France was once the heartland of revolution. Today, its left is battered, and its far right is rising. To understand why, we have to look at François Mitterrand’s socialist government’s turn from radical reform to neoliberal austerity in the 1980s.

In order to understand what is happening to us [India], we can look at other countries which have suffered the same fate, some years in advance of us. Among major Third World economies, Mexico has traveled perhaps the furthest down the path of neoliberal globalisation. The model being adopted in India today is similar to that imposed on Mexican agriculture since the onset of IMF-dictated ‘reforms’ in the 1980s; and more particularly since 1994, when the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was signed between the United States, Canada, and Mexico.