Typically, a banana republic has a society of extremely stratified social classes, usually a large impoverished working class and a ruling class plutocracy, composed of the business, political, and military elites. The ruling class controls the primary sector of the economy by way of the exploitation of labor; A banana republic is a country with an economy of state capitalism, whereby the country is operated as a private commercial enterprise for the exclusive profit of the ruling class. Such exploitation is enabled by collusion between the state and favored economic monopolies, in which the profit, derived from the private exploitation of public lands, is private property, while the debts incurred thereby are the financial responsibility of the public treasury. Throughout the last nine years, of Prime minister Modi however, corruption of a more sinister, totalised form has been creeping into the constitutional order in India. This new form is sourced in the power of cultism.
In the course of becoming the world’s most popular fruit, the banana also added an enduring item to our vocabulary: the banana republic. In 1901, Ainslee’s Magazine published a short story by an author named Olivier Henry, “Rouge et Noir,” set in “the banana republic of Costaragua.” Three years later, the story would reappear in a newly published novel (or set of linked stories) called Cabbages and Kings, with the country’s name changed to Anchuria and the authorial name adjusted as well: The writer, born William S. Porter, was now to be known as—and would remain forever—O. Henry. The term originated as a way to describe the experiences of many countries in Central America, whose economies and politics were dominated by U.S.-based banana exporters at the turn of the 20th century. When someone mentions a “banana republic,” they’re referring to a small, poor, politically unstable country that is weak because of an excessive reliance on one crop and foreign funding. In America, After the FBI’s August 2022 search of the residence of former President Donald Trump, some Republicans compared the U.S. to a banana republic. And in the wake of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, a surge of tweets did the same.
Responding to the events that unfolded in America in 2021 leading up to and during the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol Hill that current and former government officials commented that they resembled the instability of banana republics that were known for ignoring election results and overturning those results with coups – that’s exactly what happened in Costa Rica in 1917. During the 1880’s the Boston Fruit Company, which later became the United Fruit Company and then Chiquita, began importing bananas from Jamaica and launched a successful campaign to popularize them in the U.S. As demand for bananas grew, large companies of America made deals with governments across Central America to fund infrastructure projects in exchange for land and policies that would allow them to expand production. The growers often depended on authoritarian rule to protect land concessions and quell labor unrest that might shrink their profits. Sometimes, they would actively subvert democracy to reassert their influence. The Cuyamel Fruit Company, for example, supported a coup in Honduras in 1911 that replaced its president with someone more aligned with U.S. interests. Another well-known example is the 1954 CIA-orchestrated plot on behalf of the United Fruit Company against Guatemalan President Jacobo Árbenz. That coup ended the first real period of democracy that Guatemala had known. The tight relationship between banana exporters and repressive and corrupt leaders ultimately undermined development in the region, exacerbated inequality and left Central American countries weak and misgoverned. holding elected officials accountable for their actions and not allowing anyone to be above the law is actually characteristic of a healthy democracy. India as a nation is young , aged around 75, it is the world’s largest democracy. Except the 25 June 1975 – 21 March 1977 , 21 month long emergency period during the period of Indira Gandhi , the country did not go through any kind of serious political instability.
In our day, instances of graft are sought to be deployed to camouflage a far more consequential systemic corruption – one that carries the potential of transforming the realm into a banana republic. The run up to elections in Karnataka on may 10 what ammunition the ruling BJP means to hurl at the opposition: cult and corruption, even as relentless communal polarisation will continue to be pressed into service to deflect attention from common miseries of the masses – and from the Adani affair. Prime minister Modi has publicly urged the Central Bureau of Investigation to go hammer and tongs at the corrupt, sparing “no one”. spare no one” – is of course most intriguing; one imagines that had Jawaharlal Nehru used those words, he would have added—“not even me”, something he used to tell the cartoonist, Shankar. As Shakespeare wrote, “When Caesar says do this, it is done” so with present political elite India’s oracular leader. Throughout the last nine years, of prime minister Modi however, corruption of a more sinister, totalised form has been creeping into the constitutional order. And is sourced in the power of cultism.
Once a political persona in Indian politics in this land of great religious iteration attains to the status of deity, all adjuncts to the constitutional system must yield, and all nay-sayers be designated apostates. as corruption comes to be bandied about as a uniquely oppositional malady – to be ruthlessly eradicated by self-evidently pristine and patriotic agents – people may reserve a thought for a much higher order that bids fair to diminish the realm into a banana republic. The present dispensation to remain alive where it concerns the degradation of a lawful republic into a banana republic under the corroding power of the nexus between private wealth and structures of governance.
