One-size-fits-all Globalisation Won't Work Post Outbreak, Says RSS Ideologue in his Swadeshi Pitch

In line with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh’s (RSS) rooting for the cause of ‘swadeshi’, Sangh ideologue S Gurumurthy spoke about how the world would change after the pandemic and move towards a value-based system.

Addressing a webinar on ‘Rebuilding Indian Economy’ on Monday, Gurumurthy discussed options for India at a time “when credibility of China is at stake.”

He said a self-reliant Indian model can be re-invented in the coming days as the world tries to recover from the coronavirus outbreak. “The globalist model is the one which is an alternative, and not the ‘swadeshi’ one, as the latter is the functional model,” said Gurumurthy.

Stating that a health emergency of the magnitude of COVID-19 has helped bring in a change in perspective, he said the global one-size-fits-all model won’t work.

“It has been questioned by the world thinking forum. Each one has to come up with its own model. In 2008, the World Bank had said the same thing. But policymakers and government think-tanks, like Niti Aayog, discarded it. There are policies which are a photocopy of Western thoughts.”

He further said that there is a huge shortening of paradigms. “We thought colonialism would last forever, but it collapsed in 200 years. We thought mercantilism will last, but that too came to an end, so was the case with Marxism. Then came socialism, and everybody thought it to be the future of the world, but everything collapsed. Globalisation existed for only 25 years. We don’t need any proof because the proponents have admitted themselves that globalisation is over.”

The senior RSS leader said globalisation was never a global idea after all. It was an impractical one, touted as something that can take the world to a conflict-free situation. “But anyone who knew history would have dismissed it,” he said.

The World Trade Organisation is in a bad state and its dispute settlement department has seized to exist, Gurumurthy said. “America refused to appoint the judges. China had some temporary mechanism, but the US, India and Japan refused to join. This brought an end of WTO,” he added.

Stating that there is no relation between a democracy and dictatorship, the Sangh veteran said global supply chain rooted in China is seeing a virtual end.

Further, he said multilateralism is over and it will be replaced by a compatible mutual trade political relationship. “There is going to be a global political economic order, something different from what existed in pre-coronavirus times.”