Answer: 

Introduction:

Globalization is the process of expanding and accelerating the movement of ideas, people, capital and exchange of commodities (goods and services) over vast distances. India is a diverse country and India’s greatness lies in its unique culture. India being part of the globalized world has faced a significant impact on its cultural diversity in both positive and negative ways.

Body:

Areas where cultural diversity is at threat due to globalization:

• Linguistic homogenisation: The influence of transnational corporations has resulted in a central common language mainly English, which dominates regional dialects, and minority languages.
  • This impacts the development of local languages, literature and in some cases complete wipe-out of some local languages.
• Cultural homogenization: There is increasing ‘McDonaldization’ of Indian food habits. Global market decides what’s to be produced, resulting in low incentive for diverse products which means Loss of local artifacts, promotion of western dressing, shift from local culinary habits etc.
  • Unmonitored access to Western culture has led to increasing misrepresentation, stereotyping and the risk of loss of culture.
• Individualisation of relations: Community affiliation reduced due to globalization as the person is more concerned with one’s own interests rather than the communities.
• Nuclearization of family: Joint family system broke down due to increase in economic migration and choice for individual space as part of globalization.
• Marriage: As an institution, marriage has become more individualized and there is a greater acceptance for ideas like live-in relationships which exist outside the domain of traditional marriage.

But there is a silver lining too. Globalization has aided diversity in some aspects:

• Global opportunities: English as a global language has led to opening up of job and education opportunities throughout the world. Indians have been particularly benefited in the services sector.
  • Globalization has aided interaction between people of different cultural backgrounds and helped people learn about other cultures. This has contributed to the emergence of new cultural practices and identities.
• Wider reach of Indian culture: Technology has helped preserve some of the dying artifacts, document local languages, made some Indian dishes and artifacts globally popular and also exposed Indians to various global arts/movies etc.
  • Example: Yoga has become famous globally and today we have 21^st June as International Yoga Day.
• Lesser importance to Caste: Globalization has led to decreased emphasis on localized castes. Globalization has led to the rise of lower castes by making them aware of their rights. People eat together, and increased instances of inter-caste marriages are seen in the urban areas.
• Women empowerment: Globalization has attacked the discriminatory tendencies and patriarchal mindset in India. It has helped in getting rid of practices derogatory to women and has helped in the rise of women and exposure of women related issues.

 Conclusion:

India is a place where there is diversity and pluralism. The highly diverse nature of our culture is the uniting strength of India. Globalization to an extent acted as a unifying force but monitored access would help India preserve its multi-lingual, multi-religious and multi-caste society as a means to preserve its diversity and plurality.

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