Table Of ContentThe Politics and Culture of Globalisation
The Politics and Culture
of Globalisation
India and Australia
Edited by
Hans Löfgren & Prakash Sarangi
Firstpublished2018
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Contents
1. Introduction: Dynamics and Dilemmas of Globalisation 1
Hans Löfgren and Prakash Sarangi
SECTION 1: MAKING SENSE OF GLOBALISATION
Introduction 19
2. Justice, Globalisation and Diverse Conceptual Worlds 21
Michael Leahy
3. Ontology of Permanence and Change: A Critique
of Globalisation 40
A. Raghuramaraju
4. Neo-liberal Hyperglobalism in Australian Political
Thought 56
Geoffrey Stokes
5. The Numerical Small: Casualty of Hyperglobalisation 77
Purushottama Bilimoria
SECTION 2: GOVERNANCE AND GLOBALISATION
Introduction 97
6. Globalisation and Indian Federalism: Re-assertion
of States’ Rights 99
Harihar Bhattacharyya
7. Challenges of Globalisation in Urban Local Governance 119
Sudha Mohan
vi Contents
8. Community Governance and Rural Regeneration
in a Globalised World 138
Kevin O’Toole
9. Chemicals and Pharmaceuticals in South India:
‘Sun Rise’ Industrialisation or Global Cost-shifting
of Dirty Goods Manufacturing 158
G.Vijay
10. India’s Drug Multinationals: Growth Strategies
and Global Industry Dynamics 181
Hans Löfgren
SECTION 3: EXPERIENCING GLOBALISATION
Introduction 199
11. ‘The Good Australians’: Anglo-Indians,
Multiculturalism and Cosmopolitanism 201
Glenn D’Cruz
12. Cosmopolitanism and Tolerance 220
Stan van Hooft
13. Late Marxism and Parliamentary Government:
Indian Communism Today 236
Geoff Robinson
SECTION 4: GLOBALISATION, FOREIGN
RELATIONS AND SECURITY
Introduction 259
14. Indo–Australian Relations in the Post-Cold War Period 261
Y. Yagama Reddy and J.D. Kenneth Boutin
15. Indo–Australian Relations: Beyond Indifference 277
Gary Smith
16. Terror, Power and Protest 295
Andrew Vandenberg
17. Globalisation, ‘Glocalisation’ and South Asian Insecurity 315
B. Ramesh Babu
List of Contributors 334
Index 336
Introduction
Dynamics and Dilemmas
of Globalisation
Hans Löfgren and Prakash Sarangi
Globalisation is an elusive and contested concept, yet one with
descriptive and intuitive plausibility.1 We experience the
economic and cultural dimensions of global interdependencies
everyday—whether in an Udipi restaurant in Chicago, or a Pizza
Hut in Hyderabad, or as consumers of Bollywood films in Australia.
We may dislike many aspects of globalisation, but to change it we
need to ‘analyse it in such a way as to clarify the manner in which
it can be changed’ (Sutcliffe 2002: 41). The aim of this volume is to
critically examine the dynamics and dilemmas of globalisation with
a particular focus on India and Australia. Its distinctive contribution
is to bring a juxtaposition of Indian and Australian perspectives to
bear on interpretations of globalisation and some of its specific
manifestations. It offers a broad-ranging interdisciplinary study that
confirms the unfolding of a profound, though indeterminate
transformation of governance.
THE AMBIGUITIES OF GLOBALISATION
The globalisation concept is a label often used for a wide range of
phenomena and is not a theory or explanation. Globalisation can
be conceived of as ‘the complex, emergent product of many different
forces operating on many scales’ (Jessop 2008: 179). As such,
globalisation does not point to an intrinsic logic that inexorably drives
societies along or towards a single path of economic and political
development. Admittedly, there is a correlation between the rise of
2 The Politics and Culture of Globalisation
globalisation since the 1980s and both neo-liberal public policy
and neo-liberalism as a doctrine of the free market. This doctrine
‘holds that the social good will be maximized by maximizing the
reach and frequency of market transactions, and it seeks to bring
all human action into the domain of the market’ (Harvey 2005a: 3).
