Conceptualizing Globalization and its Impact on the Identity of Youth in India

Globalization means intensification or integration of the whole world to make a global village with global issues likely to be solved with global efforts due to unhindered flow of technology, trade, communication, finance, employment and capital, goods, increasing economic integration, economic openness and interdependence. It is a death of distance and a step towards one world, one state and one country. It is believed that the achievements of globalization would make people all over the globe happy, prosperous and contended and there would be no conflicts, no poverty and inequality, no violation of human rights, no malnutrition and no literacy because the integrated benefits would flow both laterally and vertically to prosper everyone on the globe but due to wrong planning, corruption, individualism and accumulation of private property, it has become a sinister process and depends upon which side of debate one stands.

Globalization has taken the culture of every society into its clutches especially the youth culture of third world countries posing a serious threat for local cultures to sustain. Ideologies or mental structures of youth have taken a new shift and they think in terms of growing economy. Television/media is arguably the most dominant gateway of globalization affecting India today and bringing with it far reaching consumerism besides growing tourist activities and MNC's. Mac Donald's have spread its wings to each and every corner of the world. There are four major issues related to identity which develop due to globalization like development of a bicultural identity, identity confusion, growth of self selected culture and spread of emerging adulthood. Western societies do not bother about the deterioration of norms or identity crisis. They think only in terms of economic gains and are in search of more and more market. Above all, globalization gave rise to marginalization or polarization of classes.