, religion and language, have also distorted political functioning at more local levels, and in the extreme have been a continuing source of violence, from attacks on Christians in Karnataka and Orissa to the tragic conflict in Sri Lanka. At a more subtle but still pernicious level, polarisation around identity has been a source of vote-bank politics and fights over reservation status.

Soul-searching over capitalism has recently been intensely preoccupied with the global financial crisis, that started in the American core of the capitalist system. But there have also been longer-term concerns, in India and elsewhere, over whether unleashed capitalism necessarily enriches the few with only limited benefits or causes displacement for weaker groups.