Globalization differentiates people rich or poor...

Changes brought by Globalization…

It was proved that nations with better mass educated and trained workforce benefited more from globalization. It also led to a rise in inequality between the urban and rural populations and between the haves and have-nots. The need was to ensure that the benefits of globalization also helped in improving social parameters and states should be more accountable to their people. If the economic process of globalization continued to alienate people and increase social disparity, problems across the globe would grow further.

Rapid Globalization might create two classes Have’s & Have Not’s, few of my learned critic’s said. Globalization and the attendant concerns about poverty and inequality have become a focus of discussion in this post in a way that few other topics, except for international terrorism or global warming, have. In my last post about whether India & China is in the race to become Super Power few of my beloved readers had expressed concerns. Most people I know have a strong opinion on globalization, and ultimately all of them expressed an interest in the well-being of the world's poor.

The financial press and influential international officials confidently assert that global free markets expand the horizons for the poor, whereas activist-protesters hold the opposite belief with equal intensity. Yet the strength of people's conviction is often in inverse proportion to the amount of robust factual evidence they have.

The case for free trade rests on the age-old principle of comparative advantage, the idea that countries are better-off when they export the things they are best at producing, and import the rest. Most mainstream economists accept the principle, but even they have serious differences of opinion on the balance of potential benefits and actual costs from trade and on the importance of social protection for the poor. Free traders believe that the rising tide of international specialization and investment lifts all boats. Others point out that many poor people lack the capacity to adjust, retool and relocate with changing market conditions. These scholars argue that the benefits of specialization materialize in the long run, over which people and resources are assumed to be fully mobile, whereas the adjustments can cause pain in the short run.

The debate among economists is a paragon of civility compared with the one taking place in the streets. Anti-globalizers' central claim is that globalization is making the rich richer and the poor poorer; pro-globalizers assert that it actually helps the poor. But if one looks at the factual evidence, the matter is rather more complicated. On the basis of household survey data collected by different agencies, the World Bank estimated the fraction of the

Population in developing countries that falls below the $1-a-day poverty line (at 1993 prices)--an admittedly crude but internationally comparable level. By this measure, extreme poverty is declining in the aggregate. Though the recent data is suggesting Indian per capita income had grown to the level of $1100/month.

The trend is particularly pronounced in East, South and Southeast Asia. Poverty has declined sharply in China, India and Indonesia--countries that have long been characterized by massive rural poverty and that together account for about half the total population of developing countries. Between 1981 and 2001 the percentage of rural people living on less than $1 a day decreased from 79 to 27 percent in China, 63 to 42 percent in India, and 55 to 11 percent in Indonesia.

Globalization that triggered the flow of investments and growth in the developing nations brought millions out of poverty, particularly in India and China. After the Indian economy opened up, the level of poverty in the country declined, and had the reforms been pursued further and faster, the results would have been far better. The untapped potential of the economy remained and there are immense scopes for improvements in the bureaucracy and labor reforms in order to sustain the economic reforms.

If globalization increased competition, it also promoted protectionism and increased the divide between the young and the old. Globalization was not only about choice but also about more choices than one could handle. However, the more radical lot thought that it was creating a lack of faith among human beings.

Referring to the growing opposition by the West to migration, Britain and the U.S. were benefiting from Indian migrants and their children in the past, 30 per cent of the doctors and paramedics in Britain belonged to the Indian Diaspora, while Indians accounted for one-third of those working in the U.S. space program. Now a reverse flow is created and many NRI is returning back home or bringing their businesses in India or China, might be one of the major reason is “Globalization”, because everything and anything we get in US or abroad are now available in India within reach, except the quality of life and broad disparity in between rich and poor. These people might be returning with the hope that, very soon Globalization might show up the path of rapid Infrastructure development in India in every sphere, which might improve the better quality of the life within reach too.