India and the world

Pranjal

The word “globalization” has come to describe a bundle of similar phenomena taking place in all the continents of the world. The concept of globalization builds on other words like “imperialism”, “colonialism”, “Westernization”, “modernization”, “capitalism”, etc. Yet it has a very precise definition: the lowering of the costs and regulations that kept the human beings, cultures, and resources of the world spread apart. Globalization is the process in which geographically distant and culturally distinct peoples’ labour and leisure are slowly closing towards similar standards.

Globalization has spread by roughly four channels – (i) by the advent of Portuguese, Dutch, Spanish, French, and British colonialism that forcefully made the native populations of India, Indonesia, Africa, China, America, and Australia adopt western culture and science (ii) by the lowering of tariffs, quotas and immigration laws that sought to restrict the movement of people and products across national borders (iii) by inventions in the field of telecommunication, from printing press to email to social media (iv) global forums like the United Nations that enforce rules and regulations on all nations concerning environmental, economic, and social issues.

The language that we use today in our Legislature, Judiciary, Army, Bureaucracy, and University is English. This language was taught to our forefathers during the British rule, so that we may learn the ways of British life and become functioning citizens of British India. Knowing English allows Indians to keep in touch not only with their own nation, but also to keep a cursory glance at the world outside. The British also set up many useful societies like the Asiatic Society, Archeological Society, Geological Survey of India, Census of India, Calcutta University, etc., that have disseminated knowledge about India. Indians learnt the usefulness of science and continued the British legacy in building scientific institutions like the Planning Commission, IITs, ICERs, ISRO, DRDO, etc. The British brought many inventions with them. They funded the installation of steamboats, railways, the Guttenberg press, postal and telegraph lines and the first electrical grids. Even those native regimes that resisted the British, like Mysore and Maratha, assimilated techniques of warfare from the Europeans. And even those princely states and city-states not under direct British rule, were forced to accede to the Indian union during decolonization. It is important to know that the British were not necessary for any of this, but they hastened the process by which India learnt about the world and, in turn, found the confidence to teach it something.

In 1991, following a crisis period, India reduced many regulations to international trade. National markets are open to almost all products, and beggar-thy-neighbour protectionism is no longer the norm. International trade has grown in volume in comparison with national trade; it is no longer a mere side-arm of the national economy. India exports information-technology services, textiles, petroleum products, gems and jewellery, and pharmaceutical drugs. These are sent to France, Germany, UK, US, China, Africa and most prominently the Indian subcontinent. We import for our needs: electronic goods, machinery, crude oil, and gold. Private ports like the Mundra Port in Gujarat have become crucial for sustaining such high volumes of trade.

Almost nothing expensive is produced locally. Take the simple iPhone. The design and software come from Silicon Valley, the superconductor and microchips come from Taiwan or Korea, while the phone itself is assembled in large Chinese sweatshops and factories. When it is sold in India, only the plastic cover might be obtained locally. All of this would have been very difficult if each nation restricted the sale of its products in international markets. The gap between national producers and national consumers has also fallen, the middle men have been weeded out. Walmarts and Reliance stores directly purchase wholesale and simultaneously allow for retail trade. Home deliveries in fast moving consumer goods save time and effort for householders.

It has been a special joy living through the modern world, where technological marvels are a normal part of life. We have become used to inventions and innovations that reduce our hours of labour and enrich the time for leisure and entertainment. These innovations also have connected various parts of the world, bringing opinions and curiosities of multitudes of
people together. Aeroplanes and bullet-trains have reduced travel time considerably. The Internet has allowed people with little means to access a universe of resources and knowledge. Internet-communities, chatrooms, and forums are now common, paralleling and transcending limitations of the “real” world. Across many languages, with all the problems of translation and transliteration, social media like Facebook, WhatsApp, Twitter, etc., have drawn upon the energies of socially open men and women. These communications are not limited, they take the form of images, sound-bytes, text, video recordings.

