Witoubou Newmai
The world’s main talking point at the moment is the presidential election ‘in’ (I don’t prefer to use the preposition ‘of’ in this regard at least for now) the United States of America (USA). There are definitely sections of people naively talking about the election simply by the influence of the auras or hypes. And definitely there are also people who really know what and why they are talking about this election. The auras or hypes are perhaps generated, not with the intention for such targets, as commentators and thinking people call our attention to the role of the United States in global issues.
Social media groups, which are there for specific purposes and interests, left their usual topics and interests to join the discussions on the presidential election ‘in’ the US.
Presidential elections ‘in’ the United States have been matters of interests around the world for decades now. The intensities and degrees of interests grow with time.
Of late, globe-wide public interests on election stories in other ‘powerful’ countries have also grown considerably. There are more things or underlying ideas and interests of ‘other’ people intensifying their interests about somebody’s elections than meets the eye.
As the world continues to shrink and intensifies to operate as a connected platform, it is becoming more difficult to remain in isolation. Today there is hardly anyone who is not affected by the paradigmatic changes of the world. As policies of one country affect another country, and that, everyone is becoming more and more a billiard ball among the many rolling billiard balls in the playing board.
Such a situation has become our time that it is more appropriate to say "‘in’ the US presidential election" rather than "‘of’ the US presidential election", for everyone in the globe will have shares in the benefits and detriments of the policies of the United States. This has become so in today’s world because “…the essential political units of the world are still based on nation states while some of the most powerful socio-political forces of the world escape the boundaries of these units” (David Held).
According to Elmar Altvater, “authoritarian political systems lose their ‘sense’ in view of the authority of the world market”. He further stated that “politics and economics become homologous, such that politics follow the economic logic”.
As such, globalization continues to drive for the re-thinking on state-centric understanding of many things. The number of commentators is rising who have been saying that such articulations, when received their full dues, may erode the “territorial and Westphalian conceptualization of political community”. Many thinkers including Alexander Wendt, David Held et alia may not be overstating the situation when they articulate this issue.
For public intellectuals like Yuval Noah Harari, the “real” divide today in the world is between “global” and “national/local” while the Left versus Right political model is “irrelevant”. Yuval advocates that the world needs “completely new political models and completely new ways of thinking about politics”. Yuval talks loads about global governance. As he continues to elaborate his ideas, more and more people are attracted to his big ideas.
As the ‘phenomena’ are global, which are assaulting the ‘local’ with increasing forces by the moment; we can no longer make our ideas confined to the ‘local’. How do we go in ‘sync’ with the global ‘phenomena’ should be a considered question more than almost anything else, so that we are not left behind.
With the Naga political issue still unresolved, the situation is even more difficult for Nagas than most others. Due to this issue, Nagas have been, all this while, seeing things in a ‘singular condition’ and taking the linear process.
The Naga political issue is extremely important. But at the same time, it is also about Nagas navigating through difficult decisions to update themselves with time.
Given the challenges and demands, and as most of the issues are becoming progressively global in essence impacting the 'local', it is extremely important that Nagas explore ways for multidimensional 'interaction' without demeaning the Naga political issue.
