COLONISATION AND IMPERIALISM – THIS TIME IN THE NAME OF GLOBALISATION!

For Some time now, the western countries have been showing keen interest in the emerging markets of Asia, to name a few India, China, Korea etc. Corporate bodies of the west have been setting up their offices in India, China and other Asian countries. These Asian countries which were considered as third world, usually mocked by westerners as slums are gaining importance. In order to survive and grow these powerful Multinationals of the west have been expanding all over the world to survive and grow. They have been making their presence in the emerging Asian markets looking at the potential of these markets and the rapid economic developments. They know very well that these emerging economies are hidden treasures which can serve as a huge market for their goods and services. Now recently, the damn fall out of the European and American financial supremacy further intensified the process of these corporate to make their presence in these Asian countries.

All credit goes to the saturated western market; the western market has the capacity absorb any amount of production of goods and services. Because westerners have the habit of changing the goods as they become old and they also accept new technologies as soon as they arrive. So this is what makes the market keep going, but now after the collapse of the European and American financial system followed by recession, the purchasing power has come down in these western countries and the entry of these big corporations to enter into the third world markets has become inevitable. Now the point is, these big corporations are looking for markets all over the world to dump their excess production of goods and to survive in the highly competitive markets.

Now let’s have a look at the colonization period, during the industrial revolution there was an excess production of goods in the west, these western countries in order to keep their economy and big corporations alive started to explore new markets in the other parts of the world like Asia and Africa. They first entered into these third world countries as traders to sell their goods and later started to colonize these countries, finally they established their rule over these countries successfully. They dumped such goods in these markets which are not very much needed for human existence, but they created demand for these goods, like perfumes, hard drinks, clothes etc, in exchange they exported food items, costly spices, gold, diamond, rubies, emerald etc to their countries. so in this way they drained the wealth of these third countries which were not actually third world, but the people of these countries did not know how to make money out of these precious treasures hidden in their own countries, further the imperialistic greed did not end there, after almost capturing all parts of the world and colonizing them, they started to invade other colonies controlled by other powerful nations. This led to world wars. At those times colonization and imperialism took place with the help of military force.

And now we are back to the same era, this time in the name of globalization, with the help of financial might. With the help of west controlled international organizations like WTO, IMF , World Bank etc, these western countries have managed and forced many third world to become an open economy and these countries have already opened their markets for western companies in the name of creating employment and bringing prosperity. But the point is, they are companies, whose primary objective is profits, they are here to exploit the potential of this market (1.3 billion population), and not to do any social service. These companies would change their policies and strategies according to their business interests and not in any nation’s interest and they sometimes lead countries’ economies into deep trouble. For example the BPOs which have employed a huge amount of work force in our country, May any time pull out from India, as US president is completely against outsourcing and wants to bring back those jobs to America, if these thousands of BPO employees would be left jobless, this would lead to a big economic instability, how would they pay their huge home loan EMIs and personal loans (remember Sub prime market of the US). The American President recently quoted ‘He was more interested to create jobs in Buffalo, USA than in Bangalore, India.

So these Asian countries have already taken staggering amount of loans and aides from these west backed international organization like WTO, World bank etc, which cannot be repaid in the near future, this means these countries are already in the clutches of these western countries which indirectly control these Asian economies with their financial might and these western corporations have already colonized these Asian and African countries in the name of globalization. Though it has benefited some people at the top of the pyramid, nothing has changed in the life of a common people of these countries. Even the bull drive in our Sensex is not a real one, which has been supported by these FDIs and FIIs, the sensex would crash like hell once these FDIs and FIIs pull out from our country, as it happened a few months ago. The state of our stock market became pathetic once the meltdown shook the western financial system. We are back to the age of Imperialism and Colonization, this time in the name of Globalization. Once this gets out of control, a third world war may become inevitable. Thanks to capitalism and its supporters.