Do countries need borders?
(This is an essay on International Relations that I wrote for the Immerse Education Essay Competition in April 2021. It was selected to receive a partial scholarship to take part in the International Relations program with Immerse Education in 2022).
Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield while orbiting Earth felt more connected to people on this planet than ever before! From outer space, our planet is viewed as a single entity, an orb with shades of blue, green, yellow, and grey blending into each other. There are no territories harshly demarcated with jagged lines.
Astronauts observing Earth form an infinitesimal percent of world’s population. But what if this “overview effect” is extended? What if there are no borders?
Let us take a step back. 1947. Sir Cyril Radcliffe finds himself creating a “Radcliffe Line”, separating a mostly Hindu India in the centre from mostly Muslim East and West Pakistan. Chaos ensues. The outcome? 14 million people displaced and 2 million dead.
Radcliffe is no anomaly in the history of border-making. Borders have mostly been formed severely, often to settle scores and extract maximum gain. The current system of borders is just not rational or ethical, and there are several reasons why open borders make more sense.
First, borders reinforce status quo. Why should living on one side of an arbitrary line (for example, in Haiti) consign you to a life of relative hardship, and living on the other (say, in Miami) ensure a prosperous one? With open borders, people would have the opportunity to migrate to places with improved opportunities. The usual argument is that migrants will “steal” the jobs of the natives, however, economists Gihoon Hong and John McLaren found that “immigrants can raise native workers’ real wages, and… [each] immigrant creates 1.2 jobs for local workers”. In 2011, Michael Clemens, an economist at the Centre for Global Development, showed that eliminating barriers to movement would increase global GDP by an estimated 50-150 percent.
Secondly, borders kill. According to the Missing Migrants Project, more than 75,000 migrant deaths have been recorded globally since 1996, which only represents a fraction of total deaths, considering many go unrecorded. According to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, around 3,000 people died in the Mediterranean Sea in 2017, attempting to reach Europe. If there were open borders, people wouldn’t have to risk their lives braving choppy seas or voyaging through harsh territories.
Borders restrict human mobility, a fundamental human freedom enshrined in Article 13 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Today’s “crisis of migration” is merely the uneasy reaction of settler-colonial states to transnational movements of people whose place in the world is supposed to be “fixed”. America’s 1882 Chinese exclusion act, the White Australia policy, or Britain’s 1962 Commonwealth Immigrants Act have been the crudest filters.
Bounded sovereignty also makes it difficult to combat worlds’ problems like climate change. The 2014 IPCC report states that historically polluting countries are less negatively affected by climate change and identifies poor Sub-Saharan Africa and small islands as most vulnerable. Perversely, countries that produced majority of the emissions are now building walls and securing borders to prevent the movement of people who are displaced by it!
To conclude, to have a world without borders would be to assimilate cultures, boost economies, save people’s lives, tackle climate change, and break psychological walls. Whenever we see space photographs of Earth, we realize that borders don’t actually exist. So, why have we made them?
Who has the right to decide if a piece of creative writing is good or bad?
(This is an essay that I wrote for the Immerse Education Essay Competition in 2020).
All great writers have a few things in common. They write their books how they would like to read them. They ensure their readers enjoy by stepping into their shoes and viewing the book from their perspective. They believe in themselves, in their own abilities. They like the books they bring to life and that propels them forward.
But it’s not easy. Many famous authors experience multiple rejections before their books get published. You first have to deal with the publishers. Stephen King’s first big novel, Carrie, was rejected 30 times and were it not for his wife who fished out the manuscript from the wastebasket where he had dumped it out of frustration, it probably wouldn’t have seen the light of day. Similarly, J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter was rejected by a dozen British publishing houses and got into print only after the eight-year-old daughter of a publisher pleaded for it. Agatha Christie, Louisa May Alcott were both repeatedly scorned before their now renowned books were released.
And then you deal with the critics. Not just the traditional ones, but everyone who is out there! Article 19 of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights says that everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression. Today, on the internet, everyone has unfettered access, unlimited opinions and undiminished restraint while making unsubstantiated comments on topics one is not qualified for. The internet is the arena where the book review now exists. And here, it’s a free for all.
Reviews have lost their traditional function. They no longer evaluate or even describe the creative work but simply vouch for its credibility, the way doctors put their diplomas on examination room walls. Reviews are powerful because, unlike advertising, they create an illusion of truth. They pretend to be testimonials of actual people, even though some (or most) are bought and sold just like everything else on the Internet. Reviews increase conversion by as much as 270%!
The system is enough to make you a little skeptical, isn’t it? So, where does it land a writer who aims to reach out to the reader in spite of all these hurdles? After all, the only people who matter are the writer and the reader – everyone in between has a nuisance value at best.
Writers can dedicate time to creative expression and let the ideas effervescing in their head cascade like tiny waterfalls onto pieces of paper. But they also need to find an effective way to reach and connect with their readers after overcoming the odds.
American author and one of Time’s 100 Most Influential People in the World 2014 John Green says that “Every reading of a book is a collaboration between the reader and the writer who are making the story up together”. So while anyone can judge creative compositions and proclaim them go
A recent piece of graffiti in Hong Kong proclaims: “We can’t return to normal, because the normal we had was precisely the problem.” How true is that!
Covid-19 has been called “the great pause,” a time for reflection and introspection. And we must use this time well. As a guy named Einstein reminded us, we can’t solve our problems with the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.
With clear skies over New Delhi for the first time since I was born, existential threats felt for the first time in generations and enforced quiet time at home, people everywhere are reassessing their values and what’s truly important to them. And learning to adapt in multi-fold ways to the challenges and exciting opportunities ahead.
Let’s face it, there is no going back to December 2019.
