India Globalization 

Over the years India has given countries around the world a run for their money, and a reason to take notice. One of the main areas that the world has been baffled by is India’s economic rate that has been rapidly growing over the years. Although it is considered to be a developing country, it has shown both political and economic growth over the last fifty years. One thing is pretty clear; there is more growth to come. India is located in south Asia. Geographically, India is bordered by Pakistan in the west, China and Nepal in the north to north east, Bhutan in the north east and Burma in the west. We can continue to boast about India’s inspirational advancements but with all great things there are still quite a few areas where improvement is needed.

The path to independence in India has not been an easy one largely due to colonization of the British. Even after the country gained its independence India has fallen victim to being largely influenced by their colonizers for the last six decades. The British’s invasion of the country has led to the battles that many Indians face economically, politically, culturally, and socially. The impacts of the colonizers continue to play a huge role in the country today. As a whole India has been able to grow and develop substantially since its independence in the economic realm. This is due to the globalization process which has been implemented into India since the 1990s while many countries have had their fair share of animosity towards integration the same cannot be said about India. It is one of the states to have gained greatly after the introduction of globalization.

In the country there is the issue of the government having trouble with enforcing laws within its country which falls under the characteristic of legitimacy. This means that the people of that territory gives the government the right to govern and they are accepted by the citizens. The regulations that are placed into the states are not being fully being enforced with some being selectively enforced. With some laws being completely unnecessary such as the Telegraph Wires Act of 1950 which makes it a criminal offense for a person to have a 2.43mm-3.52mm diameter copper wire. This law is viewed by many as ridiculous and a waste of time and manpower especially since the telegraph service has been closed since 2013. The need to repeal obsolete laws is necessary to allow some state capacity to be freed.

As of 2018, India has been placed as the 72nd in the Fund for Peace stability index. One of the many failures that the province has is its weakness of government institutions and is seen from its federal level to local government. There has been a project to change these circumstances through the CASI research by bringing more analytical rigor and enlarging parameters of debates. These debates are meant to balance India’s economy and society since both have changed tremendously over the last decade. The CASI began the project in 2013 with the Centre for Policy Research and UPIASI the conference was used to focus primarily on key federal public institutions.

When it comes to natural resources India has and abundant supply of iron ore and ferroalloys, along with copper, bauxite with a large supply of limestone, dolomite, rock phosphate, and building block just to name a few. India is the 17th largest export economy in the world, as of 2016 the country has exported 261 billion dollars and imported 3396 billion dollars. Diamonds, refined petroleum, packaged medicaments, jewelry, and cars are among the top exports in the state. Diamonds represent 11.2% of the total exports of India and 8.7% is represented by refined petroleum (OEC , 2016). The top destinations for the exports are mainly the United States, the United Arab Emirates, Hong Kong, China, and the United Kingdom. The United States being among the largest with a total of 45 billion dollars while the United Kingdom being the lowest with a total of 8 billion dollars. The top imports are crude petroleum, gold, diamonds, coal briquettes, and telephones (OEC , 2016). Imports usually come from China, the United States, the Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and Switzerland (OEC , 2016).

The economic growth that the country has gained since its independence is due largely to globalization. The tool has been credited for creating an increase in employment, increase in compensation, enhancements of living standards and increased purchasing power, and the empowerment of Indian Youth (Bhattacharjee, 2010). With a large amount of the development toward globalization being outsourced IT and business processing outsourcing services which is largely popular with the United States and Europe. The increase of employment in the country is due to countries such as the United States and the United Kingdom using the cheap labor provided in India outsource their work to Indian companies (Cassim, 2015 ). Although many may consider the benefits gained by globalization to be profound there are also some draw backs of it that affect the country. One being that the workers in the country is getting taken advantage of by western countries that pay them for cheap labor and do not give them the rightful benefits.

