Movement

After the 'Arab Spring', we now have the 'Occupy' movements. India has had its 'Lok Pal' movement which looks fizzled out now. Anyway, movements in India never had long lifetimes since we gained independence. It is always difficult to create a sustained mass movement in the country. Fissions are bound to occur and factions develop.

'Occupy' movements, currently running without leaders are reactions of the societies towards imbalances created to disrupt the old equilibrium. Micro changes over the years have resulted in macrotransformation of the society in which the old middle class values are increasingly getting sidelined. The loss of power of the middle class to the upper class is a sign of society in transition. Upper class wielding power is the shortest way to chaos as they tend to use the power to protect themselves from the increasingly vehement lower classes rather than reaching a compromise with them. This causes further imbalance and chaos. I used to believe that democracy would help in avoiding this showdown but it seems that once the political class too is sold out, nothing else really matters.

The 'occupy' movements may either restore the balance in favour of the middle class or they may die out, resulting in the concentration of power in the elite. If the latter condition becomes true, it will be the beginning of the end of the world as we know it now. For, the American elite now have a say in almost all matters that affect the humanity rather than American public alone.

I'm no fan of Marx. But when you see the world rapidly moving towards his worst predictions. You can't help but notice. In fact, Marx's supporters may have actually delayed the coming of the revolution by creating awareness about workers' rights and promoting the role of the state in the economy earlier. With the capitalists warned about the problems that may be caused by the proletariat, they adopted reconciliatory measures. However, as the ownership of capital today has become depersonalised, there may be nobody around to take the real decisions soon. Shareholders being amorphous entities and profit being the only concern, managers are bound to make decisions that are good for their companies but bad for the humanity. Same goes with political parties. With each party appealing only to ideologically polarised groups, the independents have no choice but to adopt an ideology that is closest to their ideas - though they may personally be deadly against many of the party programmes. Thus politics too becomes an insensible, inhuman war without weapons that actually does no good to the majority.

When both economy and polity fail, society too might follow their footsteps. However, since society is composed of much more than economic and political relations, there is a chance that it may react to restore the equilibrium. The intensity of the reaction will depend on the prevalence and strength of non-economic and non-political relations in the society and their orientation towards the change.

For example, in the Arab Spring, the social networking sites increased the number of the non-economic, non-political relations; these were in general, negatively orientd towards the power centres. However, in India, not only are the political and economic relations more prevalent and stronger than NPNE relations, the orientation of the NPNE relations is itself ambiguous.

The West, unlike most of us in the East characterise it, is not a homogeneous entity. Each nation has a culture specific to itself. Hence, whether the 'Occupy' movements will be successful or not is a question that cannot be answered offhand. However, it can be predicted that political parties will try to co-opt these movements, leading to the alienation of many. Most of the objectives of these movements will not be fulfilled. And none of them is going to result in a revolution of the type any of the Arab Spring nations witnessed.

Never underestimate the power of democracy and capitalism to strike back.