November 25th marked the largest protest in human history — over ten times the size of demonstrations that erupted in the wake of George Floyd's murder at the hands of police.

During a 24-hour general strike across India, more than 250 million marched in solidarity with the country's long-suffering farmers. "Colonial-induced famines . . . oppressive government policy, exploitation by feudal-minded landholders, and, of course, climate change have continually left India’s land workers among the worst off the world over," writes Nitish Pahwa for Slate. Not to mention the apocalyptic swarms of locusts that ravaged crops this summer.

That was the situation well before a pandemic of suicidal despair overtook those whose livelihoods were decimated during lockdown — and before Prime Minister Narendra Modi instituted exploitative new policies designed to undermine farmers and prop up huge corporations.

When thousands upon thousands marched on Delhi, they faced tear gas and water canons as police attempted to quash peaceful demonstrations with brutality. And despite ongoing arrests and crackdowns, demonstrating farmers from across the vast nation have dug in within the capital. Modi has made half-hearted efforts to negotiate, but demonstrators demand nothing less than that the new laws be struck down. Can protestors break the stalemate? They may not have time on their side, but they have the numbers. If Modi's government doesn't concede, it may have a rebellion of millions on its hands.

As the warming climate, the coronavirus pandemic, the erosion of political stability, and other crises threaten the old world order, will other states follow suit . . . one toppling after another around the world? Without immediate revolutionary change, India's current predicament could be a snapshot of the global future in the perilous times to come.

As Western nations continue to grapple with the pandemic, it is apparent that Covid-19 has landed the death blow to the neoliberal capitalism that has dominated the global political and economic landscape of the last few decades.

Tethering the line between a neoconservative economic system and progressive social values, the contradictions of the Western status quo have finally caught up to it in the apt form of a literal virus. While Western nations flounder, unable to balance economy and public health, the “Four Asian Tigers,” a name filled with colonial fear, were able to deploy authoritarian top-down measures which curbed the virus and prevented the economic crisis of the market plaguing the West.

Ironically, the countries which the colonial West exported capitalism to have been able to resolve the contradictions that the West grapples with by shedding the niceties of neoliberalism and espousal of freedom, breaking capitalism “free of the shackles of democracy,” as Slavoj Zizek fittingly puts it. In the same way the colony of America overtook the empires of Europe by experimenting with a new system in capitalist democracy; today we see China, South Korea, Indonesia and other economic powerhouses of Asia rising globally by embracing this new form of authoritarian capitalism that filters out the excesses of liberalism.

Time and time again, capitalism manages to evade the crises its spawns by insidiously assimilating the needed measures to prolong its death march to a climate apocalypse. In countering such a pragmatic force, a staunch dogmatism and commitment to the values of freedom and egalitarianism must be met. To win the planetary endgame, we have to take charge of our own destiny . . . hack our way into the capitalist algorithm and reprogram the system from within.

-- Majeed Malhas