• No discussion on social change in the twenty-first century is complete without reference to globalisation.

• Globalisation and liberalisation have been discussed earlier in relation to rural society, Indian government’s policies, and visions for global cities.

• The term globalisation is commonly encountered in newspapers, television, and daily conversations.

• There is no single definition of globalisation; different disciplines focus on different aspects – economics on capital flows, political science on the role of governments.

• The process is so far-reaching that disciplines borrow from each other to study its causes and consequences.

• Sociology uses the sociological imagination to connect individual and society, micro and macro, local and global.

• Questions include how peasants in remote villages are affected, how it impacts middle-class employment, how Indian corporations become transnationals, effects on local grocers from foreign retail entry, the spread of shopping malls, and changes in youth leisure activities.

• With market opening and removal of import restrictions (since April 1, 2001, all quantitative restrictions withdrawn), foreign products like Chinese pears and Australian apples are common.

• The same policy changes benefit urban affluent consumers but may cause livelihood crises for farmers.

• Macro policy changes have increased television channels from one to many; media change is a visible impact of globalisation.

• Sociological imagination connects personal lives to global policies.

• Sociologists can no longer study society as isolated due to compression of space and time; they must consider global interconnections.

• Studies must assess impacts such as WTO rules on agriculture affecting farmers.

• Globalisation affects everyone but differently; it may mean opportunity for some and livelihood loss for others.

• Examples of livelihood loss include Bihar silk spinners losing jobs due to Chinese and Korean silk yarn, fishing communities affected by large foreign vessels, Gujarat gum collectors displaced by Sudanese gum imports, and rag pickers losing work due to imported waste paper.

• Globalisation is socially significant but impacts are sharply divided; some see it as a path to progress, others see worsening inequality.

• Some argue globalisation is not new, prompting examination of India’s historical global interconnections and whether modern globalisation has distinctive features.

Are Global Interconnections New to World and to India

The Early Years

• If globalisation is about global interconnections, we can question whether it is truly a new phenomenon.

• India and other parts of the world have interacted for centuries.

• Even two thousand years ago, India was not isolated from the world.

• The Silk Route connected India to China, Persia, Egypt, and Rome centuries ago.

• Throughout history, people came to India as traders, conquerors, and migrants seeking new lands, settling here.

• In many remote Indian villages, people recall ancestral origins from other places.

• Global interactions and a global outlook are not unique to the modern period or modern India.

Colonialism and the Global Connection

• The story of social and economic development in modern India begins from the colonial period.

• Modern capitalism had a global dimension from its inception.

• Colonialism was part of a system requiring new sources of capital, raw materials, energy, markets, and a global network to sustain it.

• Globalisation today often highlights large-scale migration as a defining feature.

• The greatest movement of people was the migration of Europeans who settled in the Americas and Australia.

• Indentured labourers from India were taken by ships to work in Asia, Africa, and the Americas.

• The slave trade forcibly transported thousands of Africans to distant shores.