During the year of American declaration of Independence, China was the biggest economy of the world, followed by India. Now with both China and India opening up their economies, Economist Clyde Prestowitz thinks that 21st century could well turn out to be the Indian century.
But then it takes political will to sustain the current growth. For the current Indian Govt. this is all the more difficult because the Congress is supported by the Communists, who are anti everything. But the Trade Minister seems to realize what needs to be done.

India’s main problem is the absence of world-class ports, cold-storage facilities and all-weather roads. “The biggest exporter complaint is the amount of time it takes to get your product from A to B,” he said. One solution would be to open India’s retail sector to foreign direct investment. Many multinational retail chains have beaten a path to Mr Nath’s door since Congress took office in May. Economists argue that foreign investment would stimulate much greater investment in cold storage facilities and transport links.

But many lobby groups would fight tooth and nail to prevent a global chain store setting up in their city. “I would not rule out permitting foreign investment, especially if it were shown it was a net generator of employment,” said Mr Nath. “My main concern would be to protect ‘mom and pop’ stores from closing.”

“We know the direction we are heading – a freer and more dynamic trading environment,” said Mr Nath. “It is just a question of filling in the details.”[Infrastructure reform high on the list for India’s new trade minister]

For a country the size of India, there is a limit to the employment that mom and pop stores can generate. Also the Govt. should not introduce artificial restrictions which will impede development. One such situation is coming up in 2005 when the Multi Fiber Agreement will end. When Indian planners began the five year plans in 1951, they were worried that the large scale expansion of cotton mills in Ahmedabad would put the small scale sector out of business. So they prevented the mills from expanding and modernizing and Indian exports could not even fill the quotas under the Multi-Fibre agreement. But in 2005, the Agreement will expire and there is fear in India that Chinese Mills will kill them in the global market. [from In Defense of Globalization]

In 1999, a McDonalds in France was dismantled by protestors just before it was to open. This was the idea of Jose Bove, a farmer, who found this was the ideal way to protest against globalization and became the poster child for the anti-globalization movement. He then turned his attention to genetically modified crops and one day in Brazil, he along with 1500 protestors tore the crops by their root. But then it seems farmers who have learned the benefits of these biotech crops have stopped listening to the anti-globalization crowd.

Despite the naysayers, perhaps the greatest testament to the Green Revolution’s legacy is the growth of biotechnology in the Third World. From South America to Southeast Asia, farmers are discovering that biotech crops are so superior, they are willing to risk breaking existing laws to plant them. During the last year, Brazilian farmers more than doubled cultivation of genetically enhanced soybeans, with more than 150 million acres under production. And when local bureaucrats tried to over-regulate biotech cotton, Brazilian farmers smuggled in seeds from Argentina and Australia.

The same holds true in India, whose farmers have been planting biotech cotton despite overwrought bureaucratic regulations. But earlier this month, Indian Science and Technology Minister Kapil Sibal said he would drastically cut the red tape. “The seed is the potential tool that can carry state-of-the-art technologies to every farmer,” explained Sibal. “It can once again usher in a green revolution.”

Biotechnology has even found grassroots support in France. When Bove recently showed up to destroy a field of biotech crops, he was met by a group of angry farmers who want an opportunity to plant these modern crops. As they know, unless Bove’s movement meets some resistance, the scaremongers of the future (ironically, still stuck in the past) will continue their efforts to scare away impoverished countries from the very technology that can help feed their people. [Norman Borlaug’s Legacy]

Also, here is why no one takes anti-globalizers seriously.

There are six bills coming up in California State Assembly limiting outsourcing. This includes bill which restrict state jobs from being outsourced to requiring companies in California to mention how many employees work outside the country.
The Public Policy Institute of California had study on the effect of offshore outsourcing on the Californian economy and found that outsourcing actually created jobs in California. Gov. Schwarzenegger proudly told the Republican National Convention that

There is another way you can tell you’re a Republican. You have faith in free enterprise, faith in the resourcefulness of the American people … and faith in the U.S. economy. To those critics who are so pessimistic about our economy, I say: “Don’t be economic girlie men!”[Text of Schwarzenegger’s Speech at RNC]

Since he is not a girly man, I hope he will veto all these anti-outsourcing bills.

