CAPITAL VERSUS LABOUR GLOBALISATION, MARGINALISED AND CRISIS OF GOVERNANCE

Globalisation is one of the few concepts in social sciences, which has suddenly acquired a vast currency in almost all of its disciplines. It has led to the creation of a large body of literature encompassing varied definitions, interpretations, and explanations. The term globalisation has been employed to refer to different processes, structures, interactive networks, rhetoric, and discourses. Each one of these perspectives has further been categorised into a large number of issue areas with specific set of rules, norms and episteme. Such a plethora of varied contents of globalisation, and its multi-dimensional connotations, has produced enormous shades of meanings with an equally wide range of contexts (Rangarajan 2003). The present study is confined to one such context. That context refers to ‘pro capital’ and ‘anti labour’ postulates of the process of globalisation.

This paper also intends to highlight that as a process, globalisation is a continuation of a system of capital accumulation and exploitation that started with the onset of imperialism (from about 1870 to 1914, for details see Abdelal and Segal 2007; Patnaik 2004). Furthermore, ‘although globalisation had become the defining feature of the international economy at the beginning of the 21st century’, it remains considerably less globalised and integrated in comparison with that of the pre-1914 era (Gilpin 2001:3; see also O’Rourke and Williamson 2000; McGrew 2005:216). However, this aspect of the phenomenon of the process of globalisation is often left untouched and its current pattern “… is significantly exaggerated and thereby fundamentally misrepresented because globalists fail to locate it in its proper historical context” (McGrew 2005:216; see also Hoogvelt 2001). However, it should not be construed that the contemporary literature on the process of globalisation contains nothing essentially new. What makes a major difference between the age of imperialism and that of the process of globalisation is the pace of speed with which the events have been taking place in them (Rangarajan 2003). Recent developments in the field of communication infrastructures, informatics technology and transportation have restructured the equation of time and space to the extant that ‘local’ now remains no longer ‘local’ (Pauly 2005: 176-203). As Anthony McGrew observes, “Although, geography still matters it is nevertheless the case that globalisation is associated with a process of time-space compression – literally a shrinking world – in which the sources of even very localised economic developments, from price rises to corporate restructuring, may be traced to economic conditions on another continent” (McGrew 2005:210 emphasis in original). The shrinking of the world, and the recasting of geography, have become possible with the tremendous rise in the magnitude of the speed with which the events have been unfolding in the contemporary world that would have been unimaginable only a 100 years ago (Armstrong 1998: 466). The study speculates that the pace of the speed varies in its impact — ranging from capital to labour — and has something to do with the heightened level of exploitation of the marginalised.

Globalisation, Dalits and the State

The central theme of the paper focuses on how the process of globalisation has affected the lives of the marginalised, who had, hitherto, been looking forward towards the State for some support to stand on their own feet. Since the very logic of globalisation is based on the idea that the welfare state is a hindrance in the way of the global market, it is presumed that the marginalised need not be supported by the state at all as they used to be earlier. This has further deepened marginalisation and exclusion of the marginal groups and communities that were traditionally vulnerable and excluded (Rangarajan 2003). The rapid pace of transformation in the context of the market forces in the contemporary world has not only heightened the exploitation of the marginalised, but also severely limited the possibilities of their emancipation. Globalisation may have opened up enormous opportunities but one has to map the emphasis on the ‘opportunities’. In fact, in the asymmetrical world in which we live, such opportunities open many doors for the haves by further marginalising the interests of the have nots. “The global disparity obtains between countries and regions … gets translated into classes and categories within them. Indeed, it is reflected at the individual level too” (Oommen 1999).

Capital and the Marginalised

In this way, the process of globalisation has favoured the capital and, ignored with impunity, the labour. In comparison to the ultra mobile capital, labour flows are stagnant, geographically extensive and reflect “… an almost mirror image of capital flows insofar as they become primarily South to North” (McGrew 2005:216; see also Held et al. 1999; Castles and Miller 2002; Chiswick and Hatton 2003). For instance, in the 1970s and 1980s, the outflow of labour from India was primarily confined to the Middle East countries, and in the early 20th century to the then emerging new colonies of the erstwhile British Empire under the rules of the indentured labour laws. In the opinion of Chiswick and Hatton, the outward mobility of labour primarily emanated from the developing countries only (Chiswick and Hatton 2003:74). Even from these countries it is the skilled labour that moves more frequently from South to North as against the unskilled. As far as the unskilled labour is concerned, it remains immobile and stagnant. Although, the pontiffs of the fast expanding caravan of globalisation are over optimistic about the emergence of ‘integrated distance labour markets’ and the consequent birth of the ‘common wage rates’ the world over, especially in the sector of the skilled labour, there is no general consensus about the equity of flows between capital and labour (McGrew 2005:216; Silver 2003; Galbraith 2002; Firebaugh 2003; Lindert and Williamson 2003). The opportunities for the poor, socially excluded, tribal people, women, disabled and other vulnerable groups have shrunk and marginalisation of certain sections among these groups has been intensified through the process of Special Economic Zones and arbitrarily deprivation of land and displacement. The destruction of Mcdonald’s, which was under construction in rural southwest France in August 1999, under the poster child fame leadership of Jose Bove, and the recent incidences of violence on the poor peasants at Nandigram in India, vividly highlight the fast emerging contradictions between capital and labour (Birchfield 2005:581-82).

