At the level of facts and their presentation in the official discourse, systematic recourse is made to falsification and mis-representation ignoring their linkages with policies. The way the NDA government went about playing up the GDP growth rate of over 8 per cent estimated for the year 2003-04 and turned it into a ‘Shining India’ election campaign. However, the growth rate was basically an episodic phenomenon. It was the democratic spirit and political maturity of the Indian people that the hard sale of its performance by the NDA regime failed to cut much ice and it was shown the door. The rhetoric of ‘human face’ indulged in by the successor UPA government seems more oriented to selling a bitter pill than to herald any substantive change. At the end of over a decade of ‘economic reforms’, unassailable evidence show that in terms of the concerns and needs of the vast majority of the humanity, the situation is steadily worsening. Those claiming that ‘There is no Alternative’ to the imposition of a blatantly pro-G-7, pro-MNCs, pro-super rich policies, that this process is irreversible, and that it would amount to inflicting injuries on oneself if a country were to try to chart a different course are even to this day labouring hard to defend ‘economic globalisation’. But there is also a trend that concedes that special efforts would be needed to make ‘globalisation’ work. Some powerful and influential sections from within the G-7 establishment seem to have broken rank from the dominant orthodoxy by recognizing limitations, failures and distortions of the neo-liberal LPG regime. These ‘Left’ neo-liberals are advocating far-reaching corrective measures for ‘making globalisation good.’ It is in this context that the Alternative Survey Group has presented its latest review in the present volume, eleventh in the series. As in the past, an objective analysis using authentic information under a well articulated theoretical framework, which recognizes the primacy of people’s interests, has been attempted by a group of social scientists, activists, journalists etc; each responsible for one’s exercise and yet contributing to a common cause.
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