The Hindu Business Line : 'Globalisation has slowed growth'

GLOBALISATION has not led to a dramatic increase in economic growth as its advocates claimed it would, and indeed has been associated with a slowing of growth in many countries except India and China. More crucially, globalisation has been associated with an increase in economic instability and a greater incidence of economic crisis, according to the findings of the International Labour Organisation (ILO).

The ILO on Friday released a report titled `Economic security for a better world.' According to the findings of the report, for which data has been collected for five years from over 90 countries covering 86 per cent of the global population, standard measures like Gini Coefficient do not adequately capture the trends of income distribution because the rich have become richer and the poor have become poorer and the middle income group have retained roughly the same share of national income across the regions of the world even after the process of globalisation has taken off.

The Director of ILO Programme on Economic Security, Mr Guy Standing, while releasing the report said that the two most important concerns about labour related security at present are income security and representation security.

"Old forms of trade unions are not able to address the problems of the 21st century citizens and new forms of representations are needed to address the issues," he said.

The report has found out that political democracy and a trend towards civil liberties significantly increase economic security and that Government spending on social security policies also have a positive effect. But measured over a longer time frame, economic growth has a weak impact on security, it says.

The report also points out that about 73 per cent of all workers live in circumstances of economic insecurity while only 8 per cent live in countries where societies provide greater economic security.