Why is that no matter where you travel in the world, there’s several Starbucks (SBUX) locations, four McDonald’s, and a Taco Bell Cantina. Well, after hundreds of years of technological advancements, as well as collaboration between nations, these businesses have slowly made their way around the planet. As for the methodology behind this comforting, yet homogenous undertaking, this is called globalization. According to the Peterson Institute For International Economics, globalization is the word used to describe “growing interdependence of the world’s economies, cultures, and populations, brought about by cross-border trade in goods and services, technology, and flows of investment, people, and information.”
Basically, following the invention of modern transportation, countries began trading cultural resources, businesses, ideas, and languages almost like Pokemon cards. Slowly, these cooperative arrangements formed life as we’ve all come to know it, resulting in familiar shops and brands available nearly everywhere in the world. However, in the early stages of globalization, despite countries playing nice with one another, some nations wanted more power and more resources.
“…If we could get a freer flow of trade — freer in the sense of fewer discriminations and obstructions — so that one country would not be deadly jealous of another and the living standards of all countries might rise, thereby eliminating the economic dissatisfaction that breeds war, we might have a reasonable chance for lasting peace.”
–Cordell Hull, Secretary of State under President Franklin D. Roosevelt
In our pursuit of global advancement, nations with greater resources failed to lift up nations withering in poverty, and this has only gotten worse over time. It is for this reason that we have countries like the U.S., China, Russia, European Union, Brazil, and coming in at the last second, the Nation of India.
Take a trip to India and you’ll see a country with beautiful people, incredible architecture, a cultural paradise. But if you look closer you’ll see remnants of the harmful caste system still very much at play. Thousands of years ago, Hindus were divided into hierarchical groups based on their karma (work) and dharma (religion). For centuries, the caste system dictated every aspect of an individual’s life, with rural communities at the bottom, and the wealthy at the top.
Though they are not proud to admit it, India still has lasting effects of this stratifying system, and we can see that based on the country’s economic present, as well as its future. Analysts believe that India possesses great entrepreneurial potential for several reasons, namely because of its massive tech support industry which has assisted consumers with product-related issued for two decades. In his newest book, James Crabtree, argues that India presently faces a triple threat of “inequality and the new super-rich, crony capitalism, and the travails of the industrial economy.”
In his writing, Crabtree speaks about India’s government and its history of failing to serve the entirety of the nation by providing greater access and support to the wealthy. In addition to the Indian government’s struggles with increasing output capacity, our old friend globalization has played a significant role in the subjugation of the future of India. For quite some time there was massive interest in developing India as the next Silicon Valley and in that time, India expressed openness to the idea.
Enter globalization, which has seen India become
“When I lived in in Mumbai, there was a big tech investment wave in the after wave of the Alibaba IPO. There were these great hopes that India would follow the sort of hockey stick growth” seen in China. Yet, the country’s demographics don’t back that up. India has a tiny middle class — 10-20 million using a reasonable definition of the term “middle class.” That group is simply not large enough to support the valuation dreams underpinning some of India’s most-discussed unicorns. Growing users is really easy, but growing revenues is just much more challenging.”
–James Crabtree, Financial Times
