The distinguished economist Jagdish Bhagwati, while reviewing the widely acclaimed A Future Perfect: The Challenge and Hidden Promise of Globalisation by John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge, wondered whether books on globalisation are beginning to be subject to the law of diminishing marginal utility. Bhagwati was writing in Foreign Affairs in July/August 2000 when, amidst a vast outpouring, Thomas Friedman's celebrated The Lexus and the Olive Tree was also capturing world attention. In recent months, the literature on globalisation has mushroomed even further but Bhagwati's fears are still unfounded.

Globalisation and History by Kevin O'Rourke and Jeffrey Williamson traces the evolution of the 19th century Atlantic economy that was marked by an explosion in trade flows, capital movements and migration. But the 1920s and the 1930s saw a dramatic reversal which the duo, who are well-known economists at University College, Dublin, and at Harvard University respectively, call "deglobalisation". This led to an increase in trade protectionism, a breakdown of international capital markets and an end to mass and easy migration. They reject the conventional view that the deglobalisation of the inter-war decades was a consequence of World War I. Instead, they ascribe it to the political backlash in response to the actual or perceived distributional effects of globalisation itself.

Harold James' The End of Globalisation: Lessons from the Great Depression is a book of great scholarship. James, a highly distinguished professor of history at Princeton University of the US, examines the world economy in the late 1920s and 1930s and concludes that "globalism fails because humans and institutions they create cannot adequately handle the psychological and institutional consequences of an interconnected world". Institutions created to tackle the problems of globalism themselves become the major channels through which the resentments against globalisation work their destruction.

Dani Rodrik holds a prestigious chair of political economy at Harvard University. He first hit the headlines in 1997 with his provocative Has Globalisation Gone Too Far? where he expounded on the political and social backlashes to the prevailing globalisation paradigm. Now comes "The Global Governance of Trade As If Development Really Mattered". Rodrik believes that import liberalisation is not essential for growth. He argues that the WTO is anti-democratic and that the world trading regime has to shift from a market access to a development perspective. He suggests that globalisation is an outcome, not a prerequisite of a successful growth strategy as evidenced from East Asia and China. He postulates a basic "trilemma": deep international integration, a strong nation-state and vibrant democratic politics cannot co-exist and that a country must choose any two of the three.

The WTO has directed the International Labour Organisation (ILO) to continue its studies on the social dimensions of globalisation and the ilo is soon to establish an eminent persons' group on this subject. Based on the experience of Bangladesh, Chile, South Korea, Mauritius, Poland, South Africa and Switzerland, Raymond Torres of the ILO has published Towards a Socially Sustainable World Economy. Four areas-education and training, social safety nets, labour laws and industrial relations and core labour standards-are identified as the social pillars that would make the process of globalisation successful. Ajit Ghose, a senior economist at the ILO, has come out with Global Economic Inequality and International Trade in which he shows that while inter-country inequality (measured by per capita income) has increased in the past two decades, international inequality (per capita income weighted by population) has actually declined breaking a long-term trend.

The World Bank's characteristically voluminous Globalisation, Growth and Poverty concludes that there are regions where globalisation has reduced poverty. But there are other places where it has clearly had adverse impacts. Many widespread anxieties on the process of globalisation are well-founded. In order to build an inclusive world economy, the report makes seven major recommendations: greater opening of developed country markets, improvement in the investment climate in developing countries, effective delivery of education and health care in the poor nations, social insurance and security, increased development aid, debt relief particularly for African economies and effective global cooperation in environment.

Globalisation is here to stay-indeed, the most globalised community today is that of anti-globalisation protesters! How we leverage the numerous opportunities it throws up and manage the many risks it entails is the real challenge. So far, we have been more successful in the latter than in the former. And getting globalisation to deliver is, ultimately, a matter of effective domestic governance.

(The author is with the Congress party. These are his personal views)