Description
SPRINGER Globalization And Standards Issues And Challenges In Indian Business by DAS K
The changes following more than two decades of economic reforms and globalization of the Indian economy - at state, corporate sector, and consumer level - raise interesting questions on the ways in which the stakeholders will continue to engage on the world stage, politically, socially and economically. One key feature of global trade over this period has been the growing importance of not only product standards but, importantly, labor, environmental, food safety and social standards. Being essentially a non-tariff barrier,standards have often become critical to market access and essential to sustained competitiveness. This has a clear impact on the manner in which both global and Indian business is conducted now and in the future. It also underlines the need for a new area of enquiry that addresses the following questions: How are the Indian public and private actors - the state, domestic firms, local consumers and society - influencing and being influenced by such standards? Do standards really matter in an overwhelmingly informal production sphere, with consumers deeply segmented on the basis of a highly skewed distribution of income and with the rural population becoming further marginalized?