Anthony Giddens, the man who even Bill Clinton listens to, is in the Capital for two days to deliver the second Reith lecture on Tradition, in a series entitled the Runaway World, and clearly he attracts more of a following than just any director of the London School of Economics.

Not that the 61-year-old star sociologist had that much to say about India. Except, of course, that India could not afford to opt out of globalisation. Or that Ganesha drinking milk was a sign of surviving traditionalism. Or that India must ``reject the idea that globalisation was equivalent to the liberalisation of the economy''. To be fair to the man, he could not be expected to talk at length about a country he doesn't know too well. But being a visiting scholar in India can be tough, you are expected to talk on a variety of subjects, from Hindu fundamentalism to Andre Gunder Frank's neo-imperialism.

Giddens tried manfully. He even came up with a great one-liner for the press conference in the afternoon, preceding his packed lecture at Teen Murti in the evening. ``The real battle now will be between fundamentalism and cosmopolitanism,'' he said, ``and the only way to contain the threat of fundamentalism is to defend tradition, not reject it.'' Especially as he said during the Nehru Memorial lecture, ``much of what we think as traditional and steeped in the mists of time is actually a product of the last couple of centuries....The idea of tradition is itself a creation of modernity....All traditions, I would say, are invented traditions. No traditional societies were wholly traditional, and traditions and customs have been invented for a diversity of reasons''.

All this by the way is called the Third Way, a cause he has served well all over the world. He believes market-based economics delivers social justice. He agrees there is a crisis of political legitimacy in India and that there is a democratising of democracy. ``You have to have globalisation from below. Brazil is just as unequal as India but there is collaboration between business, government, and local agents.'' The Third Way, he insisted, was not Margaret Thatcher + society.

He believes that the market expansion for the past 150 years has been dominated by Western nations. Now it has to be decentralised. The nature of the public space itself is changing, and a distinction is arising between market and non-market. ``There has to be reconstruction of government and a democratising of information. Governments will no longer be allowed to indulge in cronyism.''

Giddens also makes a distinction between state and government: ``I firmly believe we need more government, not less.'' ``We are the first generation in a truly global world,'' he said. ``The great thing about globalisation is that everyone is being forced to rethink themselves.''