Globalisation not benefitted masses: SC judge

Hyderabad, Mar 22 (UNI) Globalisaton had not benefitted a majority of the people both in the developed and developing countries, Supreme Court Judge Justice B Sudershan Reddy said here today.

He said globalisation might have helped some countries to increase Gross Domestic Product(GDP), but it had not helped most of the people even in these countries.

Globalisation might only be creating rich countries with poor people, as even in most of the developed countries, the rich were getting richer, while the poor were often not even holding their own, he noted, while inaugurating the state-level conference of the Akhila Bharatiya Adhivaka Parishad(ABAP) here.

Referring to the report of the World Commission on the social dimensions of globalisation by International Labour Organisation(ILO), which surveyed 73 countries, he said, it found that 59 per cent of the world's population was living in countries with growing inequality and only five per cent with declining inequality.

The revolution in global communications had heightened awareness of these disparities, he pointed out, asserting that ''these global imbalances are morally unacceptable and politically unsustainable''.

The rules of the game governing globalisation was unfair and specifically designed to benefit advanced industrialised countries and in fact, some recent changes were grossly unfair that they had made some of the poorest countries actually worse off, he observed.

Stating that globalisation advanced material values over other value, such as concern for environment or for life itself, he said the way globalisation had been managed, had taken away much of the developing countries sovereignty, add their ability to make decisions themselves in key areas that affected their citizen's well being and undermining democracy.

While advocates of globalisation had claimed that every one would benefit economically, there was plenty of evidence from both developing and developed countries that there were many losers in both, he noted, adding that globalisation should not mean Americanisation of either economic policy or culture, but often it did and that had caused resentment.

In the era of pervasive change, lawyers had the role of articulation, of the need to evaluate the proposals for change and the incidence of change against the constitutional principle of justice -- social, economic and political-- for all.

In a Constitutional democracy it was in courts that the actual impact of social choices were examined at the individual level, he pointed out adding that whether the legal fraternity brought efforts, both intellectual modesty and intellectual integrity or not would crucially determine whether change - social, economic and political, would be for all or only for the few.

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