Oh, Shut Up, Tom

Indians like Tom Friedman.

They have liked him since he wrote "The World is Flat," announcing the emergence of a technology-driven multipolar world, where there are many economic centers.

Friedman saw India as one of the centers. So Indians thought, Friedman was pro-India.

I don't like/dislike Friedman, but having followed his train of thinking for years, I have ascertained that he is a place-holder, a mouthpiece, if you will, for this thing called global neoliberalism.

He is a neoliberal. There have been old American liberals galore who have praised India, albeit with a sting of condescension/patronizing. Imagine Senator Patrick Moynihan as an example.

Senator Moynihan would speak of the need to uplift India, through the machinery of aid and education.
The neoliberal like Friedman says India is not only uplifted, but it also is poised to overtake America as an economic powerhouse.

Well, he said that years ago and his prediction hasn't quite materialized. But the point is what Friedman says in praise of India, is really not a praise of India. It is a propaganda for the virtue of a particular kind of economy--the free market type.

Any nation that opens itself to the free market receives Friedman's praise.

Besides, in "The Flat World," it isn't India as a whole that caught Friedman's attention, but only an itty bitty part of it--the technology corridor of Bangalore. Friedman managed to blow that part into a whole.
In other words, Friedman's India in the book is Infosys Inc, not a nation per se, but an outsourcing giant that enabled American corporations to do business cheaply.

Tom Friedman and his ilk value one thing--the expansion of American business abroad, because they believe that a free-market economy and the wealth that it generates, is good for world peace. When people are busy making money or "innovating" something or the other (with an eye to making money), then they don't have time to do fight.

So, once upon a time, Friedman's solution for violence in the "Arab Streets" was to introduce the free-market into the street.

It didn't work, because as the Arab Spring showed, Arabs wanted more than peace and affluence, especially because the affluence wasn't trickling down to the general population.

When India and Pakistan were almost on the point of conflict, Friedman said that General Electric, not General Powell will prevent the border war. And the rumor is that General Electric did prevent the conflict from escalating: Some multinational bosses went to the Indian Prime Minister and said they would not be able to do business in a country with unstable, "warlike" conditions. India, it is said, went for peaceful negotiations.

Arabs seemingly couldn't care less for what Friedman says, but Indians do. And they continue to worship Friedman.

Consequently, Friedman visits India frequently and periodically updates us about the progress India has made as an agent of free market economy.

The updates are published in The New York Times and every time I read them, I bristle with the desire to speak back to Friedman.

I can't speak back to him in person because he is a celebrity opinion-shaper, but I have written back in my own small way in the comments section in The New York Times.

In light of the political unrest sweeping up, not only the U.S. but also the rest of the world, Mr. Friedman's insistence that spread of technology will free us to become partakers in the grand free-market economy fest, is tiresome and petty.

One wishes he would stop visiting the little nooks and crannies of an "underhyped" India—the garages and the shanty homes populated by brave new Indian (Americans) who are "returning" to India to serve the poor with cheap cell phones etc.—and spend more time on real political issues plaguing the nation of America.
Indians will remain the uncritical zombies that they have always been--since the colonial times.