‘Marginal’ – a very loose term – has been employed by different scholars to include different communities, individuals and social groups under its rubric. Broadly speaking, it encompasses the deprived sections of the society who have been subjected to social exclusion, economic deprivation and political isolation. It also includes gender, since the women are denied equal opportunities and rights (Bhattacharya [ed] 2004; Sivaraman 2000). In the context of the Indian society, it comprised Dalits (literally, grounded/oppressed/broken some of them designated constitutionally as Scheduled Castes), tribals (India’s indigenous peoples legally known as Scheduled Tribes), economically deprived groups/individuals (officially termed as Backward Castes), women, disabled and other vulnerable groups. Dalits is the “politically correct” nomenclature for the ex-untouchables who traditionally have been placed at the lowest rung of the Hindu caste hierarchy and were contemptuously called by different names like Shudras, Atishudras, Achhuts, Antyajas, Chandalas Pariahs, Dheds, Panchamas, Avarnas, Namashudras, Adi-Dravida, Ad Dharmis, Mazhabis, Harijans, Depressed Classes and Scheduled Castes. The ‘Dalit’ is a broad term that incorporates the Scheduled Castes, the Scheduled Tribes, and the Backward Castes. However, in the current political discourse, it is mainly confined to the Scheduled Castes and covers only those Dalits who are classified as Hindus, Sikhs and Buddhists but excludes Muslim and Christian Dalits (Moliner 2004:2).

Dalits v/s Upper Castes Poor

In the present paper, the term ‘marginal’ (marginalised) has been used to refer to the labourers belonging to the categories of the Scheduled Castes, the Scheduled Tribes, the economically Backward Castes and also the poor upper castes. The marginal belonging to the Scheduled Tribes, economically Backward Castes and the poor upper castes fall in the category of economic deprivation whereas the Scheduled Castes belong to the category of the socially excluded and segregated groups. A labourer along with his being subjected to economic deprivation might be a victim of social exclusion depending on his caste status. The case of a labourer belonging to an upper caste is different from that of the lower caste. In the case of the former he might be economically deprived but in no way socially excluded and segregated, as is the case of those labourers who belong to the Dalit/ Scheduled Castes category of the Hindu social hierarchy. In the case of the Scheduled Castes, it has been found that along with their economic deprivation they have also been suffering invariably from social exclusion. The process of globalisation impacts these different categories differently (Teltumbde 2004: 5). How the process of globalisation influences the caste based social divisions and their consequent economic repercussions is an important theme to be taken up a bit more seriously.

The Dalits have been excluded from social, economic and political rights including the right to education and employment, other than the traditional forced and customary undignified labour, precisely because of their birth in the untouchable castes. They also suffered from social exclusion because of their geographical segregation. They were forced to live on the outskirts of the villages towards which the wind blew and sewage flowed. Their houses were dirty, dingy, dark, and unhygienic where poverty and squalor loomed large (for a detailed description see Madhopuri 2004). Until 1990, there had been some improvements in the lives of the Dalits in terms of education and employment opportunities, increase in wages, fall in poverty, access to land, water, health, education, housing and other resources owing to the State’s affirmative action. However, the trend was reverted and sidelined with the onset of the economic reforms under the process of globalisation. The economic policy in India has undergone a major transformation since the beginning of the early 1990s, under the paradigm of liberalisation, privatisation, and globalisation. One of the main concerns of this new paradigm is to facilitate the process of the roll back of the welfare State and prepare the space for the operation of the unrestrained market forces and open international trade. This pro-market and capital stance of the process of economic globalisation has led to the widening of the gap between the privileged few and the large mass of the marginalised, and among them the Dalit labourers, daily wage workers and workers in the informal sector suffer the most. It is pertinent to quote in this context Harish K. Puri,

In fact the process of development tended to further marginalize some categories of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes. Judged by even the government statistics on all parameters – of jobs, literacy, access to drinking water, medical facilities, housing and even cremation of the dead, this vast segment of Indian people remained abysmally deprived and oppressed (Puri 2006:10).

It has led to discontentment and disillusionment among the marginalised people of the society to who the main slogan of the World Social Forum – Another World is Possible – appeals the most, perhaps because they feel that it opens up the perspective of a world without exploitation and exclusion (A Report from Mumbai Resistance 2004 and the World Social Forum: 6; see also Asia Gears up against Globalisation: 1-2). World Social Forum aims at not only building up a movement against the exclusion of the poor and the powerless from the mainstream political system, it also lobby for their inclusion (Green and Griffith 2002:54; see also Varadarajan 2006).

Although, both the Scheduled Caste and the non-Scheduled Caste labourers have been relegated to the periphery by the forces of the market in the process of globalisation, it did not affect them uniformly. In fact, the process of globalisation has never been uniform in its effects across all regions or economies. Since globalisation is an uneven process, it “…generates a distinctive geography of inclusion and exclusion such that the notion of a worldwide or global economy is less geographically inclusive than that of a planetary or universal economy” (McGrew 2005:210). The way the process of globalisation affects the life of a Scheduled Caste worker differs significantly from that of the non-Scheduled Caste one. In a caste-based society, social rank plays an important role in determining one’s economic status. In a system of graded social hierarchy, lower social status and economic backwardness seems to be coterminous.

The process of globalisation has further aggravated this vicious equation of social and economic backwardness. The logic of economic globalisation favours the rich, who can invest and multiply capital. Such favoured rich are mostly found among the so-called traditional ‘upper castes’ who have monopolised land and other economic sources in the country. It has made them prominent in the newly carved out vast private space of the open market. In other words, it has led to an alliance between the forces of the market and the upper castes — much to the disadvantage of the marginal and the lower castes. Since the implementation of the new economic reforms, the numbers of jobs have been reduced in the public sector. This, in turn, has led to an increase in unemployment and poverty. The increase in unemployment among the Dalits is most discernible in relation to the constitutional space that signifies their current mode of existence. This space basically comprise (sic) the provision of reservations in the state-aided educational institutions and in the employment of government and public sector companies. Despite the dismal record of their implementation, there is no doubt that these provision (sic) have played a crucial role in the advancement and progress of dalits. Globalisation has variously constrained this space without affecting any change in the constitution (Teltumbde 2004:5).

