As Donald Trump prepares for another round in office as US President, shrouded in the looming sceptre of America’s Brexit, following an election campaign that blatantly exposed the growing irrelevance of mainstream western and American media’s diminishing capabilities to grasp and interpret the evolving political and by extension social and cultural landscape – AI fact-checking tools and all, I revisit and share this piece that reflects the moves by third-round India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s on the West. It is a prelude to a closer look at this week’s ndia-Caricom Summit, coming on the heels of the Brazil-hosted G20 Summit, and some new AuthenThink Intel AI AnalyEthics and insights into what this should mean for the region, the Americas, the Global South and the emerging New World Order!
(Flashback)
Modi & Merkel
They say blood is thicker than water, and that’s the balm. Breathing deeply, looking to be distracted from the flurry and flight of prudence from jurisprudence (See Demokrissy’s Ode to Jurisprudence) and plummeting pillars of the body politic here across the kala pani, up loomed the publicly blossoming promance (power romance) between Indian Prime Minister Narendra Damodardas Modi and German Chancellor Iron Lady, Angela Dorothea Merkel, sounding sirens of the recolonization of Europe and reconfiguration of the old into a New World Order. (Much has since been said of that meeting, this here is my take on it as it unfolded!)
Colour-Coordinated Strides n Stares
The colour-coordinated his and hers suits, syncronised strides, long stares into each other’s eyes, relaxed garden walks and talks, tetes-a-tetes at the Iron Lady’s baroque castle retreat; the ‘made-for-each-other’ Merkel-Modi hugs; the over shoulder winks to the European Union of a stronger India-Europe alliance caused as many-a- conservative tongue to wag in equal consternation as the leg-flashing Bollywood princess Priyanka Chopra who took to covering her Baywatched bikini body with (oh horror of horrors!) an above-knee length dress to greet her Prime Minister in Germany.
Challenge to Old Conventions
Like the knee-exposed Priyanka, challenging the image of conservative, cloistered Indian womanhood, Modi’s India with Gita-like prophesy is shedding its worn old body of deprivation, starvation, impoverishment and underdevelopment, for its new reincarnation as a potential world power.
As they say, blue blood is thicker than water, thicker too than German bier. I am patient, if anything. It’s but a pint in a sea of samskara. It is left to be seen how far will go this promance with the woman who had belched out in a fit of frustration at the challenges of globalisation that ‘Multikulti is dead’ while we rum-guzzlers on this side of the diaspora in Canada, the Americas, the Caribbean, take up the collective chant – ‘long live Multikulti!’
Fuhrer ignored in Fascinating Furor over Priyanka’s Legs
The Western world might have missed it, as it did my date – no surprise there – with BBC lenses fascinatingly focused on the furor over Priyanka Chopra’s legs rather than the shenanigans of the German Führer and India’s Pradhaan Mantri. But no sooner has Modi kissed his Merkel abschied/farewell, he is holding hands in another garden walk, in syncronised strides, with Russian Prem’yer-Ministr Vladimir Putin, doing an about turn of his motorcade and Primer Ministro of Spain Mariano Rajoy to walk casually into crowds of cheering desi fans in Madrid, and ensnaring France’s youthful and handsome leadership makeover in Premier Ministre Emmanuel Macron in a passionate embrace pour sauver le monde/to save the world from climate change.
While journalist Megyn Kelly from Trump’s NBC is still trying to remove foot from mouth having stood in her shoes and wondered aloud if the man with the world’s largest social media following is on Twitter, the ‘eat your heart out Trump-USA,’ and ‘take that Brexit’ chants escalate into a crescendo.
Modi’s Coming, India’s Arrival
Modi, meanwhile, is poised, arms outstretched for the passing of the baton from what used to be the world’s greatest power centre, now on the rocks of a titanic sinking in the tides of melting ice caps and climate change. With Modi’s coming, India, it seems, has arrived, even as ‘persons of Indian origin’ in these parts celebrate the near 200 years of their own departure, migration and arrivals to the distance shores across in the Americas.
Curried Counter-Terrorism, Spiced Cyber Security
The world may watch in awe, or in horror, at the changing discourse and turning of the tables to courses in a menu of curried counter-terrorism, spiced with dashes of global security, smart technologies, science, clean energy, served up between sips of German bier, French wine, Spanish sangria and Russian vodka, through promises of resource sharing in health, education, global development, international cooperation, trade, investment and India’s surprise pop out in all its IT splendor with a ‘Hello World’!
India’s seemingly surprised emergence bedecked in brand new sari and adornments, tantalizingly teasing with its show of underbelly of self-empowerment through smart tech and social media savvy while conventional media grasps in dying breaths and bewildered clutches of disbelief at its emergence from branded impoverishments, buffoonery, deprivation and underdevelopment. Leading the twitterati is Modi – Tweeter Premiere.
