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Free movement of exchange of culture, tradition, trade, investments and services world over is globalization. Extension of Greek, Roman, Egyptian cultures and traditions were together
with the trade to promote demand for products and services. Similarly western trade extended as a result of prevalence of
English and western culture world over. Asians, Arabians and Africans like western products as western cultural influence
inspires to consume so feel involved in that culture. The set examples are Pepsi, coke, MK Donald, jeans and so on. Thus both
trade and culture go together. Culture and tradition attracts populace, therefore, cultural extension improves trade growth.
Free trade movement is age old and has been prevailing since the age of Mesopotamian,
Indus
valley and Egyptian civilization when commodities, services and cultures exchanged but was without brand name of “Globalization”. A form of globalization
similar to today prevailed even during 19th century and survived for many years until during economic depression ensued as
a result of world war, lasted until the cold war came to an end. Globalization was major factor to ease exchange of knowledge,
communication and technology. Globalization has its own merits and demerits.
Negative side of globalization:
- Overpopulates urban cities as job openings
and educational systems are based on urbanization. In 1800, 2% of world’s population was in urban cities. In 1950, 30%
urbanized. In 2000, 47% of world population began to live in urban cities and in 2008, urban population reached Over 50% (Facts by www.unhabitat.org).
- Agricultural land forest conversion to urban
lands. Impact of urban growth is reducing size of agricultural land. Over 20% of farm lands of developing countries have been converted to cities and
buildings for the past decades and Over 50% of farmlands of villages (close to cities) got merged with cities. Threat to high market value agricultural lands from urban encroachment: a national and regional perspective. (Access my library.com).
- Escalates disappearing traditional and small
– cottage industries, which generates more jobs than the large with auto machine industries. Especially textiles, carpets,
pottery, molding, handicrafts, handmade tools have been hard hit by introduction of machine made. Over 40% such industries
have vanished and skilled traditional artists and creators shifted to urban cities.
- Draws competition to bring down margins
as involvement of more and more countries in trade. Fittest to lead or survive and dominate. Strong nations grab most of fruit
marginalizing poor nations.
- Trade invasion by multinationals through
heavy investments and takeovers.
- Prompts establishments to cheap labor and
inferior working condition to bring down cost of production that concerns living standard of workers. Insecurity of jobs by
hire and fire. In addition, establishments tend to use atomized machinery to minimize labor force.
- Incites Flow of migration from developing
countries to crowd developed nations. Injures labor economy by raising unemployment level.
- Liberates industries and business sectors
for outsourcing from nations with cheap labor.
- Eases dumping excessive produce to disintegrate
importing country’s economy.
- Alleviates multinational group participation
in medical-health care and social services to marginalize poor.
- Escalates corruption practices for favoring multinationals interest for extracting the most as
East India Company did.
- Is helping hand to rich investors to invest
within or overseas in markets of essential commodities and services to shoot up prices. Recent depression and price rises
are the affect of massive investments for fast and easy bucks.
- Attack
on regional traditions and cultures. Attracted to western or American culture, populace gets addicted and become slave customers.
Blaming western culture may be offensive rather blame should go to the traditions and cultures which are weak enough to compete,
as Chinese culture and tradition kept pace with western culture and now has become popular to western and American society. Even Chinese languages being learnt by them.
Positive side of Globalization:
·
Beneficial for exchange of modern knowledge,
communication, technology for better connectivity among nations for trade and culture. This interconnectivity minimizes possibility
of war among nations.
·
Best part of globalization is creation
of jobs in developing countries through export, communication, technology and software sectors in developing countries.
·
Improves job opportunities internationally.
There are more than 200 million estimated international
migrants in the world today. In 2007, remittance flows are
estimated at USD 337 billion worldwide, USD 251 billion of which
went to developing countries. (iom.in). Most migrate to industrial and rich nations for better salaries. Integrating cultures
develop understanding and relationship with origin inhabitants. Improves tourism to benefit tourism
industries and travel lines.
·
Free international trade provides each and every country
to market products and services. International markets become flexible for all to invest. (UNCTAD Press Office - Developing countries accounted for 37% of world merchandise exports in 2006
on a rising trend. Moreover, as many developing countries have achieved current account surpluses, they have become
important providers of capital for the rest of the world.).
·
Enhances flow of capital, allowing investors to invest
in untapped resources of the developing countries. (OECD Investment committee - Between 2006 and 2007, FDI outflows from OECD countries increased by over 50% from US$1.2 trillion to a record US$1.82 trillion
(see table). This was US$580 billion higher than the previous record outflows in 2000. It also represented the fastest rate
of year-on-year growth (52%) since the FDI boom years of 1998 (59%) and 1999 (61%).).
·
Country’s productivity helps to
grow economy which helps investments in social sectors. (UNCTAD Press Office - Developing-country
progress has been rapid and all developing regions have benefited from recent growth trends, the compendium says, but there
are significant differences: annual per capita GDP expansion between 2003 and 2007 was 6.2% in Asia, 3.7% in Latin American and the Caribbean, and 3.0% in Africa).
·
Helps controlling inflation by widening
open competition from international products.
·
Improves living condition of population
as a result of increased earnings in the families. However, depends on availability of relevant jobs. Most rural people living
in poverty and illiterate migrate to cities still live in poverty as demand from modern industries is least. (UNCTAD Press Office - Another detail of interest is that worldwide, the number of people in developing countries living
on less than $1 a day fell from 1.25 billion in 1990 to 980 million in 2004. In sub-Saharan Africa, the
proportion of those living in extreme poverty fell from 46.8% to 41.1% over that period, with most of the progress coming
since the year 2000).
·
International Investments and franchise
systems open modern methods of education 
to pace with international standard.
Globalization opened enormous scope of opportunities and gateway
to trade exchanges world over. Especially Asian and developing countries were in advantage to promote their sales and services
to developed countries. Because of globalization developing countries easily could access to world market. Waving or minimal tariffs, quota, and anti-dumping restrictions from developed countries
managed easy exports of textiles, service sectors, small and cottage industries, mine and minerals, and so on. These sectors
generated massive employment opportunities to literate and semi literate population. Globalization also helped multinational
chains to invest in developing countries. Globalization too had a positive effects on poverty minimizing, especially India,
china, whose rural population were living under savior poverty. Globalization accelerating migration from rural villages.
Neglecting rural and researched based education weakening prolific purpose of globalization as rural inhabitants, poor and illiterates are not involved in Globalization process.
Globalization is one of the major factors to crowd urban cities.
It helped some 60% of world migrants to live in developed countries. As per World bank figures - Almost 180,000
people are added to the urban population. (BBC Interactive map Urban Growth - Trace the past and future expansion of the world's biggest cities with
our interactive map).
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