Foreign Affairs has a review of Martin Wolf’s new book Why Globalization Works

To those who complain that increased openness to trade during the 1980s and 1990s has failed to deliver faster growth, Wolf points to the contrary experiences of China and India. Both countries witnessed significant jumps in their growth rates as they opened up their economies to international trade and foreign investment. As Wolf points out, “Never before have so many people-or so large a proportion of the world’s population-enjoyed such large rises in their standards of living.”

The first charge, commonly made by NGOS and student organizations in the United States, is easiest to dismiss. If multinational jobs are so exploitative, why do workers in Bangalore, and even in predominantly Marxist Kolkata (Calcutta), line up to take them? The answer, as Wolf painstakingly documents, is that multinationals pay their workers more and treat them better than do local companies. Among other data, he cites a study of 20,000 plants in Indonesia showing that the average wage paid to workers in foreign-owned plants in 1996 was 50 percent higher than in private domestic plants. Even after controlling for education levels, plant size, and other relevant variables, wages paid by multinational companies were 12 percent higher for blue-collar workers and 27 percent higher for white-collar workers. According to surveys by the International Labor Organization, moreover, allegations that foreign-owned plants in “sweatshop industries” (such as footwear and apparel) pay lower wages and provide inferior working conditions also turn out to be false.[The Miracles of Globalization]

Daniel Drezner says this one book blows everything else out of the water.

Can globalization help eliminate poverty ? How can the markets intervene and nudge Governments into making investments for this ? The Asian Development Bank has come up with a plan

Many Asian governments are cash-strapped and shackled by debt, thus not enough is spent on education, health care and other social services people in developed nations take for granted. Making less than $2 a day may put some food on the table, but it won’t go far to pay for school. In other words, large portions of Asia’s future workforces aren’t being adequately trained to compete in the age of globalization. Multinational companies are depending on rising Asian incomes to bolster consumer spending and spur demand for cars, electronics, travel and myriad other goods and services. At the moment, developing Asia’s growth is even helping Japan’s much larger economy shake a 14-year slumber.

The Manila-based ADB is working to put the risks of poverty squarely on investors’ radar screens. It’s an intriguing strategy to nudge governments to make sure economic growth reaches the poor. If investors and companies increasingly voice concerns about poverty, officials in Beijing, Jakarta, Manila, New Delhi and elsewhere will find it harder to ignore it.[Poverty Is a Growing Risk to Asian Markets]

Paul Blustein of the Washington Post has an article analysing the medal wins of various countries in the Athen Olympics with their GDP and how offers some lessons on how globalization distributes rewards among countries.

Driving that improvement, Warner and other experts agree, is China’s transformation from a largely peasant-based economy to an industrial powerhouse. That has bestowed better health on millions of Chinese and given the government in Beijing the resources to fund a nationwide network of sports schools; as an extra incentive, the government provides cash bonuses for medalists, with a gold worth $24,000, and potentially much more in corporate donations.

While in communist countries the Govt. has to offer rewards to its athletes and fund them, in pure capitalist countries it is not required.

But old-fashioned capitalist wealth offers ample compensation. The government bonuses given to Russians and Chinese can’t compare with the multimillion-dollar contracts that top American athletes get from endorsing commercial products, as witnessed by the ubiquitous Visa ads featuring swimmer Michael Phelps.

