Preface by Kishen Pattnayak

The Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam stands for another kind of globalisation, one that is permeated by all-round democracy. As I write this small note a few weeks before the 2004 World Social Forum I am gripped by the question if the WSF so far has contributed efficiently to shaping the conceptual and agitational tools to resist the existing globalisation that has weakened the whatsoever roots of democracy that had been nurtured in the past centuries.

Globalisation weakens democracy by destroying the cultural-economic viability of the autonomous communities at the base. In South Asian countries rural communities as well as the national community had an autonomous existence economically and culturally. (At the national level it is called sovereignty). It is on the basis of these autonomous communities that democracy could be structured in one country or region, even if other countries remained non-democratic. Autonomy creates a miniscule universe in which the individual gets the sense of being a prime mover of that universe, whereas in a larger universe he or she may get lost not knowing how to assert.

Technology determines economic policy. As the technologies become very ‘high’ the resources and activities come under international control (not even national control). The individual, unless he or she is a member or the global elite, is reduced to the status of a receiver, a consumer, depending on purchasing power.

Market globalisation has been made possible with the help of technologies that conquer distance and require unprecedented large investment that developing nations cannot afford even in terms of loans. This has made grassroots autonomy and national sovereignty redundant from the economic point of view.

The role of technology in depriving poorer countries of their control over the economy is hardly debated among centre-left intellectuals. It is not realised at all that the campaign against economic imperialism presupposes a technological revolution. This is also the dilemma that cripples those who come to power in South American countries after defeating the United States supported regimes. They won’t be able to basically change the economic policies of the earlier regimes, like heavy dependence on exports, continuing the state of indebtedness, destroying the Amazon for expanding soya been farms, and pursuing the goal of unlimited growth.

Kishen Pattnayak

Senior ideologue of socialist movement, India

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