Dangling Dowry
They seem to have missed the matikor of preparation and prayers that preceded this coming out party on the world’s dance floor which sees India’s Modi curtsying and greeting and patting and pecking and nodding and kissing and hugging as he extends invitations to shardi, not as a demure bride, but dangling a dowry that would dazzle any suitor. Western world leaders from Merkel to Macron, Putin to Rajoy, hear the conch shells and drums heralding India call to line up to partake in the kitcheri of this shardi/marriage banquet of global power mongers.
The emerging New World Order, like Modi’s India, may seem pretty new, but it has had a long gestation, in peace, under the radar of the frenzied paparazzi chasing the glitterati and still recovering from a dazed stupor of having so misread the signs to Donald Trump’s electoral victory, just as it disdainfully dismissed the bugles of the New World Information Order.
Political vs Journalistic Truths
There begins my journey of mixed intentions, not unlike Modi’s: the pursuit of truths, mine journalistic rather than political truths, enroute to rediscover, not unlike Columbus, the ancient world, unearth some roots, unravel the mysteries of the complex tapestry of ‘multikulti’, that see me on one then another and anticipating a third passage to India that twists and turns and meanders through my date with Narendra Damodardas Modi.
From my repose on my nondescript island enclave across the kala pani, looking on at the unfolding pantomime, and dissolution of jurisprudence and its associated disassociated and disembodied body politic, I muse on the made in India moment.
Before Modi’s swachh bharat/clean up India movement, before India’s Pravasi Bharatiya Divas magnanimously flinging its doors open to its diaspora of PIO’s/persons of Indian origin and NRI’s – non-resident Indians, it was laying the groundworks in for this global debut through its membership in the Non Alignment Movement – states, some 120 of them, which did not see themselves as aligned with nor against any of the then major western power blocs, largely designated into ignominy in their third world status, and developing world classifications.
Ironic Trump
It is ironic that Donald Trump, raving about the biases and prejudices of mainstream media, the grip of the ‘swamp’, would turn his chops on the United Nations and the programmes of its agencies, when the goals of sustainable development, many evolved from the vision, principles and recommendations of the Non-Aligned movement, are, not unlike his own declared platform promises of revisionary approaches to economics, finance and certainly, information handling.
While my ancestry as a person of Indian origin might have been my initial point of confluence, it was, rather, as journalist, grasping at the principles and precepts of non-alignment for developing journalistic objectivity – not just a New World Order, but too, a New World Information and Communication Order that present passages to India, Canada and North America, Indonesia and the East, Britain, and Europe and my date and private tete-a-tete with Narendra Modi. Stay tuned.
Originally published on the original Demokrissy Blog as :My Date with Narendra Modi: TDat Merkel Affair et al Priyanka Chopra’s Baywatched Legs Trump’s Bucket & Dowry from the Diaspora.
Next My Date with Narendra Modi: Next: Sneak Preview: “I try to suppress the giggle. Narendra Modi strides across the room, arms outstretched …”: My Date With Narendra Modi II: India CARICOM Relations – The Prodigal; The Fox, the Well and Holes in the Bucket of the New World Information Order
… with a closer look at the evolving new world order and the flurry of new attention on India in the West in the wake of the just-concluded G20 Summit and as CARICOM hosts the India-CARICOM Summit this week.
About Dr Kris Rampersad
Dr. Kris Rampersad is a leading advocate for a revitalized world information order, rooted in the ideals of the non-aligned movement and adapted to the challenges of AI and emerging technologies.
A pioneering winner of UNESCO & partners Communications Initiative Development Policy Blogging for New Media, she has served in key roles, as Vice President of the Commonwealth Journalists’ Association, VP of UNESCO’s Programme and External Relations Commission for four consecutive terms and VP of the Consultative Body of the UNESCO InterGovernment Committee on Intangible Cultural Heritage.
As President of the UNESCO Education Commission she spearheaded the imperative for an integrated approach to to education, culture, media and ICT agenda and continues to devise actions towards realisation of that goal.
Over the last decade she was pivotal in the drive for a culture-centred approach to sustainable development goals, an approach which was only this month fully endorsed by UNESCO. She also conceptualised the Women’s Agents of Change initiative for the implementation in the Commonwealth Caribbean that has now been adopted globally by the UN system.
Self-Experimenting Scientist
Most recently, Dr Rampersad, like any under-resourced curious scientist subjected herself to self-experimentation by ingesting hundreds of courses on Artificial Intelligence, Data Science, Big Data, Cloud Computing, CyberSecurity, BlockChain, UX Design, Data Visualisation, Communications Agile, Project Management, Leadeship and other components of the emerging technologies to better understand and communicate the bewildering arena of new data tech as she formulates her platform for Authenthink Intel AI AnalyEthics. She welcomes support, partnerships and collaborations on these initiatives.