UPSC: GLOBALISATION AND SOCIAL CHANGE

No discussion on social change in the twenty-first century can take place without some reference to globalisation.

Examples of Globalisation:

1. Indian government’s policy of liberalisation and its impact on Indian industries
2. New visions for global cities
3. How is the peasant affected in a remote village? How is s/he connected to global changes?
4. How has it affected the chances of employment for the middle class?
5. How has it affected the possibilities of big Indian corporations becoming transnational corporations?
6. What does it mean to the neighbourhood grocer if the retail sector is opened up to big transnational companies?
7. Why are there so many shopping malls in our cities and towns today?
8. How has it changed the way young people spend their leisure time?

GLOBALISATION HAS AN UNEVEN IMPACT ON DIFFERENT SECTIONS OF SOCIETY (EXAMPLE: AUSTRALIAN APPLE): With the opening up of the market and removal of restrictions to the import of many products we have many more products from different corners of the world in our neighbourhood shops. Since April 1, 2001, all types of quantitative restrictions (QR) on imports were withdrawn. It is no surprise now to find a Chinese pear, an Australian apple vying for attention in the local fruit stall. The neighbourhood store also has Australian orange juice and ready to fry chips in frozen packets. What we eat and drink at home with our family and friends slowly changes. The same set of policy changes affects consumers and producers differently. What may mean greater choices for the urban, affluent consumer may mean a crisis of livelihood for a farmer. These changes are personal because they affect individuals’ lives and lifestyles.

WTO INFLUENCES PUBLIC POLICY OF INDIA -> PUBLIC POLICIES OF GOI INFLUENCES INDIVIDUAL LIFE AND LIFESTYLES:  They are obviously also linked to public policies adopted by the government and its agreement with the World Trade Organisation (WTO).

EXAMPLE OF CHINESE AND KOREAN SILK YARN: Women silk spinners and twisters of Bihar lost their jobs once the Chinese and Korean silk yarn entered the market. Weavers and consumers prefer this yarn as it is somewhat cheaper and has a shine.

EXAMPLE OF LARGE FISHING VESSELS: Similar displacements have come with the entry of large fishing vessels into Indian waters. These vessels take away the fish that used to be earlier collected by Indian fishing vessels. The livelihood of women fish sorters, dryers, vendors and net makers thereby get affected.

EXAMPLE OF GUM FROM SUDAN: In Gujarat, women gum collectors, who were picking from the ‘julifera’ (Baval trees), lost their employment due to the import of cheaper gum from Sudan.

There are, therefore, sharply divided views about the impact of globalisation regarding its effect.

ECONOMIC DIMENSION OF GLOBALISATION

1. The Economic Policy of Liberalisation
1. Liberalisation of the economy meant the steady removal of the rules that regulated Indian trade and finance regulations.
2. The basic assumption was that greater integration into the global market would be beneficial to Indian economy.
3. The process of liberalisation also involved the taking of loans from international institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF). These loans are given on certain conditions. The government makes commitments to pursue certain kind of economic measures that involve a policy of structural adjustments. These adjustments usually mean cuts in state expenditure on the social sector such as health, education and social security.
4. There is also a greater say by international institutions such as the World Trade Organisation (WTO).
2. The transnational corporations
1. Coca Cola, General Motors, Colgate-Palmolive, Kodak, Mitsubishi
3. The electronic economy
1. Banks, corporations, fund managers and individual investors are able to shift funds internationally with the click of a mouse.
2. Great Risks: In India often this is discussed with reference to rising stock markets and also sudden dips because of foreign investors buying stocks, making a profit and then selling them off
4. The Weightless Economy or Knowledge Economy
1. The weightless economy is one in which products have their base in infor mation, as in the case with computer software, media and entertainment products and internetbased services.
2. A knowledge economy is one in which much of the workforce is involved not in the physical production or distribution of material goods, but in their design, development, technology, marketing, sale and servicing.
3. Most of us make our money from thin air: we produce nothing that can be weighed, touched or easily measured. Our output is not stockpiled at harbours, stored in warehouses or shipped in railway cars. Most of us earn our livings providing service, judgement, information and analysis, whether in a telephone call centre, a lawyer’s office, a government department or a scientific laboratory. We are all in the thin-air business. (Charles Leadbeater 1999 Living on Thin Air: The New Economy (London: Viking))
5. Globalisation of finance
1. Globally integrated financial markets undertake billions of dollars worth transactions within seconds in the electronic circuits.
2. We have come up with IFSC GIFT City in Gujarat.

