A professor of economics at Columbia, Jagdish Bhagwati is the man who taught New York Times columnist Paul Krugman economics. He spoke with PW by phone from his office at the Council on Foreign Relations, where he is also a senior fellow.
PW: The title of your book In Defense of Globalization is a little deceptive. You don't think globalization is working perfectly.
Jagdish Bhagwati: My book poses as something that it's not, exactly. I decided I had to write the book because of Joseph Stiglitz and his book Globalization and Its Discontents, [whose title] comes from Freud and made it very popular on college campuses. All the kids were buying this book because of its title, on which it doesn't deliver. Stiglitz's book is really about the IMF [International Monetary Fund], where mine really is a balanced look at globalization.
PW: You've been labeled "the world's number 1 free trader," but your reputation was made writing about poverty. How has your thinking on trade and poverty changed?
JB: My first book, Economics of Underdeveloped Countries, was published in 1964. It was the first book that talked about poverty. I remember a friend of mine calling and saying, Bhagwati has gone bananas, because he's got a picture of a starving child in the book. But it was popular, selling alongside Mickey Spillane at the time. I've written more than 40 books since. The issues that are coming up today require a huge amount of additional work. Issues like the role of women, environmental impact of business, export processing, the role of corporations are very complicated and require a high intellectual breadth. My thinking now requires a more nuanced label; I'm now more diplomatic.
PW: Who is your audience: politicians, other economists, students?
JB: There are genuinely interested, idealistic men and women and the average citizens of the world who are keen to find out what is going on. This book and all my writing is for them. Sometimes I wish I was a Hindu god with 10 heads and 20 hands and could do more.
PW: How much exposure have you had to the antiglobalization movement?
JB: Essentially, the book is a response to the concerns of the antiglobalization groups. I'm on the board of Human Rights Watch in Asia, I work with children's and environmental groups in India. I've been in debates in Seattle with Ralph Nader and debated Naomi Klein, who was as young as my daughter and a fierce debater. I was in Seattle in the streets talking with the kids and trying to understand where they were coming from. Being a professor, I'm sympathetic to students, and the fact that they are agitating is good. I saw this as an opportunity to look at what it is that "ails them" and to respond to them and to look at the truth of the matter.
PW: One of the biggest issues protesters confront is the role of corporations, which you take a rosier view of than one might expect.
JB: Corporations are thought of as the B-52s of globalization, but the notion that corporations are a law unto themselves simply isn't the case any longer. You cannot act with impunity like you did in the old days. If you do, a nongovernmental organization will report it to CNN, and they will broadcast it almost instantaneously. Companies will not risk their reputation. I'm not saying there aren't things we need to worry about. There are. Take the whole pharmaceutical industry attempting to capture the World Trade Organization and convert it into a royalty collection agency. That's a problem.
PW: Despite this confidence in the power of NGOs and the media to counterbalance corporate misbehavior, you still favor some regulation?
JB: I'm in favor of some mandatory laws. There are things companies want to do that are beyond the pale. You need some regulation on our own end and then to export those values when our firms go abroad. Which we should then defend. That said, my daughter is a Marine; if you get yourself into trouble in the Bahamas, I will not encourage her to defend you.
