GLOBALIZATION and STATE

Dear readers..
recently when I came across the review of a book in The Hindu, I was very much interested in the title of the book, which reads as JIHAD Vs Mc WORLD by Benjamin Barber. Then I thought of the future of the STATE in coming days.. There were some very interesting topics which promted me to post this article which has my own views about the future of the nation-state in the globalization era..

what is globalization?
the bookish definition says it is "the intensification of economic, political and cultural relations across the borders"

It is indeed true that globalization is primarily an economic phenonmenon and expectedly, it occupies the headlines of financial and trade journals and newspapers. But the difinition presented above refer it to its political and cultural aspects. More recent literature on globalization may be considered as its second wave, and it is the critical wave.. Economists as well as political scientists, third world intellectuals as well as many American, European scholars with known leftist commitment along with those who have no distinct ideological position - all joining in the chorus of ambivalence and apprehension towards the outright rejection of, globalization and its world view...

John Rapley a famous political economist, having made a brief but incisive study of the rise and fall of various development theories in the past fifty years, finds in his highly readable book that structural adjustment has widely varied in its results. While Latin America has benefitted, Africa has not!
Besides this, Neo-classical theory has raised a moral question.... for SAPs (Structural Adjustment Policies) "worsened the plight of the poor and deepened injustices in the Third world societies"...... VALID Question I feel.. isn't it?
Undoubtably SAPs lead to the march of 'structural resubordination of the South to the North' through the dismantling of the economic role of the state.

What is a nation-state??
According to Cambridge Adv. Dictionary nation-state is "an independent country with a 'single' large group of people all sharing SAME religion, language, traditions, history etc..."
then.. is India a nation-state?!
theoretically NO.. not only India.. Nation-states never exist except in the case of few European nation-states.. but still every nation wants itself to be called a nation-state...More than the above stated uniform religion, language etc, the most important factor is to have a common culture.. of course political culture too..
The real challenge is to build such nation-states..

now our central idea is to investigate on the following question..
What does globalization mean for the nation-state?
Globalization has two principle aspects: global organization of production, global finance.. In this view, economic globalization places ' constraints upon the autonomy of states' so much so that increasingly the expression 'national economy' would become meaningless!!! So globalization implies not only a 'borderless world' but infact 'the end of the nation-state'. This threat to nation-state may reinforce the disintegrative tendencies within the existing nation-states... so we may have to see many Yugoslavias, Srilankas in future...(of course yugoslavia's crisis has very less economic reasons, I am just mentioning about its disintegration)

I can see that the dialect of "globalism and localism" has been captured by Barber in terms of "Jihad vs. McWorld."
Jihad- aim is to retribalization of mankind by war and bloodshed....
McWorld- fast music, fast computers, fast food, MTV, Mc Donald's....
I feel McWorld is the other name for globalized world.
If we analyse the ancient capitalist economy, products are manufactured and sold for profit to meet the demand of consumers. But in post-modern capitalist economy, needs are manufactured to meet the supply of producers! Hope you got my point.
"Consumer sales depend on the habits and behaviours of consumers, so these habits should be changed for better marketing!" This is the main objective of multi-billion dollar global advertizing industry... Isn't it??? See my analysis...
Tea drinkers are improbable prospects for Coke sales
Long-lunch traditions abstruct the development of fast food franchises
Highly developed public transportation system lessens the automobile sales
Agricultural life-styles wont encourage TV watching
Health campaigns hurt tobacco sales
People uninterested in sports buy fewer athletic shoes
moral logic contradicts with economic logic!
Can responsible corporate managers then afford to be anything other htan immoral advocates of sybaritism?? So the logic of globalization is homogenization of needs, attitudes and values also!!!
It will not respect nations, frontiers, national culture nor even citizenship... Individuals are only consumers in a global market. Only freedom they have is to "choose the toppings" ...!
If I summarize all my views..
First: Building of nation-sates and national morale will be affected.
second: promotes disunity, tribalism and leads to reverse process of nation-destroying.
third: general withdrawal of the state from intervention in the economy proves very costly for social justice and equality.
forth: its a process of universalizing its own values, wants, attitudes, tastes etc.. Homogenising the world... Culturally speaking globalization means Westernization or rather Americanization!
fifth: it doesnt respect civil rights,civil society nor democracy! It recognises only market.. All it wants is to create more consumers to meet the supply!

One can come up with many arguements against my ideas stated above.. Let me look at them also.. Japan, Singapore, Taiwan, Saudi Arabaia, China are also modernizing.. yet these are not westernizing.... and interactions and borrowings between civilizations have always taken place..for example Chinese absorption of Buddhism from India... so globalization has a positive end....(???????????)
As I can see these are few possible questions that one can ask against my views..
Let me give the explanation for such ideas that generate in our mind..
Yes I accept that there was tradition of interaction and borrowing between civilizations.. But the "chances of survival" of the borrwer nation only when these interactions based on free choice.. States must be able to choose more than "toppings".. Chinese absorption of Buddhism from India is standard example of free and fair interaction.. Also ... remember that "Buddhism was not packaged and sent in the drest of billion dollar ad campaign from India!"

Most of the people who preach for globalization fails to understand that Third world people especially in South Asia are more interested to " satisfice" than to maximize.. Asians do either as a matter of principle or habit or situational necessity. So the kind of consumerism found in western world (esp US) is very unlikely to appear in South Aisa.

The final question is... if globalization leads to development, it is development for whom??
Who will limit the increasing inequalities?
Who will guarantee some fairness in the distribution of fruits of growth??
Who will decide what to export, what to import, which sectors to encourage native enterprise??
Who will prevent the citizens from being transformed into consumers?
Who will stop the devastation of values???

Half a century of decolonization has taught us dangers of separatist tendencies... All our great leaders of Indian freedom struggle did their best to unite the people of the country in the name of nationalism and cultural identity and many sacrificed their lives in doing so...
They dreamt of an India which is still a dream..
Still that INDIA is visible in our Constitution... (Art. 36 - 51)
The Directive Principles of State Policy(DPSP) to create a state which has social and economic democracy in addition to political democracy...
But those ideals are just on the paper today....

NOTE:
(For those who say that the poverty came down after the globalization process, my next article will address those questions with required statistics)

(Dont confuse Globalization with Liberalization)