Editor in Chief: Moh. Reza Huwaida Friday, March 29th, 2024

Regional Challenges of South Asia in Globalisation

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Regional Challenges of South Asia  in Globalisation

Broadly, there are three major sets of challenges ahead for the NAM countries in globalisation in the sphere of foreign policy, namely, meeting strategic challenges, and secondly, responding to the challenges of globalisation and managing critical issues such as human security, water, energy, environment, Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD), etc. and thirdly evolving a national consensus on what constitutes their national interest.
Background of regional relations
At present, the prevailing situation between India and Pakistan calls for an appropriate strategy to be shared by the civilian leadership on both sides-particularly by the civilian leaders of Pakistan, of finding a way of not letting Indo-Pak dialogue be held hostage by the Pak Army. On India’s part, the remedy lies in better management of internal security, awakening our sleeping intelligence network, providing them better equipments, giving teeth of anti–terror laws, and above all, political will to give the security agencies necessary autonomy in dealing with the terrorists along with making sincere efforts to address the genuine grievances of the Muslim community.
At the juncture, the international community should encourage the civilian rulers of Pakistan to take courage in their hands, stop being submissive to the Army’s mandate and open up avenues for mutually beneficial bilateral cooperation, in areas beyond the hard political disputes.  India has, therefore, adopted the strategy of not letting terrorism any chance to be a success on Indian territory.
Apart from Pakistan and China, building a strong and enduring partnership with other neighbours too has been a major continuing challenge for India. Without friendly neighbours, India cannot concentrate on socio-economic development, a major (preoccupation) of the Indian political leadership since independence. The country has been engaged in finding a sustainable basis for winning friendship of her neighbours and retaining its political primary in South Asia. Domestic transformations and turmoil in these countries have unfortunately complicated this task. Indian foreign policy establishment must therefore deliberate on how to facilitate stability in these countries and build up interdependent, which not only integrates economies, but also creates stake in each others prosperity and stability.
Challenges in Globalisation
We are living in the era of globalisation wherein liberalisation and privatisation rule the roost. Globalisation, in its different manifestations, has encapsulated almost all aspects of life in the present era. The traditional barriers of time and space have been compressed and the society has expanded its scope to corner the nations and the world. Men have become liberated from the fringes of local and national boundaries because of the amazing developments in the field of communication and information technology, which has digitised the modern world in the real sense.
Amartya Sen defines globalisation as a movement of ideas, people, technology and goods from one region to others benefiting the people at large. Stephen Gill defines globalisation as the reduction of transaction costs, of transborder movements of capital and goods, thus of factors of production and goods. While according to David Held, ‘Goods, capital, people, knowledge, communication and weapons as well as crime, pollutaints, fashions and beliefs rapidly move across territorial boundaries, far from this being a world of discrete civilisation, or simply an international society of states, it has become a fundamentally interconnected global order, marked by intense pattern of exchange as well as by other patterns of power, hierarchy and unevenness.  It advocates for a global village’, ‘global neighbourhood’ and a world without boundaries.
Globalisation releases enormous opportunities and challenges for developing countries like India. Liberalisation and privatisation are other component of globalisation. This trend is called LPG to which India started in 1991 under the pressure of World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) authorities. Introduction of several economic reforms under the process in India has created a mixed reaction. One reaction being that it is dynamic and development oriented and the other, that it is a destroyer of home economy.
Effects of globalisation
But coming to its implications for our foreign policy, globalisation poses two challenges: the first is how foreign policy can be best conducted to help India link itself with the outside world, with the world economy and those of the major powers. Globalisation has created many opportunities for us. A challenge of foreign policy is to take maximum advantages of these opportunities. This calls for effort to find expanded access to foreign funds for investment in India and enhancing the competitiveness of our economy by importing frontier area technologies. The performance of our diplomats should be judged by the extent to which they have facilitated our availing of these opportunities.
At the 15th Conference of Non-aligned Movement held in July, 2009, while specifying the causes and consequences of this crisis Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said at the NAM Summit, ‘The benefits and burdens of globalisation were so unfairly distributed, it would be even harder for the developing economies to cope with the crisis. And if the aftermath of the crisis is not carefully managed and if the abundance of liquidity leads to a revival of speculative activities, we may well see a period of prolonged stagflation.’ He added farther that this continuing slowdown will force more and more people from these nations back into poverty, bringing down levels of nutrition, health and education. Further the globe recession has strengthened protectionism in developed countries’ markets, drastically reduced developing nations exports and choked credit and capital flow to the Third World.  Evidently the developing nations are the worst sufferers of this recession and they immediately need greater resources as loans and further steps need to be taken to ensure foreign investment in the development of their infrastructure so that they may properly address social disaffection and enjoy fruits of development.
Globalisation also casts a dark shadow on the whole social fabric and due to this several forms of terrorism and insurgent activities are taking place. Proper multilateral negotiation among likeminded nations and stern action against terrorist is also an urgent task before India’s foreign policy. India stands on the top amongst the nations severely affected by the acts of terrorism of various kinds like state terrorism, state–sponsored terrorism and Naxalism. To defeat terrorist design, the government should make it public that no individual or group can ever stand upon nation’s security. All the political parties should have consensus opinion about national security and integrity. To win over the terrorists’ motives, the support and enthusiasm of all sections of society is the need of the day.

Dr. Rajkumar Singh is Professor and Head of P.G.Department of Political Science, BNMU, West Campus, P.G. Centre, Saharsa-852201. Bihar, India. Email- rajkumarsinghpg@yahoo.com

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