The world we live in has made huge strides in terms of ensuring equity and breaking down glass ceilings in recent years and decades. But still, it remains deeply unfair when you scratch beneath the surface. No more is this true than when it comes to global power politics and corporate competition.
By all accounts Arif Naqvi would be a polarising figure. For those of us trapped in the drudgery of class conflict, it is easy to hate someone we see as a filthy rich, greedy capitalist. But perhaps there was more than meets the eye to what befell him and his multibillion-dollar private equity firm The Abraaj Group. When things fell apart, the seeds were already there for us to see only a certain side of the story.
In recent days, two books have come out detailing the rise and fall of Naqvi as a darling of the global elite. But while one of them seeks to reinforce the existing impression — that the charismatic businessman was the key man in a global criminal conspiracy — the other provides an alternative. Naqvi, this other book suggests, was no more or no less flawed than most other successful capitalists around the world. His firm, likewise, may not have been perfect but then again, neither is Goldman Sachs or Facebook for that matter.
His mistakes notwithstanding, two things could have played a bigger role in Naqvi and Abraaj’s fall from grace. The first is race — Naqvi being a Pakistani, with a core team comprised of others from the Global South, was always an outsider in the corporate elite who passed as ‘one of them’ until he didn’t. And then there is geopolitics: his ambitions ultimately set him on a collision course with great power conflict and he became a pawn in larger game.
There is a lesson in this tale for all of us, especially those who belong to Third World nations like ours. Unfairness still permeates all aspects of our lives, including in how we consume information. We may not realise it, but an internalised sense of inferiority continues to compel us to privilege news from one corner of the world over another.
Published in The Express Tribune, July 13th, 2021.
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