Thinking the Public Sphere in the Contemporary Socio-Political landscape | Chetan Anand

Privatization holds within itself a great source of anxiety and trepidation for some and hope and excitement for others. Privatization for some is opposed to state, its hope stems from the fact that capital can get some separation from the state, there is an unsaid acceptance that private capital is more efficient, accountable and responsible and direct investment in the public sphere leads to leakage and wastage. Some of us think of this movement towards private capital as part of a practical logic where efficiency of the private capital is contrasted with the inefficiency, bureaucratization and corruption of the state. While still others who accept the unsustainability of this movement towards private still only see the public in terms of the state and want to directly make the state accountable through the judiciary and the parliament.

This anxiety around the public sphere has a long history and is generally referred to by the word neoliberalism. In the literature covering the history of capitalism, neoliberalism is that point where the welfare state recedes back, and the social sphere is given over to the market logic. It has also been stated repeatedly that state made this move not because state willingly submitted its power but rather because state only stood to gain from this spread of the market logic. Sometimes this is referred to as state-market nexus. There is no doubt that many countries of the global south were on the verge of collapse and it was the market logic and not the state that was trusted by the global capital to save them and this includes India. This article is not to demonize private capital, and I remain open to how public and the private functions of the state and society must be discharged. I also realize that critical areas such as health and education need the presence of welfare state at least to some extent, but that remains an open and practical discussion that we will address through dialogue. In this article I wish to locate the position of public sphere in the contemporary world through this space for dialogue itself.

In contrast to Karl Marx who thought of the contemporary world only in terms of movement of capital, Hannah Arendt recognized the existence of the public sphere as that part of human communities through which politics gains its consistency and legitimacy. Public sphere thus is the place in which human communities affirm speech and stands in contrast to violence for political negotiations. Public sphere is acceptance of the fact that while violence may be necessary to negotiate with an