(continuation of Dr. Arindam Sen's seminar, 2 November 22025)
Setting: The students have gathered again, the projector now showing a world map filled with corporate logos and trade routes.
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Dr. Sen:
" we saw how the leash was removed in 1991.
But when you free a trained dog, who does it run to first? The one who feeds it.
In the 1990s and 2000s, a new species of capital emerged in India—let's call them Group Z.
Not old aristocrats like the pre-liberalization houses, but technocrats who understood media, logistics, and policy better than politicians."
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1 The Rise of Group Z
Priya:
"Sir, are you saying these new houses created a political alternative?"
Dr. Sen:
"They didn't create it; they nurtured it.
When the old ruling party collapsed under scandals and complacency, business looked for stability.
Group Z funded think-tanks, campaign analytics firms, social-media engines, even charter networks that moved candidates across India.
They built a parallel state inside the democratic state—what foreign observers called 'the campaign-industrial complex.'"
He scribbles on the board:
> Policy → Capital → Media → Votes → Policy (again)
"A perfect feedback loop. Whoever controls the advertising ecosystem and the data servers can amplify a narrative faster than any manifesto."
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2 The Global Game of Mirrors
Ravi:
"But sir, why would foreign investors play along with this? Wouldn't they fear political risk?"
Dr. Sen:
"Ah, they love risk—when it's priced.
Western funds and insurers buy stakes in that same conglomerates not out of friendship, but to spread their own exposure.
Imagine a giant balance sheet in New York filled with derivatives, pensions, and sovereign debt.
To keep it stable, they need fast-growing assets abroad.
So money flows to Asia—into ports, airports, digital grids.
If one of those assets is partly owned by an Indian public insurer, the same Western analysts cry 'conflict of interest.' files case against them, shake retail investors confidence and many more.
That's not hypocrisy—it's strategy.
You criticize publicly, hedge privately, and profit both ways."
He smiled thinly.
"It's financial judo."
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3 Debt as a Weapon
Neha:
"Sir, you mean the global system survives by exporting debt?"
Dr. Sen:
"Exactly.
Every empire after Britain discovered that debt is softer than gunpowder.
Print credit, sell it as safety, let the rest of the world hold it as reserves.
Whoever refuses to play—faces sanctions, downgrades, or liquidity traps.
Only a few nations can absorb that pressure: a billion-person democracy and a billion-person autocracy.
That's why both India and China are targets—one for infiltration, the other for containment."
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4 Non-Alignment under Siege
Arjun:
"So, sir, non-alignment is dead?"
Dr. Sen:
"Not dead—besieged.
The new Cold War isn't about missiles; it's about market share, information, technological war, now it's not about Ideology but who control next century through new technology and products.
If India stays neutral, it becomes the problem for them.
That terrifies both blocs.
So one side floods us with cheap capital and moral lectures; the other with infrastructure and algorithms.
And inside our borders, Group Z learns to balance both—buying Western credibility while building Eastern supply chains. Like get funding from west, and ordering vessel with that same to East"
He points to the class.
"That's the art of twenty-first-century statecraft: keeping the West invested enough not to attack, and the East dependent enough not to dominate."
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5 The Shadow Ministers
"Look closely," Dr. Sen continues. "For every cabinet minister, there's a corporate counterpart—a 'shadow minister' in all but name.
The Minister for Power has his energy consortium advisor.
The Minister for Railways, a logistics magnate whispering policy drafts.
They attend the same summits, dine at the same hotels, and issue statements hours apart.
In public, they disagree.
In spreadsheets, they merge."
He lets the class absorb that.
"The danger isn't conspiracy; it's convenience."
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6 The Final Question
Priya:
"So is democracy just an illusion now?"
Dr. Sen:
"No. It's a negotiation.
Our vote decides who reads the script—but not who writes it.
Yet awareness is power.
The day citizens understand that capital, data, and policy are the new trinity of control, the game changes again.
History is not fixed—it's an algorithm waiting for a better input."
The bell rings.
"Tomorrow," he says, "we ask the hardest question of all—can India stay neutral in a bipolar world without becoming anyone's satellite?
Bring maps, and bring courage."