Shailja Patel ponders what lies behind the recent attacks in Mumbai. Pointing to the stark inequalities that exist in India and elsewhere in the world, she asserts that the same violence could play itself out in any other city where the poor and oppressed are daily confronted by the opulence and arrogance of the wealthy globalized elite. Why, she asks, should the privileged classes of any society be exempt from fear in a world where war is the corporate strategy to open markets?
It will be Johannesburg next. Or Lagos. Or Nairobi. Any urban centre where the interests of global capital converge, meet local power brokers, to do business. Any spot where the "creamy layer", (journalist Mira Kamdar's term for Mumbai's upper classes) gathers to celebrate the international fraternity of the $3 latte.
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