Boris Kagarlitsky, Director, Institute of Globalisation and Social Movements, Moscow, has said that the BRICS nations are grappling with the crisis of managing their internal contradictions as they are faced with the challenge of meeting external demands rather than looking after one’s own interests and requirements.
Prof. Kagarlitsky was delivering the KPS Menon Lecture 2016 organised by the School of International Relations and Politics (SIRP) at Mahatma Gandhi University on Thursday. He said that the logic of global competition leaves no room for addressing issues of human needs and local conditions and, consequently, the countries in the coalitions are unable to meet the emerging requirements of the domestic market, labour and technology.
The BRICS countries had at some stage expected that the world recession would eventually benefit them due to the alternative platform they brought in.
But, on the contrary, these countries also began to face the aftershocks of the world recession, obviously because of the already built-in profile of global capitalism and its pattern of exchange relations.
Consequently, much of the early enthusiasm for a coalition of the Global South has got disrupted with domestic crisis getting worsened in each country, though the official growth rates were generally projected as improving. The BRICS coalition is generally identified as emerging economies with lots of advantages, but the ruling elites of these countries are unwilling to move beyond the track set by the Global North countries, Prof Kagarlitsky noted.
According to him with the onset of the global market demands, which is identified as the new engine of the growth, the member countries of BRICS could not properly reconcile to the reality of a series of crises emerging from within. This has paved the way for the emergence of New Right and Far Right forces in these countries.
“Unfortunately, even the Left and progressive forces are unable to even diagnose this neoliberal trap and they are, in fact, on the retreat,” he said.
Given this situation, there was not much hope for the radical transformation of the BRICS dynamics except in terms of facilitating trade among the partners.
There are, however, other manifestations of a desire on the part of the people of these countries and, naturally, the People’s BRICS and similar efforts under way from different vantage points need to be seen in this context, he said.
K.M. Seethi, coordinator, welcomed the gathering and A.M. Thomas, Director, SIRP, chaired the session.