In the first decade of the new economic reforms in India, the ratio of both unemployment and poverty increased from 28 per cent in 1989 to 48 per cent in 1992. Since Dalits constitute the bulk of the poor and unemployed, they have suffered most (Jogdand 2002). Their chances of acquiring jobs in the high-tech industry at home as well as in the multinational corporations have been getting curtailed since the beginning of the process of globalisation in India. The system of primary and elementary education in the rural and urban settings has been subverted almost totally. Since, majority of the rich upper caste send their wards to the private/convent/public schools, government schools have been reduced into dysfunctional centres of learning for the poor Dalits. It is simply out of the reach of the matriculates of such neglected government schools, where hardly any infrastructure and teachers are available, to be able to compete for admission in the country’s prestigious Information Technology (IT) or management schools. Moreover, since the background of a majority of Dalit undergraduates is in Arts and Humanities, it becomes difficult for them to meet the job requirements of the multinational corporations. Even if some of the Dalits aspire to compete in the technology driven new job market, it would be, perhaps, out of their reach to acquire the requisite qualifications at exorbitant rates from the various engineering and management institutes. “The increasing cost of education on the one hand and drying up of the motivation for education because of no-job prospects created by globalisation on the other is fast proving the reservation in education meaningless” (Teltumbde 2004:5).

Moreover, another way through which the process of globalization has been affecting the lives of the Dalits rather more severely is the transformation of their traditional hereditary occupations into lucrative profit seeking competitive avenues where they find themselves incapable of competing with the so called upper castes who until very recently used to consider such professions as polluting (Kumar 2002: 81-82). In other words, when the occupations of sewage disposal, scavenging and raw hides were performed in the Jajmani (hereditary system of asymmetrical reciprocity and patronage between landlords and occupational experts) set up bereft of profit incentive, Dalits were condemned and forced to take them up. But when the same occupations became profit-generating businesses, Dalits find themselves at odd in their own tested fields. It is in this context that the process of globalization perpetuates the system of caste and inequality albeit in a new form. Instead of liberating them, it further pins them down. Earlier they were excluded and were condemned as shudras because of their closeness to the sewages, now it excludes them by way of defeating them in the profit oriented open market system of the neo-liberal economy. In fact, this market is open only for those who have the capital to play the profit game on the chessboard of its unrestrained competition. In this new profit driven game of the process of globalization, Dalits – normally starved of capital – stand disqualified.

Yet another way through which the process of globalization severely affects the lives of the Dalits is the accentuation of the phenomenon of their exclusion from land. Significant parts of the vast majority of them who live in villages are landless labourers. Only a small number of them are cultivators with marginal holdings (Teltumbde 2004:5). The large-scale landlessness on the part of the Dalits led to their dependence on the upper caste land owning communities, which in turn further deepened the caste based inequalities with the burden of asymmetrical class structures. The neo-liberal economic policies adopted under the regimes of liberalisation, privatisation and globalisation widen the already existing caste and class divisions between the Dalits and the dominant castes. As Harish K Puri argues, The most worrying issue now related to the economic future of the lower castes and lower class people in the context of the ruling ideas and forces of neo-liberalism because it spelled a virtual paradigm shift. The state’s welfare role of positive intervention, which was the mainstay of Nehruvian and Ambedkarite framework, had given way to market rationality (Puri 2006:11).

In fact, the forces of neo-liberal economy have not only scuttled the post-1945 Keynesianism or social democratic agenda of state social welfare, they also substituted it with corporate farming to cater to the requirements of the global market, and Special Economic Zones to serve the purpose of the mega commercial centers under the control of the privileged few. Thus to put the above discussion succinctly, it can be said that the contemporary process of globalisation severely deprives the Dalits of the advantages of the new opportunities made available in the realm of capital and precludes the benefits of the hard earned constitutional affirmative action.

However, it does not mean that poverty is found only in the developing countries and among them within the lower strata of the society. Poverty also afflicts those who live in the developed world and also those who enjoy higher social status in the developing world. To quote Dipak Basu, “In the United States, about 12 million people are homeless, one third of the people cannot afford primary health care, 20 per cent of the people are below poverty line, about 23 per cent of the people are illiterate with no security of either job or of life” (Basu 2002). However, it makes a lot of difference to be a poor and at the same living in a developing world and also belonging to a low caste. For instance, in Punjab, a poor Scheduled Caste landless agricultural labourer is distinguished from a poor but dominant caste landless agricultural labourer (landless peasant labourer) by the fact that he, along with his being economically deprived, also suffers from social exclusion. In the case of a Scheduled Caste landless agricultural worker, his being deprived of land is to a large extent related with his social rank. This, in turn, also gets reflected in his economic status. In a broader context, the landlessness of the Scheduled Caste community has serious implications on its economic life. It has generally been observed that during a clash over wages between an agriculturist on the one hand, and landless but dominant caste agricultural labourers and landless Scheduled Caste agricultural labourers on the other, the agriculturalist imposes social boycott on the landless Scheduled Caste agricultural labourers in order to deny them an access to his green fields for fodder as well as to answer the call of nature in a rural setting.

