Fast transportation, telecommunications, radio, TV and finally the computers have reduced distances and brought the most distant countries and nations closer to each other.
The concept of globalisation became popular after the collapse of communism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. It is in fact the victory of capitalism and means trade without restrictions, free movement of capital and technology, and the operation of a completely free market economy.
Globalisation in the first place opens up new markets and provides opportunities for investment to industrialists and business persons. Thus if we make a rosy interpretation of this aspect of globalization, capital would flow from the developed countries like the USA, United Kingdom, France, Germany and Japan into the developing state like Bangladesh and ours, this capital plus the labour force available in these countries would make possible an industrial and agricultural revolution never heard earlier. But this does not happen.
The capital flows to the multinational companies having their branches in the developing countries and it is later used to purchase raw material at very low prices to send it to the developed countries.
Globalisation can work wonders in the industrial and commercial sense if the working classes in the developing countries are educated and trained with foreign capital and with the money of feudal lords and capitalists inside.
The effects of free trade have disturbed the developed parts of the world as well. Sometimes, in the future it may become possible that the developing world comes up to the level of the developed world sociologically, economically, and politically.
KOMAL ATA
Lahore
