India Globalizes: Some Impressions
BY REHANA GHADIALLY
In this article, I share with you my personal impressions of India’s globalization and the challenges posed by it. I work at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Mumbai. Both the institution and the city are at the forefront of what may follow in other parts of the country. Thirty years ago, when I moved to the campus, there were more trees than buildings; now it is mostly buildings and rubble. The most recent and conspicuous structure is the Kanwal Reikhi School of Information and Communication Technology. The IIT is a residential cam¬pus for staff and students, and it was common to see people walk or ride a bicycle to the classrooms. Now the students drive Japanese motorbikes and the faculty drive Korean cars. Virtually no family, faculty office, or student residence hall had a telephone. A cellular phone and the Indian ear are now inseparable. Offices had no photocopy or fax machines, comput¬ers, or air conditioners. These are now strewn across the campus. The laptop is just begin¬ning to be part of the faculty baggage. A privileged few owned a black-and-white television and had to make do with a few hours a day of government programs. Now we spend our time surfing the channels—regional, national, and international.
To see a faculty member from an overseas university was unheard of—a bureaucratic process reaching up to the Ministry in Delhi was in place to deter us. Except for a handful of students of Indian origin living in East Africa, foreign students were conspicuous by their absence. Now foreign faculty and students (read Caucasian) are quite visible, thanks to the memoranda of understanding signed with overseas universities for collaboration and exchange of students.
On the fringe of the campus have mushroomed multinational food chains—Baskin Robbins, Domino’s Pizza, and Pizza Hut—to cater to the changing food habits of middle-class Indians and to convert the uninitiated. Speaking of the urban middle class, the major beneficiary of India going global, their homes have appliances unheard of a decade ago—two-door frost-free refrig¬erators, washing machines, microwave ovens, and sophisticated music systems, all mostly Korean-made. To add to their comfort, malls, supermarkets, flyovers, and multiplex cinemas pepper the city’s landscape. Where does that leave the poor? Three issues—systematic demolishment of slums, of which there are 3,000 in Mumbai; eviction of hawkers; and development of the textile mill lands, shut down 20 years ago—confront the administrators of Mumbai. The rural poor who migrated and contributed to Mumbai’s commercial success have been told to scoot to make room for parking lots, offices, technology parks, and multinationals. The debates surrounding reha¬bilitation of those evicted, of allocation of land to mill workers, and the preservation of open spaces go on.
At the national level, talks and tenders center on development of air¬ports and ports. Every state has earmarked a city or two as an infor¬mation and communication technology hub. Indian banks, business process outsourcing firms, oil companies, and educational institutions are setting up shops abroad. In the spirit of globalization, the traffic moves in the opposite direction as well. Representatives of universities from Australia, New Zealand, United Kingdom, and Canada hold seminars in five-star hotels to counsel students. With its open-sky policies, India hopes to emerge as a favored tourist destination, and Incredible !ndia is the new mantra to match Malaysia’s Truly Asia. Medical tourism is more lucrative, and attempts are under way to woo patients from Western countries. Indian hospitals are coming together to improve the quality of health care, boost first impres¬sions, and aim for $2.3 billion by 2012. The country is on a roll, and the newspapers are doing their two-bits to eulogize the achievements of nonresident Indians. Dalip Singh in 1956 and now Bobby Jindal are the Indian-Americans who made it to the U.S. Congress. Five Indian school students among 40 finalists made it to the Intel Science Talent Search. But none is as favored as the success of the steel tycoon Lakshmi Mittal, the richest Indian in Britain with wealth worth 14.8 billion pounds. The message is: any Indian can compete globally and come out a winner. Reportage on the darker side of globalization—destruction of livelihoods, casualization of labor, inroads into reshaping of culture—is underplayed.
For a privileged few, India is already on the road to success; for others, much of the talk is rhetoric and hype, much is still on paper, but then again, more than usual is being implemented. The bottom line is that this century belongs to India…oops, China too!!
Rehana Ghadially is a professor of psychology at the Indian Institute of Technology, Mumbai, India. She was a Fulbright Visiting Scholar through the Center for Global Studies in spring 2005 and was funded in part by Rotary Clubs International, Fairfax County Public Schools, and George Mason University.
