The concept of globalization has transcended debate and become something of a stark fact. Today, it is more often the implications of globalization that are debated, not the subject of globalization itself. The forces at play in the modern worldùmass communications (including the Internet), free trade, and the rise of transnational corporations, popular culture, and democratizationùhave combined to create a global reality that is becoming increasingly pervasive. For nations such as India, the effects of globalization are not yet wholly understood. Struggling to define themselves within the new global configuration, the poorer, hungrier nations of Asia and Africa must contend with the ill-effects of a globalized agriculture scheme, which can potentially leave the poorest worse off than ever before (Vidal). The debate over the implications of globalization for India is therefore rife with conflicting opinions. At issue, ultimately, are the people that live there. Will globalization render these citizens better or worse off than they have been in the past?
As Barbara A. Weightman writes in Dragons and Tigers, the "essence of globalization" lies somewhere amidst the legacy of the Cold War; since the fall of the Soviet Union, capitalism has been allowed to dominate, leading formerly communist nations to experiment with "privatization of ownership and entrepreneurial profit making" (19). Weightman warns that "as these countries become increasingly linked with global, capitalist enterprises and economic systems, nonparticipation will be virtually impossible" (19). Thus, globalization assumes an inherently indomitable character, continually reinforcing itself as a concept by linking up market upon market, system upon system. The farther along the globalization trend is in approaching critical mass, the more difficult it will become for smaller, weaker nations to resist it. For this, globalization appears to some to be a proce...