Globalization always excited me even when I was a student. I never supported it, though there was no particular reason to oppose it either. It was a hot topic especially among student wings of Left parties in Delhi University, with whom I was associated in early 1970s. “Anti-imperialism” was the buzzword among our Left “mentors”, and globalization naturally was considered an evil, propped up by the multinational companies (MNCs). At Students’ Federation of India (SFI) study circles, taken by those whom we thought were CPI(M)’s future theoreticians – Ved Gupta, Sunit Chopra, Rajendra Prasad, Sudhish Pachauri – we were told how India’s “bourgeois-landlord government led by big bourgeoisie” was an ally of imperialism, and its “globalization efforts” undermined India’s independence. We were persuaded to believe that India’s independent in 1947 was just in namesake and that Indira Gandhi’s anti-imperialist rhetoric during and after the Indo-Pak war, too, was an eyewash. In fact, Ved Gupta, ...