What do you think globalization has done to you? How do you think it has affected you? And when did you start thinking that globalization is effective to you?
The gateway to international trade has brought about a lot of economic good in various parts of the world. The standard of living has improved and so did the access to knowledge. While people in the west may regard working in Nike factories as a low-standard job, people in the developing world may feel that working in a factory is much better than working on a farm.

Globalization is the sole reason as to why many of the Indians follow the west and the west (not many but a few), try to follow some Indian concepts. The exports and imports have gone to such an extent that different countries exchange various consumer products and hence benefiting these countries by providing access to such commodities. But did globalization have a mask behind its benefits?

Yes, it did! Globalization has become synonymous to progress in the developed nations, but once upon a time, the same benefits have not been promised in the developing countries. Despite of the promises made in reducing poverty, it led to a counter-effect in these nations. There was a risk of dire poverty where people lived in less than a dollar a day in many of these Third World nations. Some of the major examples can be Africa, Asia and Latin America. Africa, drowning in the lake of poverty even endured the scourge of AIDS. The standard of living began to sink along with their incomes. The crisis faced by Asia and Latin America shattered the stability of the developing nations as well as the economies. The Asian crisis in 1997 and 1998, became the issue of concern in various world economies. Followed by this was a contrast between Russia and China, where Russia faced a unique upsurge in poverty while China faced a decrease in the same aspect.

 

The Western countries, especially US being the major culprit, influenced the poor countries to remove the trade barriers while maintaining their own barriers which constrained the developing nations from exporting their products thus diminishing their hopes of improving their economy. Joseph Stiglitz, a well renowned American economist and professor, fought against this hypocrisy but did not succeed. Later on, the West began to crave for an uneven share of benefits, at the cost of the developing worlds.

The Uruguay Round, which led to the development of the WTO and which came into effect in 1995, cracked its brain involving the case of the cost of drugs in various countries, and made an “excellent” decision which stated that the profits of the Western drug companies would go up but the profits made by the developing countries would be less. This was done to ensure that the West made enough profits for the purpose of innovation it seems and this resulted in the deaths of many other governments and individuals since they were not able to afford these drugs. However, with the advent of an international outrage regarding AIDS, these drug companies lowered their prices towards the end of 2001. But facts stated that the Uruguay Round surprisingly, reflected the interests of the producers rather than the consumers. Joseph Stiglitz has stated in his conclusion of this extract-“To understand what went wrong, it’s important to look at the three main institutions that govern globalization: the IMF, the World Bank, and the WTO.”I felt the purpose of writing this summary based on Joseph Stiglitz’s extract ‘globalization’, because it is important to know what was globalization in the beginning.

However, in the present scenario, globalization seems to be integral and we find globalization everywhere and in everything. It has led to many developments and majority of the countries enjoy its benefits. A breakdown in the globalization process may even lead to nothingness in many economies because globalization can never be extinguished. Hoping for a betterment in its process rather than its disintegration is all we can pray for!