A couple of quotes that specially attracted my attention (emphasis is mine…):

In any case it is often statistically difficult to disentangle the effects of globalization from those of the ongoing forces of skill-biased technical progress, as with computers; structural and demographic changes; and macroeconomic policies.

(…)

Much of the extreme poverty was concentrated in rural areas, and its large decline in the first half of the 1980s is perhaps mainly a result of the spurt in agricultural growth following de-collectivization, egalitarian land reform and readjustment of farm procurement prices – mostly internal factors that had little to do with global integration.

(…)

Issues like globalization, inequality, poverty and social discontent are thus much more complicated than are allowed in the standard accounts about China and India.

The article is quite short, and, although it points some inconsistencies in the standard accounts about China and India, it does not provide any alternative explanation for phenomenons such as the rise in inequality indicators and its relation with globalization.

The point I found more intriguing, however, is the mention of the effects of skill-biased technical progres. In the traditional development accounts, technical progress is always associated to positive effects, but as the author hints, it is possible that technical progress (or some kind of technical progress…) also has a negative effect on equality, since the access to technology and its advantages may be limited by its cost and/or required skills to use it.

There are many efforts to use technology as tool to trigger economic and social progress in the more disadvantaged groups, but I wonder how many of them are really succesful and what are their effect on poverty and inequality indicators…

POST UPDATE: after writing this post, I found a paper about the increasing social fragmentation and inequality in Bangalore. I have not had time to read it in full detail, but the author seems to favor the thesis that globalization increases inequality:

Bangalore’s meteoric rise to a globally integrated location of modern service industries reflects the recent trends of economic globalisation. (…) Its integration into the highly competitive framework of inter-city linkages produces profound processes of urban restructuring creating new disparities and a highly fragmented and polarised urban society. Bangalore is becoming what is called a multiply divided city where both social and geographical barriers are reinforced.