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| Sat, 01-31-2004 - 1:02pm |
Globalization and Its Discontents: Forum Sparks Debate in India
News Feature/Analysis, Viji Sundaram,
Pacific News Service, Jan 30, 2004
Editor's Note: In the wake of the rallying and rhetoric of the anti-globalist World Social Forum in Mumbia, Indians are debating what happened -- and what steps a nation with growing wealth and lasting poverty should next take.
MUMBAI, India--In the wake of the World Social Forum, Indian commentators and intellectuals are debating what all the heat and dust was about. Did drum-beating, banner-waving activists succeed in exposing the dark underbelly of globalization? Or was the forum a Tower of Babel of assorted causes, a "Woodstock of social and economic policy," as one newspaper put it?
The question is especially important in this land of enduring poverty and newfound wealth. By most accounts, India has reaped great rewards from embracing the free markets and free trade 12 years ago. Its economy is growing at a robust 7 percent. But some say that globalization has more deeply divided the country into "those who benefit, and those who don't," according to Narendar Pani, senior editor of the Economic Times.
Pani acknowledges that opening up the Indian economy in 1991 fired the country's information technology (IT) sector. IT exports have already reached a whopping $16 billion a year, and are expected to climb steadily over the next decade. But the nation's liberalization policies, Pani says, have badly hurt agriculture, which employs two out of three Indians. Globalization allows imports of food grains from rich countries that heavily subsidize their farmers to produce more, thus pricing out Third World farmers.
"Drawing people from agriculture to information technology is not possible," Pani says.
Others, however, say that globalization can bridge the gap between the haves and have-nots. "It's called the multiplier effect," says N. Bringi Dev, a Bangalore resident who attended the World Social Forum (WSF) and worked for several multinational companies before moving into academia. "By having a multinational company on our soil, more jobs are created, which obviously is good for our economy. It's as simple as that."
Many commentators cast the anti-globalization activists, who hold their annual event to parallel the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, as hypocrites. Saubhik Chakraborti, resident editor for the venerable Kolkata daily The Statesman, tartly observed that the real reason the WSF came to Mumbai instead of a poorer city like Mombasa was because Mumbai had better hotels and air conditioning. The anti-corporate rhetoric of many activists who work for non-governmental organizations (NGOs) largely funded through corporate donations was not lost on Chakraborti.
"It's all right for an NGO to get a fat grant from the Ford Foundation, but evil for a domestic auto manufacturer to get investment from Ford Motors?" he asked.
Almost 100,000 people attended the forum. Speakers, workshops and exhibits addressed causes ranging from the rights of hijras (eunuchs) to giant dams and outsourced jobs.
Karnataka-based journalist and academic Krishna Prasad noticed that the poor were scarcely represented at the five-day event, and may not have understood the deliberations, which were conducted in English, Spanish or French. "More people need to be drawn into the discussions, rather than just having a few intellectuals debate issues concerning the poor," Prasad said. "It should be more democratic."
But other journalists are writing positively about how the WSF helped bring to light serious human rights violations in a country often portrayed solely as a poster child for the benefits of globalization. The widow of Jaswant Singh Kalra, a human rights activist from Punjab who went "missing" in 1995, testified at the forum about the disappearance of 25,000 people in 1984 in Punjab, after police and army crackdowns during communal rioting that followed the assassination of Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. Now, Kalra's widow says mass cremation grounds are being unearthed in Punjab that contain remains of close to 3,000 bodies.
"Why," asked reporter Schona Jolly in the Telegraph, a Kolkata daily, "is there no international outcry against the Indian government, like the (outcry) that rightly followed the unearthing of mass graves in Iraq?"
A speech by Booker Prize-winning author Arundhati Roy helped opened the WSF, and her call to halt "the march of the imperialist empire," referring to the United States, did not strike Indian scientist N. Kalyan Raman as out of place or too strident. "I think imperialism is so brutal that, through centuries of practice, it has learnt successfully to disguise itself as innocuous and businesslike," says Raman, who helped set up satellite television for the Delhi-based Indian Space Research Organization. "Talk of imperialism is 'embarrassing.' But would it embarrass the average Iraqi citizen, or Palestinian? It is essential to act against imperialism in ways that we can."
