11 Neoliberalism, Globalization and Resistance: The Case of India A. K. Ramakrishnan In the post-Cold War context, liberal international theory appeared to have re-emerged as a powerful explanatory instrument of global change. Traditional liberalinternational theory had lost ground due to challenges from both Realist and Marxist theories. The inability to account for the configuration and deployment of state power and interest and their mutations in an international framework, on the one hand, and the incapacity to explain structural inequalities within nation-states and at the international level, on the other, kept liberal theory away from the centre-stage of academic international relations for a long period of time. I wish to argue that the return of liberal inter- national theory is not based on any considerable recent advancements in liberalism's conceptual and methodological apparatus. The problems of traditional liberalism continue to mar its explanatory possibilities. It is the contemporary assertion of neoliberalism that is often viewed as the return of liberal internationalism. What we see today is a shift from conventional liberal internationalism to what I call 'neoliberal globalism'. Neoliberal globalism came into prominence along with the ascen- dancy of the process of globalization - the accelerated attempt at incorporating every nook and corner and every sector of the world into the capitalist mode and its market logic through the unfettered flow of transnational capital. The march of globalization is not as smooth as has been commonly projected. It encountered resistance of various kinds. One major aspect of contemporary neoliberal globalism is its blindness towards the phenomenon of resistance. The triumphalist nature of neoliberal globalist discourse emanates to a large extent from its refusal to account for resistance movements against globalization. A major task of this essay is to bring to the fore resistance to globalization as a significant 242 E. Hovden et al. (eds.), The Globalization of Liberalism © Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited 2002