Here to Stay

India is a member of George W Bush and other formations. Where to locate the Global South? The language of develop- ment is the best way to understand worlds in the making. But it has become la langue de bois (the lan- guage of evasion).

- ASH NARAIN ROY

The world has rejected what George W Bush claimed at the launch of his anti-terrorism campaign, “either you are with us, or you are against us.” In these turbulent Trumpian times when politics is fundamentally about “friends versus enemies,” countries are choosing to live in what Timothy Garton Ash, Ivan Krastev and Mark Leonard call an “a la carte world”.

Their contention is based on a major public opinion poll in 21 countries for the European Council on Foreign Relations and an Oxford University project. They argue that an à la carte arrangement gives their governments a choice to “pragmatically choose their partners depending on the issue at stake.” That explains the emergence of a large number of groupings and platforms which may appear to be working at cross purposes.

India is a member of George W Bush and other formations. Where to locate the Global South? The language of development is the best way to understand worlds in the making. But it has become la langue de bois (language of evasion). If developmental buzzwords have tended to become fuzzwords, spaces of resistance and global platforms are understood differently in different contexts at different times. Global South has become what international relations experts Laura Trajber Waisbich, Supriya Roychoudhury and Sebastian Haug call “an identity shorthand that we simultaneously reject and need.” It is full of sound and fury, signifying many things to many people. The term “Global South”, coined by Carl Ogelsby, an eloquent voice of the New Left during the 1960s and 1970s, is again getting traction.