The current globalization debate is about more than North and South or rich and poor. It is about a rising China and India on one side — and the Western world on the other.

India's attainment of the world average per capita income would mean an additional $7 trillion of new economic activity, with a multiplicity of value points for those who care to become engaged with it.

And yet, growth that will lead to India reaching the average world income level is equivalent to introducing another two billion Indians with today’s incomes to the world’s population — or adding France plus Germany and Russia to the global economy.

Unknown impact

For those who continue to deride India’s recent economic growth and success, it is important to underline the centrality of this challenge in India's fight against poverty.

The implications of such a development remain unclear — on the environment, on energy supplies — and above all, on geopolitics. An India with the average per capita income of the world today would have an economy as large as the United States'.

East vs. West

Coupled with China’s astronomical trade surpluses, these trends will inevitably pose far-reaching

Globalization pits an engaged and Gatsbyesque — even Darwinian — America ready to reinvent itself at any cost, against a sluggish and sometimes bewildered Europe.

and systemic threats to the global exchange rate regime.

Such a scenario has been visited previously — when Britain’s withdrawal of sterling from the gold standard paved the way for the rise of the U.S. dollar, and America’s subsequent dominance of the global economy.

The current debate about globalization gets confused by extending coverage to a multitude of actors. More than North and South, rich and poor, it is about a rising China and India on one side and the Western world on the other. Everyone else, in relative terms, remain bystanders.

Third round

Within the West, the Third Round of globalization pits an engaged and Gatsbyesque, even Darwinian, America ready to reinvent itself at any cost, against a sluggish and sometimes bewildered Europe, waving the flag of “values” and “tradition.”

And the United States has a distinct advantage. While quarterly results convince shareholder citizens (its frontline audience in the Third Round), Europe has found it harder to unravel the mysteries of rising India and China to its more diffuse stakeholders.

Danger zone

These are the citizens of its generous, plump welfare states — whose capital stock was largely accumulated by their ancestors in globalization’s Second Round.

An India with the average per capita income of the world today would have an economy as large as the United States'.

It was mainly Europeans like these who arranged themselves on the frontlines of the anti-globalization protests in Geneva, Seattle, Montreal, Mumbai and elsewhere.

They represent the strongest vested interest against the Third Round of globalization, which — bereft of all historical context — is seen as a zero-sum process threatening their lifestyles and livelihoods.

Chinese commitment

Amidst such a calculus, China, with its impressive, single-minded commitment to economic growth, stands closer to the United States — while India has both "American" and "European" traits.

As much as its democracy, India’s multi-ethnic polity, its ambitious but little-known affirmative action programs and income distribution, its uniquely activist Supreme Court, its commitment to issues like gender equity and the environment and the peaceful deconstruction of the power of its princes and feudal aristocracies all provide it many trappings of welfare states — before it has attained anything like their wealth.

Issue in India

For many, China is more comprehensible.

China, with its single-minded commitment to economic growth, stands closer to the United States — while India has both "American" and "European" traits.

The world’s workshop — and its historical successes in tangible domains, from gunpowder and rocketry to the naval expeditions of Admiral Cheng Ho — is easier to perceive than India.

India has to rely on relatively unknown contributions to the ideological heritage of humanity, or its status today as a back-office service hub and R&D center.

There are no doubt many more shades of complexity in efforts to unravel the challenges in the current round of globalization.

Righting wrongs

Reinterpreting history, of course, takes time. In spite of the Internet and Google search, it will be a generation or two before modern Europeans and Americans become familiar with names like Indian grammarian Panini and astronomer Aryabhata.

And it will take them time to know of mathematicians like Baudhayana and Brahmagupta, writers like Bharata and Kalidasa or medical pioneers like Sushruta and Charaka — or to learn that most principles of classical economic theory can be found in the Arthashashtra. It will be a greater shock to learn that Marconi brazenly stole his ideas from India’s Bose.

Another chance

There are many more such examples, which will be looked at anew with time,

It will be a generation or two before modern Europeans and Americans become familiar with names like Indian grammarian Panini and astronomer Aryabhata.

in India and China — and beyond.

As noted at the outset, those subscribing to the overall virtues of globalization and wishing to see it continue must underline that it is neither wholly new, nor a one-way street, from West to East, with zero sums along the way.

Meanwhile, both Indians and Chinese clearly know more about the strengths of Europe and the United States than the other way around. What is needed in the Third Round of globalization, therefore, is a globalizing of the modern Western worldview.