Fractured/Earth

I am writing this from Dehradun where rain has just squelched plans of a half-day trek along the Kipling trail — I learnt yesterday that one can see the Main Boundary Fault at the start of that walk. If not today, then another day. But the MBF has to be seen. 

And now for our regular programming. Late last week, after Trump slapped his 50% tariff on India, I did a few interviews trying to understand the implications for India.

The immediate costs are daunting. A clutch of labour-intensive sectors will lose access to the world’s biggest consumer market. And yet, they pale before the concessions that Trump seeks — not just agri, weapon and energy purchases but also countries’ waiving environmental/safety requirements; IP protections; and so on. These demands are a part of a larger piece. Even the UK, in its FTA with India, promotes voluntary licensing over compulsory licensing, undercutting Indians’ access to affordable medicines. 

In effect, as my report says, “Trump is using tariffs not just to boost US manufacturers’ access to foreign markets and to sell military hardware, he is also forcing other countries into trade agreements which, as with colonialism and neo-colonialism, are extractive (like the Ukraine critical minerals deal) or impinge on citizens’ wellbeing (as with the farm deals).” Do read.

On the face of things, likening anything to colonialism sounds like the harvest of a fevered imagination. And yet, we are handicapped by an outdated vocabulary which stops us from grasping the nature of our time. The west slipping behind China and trying to shore up its economies at the cost of weaker countries; in the global south, oligarchs like adani inching ever closer to the military industrial complex of countries like israel; the sheer, unbridled loot across the country and the fattening of the BJP/RSS combine; techbros’ promotion of AI and Crypto and our political leaders’ unthinking acquiescence; rising unaccountability across the India state; what, in all, is this moment we live in?

I am going to spend today writing up some notes and reading. As an aside, today marks 20 years to the day when I left business journalism for development reporting and headed off to ladakh on bucephalus, my now lost motorcycle, to celebrate the jump. I really should plan another hike, another trip. It has been far too long. And so it goes.

And here is wishing all of us a very happy independence day. May we better protect the country from its external and internal colonisers (look at this andaman story and tell me how this is not internal colonialism) in the year ahead.