Understanding India today

India and its transitions

(Photo taken from Getty Images. "Indian flag in map" by Jeefrey Coolidge)

1. According to the authors, had economic globalization in India provided significant improvement for lower-Income workers by 1999?

According to the authors the processes of globalization in India have responded in different ways depending on their position in terms of incomes. For the lower-income workers the globalization hasn’t brought lot of benefits; the lower middle class of salaried workers are the most affected ones. The globalization has increased the level of incomes for the lower classes but also has increased the inflation and the interests’ rates. Also, the globalization gave this class the opportunity to have an easier access to credits for purchasing but this also has been a tramp for these people because monthly they’ll have to pay these credits with high incomes. In conclusion, the liberalization or globalization in India has a contradictory effect in the middle class and lower- income workers because they have more opportunities of access to many goods and new things but they aren’t earning more money for paying the dues they have for all the purchasing they do. The globalization hasn’t provided significant improvement for the lower classes in India.

Reference: Class document

2. How is the situation for workers in India today?

“India has the highest percentage of highly engaged workers at 78 percent in Asia as compared to Japan, which has the lowest employee engagement level at 39 percent.

The engagement level of the Indian worker is 20 percent more than his Chinese counterpart. This means that Indian employees are better at understanding the organization’s business goals, the steps required to achieve those goals and how their contributions drive goals, says WorkAsia research study by Watson Wyatt Worldwide”[1].

Even though, there still are poor working conditions, including working more hours than the legal ones, poor payment and children recruitment, Indian government is taking some measures in order to improve their labor force conditions:

“On 17 December 2008 the Indian Parliament passed the Unorganized Workers’ Social Security Bill, which seeks to provide welfare measures for unorganized workers. The House of Representatives in Parliament has described the Bill as the first major step in 60 years that will benefit the poor.

Amongst the workers to be covered under the Act are agricultural workers, migrant laborers and workers in the informal sector. It is estimated that 94 percent of the working class in the country employed in the unorganized sector would get the benefit of health, life and disability insurance, old age pension and group accident scheme.

The Indian Government has also introduced the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act Scheme that gives a minimum of 100 days of employment to those in the unorganized sector, through which the workers’ income will also be raised”[2].

“India has praised its recent Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and said that similar agreements were likely with Kuwait, Bahrain and other Gulf states. A number of steps were under consultation and implementation to ensure the protection and welfare of the workers. Problems arose sometimes as a significant number of them work in informal sectors, (and) they often do not have the protection of labor laws in the host country. What is required is a win-win situation for both the employers and workers”[3]

3. How cultural globalization has affected Indian in the last 2 decades?

Globalization has brought to India many changes especially in the social and economic field, what brings different developments in the cultural settings, with benefits but damages as well (Banerjee, 2008).

Most of this changes start occurring in the 80’s / 90’s when India opened itself to the world market and decided to become industrialized and reach for an economic growth having as example the western model. And this model has created a socio cultural contradiction between the Indian traditional ways of life (Banerjee, 2008).

According to Banerjee (2008) the issue here is that India has a wide ethno cultural diversity that is attached to the past but feels it has to move within a present that is getting disconnected from all its traditions. So having that in mind, the Government of India in order to keep its culture around the cultural globalization stated “the future of India should be built on a rediscovery of the past”. But it hasn’t been as effective as it should have been, since Benerjee (2008) takes the findings from Kapoor (2004) and Kapur (1982) which say that some Indian people are leaving its traditional values such as spirituality and collectivism and culturally are becoming materialistic, individualistic and consuming oriented.
(Photo taken from Getty Images. "India, Uttar Pradesh, Agra, Taj Mahal, dawn" by Ed Freeman)

So in a way the economic globalization and need to become competitive in the international market has become a cultural globalization too.

That has brought different problems, since poverty has increased, health services are not the same and other issues have arisen, the environment is not protected as before and the moral order of the country has apparently no direction, there is not a strong Indian or Western values’ recognition (Banerjee, 2008).

Like that Banerjee (2008) concludes by saying, that it is well known that the economic growth and globalization can improve competitiveness and produce more national wealth, however the policies around globalization should also have social and cultural results, by giving people education, better health systems… and pursue with that economic development through globalization, but without sacrificing important aspects such as the cultural integrity and traditional social structure from India.

However, other authors side a positive side on globalization and world trade and how to preserve the different cultures and even strength them and then share them with the world.

Those author are Drache and Froese (2006), who talked about a global cultural economy and analyze different aspect such as Film entertainment, music, internet access and sports among others, and how it has changed in this global era. One of the countries they took in their research is India.

Concerning Film entertainment, the film production in India is taking stronger steps in the world with its movies and they are even known around as Bollywood. And like that with technology and communication, India has become one of the most effective promoters of national cultures along with USA and Japan (Drache, Froese, 2006). Connected with the movie industry is coming the promotion of the Indian music and tourism to India and the take off of Indian art (Drache, Froese, 2006).

According to Drache and Froese (2006), “Film is the icon of cultural globalization and one of the dominant contemporary cultural flows”, this generates higher economic income to the countries and promotes local cultures stronger internally and externally as well. So we could conclude that through Bollywood, that produces more films than even Hollywood, India is taking a good road.

Drache and Froese (2006) also speak of the importance of national newspapers and media in India and their increase of internet users. All of them essential for promote local products and services and with it its cultural features.

To conclude, with both authors we can see that there are significant changes in the cultural basis of the countries and more specifically India because of cultural globalization. But countries are not willing to lose their own cultures so they are taking steps related to global markets where they can promote their own culture and also have effects in the cultural globalization of countries away from them.

