Swadeshi Jagaran Manch
National Council 20-21 May2017
Guwahati (Assam)

TIME TO DUMP GLOBALISATION

The Present Government has crossed its mid-term and is time to evaluate the current national and international economic situation. The world is yet to come out of the Global Economic crisis started in 2008 and it is continuing in one form or another in different parts of the world. The revival of the U.S., economy is still a work -in -progress, Europe is in deep economic crisis, Japan is struggling with deflation and the slowdown has started in China.

In its latest report, the UNCTAD has pointed that the world GDP is growing is at 3% while the International Trade at 1.5% a situation not witnessed in the last 25 years. It means that domestic growth is fueling world growth and not otherwise. Trump's victory on the plank of America first and Britain's exit from European Union points out that after 25 years of aggressive globalization, de-globalization has started. Elections in France and Germany further intensified the debate on globalization. Chinese economy is weakening internally and trying to take advantage of the fragile global situation. China is trying to emerge as a global leader replacing U,S., repeating exactly what the U.S. did few decades ago. Chinese President's remarks in the last World Economic Forum in Davos and his commitment to further promote globalization in the recent Belt Road Initiative (BRI) summit are all pointers in this Direction. This trend confirms the fact that attempts to force re-globalization started. The vision of Shri.Dattopant Thengadi's saying that globalization is a passing phase and only Swadeshi is permanent is coming true. India must play its cards tactfully, realizing that the days of aggressive globalization are over and the scope for international commerce has dwindled.

Back home, after recast in the method of computing GDP and other economic indicators like IIP keeping in tune with the accepted international practice, GDP growth stands at 7.1%. India is now the fastest growing economy in the world. But job creation still poses a challenge and the recent report indicates that it is growing only at 1%, a dismal state of affairs. The IT industry is facing huge job losses and retrenchment. The stalled projects are yet to be revived and NPA problem persists. Though the banks are sitting on huge pile of cash, especially after de-monetization, loan off-take has not begun to start and domestic investment is at stand still. The government has opened many sectors to FDI and increased the limits in many others. Though the quantum of FDI is about $56 billion last year, finer reading reveals that most of the investments has been in the brown field area, "e" commerce sector tops the list, about 50% is from destinations liker Mauritius and Singapore notorious for round tripping of black money and substantial sum by way of Private Equity which will go away multi fold after few years. Investment is green field area is negligible. The important aspect is that FDI will leads to job reduction due to technology changes.

The SJM appreciates the swadeshi spirit of the government by moves like efforts towards preferential treatment for indigenous goods in government procurement. The focus must shift from augmenting FDI to promote and encourage domestic investment.

In this context, the SJM demands the government to take note of the winds of de-globalization sweeping the world and frame its economic development model accordingly. Favorable demography, though started waning, and huge domestic demand provides an opportunity and efforts must be made in the direction of taking advantage of it ourselves without leaving much scope for MNCs. Millions of jobs are to be created and the SJM demands to prioritize these factors in the approach of the government.

There must be comprehensive review of the present and proposed international trade agreements and if at all these are required to make them work in our favor.