Less famous members of the U.S. team can take advantage of deals offered by U.S. companies, such as Home Depot, which pays 49 U.S. Olympic team members a full-time salary with benefits for 20 hours of work a week, allowing plenty of time for training. U.S. Olympic training centers are equipped with laptops, video cameras and sensors designed to give athletes minutely detailed feedback on their technique. The Germans, meanwhile, have developed high-tech boats, bikes and bobsleds to give their athletes an edge.[Winners with wallets]

In the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh debt-ridden farmers were committing suicides. Then came the elections and the IT savy Chief Minister Chandra Babu Naidu was voted out of power. His defeat was attributed to the fact that he did not take care of the non-IT population of his state. While the Chief Minister spent lot of time and energy in globalizing Hyderabad, his fault was in not bringing the wealth creating benefits of globalization to rest of the population.
One of the first acts of the new Govt. was to make electricity available for free. This did not stop the suicides. Free electricity did not bring people out of debt. The plight of the farmers have been blamed on globalization because government investment into agriculture fell as a result of Washington Consensus.

But the truth is that the plight of these farmers had little to do with a government bent on sending signals to investors. Rather, the indebtedness that was prompting such misery was a product of several vicious cycles. Many farmers have to rely on informal networks and oppressive moneylenders for their financing needs. And the government itself partly produced the crisis it was responding to. Sops in the form of free electricity had led to indiscriminate use of water pumps, producing a grave water crisis. Most of the indebtedness came from the need for inordinate expenditures to drill further for water. And cooperative banks, set up to provide cheap credit, made themselves insolvent by lending indiscriminately.[India balances needs of poor and investors]

Ashok V. Desai has described India in 1865 when the first wave of globalization hit India creating a trade surplus.

Thus we see in the mid-19th century the first impact of globalization on India. Shipping technology changed; ships became larger and travelled further (steamers were just coming into use in 1865). With it, direction of trade changed; from trade within the Indian Ocean region, India began to trade more with Britain and China. Industrializing Britain and opium-eating China created new markets; as they expanded, India developed a massive export surplus. It did not know what to do with all that money, so it stashed away gold and silver. Was that deindustrialization? There may have been; but there was export-led growth too. For some of India

While the World Social Forum was going in Mumbai, India, Madhu Kishwar had written an article exposing the hypocrites behind that movement. Now she has a book: Deepening Democracy: The Challenges of Globalisation and Governance and Sulekha is carrying an excerpt of it.

Unfortunately, the very same AGBs who pant and fume at India opening up to foreign investments have very little objection to India being aid-dependent. They are in fact, upset at the recent feeble attempts of the Indian government to lessen India’s aid dependence. There is something comic about representatives of the AGBs warning us about the evils of globalisation despite their own politics being altogether reliant on international aid money. They have no problem in being tied to the apron strings of international donor agencies to finance their politics, but they do not trust Indians to benefit from partnership in world trade. Their policy of ‘No to Free Trade, Yes to Tied Aid’ explains their real worth.[The Rhetoric and Reality of the Anti-Globalisation Brigades]

Here is an interesting story of how technology and globalization are helping Afghanis learn about basic health. The technology is LeapPad, the point and talk books used by kids to learn to read.

The 42-page interactive books deliver health information through point-and-touch technology and are available in Afghanistan’s two major languages, Dari and Pashto. Users point and touch pictures in the book and the book speaks, incorporating a literacy tool with the health information.

The books, based on Leapfrog’s LeapPad interactive books, deliver information on 19 personal health subjects, including diet, childhood immunization, pregnancy, breast-feeding, sanitation and water-boiling, treatment of injuries and burns, and preventing disease.

Jim Marggraff, LeapFrog’s executive vice president for worldwide content, said the LeapPad uses plain paper as an interface to a computer equipped with a proprietary chip developed by the company. Each book used in a LeapPad comes with a data cartridge, which synchronizes the paper book with the cartridge through a touch-sensitive screen the book is placed on. When a user touches text or pictures on the page, the book “reads” the text through a MIDI interface connected to the cartridge through the computer chip. [Computer World via Gizmodo]

Already due to this evil force known as globalization, many people in Afghanistan have been earning a living.