What are challenges confronting to nation-states in the era of globalisation?

The nation-state in South Asia has been facing serious challenges from different forces emerging out of local, regional and global contexts. Prominent among them are identity movements and communitarian arguments, regional movements and the global agencies.

Each of them is contending to substitute or to act independent of the nation-state. It is important to appreciate the arguments of these forces to understand direction in which nation-state in this region is moving. Several reasons can be sighted why a supranational region has emerged as a strong contender to nation-state. There can be certain possible advantages with supranational regional formations.

A supranational region can respond to economic, technological and strategic challenges much more competently. Wherever regional integration has been reinforced, there local conflicts have been expenditure has declined or has been kept within limits and there has been better economic performance. Moreover, supranational regions can acknowledge sub-national identities much more confidently than nation-state can dare to afford. If nation is not something natural but imagined, region could be imagined too albeit on different foundations. It can safeguard a regime of rights much better than states as nationalism has often tended to be chauvinistic and so on. Add to these reasons the process that seems to be at work in the present where regional relations are increasingly being consolidated. These reasons seem to suggest region as the natural tools of the nation-state.

However, the emergence of regionalism is unlikely to weaken nation-state units. In South Asia, despite the great scope for regional cooperation, the divergent interests of nation-states in the region have placed hurdles in the consolidation of regional identity.

In South Asia there is an evident ambivalence with regard to efficacy of regional formation. One major challenge that South Asian states are facing in the recent times is the consolidation of communities/ identities on ethnic, caste, gender, and regional lines. For instance, issues of marginal isation and displacement of large chunk of tribal populations owing to dam construction, mining etc. are getting articulated in the form of ecological movements seriously questioning the development model adopted by these states.

In India, the Dalit movements in their search for identity often question the validity of the state as being dominated by the upper castes. Similarly, the gender construction of power and nation-state is a serious poser to the state’s support bases. It questions the male dominated political, social and economic order, in one word, – its patriarchal base.

All these are eroding the nation-states’ position as a sole claimant of citizen’s allegiance. They assert that the member’s primary loyalty lies with one’s own community as the self of an individual member is constituted in and through the community, through its values, lore and traditions and can assume its agency only by being so situated. Often it is true that the claims of these communities come into conflict with each other in sharing resources or power structures. There need to be a point of anchor independent of communities.

Besides, the boundaries of communities are very porous, and they are constantly reinvented. Take cases such as Hindustan or Ummah or any other construction of communities on religious lines. The boundaries of such communities are not permanent and often undergo a change.

They seek to build large blocks of communities constantly ignoring divisions within. They often come into conflict over their exclusive claims. Further, they refuse to recognise or accept the existence of multiplicity of beliefs and ways of life.

In such a situation, state alone can arbitrate between the communities that are in conflict. Therefore, the arguments for communities being seen as some kind of alternative to the nation-state are far too tall a claim. Besides, for communities to negotiate their ways across globally without the mediating presence of the nation state seems well nigh impossible.

There are today a number of issues which can be substantially tackled only at a global level such as ecological imbalance, terrorism, pollution, disarmament, etc. Already, the growing number of international organisations and the tasks before and expected of these organisations is constantly on the increase.

Besides, there has emerged a broad consensus on certain issues such as human rights and democracy. Advocates of the global or world system point to the thick outlay of institutions and processes at work across states as evidence of the global system, however, nascent it may be.

They therefore support globalisation not merely in the economic arena but in the political realm as well. However, a global system or government as an alternative to the nation-state is not a feasible proposition and even if it is, it is not desirable. In fact, growing interdependence and functional cooperation has been strengthening the nation-state, rather than weakening it.

The nation- state is the space to fall back upon noi merely for recognition but also in moments of crisis. Though world system offers a unified world, it is wrought with several contradictions. A world system with more advanced counters of the North dominating, would provide no security to less developed countries and less so to their vulnerable sections.

The Relevance of Nation-State in South Asia

Over the last two centuries, nation-states irrespective of their ideological focus have shaped the popular imagination of citizens about the way they organise and relate themselves with their state. The nation-state has been not merely the organised expression of a collectivity but several times an active agency of transforming relations, economic development and popular empowerment at least to the extent possible.

It is nation-state in South Asia, which bea^rs the Memory of the national movement and gathers within its fold remembrances and recalling-of ages. In spite of the chinks in the authority operate in South Asia owing to ethnic strife, peoples of South Asian countries hold their cultural Moorings around their respective states. Right from sports to military conflicts in the subcontinent rouse huge emotional outburst. Besides, in our conditions the nation-state alone can be the instrument, however imperfect, in standing up to external domination and intimidation either on its own or in association.

This ability of the state could help a great deal in carving out autonomous spaces of culture and political life and at least a limited regulation of the economy. Further, the nation-state as an organisational form is sufficiently flexible in accommodating a range of relations and identities within and outside it.

Nationalist ideology could assume a large number of orientations. Such flexibility is not possible in any narrowly carved identities or in any remotely conceived idea of supranational entity which is too far from the imagination of an ordinary citizen.