From What Now to What Next

Praful Bidwai

June 2006

There have been several positive trends in the last thirty years of international politics and development, but there have been many more changes for the worse. North-South disparities have grown, thanks to skewed world trade and investment regimes, the failure of aid, and the neoliberal undermining of states in the global South. But civil society resistance to neoliberalism does, at least, offer a silver lining to this dark cloud.

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Today's globalised world is deeply contradictory. Growing interdependence, exchange and interaction have been accompanied by large-scale exclusion, insecurity, economic and political devastation. In this contribution to the Dag Hammarskjold Foundation’s “What Next” project, Bidwai charts thirty years of international politics and development. There have been several positive trends, including decolonisation and political independence, massive increases in literacy, and impressive gains in life expectancy. But there have been many more changes for the worse. North-South disparities have grown, thanks to skewed world trade and investment regimes, the failure of aid, and the neoliberal undermining of states in the global South. Processes of domination (including a US politics of empire) and overconsumption (particularly of fossil fuels, with the climate change implications already being felt) are coupled by multiple processes of erosion – of natural wealth, the environment, cultures and languages, of security and, worst of all, of democracy. But civil society resistance to neoliberalism does, at least, offer a silver lining to this dark cloud, writes Praful Bidwai.

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Praful Bidwai

Independent Journalist

Praful Bidwai is a political columnist, social science researcher, and activist on issues of human rights, the environment, global justice and peace. He currently holds the Durgabai Deshmukh Chair in Social Development, Equity and Human Security at the Council for Social Development, Delhi, affiliated to the Indian Council for Social Science Research.

A former Senior Editor of The Times of India, Bidwai is one of South Asia’s most widely published columnists, whose articles appear in more than 25 newspapers and magazines. He is also frequently published by The Guardian, Le Monde Diplomatique and Il Manifesto.

Bidwai is a founder-member of the Coalition for Nuclear Disarmament and Peace (India). He received the Sean MacBride International Peace Prize, 2000 of the International Peace Bureau, Geneva & London.

He was a Senior Fellow, Centre for Contemporary Studies, Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, New Delhi. Bidwai is the co-author, with Achin Vanaik, of South Asia on a Short Fuse: Nuclear Politics and the Future of Global Disarmament, Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 1999, a radical critique of the nuclearisation of India and Pakistan and of reliance on nuclear weapons for security.