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Is globalization boon for Sri Lanka?By Satheesan KumaaranGlobalization has had both a negative and a positive impact on the
contemporary world. Many countries have greatly benefited through globalization
as a result of dramatically- increased trade and cultural exchange,
while, at the same time, some observers have been critical of globalization
for various reasons. These include environmental concerns and the increase
of social ills. This is true in the case of Sri Lanka because Sri Lankans
have subsisted on their own food production except some items. Consequent
to globalisation Sri Lanka has increased its import of rice and other
basic commodities. Neighbouring India has always been trying to set
foot in the name of modernizing Sri Lankan industrial sector. Through
means of globalization India and other countries keep an eye on controlling
Sri Lankan lives. Globalization is a term used to describe the changes in societies and
the world economy that are the result of dramatically increased trade
and cultural exchange. In a specifically economic context, it refers
almost exclusively to the effects of trade, particularly trade liberalization
or "free trade". Between 1910 and 1950, a series of political
and economic upheavals dramatically reduced the volume and importance
of international trade flows. More specifically, beginning from World
War I until the end of World War II, when the Bretton Woods institutions
were created (i.e. the IMF and GATT), globalization trends reversed.
In the post-World War II environment, fostered by international economic
institutions and rebuilding programs, international trade dramatically
expanded. With the 1970s, the effects of this trade became increasingly
felt, both in terms of the benefits and its disruptive effects. The term "globalization" is used both in a descriptive and
normative sense. It describes a process of internationalization and
growing interdependencies, wherein boundaries of nation states become
less and less important in decisions to be taken by economic agents.
The normative perspective assumes that the full liberalization of market
forces through open trade and foreign investment regimes will stimulate
sustained growth and greater convergence of income per capita throughout
the world. Most developed countries and countries with economies in transition
are unable to exploit the opportunities of liberal markets. They become
very vulnerable to the costs of adjustment. To strengthen their capacity
to benefit from open trade and capital movements, good governance and
effective implementation and administration of the laws and rules are
required, together with a wide range of necessary micro-economic reforms.
The importance of education and the creation of infrastructure for the
better absorption and adaptation of more advanced technologies cannot
be over emphasised. There is no doubt that globalization is the exhortation of the decade.
Experts use the term to signify that something profound is happening
that the world is changing, that a new world economic, political and
cultural order is emerging, etc. Yet, the term is used in so many different
contexts, by so many different people, for so many different purposes,
that it is difficult to ascertain what is at stake in the globalization
problematic, what function the term serves, and what effects it has
for contemporary theory and for politics. A wide and diverse range of social theorists argue that today's world
is being organized by increasing globalization, which is strengthening
the dominance of a world capitalist economic system, supplanting the
primacy of the nation state by transnational corporations and organizations
and eroding into local cultures and traditions through a global culture.
For some, globalization entails the westernization and liberalisation
of the world, while for others it involves a cover for the ascendancy
of capitalism. Some see globalization as generating increasing homogeneity,
while others see it producing diversity and heterogeneity through increased
hybridization. For business, globalization is a strategy for increasing
corporate profits and power, for a government it is often deployed to
promote an increase in state power, while non-government social organizations
see globalization as a lever to produce positive social goods like environmental
action, democratization and /or humanization. A critical theory of globalization is necessarily trans-disciplinary
and describes the ways that global economic, political, and cultural
forces are rapidly piercing the earth in the creation of a new world
market, new transnational political organizations and a new global culture.
The expansion of the capitalist world market into areas previously closed
off to it is accompanied by the decline of the nation-state and its
power to regulate and control the flow of goods, people, information,
and various cultural forms. There have been global networks of power
and imperialist empires for centuries, accompanied by often-ferocious
local resistance by the colonized entities. Accompanying the dramatic expansion of capitalism and new transnational
political organizations, a new global culture is emerging as a result
of computer and communications technology, a consumer society with its
panorama of goods and services, transnational forms of architecture
and design, and a wide range of products and cultural forms that are
traversing national boundaries and becoming part of a new world culture.
Global culture involves promoting life-style, consumption, products,
and identities. Culture itself is being redefined for previously local and national
cultures have been forces of resistance to global forces, protecting
the traditions, identities, and modes of life of specific groups and
peoples. Culture has been precisely the particularizing, localizing
force that distinguished societies and people from each other. Culture
provided forms of local identities, practices, and modes of everyday
life that could serve as a bulwark against the invasion of ideas, identities,
and forms of life extraneous to the specific local region in question.