Krishna Kumar, a retired professor and head of the economics analysis unit of the prestigious Indian Statistical Institute in Bangladore, steers a middle ground. "Although there are many good aspects to globalization, there should be some checks and balances. The WSF takes care of that."
PNS contributor Viji Sundaram (vijiyoga@hotmail.com) is a journalist currently teaching at the Indian Institute of Journalism and New Media in Bangalore.
http://news.pacificnews.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=db7b09ad9a4c3fcd70d488dcffa32ad7

February 1, 2004
When Jobs Flee: Cost and Benefit (4 Letters)
To the Editor:
Re "Education Is No Protection," by Bob Herbert (column, Jan. 26):
The subject of outsourcing is more complex, and the real costs are higher, than the numbers alone suggest. Any corporate executive weighing offshore outsourcing must consider the political, economic and social environments.
Not very long ago, it was feared that India and Pakistan, among the potential providers of labor, would fire nuclear weapons at each other. Russia remains plagued by internal terrorism, political and business corruption, and badly enforced or inadequate laws. China, perhaps more stable but also more repressive, fails to respect intellectual property rights.
So the executive must ask: If this issue were about capital other than labor, would I want to invest in these countries?
Of course, this discussion assumes that he or she is willing to outsource jobs in the first place — which means giving up the advantages of an in-house staff of trained, known and accountable information professionals, who, once dispersed, would take years to replace.
THOMAS CORCORAN
Burlington, Vt., Jan. 27, 2004
To the Editor:
Re "Education Is No Protection," by Bob Herbert (column, Jan. 26):
We can decry companies that send jobs abroad for their lack of compassion, but business is ultimately about the bottom line.
I, too, am nervous about the potential unemployment that widespread offshore outsourcing would bring, but are there no practical or economic arguments against it? Without them, our only response is "What about the workers?"
In that case, can we expect the information technology industry to share the same fate as manufacturing? MATT YARDENI
New York, Jan. 28, 2004
To the Editor:
Re "Education Is No Protection," by Bob Herbert (column, Jan. 26):
There is no doubt about the sucking sound of white-collar jobs going abroad. But politicians in both parties, despite their vocal laments, won't or can't do anything about it. Or can they?
Why not charge a corporate "per person fee" for each laid-off American, to pay for higher unemployment benefits, job training or something more creative? BERT SHAW
Bearsville, N.Y., Jan. 28, 2004
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/01/opinion/L01HERB.html
Globalization is a double sided coin, IMO.
I agree. It's going to be painful for a while.
>"some say that globalization has more deeply divided the country into "those who benefit, and those who don't,""<
This is just too true, I posted an article on another thread "outsourcing is good". That demonstrates that this is already showing in the US.
You are correct, eventually, the influx if money will work its way into the economy, just as the outflux of money will work its way through ours; however, in the meantime, it's going to be painful for all but the very fortunate.
<>
But the nature of business is to make money, business is not a humanitarian concern. This is why governments are suppose to act as a regulating body. The problem is that there are no laws that effectively regulate businesses. Safety has always been a concern, recently a oil company was taken to a US court because of a leak in the pipeline that caused destruction and illness in southeast Asia, but the court ruled that the fault was with the foreign company so there was no recourse. Imagine what's going to happen to the environment.
>>One of the most detrimental outcomes of Globalization is the loss of community & civic identity.>>
Yes, it is sad. We can always look back to the industrial revolution to get clues to what might happen. Of course, >""More people need to be drawn into the discussions, rather than just having a few intellectuals debate issues concerning the poor," Prasad said. "It should be more democratic.""< That's what I was trying to stimulate on this board, but it must be too early for many to think of the ramifications.
I have been very conflicted about fleeing jobs and companies--we are on a wild unguided ride, but the start button has been pushed. We need international cooperation and international laws, international corporations are beyond the reach of any government.
Thanks for your response.