This does not apply on an equal scale to the landless dominant caste agricultural labourers, who lag behind their peer group economically, but enjoy a similar status socially. “Amusingly enough, the agricultural labourers belonging to higher castes treated their fellow labourers of Scheduled Castes as social untouchables” (Chowdhry 1976: 464-65). The prestige system of social status also affects the lives of the members of the poor upper castes in its own unique way. The upper caste poor have often found that their so called higher social status turns out to be a hurdle in their way to take up those jobs which are usually undertaken by the lower caste people. The spate of suicides among the farmers in Punjab is a case in point. These hapless farmers were Jats by caste, which is a dominant caste in Punjab similar to the Brahmins in other parts of the country. Whatever be the reasons behind the act of their suicides, social prestige was an important factor in almost all the cases. Though in majority of the suicide cases the burden of indebtedness was the obvious factor, it was not the sole factor. The factor that pushed them to such a disastrous act was that they did not dare to face the blot of bankruptcy in a social system in which they enjoy a higher rank (Iyer and Manick 2000; Bhalla et al. 1998; Shergill 1998; Sidhu 1991; Singh 1993; for an excellent review of agrarian crisis and suicides by farmers in different states in India see also Ahlawat 2003; Lochan and Rajiv 2006; Suri 2006; Jodhka 2006; Mishra 2006a; Mishra 2006b; Rao and Suri 2006; Mohanakumar and Sharma 2006; Sridhar2006). In the following section an attempt has been made to delineate the meaning of globalisation with reference to capital and labour.

I
Variants of Globalisation

Globalisation, as referred to in the beginning of the paper, has been embellished with various meanings. It has been projected as a 20th century wonder, which contains immense potentialities for the elimination of poverty, hunger and disease. The European Commission in its Annual Economic Report for 1997 defined globalisation “as the process by which markets and production in different countries are becoming increasingly interdependent due to the dynamics of trade in goods and services and flows of capital and technology. It is not a new phenomenon but the continuation of developments that have been in train for some considerable time” (European Commission 1997: 45). In this context, it is primarily associated with ‘a process of intensifying worldwide economic integration’ (McGrew 2005:209). However, this political-economy-centric view of globalisation when juxtaposed with the one grounded within the wider social science literature presents a more complex picture. It is also projected as an era of universalisation and intensification of transnational flows of images, people, commodities and capital (Deshpande 2003:152). Though the process of globalisation is often referred to interchangeably with the notions of liberalisation, internationalisation, universalisation, modernisation, westernisation, Americanisation, de-territorialisation, or supra-territorialisation, none of these terms, argues Scholte, captures its distinctive features (McGrew 2005: 209; see also Scholte 2000; Scott 1997:5; Abdelal and Segal 2007).

Looked at through the prisms of political economy, cultural theory, political analysis, international relations, and urban sociology, globalisation resonates differently in the different contexts (Nasstrom 2003). Given the complex nature of its subject matter, the phenomenon of globalisation is prone to give rise to methodological disputes about its apt analysis (Rosenberg 1995). “The recent discussion within sociology and political science has been careful to distinguish globalisation theory from the theory of modernisation on the one hand and from accounts of colonialism on the other. The concept of globalisation should not act simply as a synonym for a new phase of modernisation or for Westernisation,” (Scott 1997:3). The theory of globalisation needs to be saved from being slipped into a trap of reductionist or determinist that “ … appear to reduce divergent aspects of a complex process to some set of fundamental causes or to some single societal sub-system (e.g., the economy)” (Scott 1997:3). Globalisation needs to be understood as a multi-dimensional, rather than singular, process and free from the disciplinary boundaries of a particular field. Equally important is to rescue it from the prevailing myths and rhetoric about its inevitability and irresistibility (Scott 1997:1; McGrew 2005:3).

New v/s the Old

Globalisation is not a new phenomenon, as it is claimed widely. In effect, it is the replication of the political and economic imperialism of the 19th century (Harshe 2002: 1407). Moreover, in the 19th century the world was more integrated than is the case today (Gilpin 2001:3). Equally important is to critically analyse the objectives of the process of globalisation. The process of globalisation is not something that has come into operation on its own as a beneficial God gifted natural source. It is, perhaps, a well planned and well regulated project aimed at building a uniformed global market for the benefit of a limited number of individuals/corporations. Its sole aim is to accumulate capital, which by its very logic creates dens of poverty, disease and squalor in the periphery, and wealth in the core of the globalising world (Wade 2005: 291-316). In order to comprehend such diabolic posture of the phenomenon of globalisation, it needs to be distinguished as an ideology and as a paradigm.

As an ideology, globalisation creates a sense of false consciousness in the periphery. It makes its appearance as beneficial through various popularly projected images. At the same time, it also builds up the logic to subdue any opposition to its upward surgence. It emphasises that poverty and low economic growth were the results of keeping oneself out of the reach of globalisation. As a paradigm, globalisation provides an epistemological outlook for the understanding of the world. This epistemological outlook has assigned the prefix New to the already existing asymmetrical world. The fact, however, is that it is not the existential world that has really become new or newly ordered under the spill of globalisation. What the paradigm of globalisation was able to do under the prefix New is that it has succeeded in projecting the same old world as new in a particular way that favours capital over labour. This paradigm of presenting the old world in the form of something new emanates from a perspective, held by the privileged few, to scan the uneven structures of the existing world in such a manner as to project them as ‘new’, ‘ordered’, ‘global’, interdependent’, and ‘homogeneous. Such a paradigmatic approach in looking at the so-called changing trajectories of the world has more to do with the ‘concrete processes’ of economy and politics rather than with its projected abstract realities. However, in the domain of political economy, it is not always essential to stick to apparent realities. On the contrary, the projected realities have usually been taken as given; realities that favour capital and the metropolis and deprive labour and the periphery. Such realities in fact are not generally acceptable realities at all. (Explain more clearly) It is so because they emboss the fabricated and artificial homogeneous world on the real and the existing asymmetrical world.

