The future needs global citizens equipped with global skills. The learning process for students should continue life long as it will give them the potential to join the global workforce, according to L. Prakash Sai from IIT Madras.
Delivering a talk on ‘Genesis of globalisation’ organised by the Department of Business Administration at PB Siddhartha College of Arts and Sciences on Tuesday, Prof. Sai pointed to the current state of ‘Slowbalisation’, a slowdown of the global economy and said trade experts were hopeful that it was only a temporary phase.
Taking the students through a brief history of globalisation, he referred to the recent discovery at Botswana suggesting that all humans alive today were descended from people living in Southern Africa, two lakh years ago, from where the earliest humans migrated to different places in the world. He then spoke about the ‘early’ preachers who brought people together using religion, a belief system as a force to make people subscribe to one system and how Buddhism originated as the first religion in India before reaching Japan and China.
Then came on the scene great explorers like Vasco da Gama, Christopher Columbus, Ferdinand Magellan and John Cabot. “Vasco da Gama circumnavigated Africa and tried to discover a trade route to India which was known for its world class products like pepper, spices and textiles,” said Prof. Sai.
Columbus lost the way to India and discovered a continent -- The United States of America. But he did not know what it was. He assumed North America to be India. “At that time (1600-1700) India and China together controlled more than two thirds of the global GDP and Europeans were interested in finding trade routes to the two countries,” he said
Prof. Sai went on to explain how imperialism impoverished colonies like India. “We missed many Industrial Revolution opportunities because the British rulers never allowed India to develop technologically. It wanted to keep India as a supplier of raw material so it could exploit the situation and supply finished goods.”
Trade blocs
Speaking about trade blocs, Prof. Sai referred to what he called “new impediments for countries to come together at the cost of the World Trade Organisation. “We seem to be moving towards regionalism and nationalism in a big way. “Things are moving at a slower pace, a condition coined as ‘Slowbalisation’,” he said.
Dean (Academics and Administration) Rajesh C. Jampala and other faculty members were present.
