Globalisation has turned India into a coolie economy

A common complaint when the British ruled India was that they impoverished India while using Indian resources and labour for the betterment of Britain. Indian labourers who worked for their imperial masters, particularly the British, were called coolies. The vast majority of the Indian population did not have any economic opportunities and were left out of the system. Only those who knew English could find a job, and even then only as a white-collar coolie or as a blue-collar coolie.

The situation today is no different with globalisation exacerbating the problem under the direction of institutions like the World Trade Organization (WTO).  Almost every economic policy in India is oriented towards increasing exports to the West, getting a job from some Western country, or increasing profits of Western firms, that is, bettering the lives of people in the West using Indian labour and resources.

Many people in India look forward to becoming some type of coolie as a career choice. Today, every person who receives money, prizes or titles from the West for the work he/she does is a neo-coolie. This is the case regardless of whether such a person lives in India or elsewhere. The list of such coolies includes doctors, engineers, management consultants, activists, writers, professors and entrepreneurs. Even the business firm typically symbolised as the bellwether of India’s globalised economy, Infosys, is just a successful herding of coolies into a mega coolie shop. Those who aspire to become coolies cannot be faulted as the blame lies with those who run the country. The rulers have created an education system that, instead of benefiting India, prepares a small minority of people who speak in a foreign language to become coolies.

The thought process of India’s ruling class is shaped by British and American universities and should be termed the coolie mindset. Shamefully, even the Indian Parliament sends a few of its members every year to attend a course at Yale University to supposedly learn leadership skills from professors who have no experience with either politics or leadership. That Yale University was built using money looted from India adds a layer of irony to the situation.

With the belief that the instructions received from Western universities equates to knowledge, India’s politicians, bureaucrats and official economists have allowed the WTO a free run in India. The WTO plays the same role as the former imperial British government and ensures that the labour and resources of the world exist solely to benefit Western powers. Despite its rhetoric of free multilateral trade, WTO’s rules are heavily skewed to favour Western countries. These rules forbid most subsidies but allow for subsidies provided by the West by categorising them as research grants.

At least one economic adviser to the Indian government is a WTO loyalist and has a conflict of interest as he is beholden to his employers in a university which is part of the American establishment. He is called a trade expert and judges economic performance based on the value of exports and imports, a method that originated for assessing the success of the East India Company by measuring its net trade volume out of India. Mutually beneficial trade should be welcomed but it must not be subject to oversight by the WTO. India can move away from its coolie economy only if it removes all external influences and stops hampering productive economic activities which directly contribute to the country’s development.

The author is an expert on technology and economic issues. Views expressed are personal