This is another way of subjugating the marginal, the ‘other’. The marginalised are subjugated through the mirage of the promised /imagined new world. The imagined world has been made more real than the actual real world is. The real world is not the one where we live, but the one we have been told about. The panacea to all our maladies, we are told, lies in getting assimilated quickly into this New world –the globalising one. It is also said that poverty, failure of the State, and ethnic insurgencies in Asia, Africa and elsewhere are not the outcome of the specific factors grounded in the colonial structures of these continents or in their own current specific domestic situations, but because of their refusal to open themselves to the currents of the global market. In the words of Abdul-Raheem, “Western ideologues insist that we must imagine and organise society in accordance with their values and systems without providing space to any alternative ideology. In this hegemonic scheme, the rest of us are seen as non-starters, or at best late comers, whose only destiny is to follow the path already trodden by the West” (Abdul-Raheem 2000:15). There is nothing sacred about regimes and institutions as sermonised by the Western think tanks. What democracy, globalisation, free market, and multilateral institutions mean to them does not equally apply to the poor South (Manchanda 1997). Nor, is the rich North seriously interested in the genuine proliferation of the principles of liberalism and democracy. In the name of democracy and free market economy regimes, the continents of Asia, Africa and South America were rather further subjected to what Abdul-Raheem characterised as “recolonisation” (Abdul-Raheem 2000: 15). No doubt the world has changed, but the governing principles of world politics have not. It is Realpolitik, which still regulates the transactions among the states and also among the non-state managers of today’s world. The emergence of the process of globalisation and the triumph of free market over the planned economy do not imply that politics based on the pursuance of national interest and power has given place to communitarianism and welfare. It is claimed that “[t]he process of globalisation has produced much that is new in the world’s economy and politics, but it has not changed the basic ways capitalism operates. Nor has it aided the cause of either peace or prosperity” (Magdoff 1992: 39).

Contrary to the repetitive claims, the post-Cold War world is very much the same intransient world of power games and shrewd diplomacy. The so-called New world is the old place where one has to move cautiously in the given hard-core choices, and in an environment of no permanent friends and foes. How does one then understand the United States’ support to the non-democratic Sheikhdom in the Middle East and to the authoritarian states of South East Asia, whereas United States, itself, stands for democracy not only within but internationally also. Democracy as a value is not as important as its use for the promotion of national interests. “It seems that the West only prefers a ‘democratic’ outcome that does not, as the Americans say, upset the applecart” (Abdul-Raheem, 2000: 19). To quote Abdul-Raheem further “[t]hat means democracy with a western veto” (Ibid.). Any democratic process that helps raise genuine political aspirations, finds no support from the West if such a process is likely to adversely affect the status of the West. Thus, in order to qualify for a democratic status one needs to fulfill the expectations of the West. It does not matter much even if you are a despot or a dictator provided you do not create any difficulties for the West. “In the Southeast Asia, lack of democracy and gross abuse of human rights do not seem to have affected the growth of capitalism, whereas the Gulf States with their abundant oil wealth can dispense with democracy and human rights altogether. Otherwise, why would America and the so-called Allied powers have gone to war in the Gulf only to restore feudal family rule” (Ibid: 18). Given a choice between democracy and promotion of national interest, the latter gets a priority over the former. That is what the law of power politics advocates. It needs to be taken with a pinch of salt that free trade is the most important natural torchbearer of the 21st century. The moot point is who does the process of globalisation favour? How does globalisation operate in an unequal and anarchic world? What safeguards, if any, are available to the ex-colonial societies and the marginalised to defend themselves against the system of domination, embedded in the logic of a world structured on the principles of power politics? In fact, the process of globalisation legitimises “the right of the advanced capitalist states and their citizens to dominate the rest of humanity. It affirms the right of the capital to move around the globe but restricts the freedom of labour (people). Those who desire a global humanity must, therefore, struggle to humanise the globe, such that free human beings can live, work or settle anywhere they wish?” (Ibid.) It is in this context that we need to take up the issue of the process of globalisation in the context of the marginalised in the periphery. Rampant violence, narcotic terrorism, mounting debts, political apathy and indolence, subordination to market, controlled print and electronic media, ecological devastation, marginalisation of the State, nepotism, corruption, the ever increasing rise in the internal civil strife leading to mass killings, and exodus are a few issues of crucial concern relating to the marginalised in the periphery.

II
Globalisation Problematique

The purpose of the paper is not to prescribe solutions, but to problematise the impact of the process of globalisation on the societies in the periphery and the marginalised. The term periphery is used here to reflect on the weaker sections of the under-developed and developing countries of the Afro-Asian world. However, even in this very part of the asymmetrical world, the interest of the miniscule minority converges more conveniently with that of the core of the rich North rather than with that of their fellow beings in the poor South. Thus, it is in this context that the term periphery needs to be taken into consideration while evaluating the impact of globalisation on the socio-economic and political life of the marginal people divided on caste/class lines within the non-Western world. The purpose here is not to provide a blueprint, but to problematise the issue. What we often deal with in the name of globalisation is less of a phenomenon and more of an ideology and a paradigm. Such an aberration always keeps one away from understanding the real causes of poverty and exploitation induced by the process of globalisation in the periphery.

Capital, Labour and Globalisation

The system of globalisation is not accountable to the people whom it affects. Since the State, which draws sustenance and legitimacy from the citizens in the geographically determined boundaries, begins fading in the face of the surging forces of globalisation, it often finds excuses to exempt itself from its legal responsibility towards the betterment of its populace, especially the marginalised. Public policy, based on the State supported social protection, gave way to deregulation, privatisation, cuts in state’s social welfare schemes (e.g. Public Distribution System [PDS] in India), restrictions on labour unions, flexible labour markets, strict laws and quotas restricting immigration to the countries of the North. Such anti-people policies are not only encountered by the people of the developing world, the political establishments in the countries of the developed world equally adhere to them. In this context, it is appropriate to reproduce here what Amiya Kumar Bagchi says:

The rules of the game in the globalisation process changed drastically from the 1970s. The European and United States’ capitalists thought that they must teach the workers a lesson – they must break the trade unions and put an end to the post-war welfare states of Europe. Margaret Thatcher, the British Prime Minister, was a pioneer in this worker bashing. Around 1985, I happened to be at a meeting with Sir Alan Walters, one of the chief economic advisors of Margaret Thatcher. We were talking about the failure of big strikes in Britain during Thatcher’s regime. Sir Alan said roughly, “I told Margaret Thatcher, kick the workers, and go on kicking them till they are down, and kick them even when they are down” … A similar strategy was pursued by the United States Government during Ronald Regan’s presidency. As a result, the real wages of an average American worker today is lower than it was in 1979 (Bagchi 2004: 7).

