Gayatri Mantra or Globalization

Oh! So you’ve heard about the IPODS , Japanese sushi, salsa, x box , and 50 CENTS. But are you aware of cel roti , Chakrapani Chalise or JAN ANDOLAN I? Well it’s not your fault if they sound only faintly familiar.

Globalisation has ensured that one is well acquainted with people and traditions from far away lands, even if one is ignorant about those from one’s own backyard.

The ‘G’ word is not so dirty anymore. It facilitates cross-border movement of people and goods. And it is fashionable these days to argue that along with political boundaries, social, cultural and geographical fences must also be done away with.

The mere thought disconcerts me. According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, globalisation is the process by which experiences of everyday life are becoming standardised around the world.

Do we really wish to become cultural clones of each other? The beauty of our world, to my mind, lies in the concept of Unity in Diversity. Each place on the map is unique, with its own diverse cultural heritage.

Geographical boundaries have helped preserve indigenous culture and local flavours. It is possible for societies to accommodate alien cultural idioms that are handed down as necessary by-products of globalisation without getting detached from their own cultural moorings.

Cultural and social roots go much deeper than we presume. America, believed to be the cultural melting pot of civilisations, has migrant communities vying constantly with each other to prove the superiority and distant antiquity of their respective classic civilisations.

To do away with geographical and cultural boundaries is not practical. Inequalities are a reality in our world, in terms of progress, sharing of natural resources and various other factors.

Globalisation has increased transnational connectivity, integration and interdependence in the economic, social, technological, cultural, political and ecological spheres.

Imported technologies have speeded up capitalism but are not capable of initiating a fundamental social transformation, a change in the way economic, social and political powers are exercised nationally and internationally.

That elusive social transformation requires tremendous political will. Globalisation may have opened up the world but still it represents the rule of the ‘haves’ over the ‘have-nots’.

Let us first talk of economic equality before we think of a ‘no nation’ theory, and counter further exploitation of the already exploited.

TOI...vikram