Former RBI governor Raghuram Rajan has slammed the narrow world view of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) saying it was "deeply problematic for an open democratic country like ours".
In an interview to THE WEEK, the former RBI Governor said such a view does not provide much freedom of participation to a host of communities "outside the majoritarian community".
However, he did not fail to mention that the RSS helped to shape great personalities like former prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee.
Rajan is now in India to promote his third book 'The Third Pillar'.
Congress president Rahul Gandhi said recently that many eminent economists, including Rajan was consulted to draft the Nyuntam Aay Yojana (NYAYA), or minimum income guarantee scheme, sparking speculations that Rajan might take up key responsibilities if UPA comes to power.
The Third Pillar
The local community is at the centre of Rajan's latest book "The Third Pillar: How Markets and the State Leave the Community Behind", published by Harper Collins India and released on Feb 26.
The "Third Pillar" is a philosophical exploration of the imbalances between state, markets and local communities, and Rajan writes that wrong choices could derail human economic progress at this critical moment in history. It explores how globalisation and technological advancement have also produced a strong backlash of populist nationalism. The community is the third pillar that has got left behind as the two other pillars - the state and the markets - scaled up and expanded their powers at the expense of the former, Rajan says. "India, with its more pluralistic and open-access political system is better positioned for the community to create more separation between the state and the markets. Its weakest pillar is the state," he writes.
"India also has a private sector that is still dependent on the state, which makes it a feeble constraint on it. "India's challenge in the years to come is not its democracy, which is probably the only way to keep a country with such varied communities together, but the need to strengthen state capacity and private sector independence."Given the plethora of languages, religions, castes and ethnicities, India needs a system that allows grievances to be expressed through democratic protest and dialogue, "rather than one that bottles them up so that they explode later", he says in the book.
Noting that the questions populist nationalists are raising are reasonable, the former RBI Governor says that re-emergence of populist nationalism in the industrial West is based on economic worries. The "primary source of worry" seems to be that moderately educated workers are rapidly losing or at the risk of losing good "middle class" employment, and this has grievous effects on them, their families and the communities they live in. Rajan, currently a University of Chicago professor and one of whose earlier works predicted the 2008 global financial crisis, draws India's parallel with China.
Both countries have large young migrant populations "yet to be integrated into solid new communities" who are ideal raw material for populist nationalists' vision of a "cohesive nationalist community. The Hindu nationalist movement tries to tap into such people's desire to anchor themselves in tradition. It exploits the sense among the majority Hindu population that they have bent over backwards to appease minorities, especially Muslims." "The committed Hindu majoritarian leaders," Rajan says, "are a serious threat to a liberal tolerant innovative India."
According to him, the lure of populist nationalists is that they propose simple solutions that don't deal with the fundamental question, while populist nationalism in one country breeds populist nationalism in another, increasing the risk of conflict between countries.
Tracing the rise of populist nationalism worldwide to the diminution of the community at a time of heightened economic worries, Rajan says that liberal "open-acess" values are under threat in India from the Hindu nationalist movement.
(With inputs from IANS)
