Globalisation is the process by which social relations are stretched across space and time, so that production, finance, politics, culture and migration operate at a planetary scale. Giddens defines it as the intensification of worldwide social relations linking distant localities, in which local happenings are shaped by events many miles away — a compression of both distance and response time rather than merely more international trade.
How it works
Four dimensions are usually distinguished. Economic globalisation works through trade liberalisation, global value chains, mobile finance and transnational corporations. Political globalisation works through the World Trade Organization, the International Monetary Fund, regional blocs and treaty regimes that constrain national policy. Cultural globalisation moves images, brands, languages and religious movements, producing both homogenisation and reactive assertions of local identity. Technological globalisation — Castells's informational economy — supplies the infrastructure that makes real-time coordination possible.
Points of debate
Held and his colleagues classify positions into three camps. Hyperglobalists argue that a genuinely borderless economy has made the nation-state obsolete. Sceptics reply that trade and migration were proportionally comparable before 1914, that flows remain concentrated in a few regions, and that states still set the rules. Transformationalists hold that globalisation is real but reconfigures rather than abolishes state power, producing new hierarchies. Dependency and world-systems writers add that integration is asymmetric by design.
Why it matters
In India, liberalisation from 1991 delivered rapid growth in software, services and consumption while deepening regional and class divides: metropolitan and coastal regions gained, agrarian districts lagged, and formal-sector employment grew slowly relative to output. Work informalised, agriculture faced price volatility, and cultural effects ranged from global consumption among the urban middle class to reassertions of caste and religious identity.
For the UPSC answer
Define globalisation through Giddens, then organise the answer by the four dimensions and close with the three-camp debate — this structure fits almost any question. Always add an Indian evidence layer showing uneven benefit: the same process produced both the information-technology corridor and agrarian distress, which is why sociologists describe it as differentiating rather than levelling.
References & further reading
- Giddens, A. (1990). The Consequences of Modernity. Polity.
- Held, D., McGrew, A., Goldblatt, D. and Perraton, J. (1999). Global Transformations. Polity.
- Sassen, S. (1991). The Global City. Princeton University Press.