Such anti-labour policies do not only characterise the governments in Europe and the United States, but even the governments and left-of-centre parties in Japan, and Australia have been talking the same language (Wade 2005:292). Furthermore, through the international financial mechanism of the Multilateral Economic Organisations (MEOs) like the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, and the World Trade Organisation (WTO), these anti-labour policies are extended to the domestic realms of the developing countries (Ibid).

The most startling case of non-accountability on the part of the forces of globalisation is the callousness on the part of the Union Carbide with regard to the victims of the Bhopal Gas tragedy. According to Harish K Puri, Much of the information is hidden from the public. Inspection of the plant by the Indian government officials was evidently casual; and most likely corrupt. And we know the cost. Over 10,000 were killed by the leakage of the deadly gas; over 200,000 were injured and sick, including those born later. Invariably most of these who became victims happened to come from the low class caste workers and their families. And, even after 22 years of struggle for justice the culprits have not been punished (Puri 2006:15).

The question of justice, of late, has come up as the most important contentious issue of globalisation. Some of the leading exponents of the process of globalising have now started echoing the concern that “… in its failure to deliver a more just global economic order, globalisation may hold within it the seeds of its own demise” (Higgott 2000:131). James Wolfenson, President of the World Bank reiterated in his address to the Board of Governors of the Bank in October 1998 that in the absence of ‘greater equity and social justice’ no amount of money could provide us financial stability. Ethan Kapstein expressed similar views when he underlined the fact that any economic system widely viewed as unjust will not endure for long. Of course, these views are not new. They were put forward much earlier when the present system of globalisation was not even conceived of. Adam Smith put on record in his ‘Wealth of Nations’ that no society could survive or flourish if great numbers lived in poverty (quoted in Higgott 2000:131). If the contemporary process of globalisation sincerely aims at strengthening the need for strong governance, then contrary to the pro-capital policies of its neo-liberal lobbying centres of London and Washington, it has to remove all “barriers to the movement of people in search of work” and to make stringent efforts towards the formation of “a single market for both capital and labour” (Jha 1999).

The system of justice, which we are familiar with, is understood within the “Westphalien cartography of clear lines and stable identities”(ibid). Westphalien justice presumes a stable political order, based on legitimate political authority, having a clearly demarcated social space. Since with the concretisation of the process of globalisation, the territorial boundaries of politics are becoming unbundled, to borrow Ruggie’s evocative phrase, it becomes inevitable that the conceptual images of justice conceived in the boundaries of politics fixed by territoriality will become similarly unbundled (ibid). The conventional accounts of justice have failed to address the changing nature of social bond. The system of globalisation is not a social bond at all. It is a blatant system of profit seeking and self-propagation. It has not been brought out by a contractarian agreement among the multitudes of large number of so-called fading states. The system of globalisation has come to be confronted by the people of Afro-Asian world who have yet to become citizens in real terms (Ram 2001). Before the people of impoverished states could win the battle of their subsistence against their native monopoliser and rent-seeker, they have suddenly been exposed to the big doyens over whom they have no system of pressure. In an era of consumer driven globalisation, it is not in the fitness of things to quote Karl Marx who even after one and a half-century sounds fresh in his contents and analysis of the economic structure of the society. To quote him in detail:

The bourgeoisie has through its exploitation of the world market given a cosmopolitan character to production and consumption in every country. To the great chagrin of Reactionists, it has drawn from under the feet of industry the national ground on which it stood. All old-established national industries have been destroyed or are daily being destroyed. They are dislodged by new industries, whose introduction becomes a life and death question for all civilised nations, by industries that no longer work up indigenous raw material, but raw material drawn from the remotest zones; industries whose products are consumed, not only at home, but in every quarter of the globe. In place of the old wants, satisfied by the productions of the country, we find new wants, requiring for their satisfaction, the products of distant lands and climes. In place of the old local and national seclusion and self-sufficiency, we have intercourse in every direction, universal inter-dependence of nations. And as in material, so also in intellectual production. The intellectual creations of individual nations become common property. National one-sidedness and narrow-mindedness become more and more impossible, and from the numerous national and local literatures, there arises a world literature (Marx and Engels 1848:37-38).

This system of global relations of production, of exchange and of property has become, to quote Marx again, “…like the sorcerer, who is no longer able to control the powers of the nether world whom he has called up by his spells” (ibid: 39). However, what makes Marx’s analysis of the ever-widening reach of the bourgeoisie society unique is its class character articulated by him in the following words:

In proportion as the bourgeoisie, i.e., capital, is developed, in the same proportion is the proletariat, the modern working class, developed – a class of labourers, who live only so long as they find work, and who find work only so long as their labour increases capital. These labourers, who must sell themselves piecemeal, are a commodity, like every other article of commerce, and consequently exposed to all the vicissitudes of competition, to all the fluctuations of the market (Marx and Engels 1848:40).

Thus, the formation and augmentation of capital is the essential condition for the existence and furtherance of the bourgeoisie that lay at the foundation of the process of globalisation. The current process of globalisation does not paint a different picture. The basic rules of its grammar remain the same (see also Omvedt 2001). However, what makes a difference, as far as the status of the labour versus capital is concerned is that, to quote Marx once again,

The modern labourer, on the contrary, instead of rising with the progress of industry, sinks deeper and deeper below the conditions of existence of his own class. He becomes a pauper, and pauperism develops more rapidly than population and wealth (ibid: 45).

