The fallacies of globalization: Development or underdevelopment in India?

Abstract

AbstractGlobalization heralded the world economy in the 1980s, even though its policy prescriptions were laid out more broadly by neoliberal theorists in the 1960s and 1970s. Globalization endorsed the neoliberal policies of free trade and the free market economy as a counter‐narrative to the growing resurgence of the models of “social democracy” in the post‐Second World War period. This article seeks to unravel the inequalities and inequities brought in by the policies of globalization through the prisms of the Indian experience. Through a thorough analysis of the human development index (HDI) indicators, we can only agree with dependency theorists like Andre Gunder Frank and Immanuel Wallerstein that globalization has accentuated the miseries and underdevelopment of a developing country like India. It has exacerbated the class differences between the rich and the poor and deepened poverty, inequality, and unemployment in India.