Page 282 - DSOC201_SOCIAL_STRUCTURE_AND_SOCIAL_CHANGE_ENGLISH

Unit 12: Processes of Change

• No choice of crop for cultivation and selling of their product. Notes
• No space to bargain for better wages.
• More dependency on landowners for credit, that also by interlinking with their labour services
and product with varying interest rates.
In the education sector, the new Policy Framework for Reforms in Education drafted by the committee
headed by Mukesh Ambani and Kumarmangalam Birla seeks to drive privatization and introduce
commercialization of higher education on the pattern of USA. The pay seats in the educational
institutions are fortifying the class basis of education. The poorer sections of the society, especially
the dalits and the tribals along with the minorities, are going to be the biggest losers. The quality
education, especially higher education, is increasingly becoming unaffordable for these sections of
the society. The advent of globalization is also bringing about a new value system and encroaching
upon the cultural values of these sections.
Tribal population of the country shares a number of features of the impact of globalization with the
dalits. This is mainly because of the reason that both these segments have been and still are the
deprived and marginalised populations. As with dalits, the systematic cuts in welfare expenditure,
the privatization of public sector, drop in investment in agriculture, dismantling of the public
distribution system, etc have also hit the tribals very hard. In the name of ‘development’, tribal people
are being driven off their lands, their forests are being submerged, their sources of income are being
sapped, and they are thus being virtually pushed to death.
The entry of Multi National Companies into industrial mining and commercialization of forest products
are likely to increase inequalities of income and consumption between regions and peoples. The new
agricultural policy enunciated by the government is capital intensive; improved seeds, pesticides
and fertilizers are costly and subsidies are being with drawn. There is also encouragement for
mechanized farming. This is harmful to the tribal interests. Globalization policies threaten to disturb
the bio-diversity of forest areas preserved for millennia by the tribal communities. The MNCs are
going to steal the gene resources of plants, herbs and trees or seeds. They will claim intellectual
property rights on those items, which are under the nature and control of the tribal people.
Globalization is also promoting over-consumption of industrial and consumer goods, thus changing
the life style of the tribal and other deprived people to their disadvantage. Disruption of traditional
crafts and small-scale industries is predictable as capital efficiency factor is throwing out small-scale
units. There will be more unemployment as traditional labour intensive small-scale industries will be
displaced by new technologies.
The impact of globalization on the Scheduled Areas should be a major area of concern for the tribal
population. In order to adapt to the globalization processes the policy makers are preparing to make
a complete reversal of the Indian Constitution wherever peoples’ rights and control of resources are
concerned. In a globalised situation, it is the market and not the community, which is the chief player.
All laws and policies relating to the Scheduled Areas—the land transfer regulations, the forest act,
the environmental protection act, the land acquisition act are all under immediate threat of repeal,
dilution or amendment. These laws were meant for the protection of people and resources while the
new policies call for exploitation of resources at the cost of people. Now all these ‘bottlenecks’ are
being removed to promote globalization. The tribal population has always been known for their
strong community life and collective spirit and they used it as a part of their ‘survival strategy’. This
is rapidly being eroded through the promotion of private rights at the cost of ‘community rights’.
Thus the tribal people are going to be the worst sufferers and the most coveted sacrificial goat for
globalization.
Minorities, especially the Muslim minority, constitute one of the poorest and most backward and
deprived segments of Indian population coming after scheduled castes and tribes. Thus, the economic
impact of globalization policies is being felt by their poorer and deprived sections in the same way as
that of the dalits and tribals. Moreover, they have also become victims of communalism and communal
violence. As Arvind (ibid) rightly points out, “though the Indian State always had an upper we find,
it becoming an important aspect of state policy from the mid-1980s, and particularly in the 1990s i.e.
particularly in the period of globalization. This is not a mere coincidence.” The most aggressive

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