He (labourer), in fact, has been completely abandoned in the labyrinth of uselessness. Globalisation thrives on services and information technology. Agricultural, industry and manufacturing are no longer important avenues for it. Finance capital, capital generated through stock markets and capital earned on the use of information industry has ultimately replaced the capital generated by the labour. This, in turn, has further led to marginalisation of the already marginalised section of the society (Patnaik 2004).

History played a trick with Marx. He expected revolution on the basis of his capital analysis of the bourgeoisie society in the industrial world of Germany or England, and not in an agriculturally dominated society of Russia. However due to Lenin’s intervention, the revolution in Russia became successful at that time. For Marx, proletariats contain the force of transformation of the bourgeoisie society into socialism. In the manifesto of the Communist Party, he clearly mentioned that the struggle of the proletariat with the bourgeoisie is at first a national struggle. “The proletariat of each country must, of course, first of all settle matters with its own bourgeoisie”. Since capital knows no boundaries and expands further and further, in search of its expansion it becomes imperative for the proletariats of all the countries to get united to oppose the march of such capital. The manifesto ends with the following words “The proletarians have nothing to loose but their chains. They have a world to win”. In reality, workers belonging to different countries failed to emerge into a global body. On the other hand, capital succeeded in forging a global network. The success of the capital has been celebrated with the end of the history thesis. In the absence of a radical alternative to the arbitrariness of the global capital, the future of mankind seems to zero-in on barbarism. One may venture into formulating that in the face of ‘the end of history’ emerges ‘the clash of civilisations’. Efforts are being made now at the global level to tackle the crisis of communal global terrorism. However, such types of symptoms of the disease are quite early signs of the maturing evil of accumulation of capital on the one hand, and poverty on the other. From the Seattle protests of 1999 to the annual conclaves of the World Social Forum, surcharged street demonstrations and shouting of anti globalisation slogans represent deep smouldering embers of the severe crisis that the process of globalisation faces today.

III
Globalisation and the Crisis of Governance

To manage the crisis of globalisation, efforts are now being made, since the second half of 1997, to politically legitimise, democratise and socialise the process of globalisation (Higgott 2000:133). Is it feasible, at least theoretically, to socialise the process of globalisation? To socialise globalisation seems to be tantamount to saying to socialise capital. However, capital by its very nature intrinsically defies any such attempts. It is basically based on the process of capital generation through the appropriation of surplus values generated by the labourers. And, the grammar of capitalism tells us that a surplus value is the value of labour that is denied to a labourer. Thus, the capital and the utopia of its equal distribution are basically antithetical to each other. In the words of Scott, “… not only is globalisation thought not to be tied to any substantive notion of the ‘Good Society’, it may, according to its critics, even preclude any discussion of what such a society might look like” (Scott 1997:6). According to the Human Development Report 1997 published by United Nations Development Programme,

The greatest benefits of globalisation have been garnered by a fortunate few. A rising tide of wealth is supposed to lift all boats, but some are more seaworthy than others. The yachts and ocean liners are rising in response to new opportunities, but many rafts and rowboats are taking on water- and some are sinking. The ratio of global trade to Gross Domestic Product has been rising over the past decade, but it has been falling for 44 developing countries, with more than a billion people. The least developed countries, with 10 per cent of the world’s people, have only 0.3 per cent of world trade – half their share of two decades ago.

The metaphor of the rising tide lifting all boats fails to take off when applied in the context of the effect of the globalisation on the developing countries. In the developing world the tides of the neo-liberal economy had ended up knocking over some of the smaller boats. “It has increased the divide between the rich and the poor countries and further widened the gap between the rich and the poor in the Third World countries. The number of poor in Africa has doubled”, said Nobel Laureate economist Joseph Stiglitz in a lecture on Making Globalisation Work in Chennai recently (Stiglitz 2007). According to the 1999 version of the Human Development Report, the income gap ratio between the 20 per cent of the world’s population in the richest countries and the 20 per cent in the poorest grew from 30:1 in 1960 to 60:1 in 1990 and 74:1 in 1995. The poorest 20 per cent of the world’s population account for only one per cent of the total global Gross Domestic Product and 40 per cent of the world’s population lives in absolute poverty. The number of people with income of less than $ 1 a day increased by almost 100 million to 1.3 billion between 1987 and 1993 (Reddy 1999). In the past 18 years, the per capita income has declined in more than 100 countries. In a large number of countries, life expectancy is still 40 years. The external debt burden of the developing countries totals $2.2 trillion, according to 1999 estimates. Of this, two-thirds is public debt. The net material worth of the world’s 200 richest persons increased from $ 440 billion to more than one trillion in just four years: 1994-1998 (Oommen 1999). “Global inequalities in income have increased alarmingly in the last hundred years. More than 30,000 children die every day from preventable diseases. Some 90 million children are excluded from primary education. About 790 million people are hungry and 1.2 billion live on less than one dollar a day” (Raj 2002). The above statistics shows that the global spread of capital failed to reduce the contradictions between the poor and the rich nations. “Although a handful of third world countries, benefiting from the globalisation process, have made noteworthy progress in industrialisation and trade, the overall gap between core and periphery nations has kept on widening” (Magdoff 1992:2).

