onomi      e orms         6.9
               process of privatisation. We may cite few            narrow and business-like sense—‘any cross-
               examples from India—de-licencing and                 border investment by an OECD company
               de-reservation of the industries, even cuts          outside its country of origin for its benefit is
               in the subsidies, permission to foreign              globalisation’. After this summit of the OECD,
               investment, etc.22                                   proposals for replacing the GATT by the WTO
          Here we may connect liberalisation to                     were pushed by the developed economies of the
     privatisation in India. Liberalisation shows the               world, better known as the starting of the Uruguay
     direction of economic reforms in India, i.e.,                  Round of GATT deliberations which ends in
     inclination towards the dominance of market. But               Marrakesh (1994) with the birth of WTO. In the
     how will it be achieved? Basically, privatisation              meantime, the OECD had defined globalisation
     will be the path to reform. It means, everything               officially, (1995) too— “a shift from a world of
     which includes promotion of the ‘market’ will be               distinct national economies to a global economy
     the path of the reform process in India.                       in which production is internationalised and
                                                                    financial capital flows freely and instantly between
        GLobaLIsatIon                                               countries.”27
                                                                          The official meaning of globalisation for the
     The process of Globalisation has always been used              WTO is movement of the economies of the world
     in economic terms though it has always taken the               towards “unrestricted cross border movements
     political and cultural dimensions. Once economic               of goods and services, capital and the labour
     changes occur it has several socio-political                   force”. It simply means that the economies who
     manifestations.23 Globalisation is generally termed            are signatories to the process of globalisation (i.e.,
     as ‘an increase in economic integration among                  signatories to the WTO) for them there will be
     nations’.24 Even before several nation-states were             nothing like foreign or indigenous goods and
     not even born, the countries around the world had              services, capital and labour. The world becoming
     gone for globalisation, i.e., ‘a closer integration            a flat and level-playing field emerging in the due
     of their economies’.25 This globalisation lasted               process of time.28
     from 1800 to almost 1930, interrupted by the
                                                                          For many political scientists (which is today
     Great Depression and the two Wars which led
                                                                    a very dominant force in the world), globalisation
     to retrenchment and several trade barriers were
                                                                    is the emergence of a situation when our lives are
     erected since early 1930s.26
                                                                    increasingly shaped by the events that occur at a
          The concept was popularised by the                        great distance from us about which the decisions
     Organisation of Economic Cooperation and                       are not taken by our conscious self. One section of
     Development (OECD) in the mid-1980s again                      experts believe that globalisation subordinates the
     after the Wars. In its earlier deliberatization, the           state, while the other section argues that the local,
     organisation had defined globalisation in a very               national and global events constantly interact
                                                                    under it without any subordination of one by
       22.   New Industrial Policy, 1991 & several documents of     the other. Rather, globalisation highlights the
            GoI since then.
       23.  Talcott Parsons, The Structure of Social Action, (New
            York: McGraw Hill, 1937).
       24.  Samuelson and Nordhaus, Economics, p. 32.
       25.  Stiglitz and Walsh, Economics, p. 804.                    27.   As quoted in Andrew Heywood, Politics, p. 139.
       26.  Thomas L. Friedman, The World is Flat, (London: Penguin   28.   As Friedman shows in his best-seller, The World is
            Books, 2006), 9. Stiglitz & Walsh, Economics, p. 804.           Flat, p. 9.