As of 2017 India’s GDP valued in at 2.6 trillion dollars. This total represents 4.19 present of the world economy with a GNI of about 6,000 dollars (India GDP, 2018). During the 1960s the average GDP in India was 545.51 billion dollars, and in 2017 it raised to the highest point of 2597.49 billion dollars (India GDP, 2018). Those amounts are a far cry from its lowest point of 36.54 billion in 1960. The country is the ninth largest in the world and the third-largest by PPP. In 2014 it replaced China as the world’s fastest growing economy. Trends that played a large role in the economic growth are its young population, low dependency ratio, healthy savings, and investment rates, and increasing integration into the global economy (India GDP, 2018)

The introduction of the Indian Income Tax Act of 1922 has made income inequality within the state at an all-time high. According to Muthukumar the top one percent of income earners is making 22 percent of the total income in India; this is the highest it has ever been. From 1951-1980 the income gap between the poor and the wealthy seemed to be shrinking but it fell apart during the 1980s and 2014 (Phukan, 2017). The current GINI for India is estimated to be close to 0.50. The current population of the country is 1.35 billion, which has doubled in size in the span of 40 years (Phukan, 2017). It is world’s 7th largest country by area and the second most populous country falling slightly behind China. The main source of the state’s continuous growth is a result of the birth rate being remarkably higher than the death rates. Trends such as; early marriage, poverty and illiteracy, age old cultural norm and illegal migration has played roles in the high birth rate and population growth. According to the HDR more than half the population older than the age of 15 is employed and has been ranked 131 with a life expectancy of about 68 years old (India GDP, 2018).

In India there is a two-way relationship between economic growth and institutions. The role that institutions play in a country is to promote and sustain long-run development they perform a number of task that affect efficiency and equity objectives. One of those task are creating markets this is done by protecting property rights, guaranteeing sanctity of contract, and providing law and order. They also regulate and substitute for markets which can occur during market failure or other social objectives. In other words market such as banks and other financial institutions are regulated to ensure that they do not take on excessive risk which can cause costly bank runs or collapse. Institutions also stabilize markets by ensuring low inflation and macroeconomics stability and avoid financial crises (Subramanian, 2007).

India’s government is considered a parliamentary democracy the state is ran by both a President who acts as the Head of State and Prime Minister who’s role is the Chief Executive. The government is similar to that of the United States being that it is divided into three branches known as the legislative, executive, and judicial branch (India: Government, 2018). This system was adopted in 1950 after gaining their independence from Britain. Speaking of government one of the main areas that the country struggles with is corruption. Other struggles that the country is currently facing are illiteracy, sanitation, poverty and women’s safety.

Overall, in the span of 60 years India has grown remarkably being influenced by the British government has played a large part in how the system is today. Economically the country seems to be doing great on paper but when you dig deeper the country is still facing underlying issues that need to be worked on. Something that might take some time to establish is how they chose to handle these matters. On the bright side the country is still fairly young and has overcome many obstacles that states much older are still trying to grapple with and there is still growth to be made.

Although India is able to handle extremely difficult task, it seems as if the country struggles to execute relatively simple ones. While India has no trouble organizing elections for 850 million voters, conduct a census for over 1 billion people, and effectively run space programs, it unfortunately has failed to provide basic services to their people. Matters plaguing the country vary from health to education and water to sanitation. High levels of corruption can be blamed for these shortcomings but an equal amount of the blame can be found in the lack of competence for policy design and formation level, along with the inability of successfully implementing these policies. These outcomes have made it remarkably clear that India is struggling to perform even the most basic requirements of a sovereign state.