Indeed, culture is an especially complex and contested terrain today
as global cultures pervade locals and new configurations emerge that
synthesize both poles, providing contradictory forces of colonization
and resistance, global homogenization and new local hybrid forms and
identities. Sri Lankans are good candidates to buy name brands like those in the
western countries. Middle-class and rich people aspire to have Nike
and other popular brands, as the Japanese and Indian brand bicycles.
However, Sri Lankans do not seem to have taken measures to innovate
their own technologies and the culture of exporting their own innovations
to other countries. Sadly enough, they are good consumers of foreign
goods because they live in the misguided belief that those of western
countries, as well as the innovations of Indians, Chinese and Japanese
would be superior to theirs. They do not seem to have realized that
these industrialists try to export their cultures through their innovations
to the Sri Lankan consumers. In general while globalization in the sense of opening the economy
to trade and long-term capital flows can constrain some policy options
and wipe out some existing jobs and entrepreneurial opportunities for
the poor and for small enterprises, in the medium to long run it need
not make the poor much worse off, if appropriate domestic policies and
institutions are in place and appropriate coordination among the involved
parties can be organized. If the institutional prerequisites can be
managed, globalization opens the door for some new opportunities even
for the poor. Of course, domestic institutional reform is not easy and it requires
political leadership, popular participation and administrative capacity
which are often lacking in poor countries. One can only say that if
we keep the focus on agitating against transnational companies and international
organizations like the WTO, attention in those countries often gets
deflected from the domestic institutional vested interests, and the
day of politically challenging them gets postponed. In fact in some
cases opening the economy may unleash forces for such a challenge. Globalization also involves the dissemination of new technologies that
have tremendous impact on the economy, polity, society, culture, and
everyday life. Time-space compression produced by new media and communications
technologies are overcoming previous boundaries of space and time, creating
a global cultural village and dramatic penetration of global forces
into every realm of life in every region of the world. Sri Lanka has
enjoyed little of this because Sri Lankans are still living in the dark-age
where they have not sufficient access to cybercafés as those
that exist in India or elsewhere. Sri Lankan government has the time
and energy to fight the LTTE and they invest their time and energy in
bargaining with other political parties and businessmen to maintain
themselves in power. The Sri Lankan government's efforts to introduce
the scientific revolution among the teachers, students and general public
in general are far below the required level. In the age of globalization, many people have misused the allocated
powers into exploiting children and women into the sex trade. The article
entitled "Globalization, Over-Exploitation, and Social Exclusion:
the View from the Children" is, of course, a great article to read.
The industry of child pornography is apparently experiencing a global
rise in influence, due to a few different factors. The child sex industry is taking the needs or desires of pedophiles
into consideration and cashing in on the "commodification"
of children. Innocent children are compromised by variables out of their
hands and in the hands of those who have been created by industrial
capitalist societies. There are many reasons why these social ills have
been on the rise. Some of these are poverty, situations in families,
addictions, etc., factors that provide the raw product for the market
of exploitation that exists. Foreign nationals make sex tours to countries like Sri Lanka to exploit
children and women. Many westerners have been taking the advantage of
the practices of law-enforcement agencies because they can be ransomed
with money in return. Violators of the crimes from other countries easily
leave Sri Lanka without being charged for violating the Sri Lankan laws
on sex industry. Sri Lanka falls prey to illicit sex industry in this
age of globalization. On the other hand, the sex industry is helping
the government to show more earnings in revenue. The recent announcement
by the Sri Lankan government not to allow women to work in Middle East
is a promising one. Sri Lankan government must take responsible for
the welfare of the Sri Lankan maids working in the Middle Eastern countries.
The government should work together with the law enforcing agencies
in the Middle East countries to ensure that the perpetrators of the
crimes such as the abuse of maids by their masters or by their co-workers
are prevented from doing so through the means of globalization. Globalization has cut both ways. On one hand it has eradicated poverty
and increased employment in some parts of the world. On the other hand,
it has been misused by some to exploit the world and to create social
ills, with which the next generation will have to deal to fight it or
live with it. Globalization has started to spread throughout the world
in recent decades, including the most populous countries like India
and China. Whether we like it or not it has come to stay. (The author can be reached at e-mail: satheessan_kumaaran@yahoo.com) |
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