Globalization and Trans-nationalism

Abstract

On 10 August 2006, The National Advisory Council for South Asian Affairs
(NACSAA) met at the Cosmos Club in Washington, DC, to answer several
questions: Do markets know best? Does the market really know? Are the rich
getting richer and the poor getting poorer? Does globalization mean
Westernization and/or Americanization? Are traditional societies being dissipated?
As there were many speakers, I will present only brief summaries.
Shabir Ahmed stated that the West uses its foreign aid to get countries
to follow its own standards and perspectives, while many members of the
elites have abandoned the traditional lifestyle. On the positive side, globalization
solves poverty through the market. Syed Akhtar asked whether globalization
was the same as McDonaldization or Nikeification, or just about
cultural domination and sweatshops. He sees globalization as a win-win situation,
provided that a nation has the necessary “enabling conditions”: a
highly educated workforce, the rule of law, and democratic institutions.
V. Balachandran reminded the audience that globalization also causes
problems. In India, this takes the form of increasing farmer suicides, shanty
towns, a lack of investment in the agricultural sector, a decrease in the quality of life, and questions of who owns the country’s natural resources. James
Clad defined globalization in negative terms: It is not necessarily an acrossthe-
board integration of economies, a generator of an immediately improved
security environment, a trend of deepening skill sets and the development of
an industrial and an R&D culture, something new (it is a recurrent phenomenon
enabled by technological advancement), or westernization, for all cultures
borrow what is useful to them.
Abdul Mommen claimed that the South Asian diaspora can help root out
terrorism. Currently, South Asia is facing higher levels of terrorism; in
America and western Europe, these levels are actually declining or increasing
only marginally. Bangladesh, despite being a liberal Muslim state, is seeing
its level of terrorism, as well as the number of fatalities, grow even faster
than has been the case in the Middle East since 9/11. Vijay Sazawal spoke
on self-governance and trans-nationalism in Kashmir. He pointed out that
while Pakistan calls for more self-rule in Indian Kashmir, it provides almost
none to its own Kashmiri citizens. He concluded that “the line of control
(LOC) is more or less a pretty clean division between various ethnic entities
that make up the old princely state and that the current boundary can sustain
regional stability even when its political future is questioned.” ...