With Salman Khan rapping "East or West, India is the best" and my mother humming along in the background, I can't help but question the validity of the lyrics. Sure, Salman Khans words were probably scripted by some underpaid Bollywood writer, but the sentiment must have some sort of factual basis. I mean, it can't be that Mr. Khan or my mother, blindly believe that having 1/3 of their nation living in abject poverty that rivals sub-Saharan Africa makes it "the best".

Peering through a telescope - one fixated on the streets of Banglore or Mumbai gives limits our view of India. I'm going to guess that Salman Khan and his Bollywood kin have been bolstered by the events of globalization over the last two decades in making their musical claim.

Excluding Bollywoods attempt at hardcore rap, I'm going to say that globalization in its most basic form is benificial - economically atleast. Why? Thats simple - its the best system we've got.

Globalization is the international system that replaced the cold war system. It effects everyones domestic politics and everyones international relations. The cold war system was defined by the idea of division, symbolized by the Berlin Wall. It was like the Nile River delta, filled with dykes and damns. We could not go far without running into a wall.

Globalization is defined by a single word - integration - and all the threats and oppurtunities of this system flow from integration. It to is symbolized by an image, not a wall but a web. Globalization has blown up the dykes and damns of the Cold War System, and replaced the formers definitions of "First world" "second world" and "third world" with, that of a "fast world" and "slow world".

Thomas L. Friedman

Globalization levels the economic playing field. For most countries, it was clear the old system leaned heavily to Western (European and North American) economies. Globalization changes that. It allows countries like India and China to capitalize on their greatest natural resourse - their citizenry.

With both countries touting massive populations that surpass those of North America and Europe combined, globalization allows for the unique oppurtunity for these countries to promote competitive labor prices. Outsourcing is a product of this recent phenomenon. Most people I've spoken to accept that globalization has in general, been a good thing for developing nations. Yet the success of globalization seems to go hand in hand with the fear of "Americanization".

Most cry that value of a society can't be measured by material prosperity alone. They claim that the cultural cost of globalization does not justify the few rewards it offers. Is this true? Is India for example, becoming a mini-America? Is that such a bad thing?

India is one billion people living in seven hundred thousand villages. She is not represented on the streets of Mumbai, but in the rice fields of Vijayvada, the olive groves of Kerala and the fish markets of Manglore. Even with five thousand years of history behind her, several foreign rulers including both Arabian and British influences, many fear her daily "Americanization".

It doesn't take much to find an American touch in traditional India. What was once a pani puri stand has been replaced by McDonalds and Pizza Hut - Gap is competing with the local sari shops and Calvin Klein branded Kurta Pajamas are just around the corner.

Is this a bad thing? If we're talking about losing our identity as Indians, then yes. We do not want our countrymen to mimic the babboon like calls of the NRI youth, who shouts "I am DESI" not out of pride, but to remind himself that he isn't anything else. With its current run of prosperity, India should not forget its heritage. It should focus on a more Indian approach to globalization - it should g-localize.

G-localize? No, that isn't spelt wrong, its a new approach to an old idea. Rather than focusing on globalization as the sole provider of wealth and prosperity, countries should use it as an avenue to tap into local resources. The Indian animation industry does the phenomenally.

Rather than using animation to perpetuate the sorry excuse for cartoons we see on TeleToon or Nickleodean today, India has taken a page from the American guide to globalization, and g-localized. While Americans were fixated on GI Joe in the 1980's, catering toward their demographic, India is currently developing its own "GI Joe"-ish cartoon. The project is a 26 part animated series that follows the life and times of an eight-year-old Hindu deity, Krishna.

What makes this project a great example of g-localization isn't that it's inspired by the local religion, it's the team that animates it. The graphic artists were all former traditional artists and sculptors. Rather than having their heritage, and the heirtage of Indian art slowly die away, they were re-trained using the latest pieces of American software on American computers. They were offered a new medium to express their art. Thomas Friedman was right when he said globalization was a web.

What India has shown is that, it is clearly capable of g-localizing, yet it doesn't do so on a larger scale. She is still in the mindset that globalization = "Americanization". This doesn't have to be the case. What globalization is offering is the ability to synergize two radically different cultures and form something better, something that is more appropriate for the next generation, one whom thinks on a global stage.

So can Globalization make Salman Khan's claim that "India is the best" true? Probably not, but that doesnt matter - what matters is, at the end of the day it makes us all better off.

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