Globalisation in the backdrop of social & economic inequalities

I was reading through the 'Lead India' campaign by Times of India. There are number of people invited to reflect their views on the newspaper, supposed to be the ordinary folks representing various sections.

There are some 10 questions on various topics such as globalisation, reservations, sex, dowry, government intervention and judiciary. What should be the government approach towards globalisation and growth with respect to distribution of the wealth created by globalisation. Should we go in such a pace where the lower pyramid can participate or we just move as fast as we can on this front.

I think the questions of how to pace India's economic growth (driven by globalisation) and how to tackle the inequality created by such growth are two different issues which need different approaches to solve. The root of the inequality trouble is very different from the drivers of the economic growth.

Lets just look at the growth phenomenon. The growth story in various emerging economies is part of the larger phenomenon of spreading the economic growth beyond the developed economies. Or these countries are the new engines of growth for the market driven / capital driven forces in the world economy today. India do not have any other option than to participate in this growth, else its going to be a laggard for a long time. Since the growth is driven by external market forces, India's ability to control the pace (increase or reduce) becomes quiet difficult task. The protection regimes will have retrograde effects only, I believe. If you look at it, in a way we are solving a the issue of inequality of world wealth by driving this new growth initiatives in emerging economies.

My views might seem to be infected by capitalist tendencies (which is criticised for being mindless). For me its not really capitalism which is taking place, but greater productivity / wealth creation by greater economic freedom. It should be about collective responsibility still retaining the importance of individual initiative. We have tried to experiment with several other mechanisms of solving economic inequalities and governing nations (Read communism and various flavours, then some very scary models of dictatorships and theocracy). But the last century has demonstrated its inherent problems for us very vividly.

But the new growth mechanism (be it capitalist or very similar the academic definition can wait at the moment) makes assumptions about the society where its being implemented. It assumes an appreciable level of participation from the people in the governance . Not just servient attitude to any political party, but an attitude of looking at the real facts involved in a situation. The mechanism needs active media which debates issues (right issues) than sensationalising it. It needs a judiciary which is timely in delivering its responsibilities. It needs a very responsible parliament and parliamentarians. Unfortunately Indian realities are far from these assumptions. We are seeing pockets of activism be it in media or judiciary or parliament or bureaucracy.

I think thats where the gap between growth and distribution of wealth comes. There is one more dimension to it, our civilisation is millenia old. The inequality of our society as is created by more than few centuries. Solving that social and economic inequality is not task which can be discussed in the same platform for globalisation. I think it takes more than economic initiatives. Our inequality is seldom economic only, its a lot psychological too.

Our 50-60 years of affirmative action led by government agencies and educational institutions would have done incremental benefits. But we are still far from the dream of an active democracy which thrives on people action and debate. We are still run by cast equations and religious placards.

Does it make sense to hurdle our economic growth by arguments on social equality. Whether we have growth or not, we need a seperate set of actions and platform to solve that. Actually the growth and new found wealth has made that social wealth distribution question more relevant for our society. In that sense I see this growth actually supporting the work for greater social & economic equality.

I have just briefly touched this broader issue. What I want to stress is that we should treat the sickness than its symptoms.