The caste system is one of the world’s oldest forms of social stratifications. It is a system that divides Hindus into hierarchical groups widely based on their karma or work, and dharma or religion. It divides Hindus into four main categories: the Brahmins who are the top of the hierarchy usually teachers and intellectuals, Kshatriyas are the warriors and rulers, Vaishya are the traders and the Saundra’s who are workers who do menial jobs (BBC News, 2017).Hindu society is stratified with a large sub-population or untouchables who are excluded from the system entirely and as a rule individuals must marry into their own caste. This has been a rule that has been followed for over 2,000 years (Munshi, 2016). In India, the caste plays a large role in the country’s economic life in areas such as school, university, the labor market, and long into old age. It influences many aspects of the state that reach beyond the private economic sectors and deep into the public sphere, where the caste determines the way that public resources are distributed. The belief itself has also played a large role by exploiting the opportunities that became available in a globalizing economy (Munshi, 2016).

The position that someone finds themselves in the caste strongly affects every aspect of that person’s life. It determines what school he will have access to, the treatment he receives from teachers and fellow classmates. His position will determine what type of benefits he will receive to continue his education into young adulthood and if he will be able to work government affiliated jobs. These social aspects will follow him for the rest of his life, and may provide him with insurance against income struggles and other downfalls way into his old age. The outcome of the caste goes deeper than the private economic activity, political parties target public resources to particular caste to gain their votes, and caste politics trickle down to the local level (Munshi, 2016). Thus continuing corruption and the large amount of incompetence found in the government and the inadequate amount of workers needed to fill the public sector in India.

Ethnic conflict also plays a large part in India’s government; the country itself has more ethnic groups than most other states around the world. There are eight major religions, 15 languages in 22 states, and 9 union territories along with a considerable number of tribes and sects. The most popular conflicts to date are that of the Assam, Punjab and the religious conflict between the Hindus and Muslims. The issue among the Assam is mostly ethnic related, while the Punjab is based both on religious and regional conflicts. In the case of the Assam conflict there have been an immense number of killings mostly as a result of mob violence that has claimed a total of 4,000 lives and has left close to 200,000 people homeless with many leaving the state to find protection elsewhere.

Three culturally diverse groups have been the cause of bloodshed in Assam: the Assamese who make up the largest portion of the population, the Bengalis and the tribal. Although the Assamese has had the largest population growth in India immigrants from Bangladesh known as the Bengali have dominated the cultural impact in the country. Their dominance has manifested in several ways through their professions, their languages which has become more developed and widely used in Assam, and their educational and numerical abilities which is far more superior than the Assamese (Ashutosh, 2018).

All of these factors have caused hatred to come from the Assam towards the Bengali and the rise of tension between the two. With there being a struggle for jobs, land scarcity, and population, the influx have intensified the historical differences between the Assamese and Bengali’s into ethnic violence with the Assam people fearing that they will become politically swamped by the Bengali’s presence in the state. These circumstances have led to underdevelopment in the area and slow economic growth. There are a few ways that this conflict can be overcome, one of them being decentralizing the power to states and to attempt to improve the educational attainment and economic level of Muslims (Ashutosh, 2018).

State capacity is one of the defining characteristics of any political system; it’s the ability for a country to satisfy the state’s most important needs such as survival, protection of citizens, economic prosperity and stability, effective governance, territorial integrity, and power. Although India as a whole has grown economically, there is still a large gap between its citizens that make it difficult for the government to effectively exert its control over the territory. These issues are caused by corruption from the elite and the caste system; both of these issues are intertwined. The government as a whole has faced many drawbacks due to its underwhelming ability to handle small, common, state problems.

For centuries the British Empire led the theme in the modern history of colonialism. With its conquest into the unknown and the Industrial Revolution the country invaded 90% of the globe. The invasion included India and many other countries. During the early seventeenth century Britain’s interference in India caused a slew of difficulties in the social, political, cultural and economic growth. This interference is something that continues to affect the country into the 21st century. The impact that globalization has had on India is credited for allowing the country to receive its title as one of the economic giants of the world. It has played a significant role in the competitive world that integrates and mobilizes cultural values of the people on a larger scale and has positively influenced the state on cultural, social, monetary, political, and communal life. After a tough journey with the license raj the country has been able to separate itself from pass downfalls in less than 30 years and seems to be on a continuous road towards development largely due to globalization.

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