The exploitative and inequitable stance of globalisation became factually clear in the last few years. The Washington Consensus (WC) based neo-liberal project of globalisation came under severe attack on its durability in the wake of the financial crisis that hit Asia in the second half of 1997 and soon spread to Latin America and Russia in early 1998 (Williamson 2003). Another factor that accounted amongst the significant sources of backlash against the unbridled nature of globalisation project was the failure of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) to establish the multilateral argument on investment. ‘The battle of Seattle’ was yet another factor that jostled globalisation from its very roots (Higgott 2000:135-136). Along with these events of crisis revelation of globalisation, another factor which affected the ever surging march of globalisation is “the development of a perception that global liberalisation brings with it increased inequality” (ibid: 136). The above cited events and perceptions led to the lowering of the image of globalisation from its status of inevitability to its self-demise. This also led to the end of the orthodox Washington Consensus backed model of globalisation, based on economic liberalisation that dominated the period between 1980 and 1990, and resulted in the emergence of a ‘Post Washington Consensus’ (ibid: 137).

The Post Washington Consensus is a response to the challenges to the process of globalisation. It aims at rectifying the pitfalls of economic liberalisation by introducing the system of global governance (for an excellent review see Parkash and Jeffrey [eds.] 1999), what Stephen Gill calls a constitution for global capitalism (quoted in Higgott 2000:137). The project of globalisation of 1980s and the early 1990s did not have any place for ethics. It was based on purely the free market principle of profit and maximising self-interest. “The idea is that capitalism, left to itself, can recover from any crisis and any public intervention can only make things worse. Thus any public actions are nothing but distortions of the system which must be minimised” (Basu 2002). The Post Washington Consensus model has been trying to bring ethical dimensions into the theory of globalisation. The attempt on the part of Post Washington Consensus to bring ethical content into the theory of globalisation was not merely a tactical move to forestall the simmering revolt against economic liberalisation. According to Edwards “there is genuine concern for bringing in recognition of the importance of tackling ethical questions of justice, fairness and inequality” (Higgott 2000:137). The Post Washington Consensus, thus, distinguished itself from the Washington Consensus by the concepts of civil society, social capital, capacity building, governance and transparency, a new international economic architecture, institution building and safety-nets as against the Washington Consensus mantras of liberalisation, deregularisation and privatisation.

Taming the Neo-liberal Economy

The immediate question that comes to mind is that whether the Post Washington Consensus would make some efforts for setting an agenda to help the marginalised. Is it possible that the mere chanting of the names of civil society, social capital, and governance etc. can facilitate the change for the betterment of the neglected lot of the society? The Post Washington Consensus fails to chart out the parameters through which the marginals can be brought into the purview of the civil society, which, as in the case of India, has still not become inclusive in its character and scope. How can capital translate the higher statuses into instruments of improvement for the downtrodden when their own kith and kin feel shy and fearful to openly divulge their caste identity in the highly inequitable hierarchical structures of the Indian society? Nothing concrete can be expected for removing the tears from the hapless faces until and unless something can be done in the form of structural transformation for dismantling the market based system of domination on one hand, and the varna based system of social hierarchy on the other. In fact, for India the crisis is not only confined to the forces emanating from the sphere of the market. It is equally severe, perhaps more, as far as its caste based social order is concerned. The market and the caste when combined make a deadly concoction for the crisis managers to tackle effectively.

In the absence of an egalitarian alternative to the structures of domination, the human face of globalisation based on global governance makes no difference for the marginalised who continue to be afflicted in the gas chambers of gender, caste and class. The market has failed to liberate them. Moreover, it has further pinned them down. They are not welcomed in the sphere of market as equal partners of profit. In other words, the market too practices untouchability, albeit in a different form. They feel alienated in their own world of creation. How strong can the global market be, in the long run? It will not survive until and unless the question of the marginals is addressed amicably. As Abdelal and Segal argue, “The challenge is to sell the benefits of ongoing globalisation to a wary public, to make sure those benefits materialise, and then to ensure they are distributed more equitably” (Abdelal and Segal 2007:104-5). In fact, the question of equitable distribution of resources is closely related with the issue of the immediate and amicable redressal of the cause of the marginals and the socially excluded (Green and Griffith 2002: 68). They need not be provided with only cheap articles of provision of minimal use as have been popularly done in some Indian states. What seems to be essential is to empower them, to enhance their buying capacity in the real sense of the term, to dismantle the structures of economic and social dominations, and to remove the stresses of globalisation. “If we are not concerned of the stresses of globalisation, ideological counter-currents will emerge. Globalisation is not a bed of roses. There is a need to be watchful, always,” warned Singapore Foreign Affairs Minister George Tong-Boon Yeo at the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) Partnership Summit in Bangalore (The Hindu, March 19, 2007). In other words, a balance needs to be created between the forces of market and the principles of social justice. It is in this context that the contemporary process of globalisation, the crisis of governance, and the issue of empowerment of the marginalised pose a common and serious challenge to the policy makers which have to be addressed amicably at the earliest.

Acknowledgement

Different versions of this paper were presented at seminars: Globalization and The Underprivileged: Perceptions, Fears and Consequences, organized by Department of Sociology, Ch. Charan Singh University, Meerut; Globalisation and Political Economy of North-West India, organized by Department of Political Science, SGGS College, Chandigarh; Globalisation, Social Institutions and Values, organized by Dev Samaj College for Women, Chandigarh; Justice to Weaker Section of the Society, organized by Chandigarh People’s Welfare Forum and Punjab and Haryana High Court Advocates’ Committee on Judicial Accountability, Chandigarh; and at a Workshop, The Empowerment of Dalits and Women, organized by Ambedkar Center, Department of Sociology, P. U. Chandigarh. Comments and observations received from the scholars helped significantly in improving the arguments presented in this paper. My thanks to Harish K Puri, Paramjit Singh Judge, and K.C. Sulekh discussions with who helped me further revise the draft. I am equally grateful to Seema, Sahaj and Daksh who facilitated my long sittings in the study away from home. However, for any fault or error, the responsibility lies entirely with the author.

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POSTED ON JULY 22, 2007