The stern travel advisory that foreign nations issued in June urging their citizens to leave India provokes a set of questions that should be debated against the context of globalisation and liberalisation.Do governments on account of their obligation to safeguard their citizens have overriding "rights" to expect compliance, in matters such as where, when and for what purposes, citizens should travel?Should MNCs subordinate their responsibility towards their host society, not to mention their shareholders, to comply with the directives of their parent government?Should the political risk assessments of foreign office functionaries be accepted as gospel notwithstanding the fact that most companies carry out their own sophisticated internal assessments?
I ask these questions not because I have any doubts about the motives for the June advisory. I can appreciate governments acting with prophylactic caution in anticipation of what could have become a logistical nightmare of large-scale evacuation had the border situation spiralled out of control.I ask these questions because, right or wrong, the advisory triggered reactions that tells us something important about the context in which MNCs and governments operate today. The CII, for instance, saw the advisory as a form of economic sanction; others as a component of a broader geopolitical plan to pressure India and Pakistan to de-escalate; yet others as simply a misreading of ground realities.The advice also put MNCs in an awkward situation. They had to decide whether to accept the advice and evacuate all expatriates notwithstanding possibly their own more optimistic assessment but risking thereby the disruption of operations and the erosion of carefully built up local relationships. Or to demur and then risk criticism from their embassy.They also had to consider the impact on staff morale. After all, if the situation was indeed dire enough to warrant immediate evacuation of foreigners then surely the security of local staff who after all are no less a part of the organisation also needed to be addressed.
This article cannot answer all of these questions but it can provide one backdrop against which I believe, the answers should be formulated.There will no doubt be other perspectives. The point is to ensure that in the event border tensions escalate again the resultant actions and reactions will be less divisive and preemptory.We live in a world today, which is in many respects truly global. This does not mean that the nation state and nationalism is dead; rather that there is now greater interaction amongst societies.There are a large number of issues in which governments and companies (not to mention NGOs and the public) have overlapping, though often conflicting, interests.Global terrorism, environment, narcotics , AIDS, are but a few such issues. The challenge for governments in this "new order" is to manage the tension between, the "germ of a universal consciousness" (to quote the scholar Raymond Aron) in the value of transnational cooperation and liberal open market norms on the one hand, and the continued pull of national self interest and "unilateralism" in decision making on the other. The travel advisory in June has highlighted this challenge. MNCs face a not too dissimilar set of challenges.
Globalisation and liberalisation has given them greater freedom of action and a greater say in policymaking in many countries.It has opened up new avenues for investment and growth and facilitated a "footloose" manufacturing and marketing strategy wherein components are often manufactured in one country, assembly is done in another and sales of the final product are made to a third.The challenge for companies is to run a multinational and multicultural operation that respects local, religious, cultural and national identities, but simultaneously, operates within well defined and agreed global principles.The challenge is compounded by the heightened expectations of the public regarding environmental and social performance. Companies that do not behave responsibly risk harsh reactions and possibly the withdrawal of their licence to operate and grow.Companies make a commitment to local relationships and wider community development not simply out of philanthropy.The call for the unilateral evacuation of expatriate staff without consideration of the impact on local stakeholders belied recognition of the complexity of the various commitments that globalisation entails.These arguments should not be unduly stretched. There is no denying that governments and companies must forewarn visitors against travel to potential trouble spots; nor that foreigners especially westerners are often the targets of random attacks; and that most people feel a heightened sense of insecurity in a foreign land.There is also no denying that globalisation has not altered the "enduring national nature of citizenship".
A primary driver behind the June advisory was domestic public opinion -- what if indeed one of their citizens got hurt? Equally, however, one must not deny that in this emergent "new order" the adoption of narrowly self interested policies have consequences, often unintended, that can reach well beyond the target audience.The June order has dealt the Indian tourist industry a severe blow and the Indian IT companies are scrambling to reassure their international clients of uninterrupted service.Notions of sovereignty predate the imperatives of globalisation. A clash is not therefore surprising. The question is whether, notwithstanding the conflicting constituencies of governments and industry, the consequences of such a clash can be contained.The tools of technology exist to share and scrutinise information and facilitate collaboration. Next time a border crisis occurs it should be deployed to bring together all concerned parties (CII, embassies, companies, NGOs) to ensure that at least each eschew the simplistic "unilateralism" of the status quo ante.
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