Top
B.Com colleges in Greater Noida encourage academicians to engage in
freewheeling intellectual debates and deliberations on free trade and
globalization. This is to assert that the study of economics papers like business
economics and business environment in the domain of undergraduate degree
programs in commerce assumes a place of pride and great importance. To
streamline the track mentioned above it is important to note that a discipline
like business environment requires surgical precision in the usage of mathematical
economics to inject the much required positive element in the study of social
sciences along with the fusion of philosophical foundations of economics,
economic history and trade theory to cater to the requirements of normative approach.
The statement might appear subversive if not paradoxical that many top B.Com
colleges while dealing with a paper like business environment tend to
under-emphasise the scope and importance of trade theory and the related debate
on issues of free trade and globalization. At Ishan Institute of Management
& Technology, academicians make a deliberate intellectual endeavour to
engineer a scientific approach to the track (based on mathematical modelling)
while trying to retain the human element of a non-lab based science like
economics. Our perspective on free trade is premised on the works of noted
trade and development theorist like Jagdish Bhagwati, Paul Krugman, Arvind Panagariya,
Joseph Stiglitz, Debraj Ray, Pranab Bardhan, Kaushik Basu and the late Harry
Gordon Johnson.
Advocating Macaulay’s Vision of
Trade as an Engine of Growth
Given
that we live in times of when a uni-polar world order is misconstrued as a flat
world, it makes enormous good sense to assert that trade has indeed acted as an
engine of growth. The point though is to scratch deeper to get beneath the
pseudo-intellectual passions running high on the animal spirit of capitalism
and question the exact classification of winners and losers in this definition of
international trade. Economists like Jagdish Bhagwati, Arvind Panagariya and
others have exhibited empirical evidence based approaches to substantiating
claims about trade led economic growth. To a great extent it is only humble for
us lesser mortals to wholeheartedly accept their doctrines based on the
economic growth rates that the Asian Tigers, China and India have achieved by
engineering an economic system design whereby trade policy acts as a gateway to
gains from exchange and gains from specialization The Flying Geese model of
trade liberalization also adds fuel to the fire of this raging advocacy of free
trade and the enormous potential that it has to address issues of world
poverty, unemployment and low per capita incomes. The Cambridge version of
Edward Denison also greatly steers the pro-free trade lobby to the shores of
safety while amply exhibiting evidence amounting to the runaway success of
softer economic borders.
Advocating Social Market Democracy
for Economic Development
The
social market democracy advocated by the likes of Amartya Sen, Joseph Stiglitz
and the rest have in their discourses on trade theory fashioned a strong
critique of free trade and the over the top usage of neo-classical policy
making that is now renowned as the “Washington Consensus”. In fact they have
also produced mounting evidence to the contrary that free trade twinned with colonialism
has led to free massacre of indigenous peoples across communities in the Third
World. They have with documentary evidences substantiated the cost of overly relying
on mathematical and statistical modelling for the purpose of policy formulation
and decision making while taking the liberty of omitting human spirits of
development and gross national happiness. Yet it is fashionable to suggest that
howsoever intellectually stimulating this side may seem, none of these
economists have spent too much time in India for teaching, research, voluntary pro-bono
social causes or any kind of campaigning to take poverty heads on. It is
equally true for the former lobby of economists as well.
Is Free Trade the Same as Fair
Trade?
To
take the debate on free trade and globalization to its due climax, it is worthwhile
to ask for the legitimacy of free trade and its capacity to resolve rather than
create challenges for the Third World. This is to suggest that the Third World
is where more than 60% of the global population resides. To quote the legendary
Massachusetts economist Paul Samuelson, we are dealing with “the importance of being unimportant.” The
lion’s share of humanity resides in the third world and thus going by the
concept of universal adult franchise and intellectual democracy, the votes of
the impoverished, overpopulated and plagued peoples matter more if not as much
as the votes of the First World. Economic history on a global scale offers
compelling evidence on the North-South Divide, the centre- periphery argument
and the infant industry argument of Friedrich List. It is not enough to have a
borderless world. It is also important to respect borders and sovereignty of
nations.