The Hindu Business Line : A global passion

Even as they celebrate Valentine's Day, Keralites must begin to engage with the other icons of globalisation as well, be they living realities or mere symbols.

READERS of this column are unlikely to be the sort to rush off to buy candy, flowers and cards to celebrate last weekend's ode to a martyred Catholic saint who served during the third century in Rome and has now become the global symbol of love and companionship.

Yet, as astute followers of contemporary Kerala affairs, they cannot but marvel at the amazing way in which all manner of people - from dyed-in-the-wool leftists to hardened nationalists - have rushed to embrace the celebration of a day that is as alien to Kerala as, say, snow. However, the objective of this column is not to be moralistic, but rather to be humanistic and objective.

Even ardent critics of soft drinks manufacturers and the vaguely defined process of "globalisation" have been quick to accept and glorify Valentine's Day, which is the second most celebrated day in the United States, after December 25. Several local newspapers have splashed photographs of couples posed against the setting sun, as a tribute to the attraction of the patron saint of lovers.

The Valentine's Day brouhaha reflects both the cultural power of globalisation and the inescapable irony of the ambiguous manner in which sections of Kerala's opinion makers seek to engage in the process of globalisation. Colas? No. Multinationals? No. A disciplined work ethic? No. Valentine's Day? Yes.

While there is certainly nothing wrong in being pluralistic enough to accept diverse cultural practices - as Kerala has done for centuries - an overemphasis on "soft" symbols of globalisation does little to integrate the State with the world at large.

To put matters in perspective, consider the recent plea by the charitable organization Oxfam asking Canadians not to express their love this Valentine's Day at the expense of the dignity of Colombian workers. Oxfam says people should tell their florists they want products that were bought at a fair price, adding that Colombian flower pickers and packers - mostly women - are being squeezed by globalisation.

"Globalisation has created new jobs for women, but more often they work 12-hour days in poor conditions without job security or sick leave and still don't earn enough to feed their families," Rieky Stuart, Executive Director of Oxfam Canada, said in a statement.

Why is it that the pious souls who scream blue murder at the very mention of reforms in the work culture of Kerala's public sector have no qualms in accepting a practice that arguably disentitles workers?

Any attempt to answer that query must necessarily grapple with the multifarious manifestations of globalisation. As an expansive interconnectivity of localities that span sites of everyday social, economic, cultural and political life, globalisation is a force that has been growing since the days of Chandragupta Maurya. And Kerala, as any "Gulf Malayalee" will vouch for, has long engaged with the process of integration of the world's economies in a sustained, though perhaps half-hearted, fashion.

Perhaps one fear of globalisation that Keralites harbour can be traced to this view of economist Charles Kindleberger who, as far back as 1969, noted that "the nation state is just about through as an economic unit. It is too easy to get two-hundred-thousand-ton tankers or airbuses, which eventually will not permit the sovereign independence of the nation-state in economic affairs."

However, as events have since proved, that fear seems to have been largely unfounded, especially in the case of regions that boast politically and economically successful redistributive policies like Nordic social democracy, East Asian land reforms and Kerala's egalitarian distribution of health and nutrition services.

The common place tendency to pose globalisation and egalitarianism as two opposites may well be wrong. Thus, even as they celebrate Valentine's Day, Keralites must surely begin to engage with the other icons of globalisation as well, be they living realities or mere symbols.

Only such a creative engagement will lead to a policy mix that allows Kerala to advance the objectives of poverty alleviation and economic security under conditions of freer movement of capital, goods, people and information.

The writer can be contacted at kg@tug.org.in

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