Globalization - The innocent scapegoat

Have you ever stopped and tried to think how profoundly our lives have been permeated by the symbols of globalization?

Let us look at what a student like me living in the year 2005 needs\uses. Necessities include, Food, air, clothes, books, communication devices, watch, TV, newspaper, some mode of transport, though there are more I have only these at the top of my mind.

Now lets look at who manufactures these.I’ll take my own example, I use a cell phone manufactured by LG (A South Korean Company), the TV that I have in my room is made by a Japanese company, Sony, the newspaper that I read (supposedly!) Economic Times is owned by Bennett Colman Ltd. , My watch is manufactured by Casio(American?, definitely not an Indian company again!), I wear jeans manufactured by an American company , My bike is a product of the Hero-Honda collaboration Honda is Japanese.Almost all the books I have read in college and other general leisure reading have been by foreign authors. Even the damn blades are made by Gillette!

How could I forget my dear PC, now lets see, as I look around the products are made by Samsung(South Korea), Intel, HP, Nvidia, only the UPS is Indian!

I am sure most of you will have a similar kind of story, now so much debate goes on whether or not globalization is good or not, I ask “can the urban population now do without globalization?”. What if all of a sudden you take all these things away from the urban consumer? This is a rather interesting concept, In the book “Future shock “ Alvin Toffler writes about how the human race will have a tough time adapting to the changes in culture and in fact a crisis may arise due to the extremely fast pace of change.

Haven’t we become so dependent on these products that any debate on the underlying concept behind their existence is superfluous? Then why do we have so much debate, and to tell you the truth I have never ever understood how globalization “exacerbates” the poverty of the poor. If someone is unemployed and is unskilled, but still some MNC sets up a sweatshop and gives them a job then at least they can feed themselves.

No one forces the people to work in sweat shops; they do it voluntarily, simply because they need the money to survive. Rather than blaming the MNCs, like many leftist politicians choose to do, we should look at where our system has failed. Why not blame the endless list of bureaucratic procedures that are strangling the system and hammering its efficiency? Or why not question the fact that only 15% of the money allocated to sarva shiksha abhiyaan is actually granted?

If today the power sector needs Rs. 165,000 crores of investment to satisfy the growing Industry, then the only way this capital will land in India is by shedding the “we are still hung up on socialism and we choose not to move our asses” attitude.

It is frustrating for me to see that I live in a country with such massive potential and still the progress is only a modicum of what can be done. Why is India lagging behind? When will the culture of corruption end? When will the politicians start acting like responsible civil servants? When will we accept global cultural practices? Will it take another rising of the masses; I don’t see any other solution.

Ironically, I feel that if ever an uprising against the government will take place, it will be in rural India. An India that doesn’t understand the global economic scenario but does feel the frustration of endless poverty. These will be the people who, in the last 50 years, have been promised everything they could ever dream of, but have been given only hardship and hunger.

God help my country.