The Impact of Globalisation on Culture.
1. Globalisation in the last decade (1999-2000) has seen major cultural changes leading to fears that our local cultures would be overtaken.
2. From time to time we listen about heated debates (or discussion) in our society (or on mass media) not just about political and economic issues but also about changes in clothes, styles,music,dance, films, languages, body-languages.
3. The 19th century socio-religious reformers and early nationalists (moderates also debated on culture and tradition. The issues today are in some ways the same ways different. What is perhaps different is the scale and intensity of change.
4. Some of the scholars declares that India’s cultural traditional has been wary of the Kupamanduka, the frog that lives its whole life within a well, knows nothing else,and is suspicious of everything outside it. It talks to no one, and argues with no one on anything. It merely harbours the deepest suspicion of the outside world. Fortunately for us we retain our ‘traditional’ open-minded attitude to this day.
5. All cultures are homogeneous. There is an increasing tendency towards globalization of culture. Globalization refers to the mixing of the global with the local. It is not entirely delinked from the commercial interests of globalization.
6. It is a strategy often adopted by foreign firms while dealing with local traditions in order to enhance their marketability. In India, we find that all the foreign television channels like Star, MTV, Channel V and Cartoon Network use Indian languages, even McDonald sells only vegetarian and chicken products in India and not its beef products, which are popular abroad. McDonald’s goes vegetarian during the Navaratri Festival.
7. The strength of Indian culture has been its open-minded approach. Culture cannot be seen as an unchanging fixed entity that can either collapse or remain the same when faced with social change.
