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… read about religion and realpolitik in the Deccan kingdoms of Medieval India.

When nationalists tell a story of a nation as timeless, eternal, and inevitable, they create an impression of a history that justifies the present. In modern India, ruled by the Hindu nationalists of the BJP, that vision is of a religiously united nation, where the presence of other faiths and other believers are foreign intrusions, injustices and indignities that need correctioning. Anirudh Kanisetti, author of “Lords of the Deccan: Southern India from the Chalukyas to the Cholas” instead shows a history of de facto religious pluralism in India’s medieval era, as a byproduct of the realpolitik of various kings in the Deccan plateau. “The Deccan kings understood very well that the more open they were to religious contestation and to multiple religions spreading, the more options they would have with regard to building alliances with powerful religious institutions,” Kanisetti tells Sudha Ramachandran of The Diplomat [[link removed]]. These leaders existed in a time of tremendous social change, as new tools and techniques allowed for greater extraction of wealth from their subjects, and openness to working with different religious communities gave kings access to everything from local administrators to international trade networks. “I would argue that the term ‘intolerance’ absolutely has no place in discussions about medieval India,” says Kanisetti. “It was an exciting world that puts a lot about modern India into context.”

Drafting History

When Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a draft mobilization, as the once-feared Russian military suffers repeated battlefield defeats in Ukraine, protests and resistance erupted in Russia. Many outside observers, forgetting ongoing protests against the war in Russia, wondered why it took mobilization to bring out the mass exodus and mass resistance to the war.

“This collective response is happening because the draft is concerted and coherent: as a policy, it is clearly targeted at a large group of people, rather than at individuals as individuals, and it affects them in the same way and at the same time. Whether that collective response turns into a powerful protest movement depends on what the state does next,” writes Sam Greene of TL;DRussia [[link removed]?].

Greene explores the limits and reality of resistance in Russia, of the many ways people have sought individual outs from collective harms. If some people can escape the draft through local acts, by getting an exemption or convincing an official to look the other way, then the resistance may atomize. But mobilization is an expansive call, it is hard to strike a bargain of anonymity within the state after saying every able fighter is needed on the front.

FORWARD TO A FRIEND [[link removed]] Class Dismissed

An empire is a political reality shaping a material relationship, but not every empire makes its foundation in the same resources. Writing for Jacobin, Volodymyr Ishchenko outlines the specific class conflicts within Russia and the post-Soviet sphere, which have led to the invasion of Ukraine. Here the material relationship is not territorial control of raw materials, nor is it even specific access to certain markets. The resource central to Russia’s post-Soviet elites, and that of neighboring countries, is specifically political capital in a more literal sense — or, access to the right leaders able to offer oligarchs exclusive access to collect rents off the common coffer.

“The puzzle was that the bourgeoisie in capitalist states does not usually run the state directly. The state bureaucracy usually enjoys substantial autonomy from the capitalist class but serves it by establishing and enforcing rules that benefit capitalist accumulation. Political capitalists, by contrast, require not general rules but much tighter control over political decision makers,” writes Ishchenko.

What Russia is fighting for, then, is not just physical territory, though it is also that. Putin’s war is about securing an exclusive sphere of economic operation for Post-Soviet elites, where local knowledge and direct relation can preserve elite privilege and wealth in the face of western capital, and as a xxxxxx against local workers. It is a model designed to appeal to autocrats across the world, who would prefer to maintain cash flows instead of opening the books for foreign accountants and foreign arbitrators.

FORWARD TO A FRIEND [[link removed]] DEEP DIVE The Italian Job: Part II

A robot is a machine that does labor. As a phenomena, industrial automation trades initial capital outset for the expense and variability of human labor, though robots are more transformative than simply direct replacements for workers.

In “ Reshoring may create new job opportunities, although primarily for workers whose skills are complementary to robots [[link removed]],” authors Massimo Anelli, Italo Colantone, and Piero Stanig examine how automation shifts the material realities, and in turn the political preferences, of workers.

“Individuals endowed with skills that are complementary to the new technologies benefit from automation, while more substitutable workers lose out. These labor-market developments are likely to be politically consequential,” write the authors.

For programmers and designers, who can turn their advanced skills into coding, building, and maintaining robots, robotic labor can be an economic boon. For workers who, in early industrial eras, would have performed tasks not automated, the introduction of robots can mean the end of well compensated employment, and permanent relegation to less stable work, like waiting tables.

