Flip side of development
B.S. Thaur

The Politics of Every Day Life
by Paul Ginsborg. Penguin. Pages 214. Rs 245.

This book brings into sharp focus the impact of modern development for the last more than three decades on economics and politics the world over. The author, Paul Ginsborg, has forcefully argued as to how binary categories like riches and poverty, power and powerlessness, male and female, profits and ethics, environmental conservation and depletion of natural resources, are going to confront population at large. He also shows how developed countries are dominating poor and developing countries through money power of organisations like the WTO, the IMF and the World Bank. The prevailing model of modernity of developed countries, exported and imposed upon the rest of the world, has been described, suggesting that something must be done before it is too late.

We have little idea of what we as individuals or as families or as groups of friends and co-workers can possibly do to stem the tide. We should simply connect our everyday lives and our individual actions to making the world a better place to live in. The author elaborates as to how in 2002, civic action initiated by a few professors of Florence University against the misrule of the municipal government grew into a big social forum, which later confronted the rule of Silvio Berlusconi, a media baron, who had come to power by corrupt means, in Italy. Berlusconi is only an example. They are a product of and in turn shape a global culture of conspicuous consumption and their television channels communicate a motivated view, which looks normal to the common man.

Dissatisfaction with democracy is not peculiar to the city of Florence. In every country where democracy has triumphed, dissatisfaction with its working, perhaps not with its essence, has grown around the globe. The author suggests that if we want to transform it, we will have to start with ourselves to reinvent choices we make on a day-to-day basis, the way we use our time, the family lives we live, the sort of things we consume and the quality of democracy we are able to exercise. The individual, the local and the global are inextricably intertwined in both positive and negative ways. Passiveness and indifference at the first and second levels (individual and local) contribute greatly to collective dismay at the third level (global).

The book has five chapters. In the first, the principal dichotomies, which are a consequence of relations of the North (developed countries) and the South (poor and undeveloped countries), have been analysed. The forces driving forward the process of globalisation for the last 30 years are taking advantage of the existing disparities due to the colonial and imperialistic past of the South. The author emphasises that the only way to surmount the spate of modernity is by linking everyday life to the wider problems of the world. In the second chapter, it is pointed out that among the reasonably well-off sections of population in the developed and developing world, there is a constant craze to consume goods, which is arousing dissatisfaction at the waste involved and the damage to environment. In the third chapter, the institution of family referring to political thinkers Mills, Hegel and Galbraith about the family culture of North and South, effect of television, their consumption needs and connectivity withthe outer world have been discussed in a manner in which the impact of modernity comes alive.

Having discussed the possibilities of civil societies to emerge in the preceding chapter, Paul Ginsborg finally comes to reformism. In social democratic traditions, reforms have been a top-down process, decending from institution sites to populations. Participative reforms conversely are based on flows in both directions. The natural starting place for such politics is the home, the civil society and the city. But its natural ambit is the world spectrum. In so dark a moment for humanity, the author calls for collective strength to arrest the deterioration and denigration of democracy.

The book is an awakening call to the world at large to stand against the spate of modernity and to seek a change in the present democratic style and culture. The suggested method of bringing about the change, no doubt, is plausible, but is difficult to execute. It can, at best, be nursed as wishful thinking.

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