The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : “Globalisation’s adverse impact on local economies”

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Sep 03, 2007
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Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Chennai

“Globalisation’s adverse impact on local economies”

Special Correspondent

A book released on Saturday addresses problems stemming from global trade

CHENNAI: The negative impact of globalisation and its debilitating effect on local economies is the “most neglected” area of the current economic discourse, according to writer and accountant M.R. Venkatesh.

“People do not realise that the dollar is becoming an unsustainable currency,” he said, speaking at the release of his book, ‘Global Imbalances and the Impending Dollar Crisis,’ here on Saturday. “We are realising more and more that globalisation itself is an unsustainable model, and I believe it is on its last leg.”

The book addresses several problems stemming from global trade such as imbalances in trade, and upheavals in stock markets worldwide, similar to the current global sub-prime mortgage crisis, which are difficult to correct.

Mr. Venkatesh said his book was aimed at sensitising “stakeholders” to the risks involved and the nature of the imbalances arising out of their participation in the global economy.

S. Gurumurthy, columnist and convenor of the Swadeshi Jagaran Manch, said there was a need for India to rid itself of the dominant, Western idea of market capitalism. “In India, only our society can be a regulatory mechanism for our kind of market,” he said.

“Around 98 per cent of businesses in India are family-owned. The problems here are between owners and others, but our brains have been mortgaged into thinking it is a problem of corporate governance as in the West.”

Mr. Gurumurthy criticised the “arrogance” with which the ideas of market capitalism and globalisation had been expounded by the United States as the only suitable and successful forms of economic governance. “Now there is a certain amount of revulsion at globalisation even in America with diminishing returns,” he said. “Market capitalism is being questioned in its own home. This barbaric idea of the market has to be destroyed.”

He said India’s economic resurgence owed nothing to the Western ideas of market capitalism and globalisation. “I believe that our rise is due to one event — the atomic blast in Pokhran.” “This aroused a sense of pride even in the Non-Resident Indians who had been criticising everything about India for 20 years.”

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