Tuesday, September 23, 2008

Further Consequences of Globalization

I sure hope Tom Friedman saw this report on the BBC NEWS Web site:

The Indian head of an Italian auto parts company has been beaten to death in a suburb of Delhi, allegedly by a group of sacked workers.

Lalit Kishore Choudhary, of Graziano Transmissioni India, died at the company factory in Greater Noida.

Police said more than 100 dismissed workers entered the factory vandalised machinery and attacked Mr Choudhary.

The confrontation came after a long industrial dispute. The workers denied killing Mr Choudhary.

Nearly 300 workers at Graziano Transmissioni were dismissed two months ago after they demanded pay rises and allegedly ransacked its offices, the AFP news agency reported.

How does this fit into your utopian vision of globalization, Tom? How much does Graziano Transmissioni know about what happens in India, other than the premise that labor is cheaper there? Some new chickens may be coming home to roost!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Globalization, especially with reference to the two most populous countries of the world, India and China, bristles with problems in the form of labour grievances. In India, as compared to China, security police is comparatively far more wanting in professionalism, and political interference even from the ruling party/party coalition is hasty and often is supportive of labour's own reactions/ role in getting their grievances resolved, unmindful of the circumstances. Indian democracy is a multiparty one with cacophonous politics rampant in which each party wants to make a show of itself on the floor of the central parliament and the state legislatures. None of them ever seems bothered about the need for a unified stand on critical issues of economic, especially rapid industrial, development of the country as a prerequisite for a high per capita and for poverty removal. Often the scenes in the parliament and legislatures are, as criticl viewers say, quite shameful of an orderly democracy. The harsh truth about Indian democracy is that it just offers no scope for educated and service oriented people to enter politics, since the political space is overwhelmingly occupied by criminals to a predominant extent. The politicians' behavior is telecast and publicised widely by numerous TV channels, the press including newspapers and periodicals which, again, more often with a slant such that the news is hardly put in the right perspective and 'debates' are encouraged in which the TV channel has planted a moderator who sets the ball rolling so that words tend to be put into the debaters' mouths, and the course of debate is done according to the goals of sensationalism of the channels. In the present instance, a minister in the Delhi cabinet [a Delhi industrial area was the scene of this rowdy labour turning murderous] hastened to proclaim that industrial managements should not let labour grievances to get pent up by delay until labour is driven to such extreme action against management. Well, the minister was perhaps right in what he said, but it is highly qestionable that he was in such haste to wisen up managements even when just a day had passed. Another ongoing politically ustained problem: In West Bengal(WB), there is rule by 'communists' [iverted commas are used because it is not clear what communism today means when it has been discarded by its foremost citadels - Russia and China].The WB govt. wants to undo its past record of anticapital aspect of its ideology. The WB Chief Minister said he was not approving the communist party of India's destructive and obstructive ideology of strikes, agitations, closures, etc. by the labour. Immediately the communist party top guns shot back to say that the WB chief minister in making such disapproval was forgetful of the fact that agitations, strikes, etc. are considered as a basic right of labour, by the communists.

India's multiparty democracy is proving to be a very big hindrance to India's economic development due to politicians putting their party and self interests above any united effort to usher in equitable economic development so as to provide potable water to all and uplift the huge proportion of the population which is below poverty line. It is even tearing apart the traditional amity between religious groups since perverse politics is fast dividing the people on religious lines as political parties are polarizing as 'secular' and 'commnal' camps with neither with any resolute determination to keep divisive politics only subordinated to a drive for rapid economic and social development. In these respects, China ranks qualitatively much higher with a resolute determination to keep party and administration's interests below its rapidly materializing dream of becoming a superpower even to rival the US.