It is heartening to observe a movement away from the glib posturing for or against the process of globalisation. It is, after all, a very complex process affecting very many things in different and unexpected ways. It is increasingly being accepted that much of the benefits of globalisation depend on how it is handled. The responses of the ‘entrenched interests’ play a dominant role as the experience from countries as disparate as Russia and Ghana shows us. We can ignore these examples only at our peril.

India now has the experience of almost 15-16 years of ‘officially accepted’ globalisation. However, in the pre-1991 period, India did engage with globalisation, although it was not regarded as such. The first time this happened was during the Green Revolution. As the scarcity of food grew by the mid-sixties and prices rose sharply, the Government of India had to think up new strategies. One way was to seek a technology upgrade and this meant looking at the advanced economies. India did not have the required knowhow and therefore the technical skills and high-yielding varieties had to be imported from the advanced, “capitalist” economies. The government decided to allow seeds to be imported. The West helped us because it was widely believed then that if the food situation in India worsened, there was the distinct possibility of a communist revolution. The ‘real’ revolution, in fact, was the rise in food production and improvement in the conditions of some, if not all, farmers. When some of us now oppose the import of seeds and technology, it would do us good to remember the Green Revolution experience.

... contd.