This shift plays out over time, as automation is but one of many factors at play in an economy. The most immediate effect is that of a line worker displaced by a robot, but automation also has a carry-on effect for new workers who, in a previous generation, may have taken the job automated out of existence. The authors go to great lengths to model this impact, as merely looking at employment after the onset of automation doesn’t capture the individual perception of what life would have been like had automation never happened.

“Individuals with higher robot exposure are less likely to have a permanent contract, display worse perceptions of economic conditions and well-being, and report lower satisfaction with the government and democracy,” write the authors.

This dissatisfaction can lead workers to radical parties on both the left and the right, but the effect of automation left support is only one-third as strong as the shift to the right. The authors attribute this to the package of protectionism and nativist policies offered by the right, as well as a specific right emphasis on a return to a mythical recent past.

“Besides the economic platforms,” write the authors, “the idea of taking back control is often combined with the defense of a traditional way of life that supposedly characterized the nation before globalization and immigrants — but also computers and robots — had a disruptive impact on society.”

The authors test their assumption by examining parties individuals voted for in elections in European countries from 1999 through 2015. To fully capture automation on an individual level, they contrast election results as they happened with how individuals would have voted instead in a world where automation did not take place. The effect, they find, is that exposure to automation leads to “a 2.8-percentage-point increase in the probability of voting for a radical-right party,” which is even more significant given that baseline probability of voting for the radical right is just 4.8%.

Nativist politics are not a solution to the problems of worker displacement from automation, but they are a visible policy the displaced can point to. Instead, policymakers could find a way to offer dignity and stability in hard-to-automate jobs.

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Marco Werman interviewed [[link removed]] Firuzeh Mahmoudi, one of the creators of Gershad, an app used by Iranians to track the location of morality police and, now, riot police. The interview, edited by Anna Kusmer, shows how crowdsourced tools are letting people protesting the country’s theocratic rules look out for one another. Said Mahmoudi, “if multiple users use the same point near the same area, they get all clumped together. And users can only report if they're within a 500-meter vicinity of a location to avoid spamming by government officials.” It’s a vital tool in a country where the morality police overwhelmingly though not exclusively target women.

Ambika Vishwanath navigated [[link removed]] the geopolitical and climate importance of water management in Southeast Asia. This summer’s flooding in Pakistan brought international attention to the dangers posed by the warming climate, and they also emphasized how mismanagement of natural water management exacerbates the problems of water systems. “While we cannot ignore the importance of maintaining our forests — the benefits are multifold — we often miss out on other critical nature-based solutions such as wetlands and marshes as important carbons sinks, biodiversity zones, and natural flood arresters,” wrote Vishwanath. Regional cooperation, between China, India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, is essential long term, even as local interventions are vital in the present.

Shirin Jaafari reported [[link removed]] on Lebanon’s string of bank robberies, where people are trying to make a kind of ‘armed withdrawal’ of their own funds from a collapsing bank system. Sali Hafiz, who held up a bank with a toy gun in an attempt to withdraw her $20,000, said tellers were able to bring her $13,000, which she intends to use to pay for her sister’s cancer treatment. Hafiz is just one of several people restoring to such means to try and pull savings out of banks, a reaction that is increasingly common as Lebanon’s banks limit withdrawals and the value of local currency continues its long collapse.

FORWARD TO A FRIEND [[link removed]] WELL PLAYED

The 18th Brumaire [[link removed]] of Francis Fukuyama [[link removed]].

When the most powerful military on earth cosplays as a galactic empire, believe it [[link removed]].

Or perhaps we’re just in the long now of the extended deadline [[link removed]].

From crown possession to crown dispossession [[link removed]].

There is a specter retreating from Europe [[link removed]].

The algorithm was tuned to the style of an uncredited artist, screaming gibberish [[link removed]].

Dr. Strangelove, or how I learned to stop worrying [[link removed]] by removing tactical nukes [[link removed]] from the hands of field commanders.

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Critical State is written by Kelsey D. Atherton with Inkstick Media.

The World is a weekday public radio show and podcast on global issues, news and insights from PRX and GBH.

With an online magazine and podcast featuring a diversity of expert voices, Inkstick Media is “foreign policy for the rest of us.”

Critical State is made possible in part by the Carnegie Corporation of New York.

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