Skip to main content

Broligarchy

A page from Time

Broligarchy is a new word I learnt from the latest issue of the Time magazine one of whose lead stories is titled ‘American Broligarchy’. Wikipedia teaches me that ‘broligarchy’ is “a neologism and portmanteau combining oligarchy and broism describing the rule of government by a coterie of extremely wealthy men (occupying leadership roles in the tech companies and tech-enabled businesses).”

The Time article informs us that Trump’s greatest “bros” are Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg, the three men who were given the most prominent seats, ahead of Cabinet members, at Trump’s Presidential inauguration. These wealthy businessmen play crucial roles in Trump’s way of governing America. They pump a lot of unregulated money into politics for their own selfish reasons. A menacing outcome is an unhealthy (for the public) expansion of presidential power with fewer checks on the Congress. The Time laments that this “would be a recipe for more corruption under any President, but there are special dangers when they combine with Trump’s explicitly transactional approach to wielding power.”

India’s Prime Minister rushed to my mind as I read the Time article. Isn’t India a broligarchy under Mr Modi?

Who governs India in reality? The Parliament or a few individuals like Modi, Amit Shah, Gautam Adani, and Mukesh Ambani?

Both Ambani and Adani have been diehard supporters of Narendra Modi since his tenure as Gujarat’s chief minister. Adani funded much of Modi’s election campaigns, especially from 2014. He made his own private aircraft available for the campaigns.

As a result, the Adani Group has seen exponential growth in sectors like ports, power, and infrastructure, winning major government contracts and acquiring key assets like airports and coal mines. The meteoric success of Ambani’s Jio in India’s telecom revolution was facilitated by policies made by the Modi government just for the purpose.

Many government policies, such as relaxed environmental clearances, privatisation moves, and infrastructural projects, have often benefited Adani and Ambani ever since Modi became India’s PM.  Even the farm laws (now repealed) were formulated to favour these corporate players.

Neither Trump nor Modi is doing any good to the system of democracy with their functioning styles. When billionaires fund political campaigns, control media narratives, and influence policymaking, elected governments tend to forget the welfare of the public. Elon Musk goes around shutting down agencies and firing workers like a dictator. Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance has significantly expanded its presence in the media sector through several strategic acquisitions and mergers. Invading NDTV and handing it over to Adani was one of the most dastardly acts of Modi ever in his media conquests.

The death of democracy in India is almost certain in the hands of Narendra Modi. If an online publication like Vikatan cannot publish a cartoon showing Modi sitting in shackles beside Trump, then we have serious reasons to be concerned. After all, the cartoon was only referring to the ‘consignment’ of Indians carried by American military aircrafts and Modi’s silence over the inhuman treatment of Indians. Who does Modi rule for? Who does Trump stand for? That’s the question in the end.

Indians returned by Trump's military aircraft - The Hindu


Labels:

Comments

  1. Pradeep NairMarch 9, 2025 at 12:52 PM

    Nothing is going to the same as before. The world is in the throes of a lot of changes. I doubt if anyone has any clues to what is in store!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalMarch 9, 2025 at 8:21 PM

      The law of entropy is the only law in the climax of Kali Yuga.

      Delete
  2. Sintra blogueMarch 9, 2025 at 2:57 PM

    thank you

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalMarch 9, 2025 at 8:24 PM

      You're welcome. To say more. In any language. We have Google translator, after all.

      Delete
  3. Yamini MacLeanMarch 9, 2025 at 4:10 PM

    Hari OM
    The world has, quite literally, gone mad. The really big question now, after the treatment of Zelenskiyy and the subsequent discords and rumblings and fumblings that are taking place from the fallout, is whether we can avoid a truly devastating and wider conflagration... this is the fear that is building. YAM xx

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalMarch 9, 2025 at 8:23 PM

      I hope the so-called Viswagurus will attain a shade of sanity soon enough.

      Delete
  4. magiceyeMarch 9, 2025 at 6:10 PM

    Armageddon on the horizon.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Liz A.March 10, 2025 at 2:47 AM

    Our Congress is supposed to be able to check the president. That they aren't speaks volumes.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl
47 comments
Read more

Don Bosco

Don Bosco (16 Aug 1815 - 31 Jan 1888) In Catholic parlance, which flows through my veins in spite of myself, today is the Feast of Don Bosco. My life was both made and unmade by Don Bosco institutions. Any great person can make or break people because of his followers. Religious institutions are the best examples. I’m presenting below an extract from my forthcoming book titled Autumn Shadows to celebrate the Feast of Don Bosco in my own way which is obviously very different from how it is celebrated in his institutions today. Do I feel nostalgic about the Feast? Not at all. I feel relieved. That’s why this celebration. The extract follows. Don Bosco, as Saint John Bosco was popularly known, had a remarkably good system for the education of youth.   He called it ‘preventive system’.   The educators should be ever vigilant so that wrong actions are prevented before they can be committed.   Reason, religion and loving kindness are the three pillars of that syste...
2 comments
Read more

The Real Enemies of India

People in general are inclined to pass the blame on to others whatever the fault.  For example, we Indians love to blame the British for their alleged ‘divide-and-rule’ policy.  Did the British really divide India into Hindus and Muslims or did the Indians do it themselves?  Was there any unified entity called India in the first place before the British unified it? Having raised those questions, I’m going to commit a further sacrilege of quoting a British journalist-cum-historian.  In his magnum opus, India: a History , John Keay says that the “stock accusations of a wider Machiavellian intent to ‘divide and rule’ and to ‘stir up Hindu-Muslim animosity’” levelled against the British Raj made little sense when the freedom struggle was going on in India because there really was no unified India until the British unified it politically.  Communal divisions existed in India despite the political unification.  In fact, they existed even before the Briti...
16 comments
Read more

Coffee can be bitter

The dawns of my childhood were redolent of filtered black coffee. We were woken up before the birds started singing in the lush green village landscape outside home. The sun would split the darkness of the eastern sky with its splinter of white radiance much after we children had our filtered coffee with a small lump of jaggery. Take a bite of the jaggery and then a sip of the coffee. Coffee was a ritual in our home back then. Perhaps our parents believed it would jolt our neurons awake and help us absorb our lessons before we set out on the 4-kilometre walk to school after all the morning rituals at home. After high school, when I left home for further studies at a distant place, the ritual of the morning coffee stopped. It resumed a whole decade later when I completed my graduation and took up a teaching job in Shillong. But I had lost my taste for filtered coffee by then; tea took its place. Plain tea without milk – what is known as red tea in most parts of India. Coffee ret...
19 comments
Read more

Truths of various colours

You have your truth and I have mine. There shouldn’t be a problem – until someone lies. Unfortunately, lying has been elevated as a virtue in present India. There are all sorts of truths, some of which are irrefutable. As a friend said the other day with a little frustration, the eternal truth is this: No matter how many times you check, the Wi-Fi will always run fastest when you don’t actually need it – and collapse the moment you’re about to hit Submit . Philosophers call it irony. Engineers call it Murphy’s Law. The rest of us just call it life. Life is impossible without countless such truths. Consider the following; ·       Change is inevitable. ·       Mortality is universal. ·       Actions have consequences. [Even if you may seem invincible, your karma will catch up, just wait.] ·       Water boils at 100 o C under normal atmospheric pressure. ·    ...
11 comments
Read more