References:
1. Benerjee, S. 2008. Dimensions of Indian culture, core cultural values and marketing implications: An analysis. Cross Cultural Management: An International Journal, 15(4): 367 – 378

2. Drache, D. & Froese, M.D. 2006. Globalisation, World Trade and the Cultural Commons: Identity, Citizenship and Pluralism. New Political Economy, 11(3): 361 - 382

4. Describe India’s Green revolution

Even tough, the term "Green Revolution" is applied to the period from 1967 to 1978. Between 1947 and 1967, efforts at achieving food self-sufficiency were not entirely successful. Efforts until 1967 largely concentrated on expanding the farming areas. But starvation deaths were still being reported in the newspapers. In a perfect case of Malthusian economics, population was growing at a much faster rate than food production. This called for drastic action to increase yield. The action came in the form of the Green Revolution.

The term "Green Revolution" is a general one that is applied to successful agricultural experiments in many Third World countries. It is NOT specific to India. But it was most successful in India.

There were three basic elements in the method of the Green Revolution:
· Continued expansion of farming areas;
· Double-cropping existing farmland;
· Using seeds with improved genetics.

Some of the results of this revolution where:
· Record grain output of 131 million tons in 1978-79. This established India as one of the world's biggest agricultural producers.
· Yield per unit of farmland improved by more than 30 per cent between 1947 (when India gained political independence) and 1979 when the Green Revolution was considered to have delivered its goods.
· India paid back all loans it had taken from the World Bank and its affiliates for the purpose of the Green Revolution. This improved India's creditworthiness in the eyes of the lending agencies.
· The Green Revolution created plenty of jobs not only for agricultural workers but also industrial workers by the creation of lateral facilities such as factories and hydro-electric power stations as explained above.

References:
http://www.indiaonestop.com/Greenrevolution.htm

5. Did the British Raj enriched or impoverish India?

British Raj is related to the British rule in India between the years 1858 and 1947. The region called India used to include different areas directly administered by the UK, as well as the States that were ruled by individual rulers representing and administrating part of the British Crown.

- Was the administration of Britain good or bad for the country? There are different, ecountered positions on this question and while for some, certain aspects were good for others they were horrible for the natural development of a country.

Below we are going to mention the most remarkable consequences the British raj brought for this land; presenting both the points of view in favour and those against it.
- “India’s share of world GDP went from 22.6% in 1700 to 3.8% in 1952″ some people say this was because the British took away India’s wealth. And others insist that this was because the Western world was living the Industrial revolution at that time and that it came late to the India. They state that Britain was not responsible for this.

- “They did it for selfish reasons!” Many state that everything the British did in this country was only thinking in themselves and their own benefit, others say that this statement could be right, but what should really be looked is what they really ended up doing, like the railways, the modern government and other such things. All of this are good for India and that it does not matter whether it was for selfish reasons or not.

- Good governance? As mentioned before some people think that the modern government system was positive for India, but others opinionate that this was a façade under which the British could justify the greatest famines recorded in the previous 2,000 years, 17-20 million deaths from 1896 to 1900 alone, high taxation to support and subsidize colonial wars, and that the surplus of the production was often shipped to England.

-Unification of all the provinces and kingdoms into a single nation?
Some maintain that thanks to this the country is too centralized. A lot of things which should be left to the states, are actually decided in the national capital, and a lot of things which should be left to local governance units are actually decided in state capitals. Other reason to think this was bad is that this country is full of differences and that Mumbai for example makes the majority of the countries revenue, but because of this it has to pay through taxes the development of poor regions. Other reason to be in favour is the fact that a lot of food gets rotten away while people is starving, because of bureaucratic problems, but if there was more than one country the food-producing ones would want to trade the food with those countries that wanted food.

Others say this is good because it’s a nation with its strengths and its downs, but as a whole it works well due to the fact that some regions, help others to develop.
There are many other factors that people discuss, but we name some of the most important and controversial ones.

References:

From Empire to Independence: The British Raj in India 1858-1947. 2007. http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/modern/independence1947_01.shtml. Accessed 28 April 2009.
The examined life. 2005. http://www.ravikiran.com/blog/classic/200506/was-the-british-raj-good-for-india/` Accessed 28 April 2009

Notes and references on question 2: [1] Indian workers most engaged in Asia. 2008. Economic Times, The (India), first quarter 2008. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=nfh&AN=2W62W61071440499&loginpage=Login.asp&site=ehost-live&scope=site. Accessed May 13 2009.
[2] Unorganised Workers’ Social Security Bill – India. 2008. United Nations Instraw, third quarter 2008. http://www.un-instraw.org/en/media-centre/world-gender-news/unorganised-workers-social-security-bill.html. Accessed May 13 2009.
[3] India praises Labour Pact with UAE. 2007. Arabia 2000. First quarter 2007. http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/detail?vid=1&hid=6&sid=10abd82a-00b7-4b2e-bcbd-fe0df3a50e28%40SRCSM2&bdata=JmxvZ2lucGFnZT1Mb2dpbi5hc3Amc2l0ZT1laG9zdC1saXZlJnNjb3BlPXNpdGU%3d#db=nfh&AN=6FI2123195203. Accessed may 13 2009.

Special Note: This Blog was made and design by María Fernanda Piña, María Camila Restrepo Zuluaga, Julia María Rodas Jaramillo, Luisa Fernanda Saldarriaga and María Natalia Suárez Vallejo.