Who flattened my world?

Just a few decades back, the world was debating democracy versus communism, capitalism versus socialism. With America's victory in the cold war, the world has become unipolar. But it remains divided nevertheless, albeit along new lines-Americanism and anti-Americanism. The problem is: America now fears both.

The Americanist force, like the Indian Muslim boy, wants to take the capitalist route to reach where America is-and is succeeding like never before. Tom Friedman in his bestseller, The World is Flat, calls it 11/9-the day Berlin wall fell-and exemplifies it by Infosys. The anti-Americanist force, like the Pakistani Muslim boy, wants to destroy America. Friedman calls this force 9/11-the day America faced its greatest terrorist attack-and exemplifies it by (what else?) Al-Qaeda.

American psyche now is preoccupied with these twin fears-job losses to developing countries like India and China through offshoring; and a possible terrorist attack from Islamist terrorist forces. No surprise, the two dominant political parties in America have divided these two fears equally between themselves to play them up and gain political mileage.

Friedman's book is definitely more about the rise of the Americanist forces and the process of Americanization of the world. While endorsing this phenomenon, which like a true American, he calls globalization, Friedman pays glowing tribute to the most visible symbols of this phenomenon-India and China in general; and the Indian technology services companies in particular.

Like a good journalist, Friedman never sounds intellectual, but interesting. And like a good reporter, he uses people's comments and his own observations-and not US government or OECD data-to draw his conclusions. Throughout the 460 odd pages, he refrains from number crunching and instead focuses on people.

The World is Flat serves a great purpose-it clears a lot of misconceptions about the countries such as India and China; raises the general knowledge level about the economic changes that are taking place in a way that appeals to popular imagination; and of course contributes in a balanced way to the great American debate that is underway about the impact of global Americanization on America.

The writing, true to Friedman style, is captivating, to say the least. The weaving of as disparate ideas as the IPO of Netscape to state of villages in south India, to the common theme, flattening of the world, is near-perfect. And so is his selection of the ten flattening forces, if one has to take a narrower view of this change-fall of Berlin Wall, rise of Netscape, work flow software, open-sourcing, outsourcing, offshoring, supply-chaining, e-logistics, search engines, development of the access devices...

But at the end, it is still a very narrow view. Except for the fall of Berlin Wall, the rest are all technology developments. Does that mean that it is technology that has flattened the world? This is where Friedman can be seriously questioned.

Yes, talking to a lot of technology CEOs-Infosys CEO Nandan Nilekani, by Friedman's own admission is one of the biggest influencers of his ideas-he has captured the impact of technology on the flattening process extremely well. But is technology the Cause of this flattening? Or the effect: a tangible manifestation that is easy to notice, and probably measure?

One guesses-it is the latter.

What is the cause, then? It is the same old answer-Americanization of the world. There is no single phrase that can describe it, but the closest would be an effective combination of democracy and capitalism (many argue they are inseparable).

The flattening started when America convinced the world the superiority of democracy-and of democratic values; when it successfully helped the spirit of democracy spreading throughout the world, resulting in what NewsWeek editor Fareed Zakaria says, evolution of democracy “from being a form of government to a way of life.” Zakaria calls it democratization. It is this broader wave of democratization that started the flattening of the world. What Friedman describes in his book is just one aspect of that democratization process-the democratization of technology and information, which as he rightly says has become evident in last ten years or so.

In other words, the flattening process did not start with the fall of Berlin Wall; it just became visible at that time.

And if democratization is the true cause of flattening of the world, and if democracy means power to the people, it is but natural that the most populous nations in the world are also becoming the most powerful as a result of this flattening. Except for the size of population, there is little commonality between India and China. They have taken very different routes to their rise; have very different forms of society; and have completely different forms of government. Yet, they together pose the biggest challenge to America's superiority.

Friedman is unequivocal in his view when it comes to what America should do. Protectionism, he says, and most intellectuals agree, is not the answer. America cannot afford to live in fear. It is a country that has still the most open society and is still the biggest center of innovation.

It cannot live by fearing about job losses. As Atal Bihari Vajpayee, the former prime minister of India, had famously remarked, “If people cannot go where jobs are, jobs will have to come where people are.”

Question is: should America try to protect those jobs or try to create more high value ones? In short, should it choose the past or the future?

Global Services