Neo-liberalism was diffused universally in the period after the
collapse of communism, gaining influence not only in the countries
of Anglo-American capitalism and in the developing world, but
also in ‘coordinated market economies’ with a social democratic or
corporatist orientation, such as Germany and Sweden. Indeed, as
Perry Anderson sees it, no ‘systematic rival outlooks’ remained as
neo-liberalism emerged as ‘the most successful ideology in world
history’ (2000: 17). But the past decade has seen an upsurge of
doubt and critiques and a renewal of interest in state regulation.
Oppositional movements and alternative interpretations of globalisation
have proliferated. These alternative perspectives do not necessarily
reject globalisation, understood as global interconnectedness. Hardt
and Negri’s analysis of Empire (2000) is but one of a number of
oppositional interpretations of globalisation that point to globalisation’s
potentiality for human emancipation.
Neo-liberal policies have brought havoc to prior institutional
arrangements, notably the ‘embedded liberalism’ of Keynesianism
and social democracy. But resistance, and economic, social and
environmental crises, such as climate change, make the minimal
state of neo-liberal orthodoxy only one of a range of possible
outcomes, and a highly unstable one at that. That globalisation is
compatible with different governance arrangements is the premise
of the ‘models of capitalism’ literature (Hall & Soskice 2001). In
this perspective, notwithstanding a history of strong state promotion
of national development, Australia belongs today within the category
of ‘liberal market economies’, as distinct from the ‘coordinated’
systems of countries like Germany or Japan. India does not readily
fit into this categorisation, which is employed to capture the diversity
of advanced capitalism. If anything, India presents a unique though
unstable model of its own. It has experienced the strong inroad of
neo-liberalism since 1991, but this process is uneven, contested
and volatile.
Dynamics and Dilemmas of Globalisation 3
Many of the chapters in this volume critically interrogate the
neo-liberal form of globalisation; others examine the search for
alternative forms of governance. With social life infused by ‘the
global’, several contributors employ the notion of cosmopolitanism
as a framework for thinking about governance and political
community. In this perspective, human beings everywhere belong
‘to a single moral realm in which each person is equally worthy of
respect and consideration’ (Held 2003: 470).
In the neo-liberal perspective, there is little scope for alternative
social and economic arrangements, notwithstanding the centrality
of liberty and choice in its discourse. Nevertheless, Geoffrey Stokes
identifies a shift in the climate of ideas in Australia from a
widespread acceptance of the inevitability of neo-liberal globalisation
to a ‘discourse of doubt’. He points to growing anxiety within
economic, political and media elites that this form of globalisation
may be derailed. In India, elite apprehensions are of a different
complexion. Here the concern is with the impediments to the full-
scale implementation of neo-liberal restructuring. In particular, the
vibrancy of electoral politics and widespread poverty in the rural
hinterlands obstruct the consistent application of neo-liberal policy
prescriptions. The acute tensions and growing insecurities associated
with full-scale integration of India into the global capitalist system
are examined in the chapter by B. Ramesh Babu, which highlights
the failures of a state that is at the same time ‘too big’ and ‘too
small’. The vision of small government bears no relationship to the
historical–empirical reality of the Indian state almost twenty years
after the neo-liberal turn. Yet this state, according to Babu, remains
strikingly ineffective in dealing with a multitude of external and
domestic challenges.
The international debate on cosmopolitanism represents one
stream of the upsurge of interest in critical interpretations of
globalisation. Stan van Hooft in this volume explores the tensions
arising from a cosmopolitan ethics of universal morality and liberal
ideals of politics. If people everywhere have the same moral standing,
how can we tolerate practices in other cultures that we perceive as
contrary to our moral commitments? How do we know that such
disapproval does not shade into unwarranted interference and
