Globalization and Its Implications

Globalization, as the name suggests, is a global economic movement which involves all national and international economic players, including the all pervasive bureaucracy. It is a multi-role, multi-layered phenomenon in which everyone contributes his bit. The growing progress of science and faster means of communication have converted the world into a global village wherein people from all strata of society have converged to share the economic benefits which are a resultant of increase in production. States' national boundaries are shrinking and an inter-state commonwealth is emerging on the basis of a common cooperative endeavor. In every such growing economy, one feels the presence of an "invisible hand" 1 of bureacracy.

The term globalization implies economic integration through cross country flow of information, ideas, technologies, goods and services. Its seminal features are:

(i) Removal of trade barriers to facilitate free flow of goods all over world
(ii) Generating environment which conduces to the free flow of capital among nation-states
(iii) Facilitating the free flow of technology, and
(iv) Providing opportunities for the free and unfettered movement of labor among various nations

To put it in a nutshell, globalization leads to economic growth and integration which can happen through trade in goods and services, movement of capital, and flow of finance through movement of people. But in reality globalization is a multi-layered phenomenon. Across borders, unity ushered under the impact of globalization has several dimensions - cultural, social, political and economic. That is why some economists termed it as a process of creation of global economy, whereas others talked of political and social globalization, a globalization of ideas that led to technological changes.2

Broadly speaking it can be suggested that "Though the world globalization (as a synonym for privatization and liberalization)