We might enter an 'RSS meets Jio' ideological world

Written by Pratap Bhanu Mehta |Updated: May 1, 2019 8:55:22 am

Pratap Bhanu Mehta is vice-chancellor of Ashoka University. He was earlier president, Centre Policy Research, New Delhi, one of India's top think tanks. Before he started engaging with contemporary affairs, he taught political theory at Harvard, and briefly at JNU.  He has written extensively on intellectual history, political theory, law,  India's social transformation and world affairs. He is the recipient of the Infosys Prize, the Adisheshiah Prize and the Amartya Sen Prize

We might enter an ‘RSS meets Jio’ ideological world

What is of interest is that in the new techno-nationalist imagination, the issue is not protecting small producers or indigenous technology etc. The focus is on creating what people believe to be the carriers of national power in the form of large companies.

The nexus of big companies, state power and consumerist populism might be the new carriers of techno-nationalism, instead of the old public sector. So one of the oddest manifestations of techno-nationalism will not just be conventional arguments for investing in more R&D. (Illustration: Shyam/File)

Technology and nationalism have always had a very intimate relationship. Technology has often been an instrument of national power; and the quest for national power has, in turn, led to the investments in, and the creation of, different models of scientific organisation. In some senses “techno-nationalism” has always been around as long as states have existed. Over the last two-three decades, the rhetoric of globalisation blunted visible expressions of techno-nationalism. One of the most euphoric ideological constructions of recent technological revolutions was that it would make the nation as a unit less salient for the development and deployment of technology. But there is a growing sense that the zeitgeist might be shifting. The one common thread that we will see emerge in global discourse is the more open reassertion of techno-nationalism. A techno-nationalist imagination will be more ascendant in political discourse, and this will shape the course of economic reform as well. India’s politics is too distracted to focus attention on this. The RSS has been calling attention to the issue of techno-nationalism for a while, and don’t be surprised if it rises up the agenda very quickly after the elections.