GLOBAL COMMUNICATIONS

1. Individuals, homes and offices have multiple links to the outside world. But not all individuals in our vast country are equally connected to the world. This is referred to as Digital Divide.
2. These forms of technology do facilitate the ‘compression’ of time and space.
3. ELECTRIC CONNECTION IN RURAL INDIA + DIGITAL INDIA + JIO EFFECT = DIGITAL RURAL INDIA
4. The emergence of PCOs satisfies the strong Indian socio-cultural need of keeping in touch with family members. Much like train travel in India which is often undertaken to celebrate marriages, visit relatives, or attend funerals, the telephone is also viewed as a way of maintaining close family ties. Not surprisingly, most advertisement for telephony service show mothers talking to their sons and daughters, or grandparents talking to grandchildren. Telephone expansion in India thus serves a strong socio-cultural function for its users, in addition to a commercial one. (Singhal and Rogers 2001: 188-89)
5. New subscription to mobile telephony services dropped by about 50 percent in 1998 when the Indian Income tax Department decreed that anyone owning a mobile telephone must submit their income tax. This decree was premised on the notion that if an individual could afford a “luxury” item such as a mobile telephone, the individual earned enough to file a tax return. (Singhal and Rogers: 2001: 203-04)
6. A statement by…, the vice chancellor of a University on an NDTV show, has sparked off huge protests among students…. The vice chancellor had defended his decision to impose a dress code and ban cell phones by saying students had welcomed it. But the students have denied supporting the ban. And in the first organised protest, they are writing to President APJ Abdul Kalam asking him to intervene.
7. SOCIAL EVOLUTION OF CELL PHONES: 1980 – CRIMINAL USE; 1998 – LUXURY; 2006: NECESSITY

GLOBALISATION AND LABOUR

1.       A new international division of labour has emerged in which more and more routine manufacturing production and employment is done in the Third World cities.

2.       Nike grew enormously from its inception in the 1960s. Nike grew as an importer of shoes. The founder Phil Knight imported shoes from Japan and sold them at athletics meetings. The company grew to a multinational enterprise, a transnational corporation. Its headquarters are in Beverton, just outside Portland, Oregon. Only two US factories ever made shoes for Nike. In the 1960s they were made in Japan. As costs increased production shifted to South Korea in mid-1970s. Labour costs grew in South Korea, so in the 1980s production widened to Thailand and Indonesia. In the 1990s we in India produce Nike. However, if labour is cheaper elsewhere production centres will move somewhere else. This entire process makes the labouring population very vulnerable and insecure. This flexibility of labour often works in favour of the producers. Instead of mass production of goods at a centralised location (Fordism), we have moved to a system of flexible production at dispersed locations (post-Fordism).

GLOBALISATION AND EMPLOYMENT

1. Here too we seen the uneven impact of globalisation.
2. For the middle class youth from urban centers, globalisation and the IT revolution has opened up new career opportunities. Instead of routinely picking up BSc/BA/BCom degree from colleges, they are learning computer languages at computer institutes or taking up jobs at call centers or Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) companies. They are working as sales persons in shopping malls or picking up jobs at the various restaurants that have opened up.
3. “The largest number of poor people lives in South Asia. The poverty rate is particularly high in India, Nepal and Bangladesh,” states an ILO report “Labour and Social Trends in Asia and the Pacific 2005”… The study provides a stark analysis of a growing ‘employment gap’ in the Asia region. It states that the creation of new jobs has failed to keep pace with the region’s impressive economic growth. Between 2003 and 2004, employment in Asia and the Pacific increased by a ‘disappointing’ 1.6 per cent, or by 25 million jobs, to a total of 1.588 billion jobs, compared to the strong economic growth rate of over 7 per cent.

GLOBALISATION AND POLITICAL CHANGES

1. The collapse of the erstwhile socialist world that hastened globalisation.
2. These changes are often termed as neo-liberal economic measures.
3. Broadly these policies reflect a political vision of free enterprise which believes that a free reign to market forces will be both efficient and fair. It is, therefore, critical of both state regulation and state subsidies.
4. Growth of international and regional mechanisms for political collaboration. The European Union (EU), the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN), SAARC & SCO.
5. The other political dimension has been the rise of International Governmental Organisations (IGOs) (EXAMPLE WTO) and International Non-Governmental Organisations (INGOs) (GREENPEACE, RED CROSS, AMNESTY INERNATIONAL, DOCTORS WITHOUT BORDERS)

GLOBALISATION AND CULTURE

1. It is interesting to note that the greatest grammarian in Sanskrit namely Panini, who systematised and transformed Sanskrit grammar and phonetics around the fourth century BCE, was of Afghan origin.
2. The influence of interactions is well reflected in languages and vocabularies throughout Asia from Thailand to Malaya to Indo-China, Indonesia, the Philippines, Korea and Japan.
3. We can find a warning against isolationism in a parable about a well-frog- the ‘kupamanduka’- that persistently recurs in several old Sanskrit texts…The kupamanduka is a frog that lives its whole life within a well, knows nothing else, and is suspicious of everything outside it. It talks to no one, and argues with no one on anything. It merely harbours the deepest suspicion of the outside world. The scientific, cultural and economic history of the world would have been very limited indeed had we lived like well-frogs.
4. Changes in clothes, styles, music, films, languages, body language.

WAY AHEAD

1. INCLUSIVE GLOBALISATION