All of these changes have been supported by legal institutions at the international level. The climate agreements in Montreal, Kyoto, Copenhagen have led to strict laws in India. The rulings of the World Trade Organization will limit Indian subsidies to agriculture, the fate of foreign patents within India, the tariff and barriers that India can set up against foreign trade. The U.N. Security council helps regulate the proliferation of nuclear technology in and outside India, and chalks the fences of Indian diplomacy. The World Health Organization keeps a close watch on child-nutrition, disease prevention, pest-control, and endemics in India, aiding some efforts and assessing overall progress. The World Bank collects data and analyses Indian poverty, suggesting remedies and inaugurating empowerment schemes. All these institutions are, in turn, affected by successes and failures of their projects in India. Globalization has depended upon such global institutions that mediate, negotiate, and transmutate successful ideas of one culture to another.

Yet, there are also many problems with globalization. The diffusion of people, products, and ideas has not been egalitarian. Borders, fences, and their militias still exist. “Developed” nations like the US and UK allow only highly skilled workers to enter legally, similarly, many Muslim-majority nations are not welcoming to people of different sects and ideas. Phobias of the outsider, cultivated in racial or ethnic terms, are still integral to maintaining the integrity of national territory and sovereignty. Most cross-border immigration is deemed “illegal”, for the native working class is afraid of being undercut by poorer men and women willing to work at cheaper rates. The poor nations still export low-profit raw materials, labour-intensive handicrafts, and have no option but to provide mass of surplus labour for the benefit of foreign capital. India is no exception.

World Bank and IMF loans are provided at the cost of national sovereignty. Technology and patent rights remain stubbornly in the hands of large corporations, a situation that is extremely catastrophic in the field of medicine and disease-prevention (e.g. African markets denied access to Indian generic drugs). Multinational corporations often do not enforce humane labour control, and peripheral nations are complicit with this (e.g. Bangladeshi child labour working for US corporations). When farming women break from tradition and undertake cross-border migration for better incomes they leave the protection offered by their domestic culture and are open to intense exploitation in a foreign culture (e.g. Moldovan housemaids in Turkey, Indian workers in the Gulf, flesh trade between Eastern Europe and America).

There are no simple judgments that we can proclaim on “globalization”, but we are sure that it is not a new phenomenon but a much older process under which radically different cultures were, by fortune or by misfortune, brought into contact with each other and the recipients of which, now, have to search for an identity and posture that may better function in a completely integrated world.

Ideas for the classroom

1. Ask students to open their pencil boxes and find out where their stationary comes from.
2. Let the students make a list of all the products in their homes that were not produced in India? They could make a list of nations where these objects came from.
3. Students can be taken to an electronic store for a field trip, where they would have to spend a few hours talking to sales-boys about different products. Usually, the sales boys are quite smart and savvy themselves, and can provide great insights about the contents of phones, TVs, gadgets, etc.
4. Ask students to select any nation and find out, using the Internet, what the main crops, handicrafts, or manufactures of that nation are and where these are exported to.
5. Students can be taken to a local dock or port, where they can talk to the port authorities about merchandise trade and cargo. They can watch the amazing day-to-day activities of the port: tugboats parking ships, refilling and registration, loading and unloading, trucks bringing exports and taking away imports. They could also watch the extraordinary documentary on Mundra Port.
6. A game called ‘Horse Trade’ can be played. Where each student represents a nation, carrying tokens representing various goods (food, TVs, Internet, etc.). Tokens must be prepared beforehand. Students must now talk to each other, bargain and negotiate trades between tokens so that firstly each nation is able to provide basic food, health, and shelter for its citizens. Secondly, the students who are able to obtain luxury goods above the basic necessities are to be considered successful and win the game. Students will find that agricultural nations like Egypt and Mexico have different advantages as compared to nations like Taiwan or Japan who mainly produce electronics and automobiles. Students will also realize that multilateral trade is very helpful, but very difficult to arrive at because each nation wants to break away seeking personal gains.

The author is an undergraduate student of economics at Presidency University. He can be reached at rawat.pranjal007@gmail.com.