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How the West was lost

Thru’ the Looking Glass
Last Updated 25 June 2022, 20:34 IST

“I bought a standby generator today, just in case,” my father informed me in a text message early last week. Australia had announced load-shedding, with a plan for rolling blackouts in various parts of the county, to stabilise the power system. Load-shedding?! What was going on?! If it was surprising to me, it must’ve been utterly shocking to most other Australians.

I was introduced to load-shedding in India. Much to my dismay and irritation, regular power outages became part of my daily life when I was living in Kerala in 2006-7. I’d never heard of load-shedding before then, let alone experienced it. How times have changed. Kerala is now in power surplus while Australia had to shut its electricity market down due to insufficient supply.

“Adani has taken Australia’s coal,” an Indian friend quipped on Twitter. If only it was that simple. Australia is also facing dwindling oil reserves, a gas shortage, a worker shortage, an affordable housing shortage, a timber shortage, grocery shortages, and some crazy price hikes (think $12 for a lettuce, thereby forcing KFC to put cabbage in its burgers). “The only thing there’s not a shortage of is vaccines,” complained one resident.

The problem is, of course, affecting toilet paper, too. “A lady tried to steal my toilet paper after I paid for it and accidently left it behind in a store in Melbourne...life is getting very tough, but people should never thieve,” a shopper rued. Two 12-packs of toilet rolls had cost her $27 (Rs 1,400). In another media report, an Australian pensioner announced she had to ration her food, couldn’t afford to turn the heating on until 5 pm, and couldn’t go anywhere because of the cost of petrol.

Australia isn’t the only Western country facing difficulties. The situation is similar in the UK, US, and parts of Europe. It’s a surreal feeling to be sitting at home here in India while being a spectator of the West’s decline. Emergency departments in some Australian hospitals have been so overwhelmed, it can take days to get a room. Patients are placed on beds in the corridors. Others die before ambulances can reach them due to long wait times. I remember how the Western media homed in on India’s overflowing hospitals at the start of the pandemic. Except now, the pandemic has dragged on for two and a half years, and more than 90% of Australians are vaccinated. Hospitals still can’t cope, though.

Australia’s woes have been caused by multiple factors, including sanctions on Russia, uncontrolled gas exports, a dependence on fossil fuels, supply chain disruptions, and an over-reliance on vaccines to stop transmission of the virus. When the Ukraine war broke out, a relative in Australia asked me if I was concerned about India’s proximity to malevolent Russia. I had to explain that India has an entirely different relationship with Russia and the two countries get along well. Indeed, India continues to frustrate the incredulous West with its neutral stance, while the West’s obsession with punishing Russia propels a global food and energy crisis. An indignant G7 group of industrialised nations was quick to condemn India for banning the export of wheat and worsening the crisis. However, China rightly pointed out that shifting the blame onto developing countries won’t solve the problem.

While the West grapples with being the architect of its own downfall, BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) countries recently met to discuss a “new era in global development”. World turmoil has presented this assorted alliance with an ideal opportunity to cooperate more closely and harness its disparate strengths to convert economic power into greater geopolitical influence. With BRICS planning on developing a reserve currency based on a basket of its member currencies, along with alternative mechanisms for international payments, a new global economic order seems inevitable.

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(Published 25 June 2022, 19:20 IST)

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