THEY did have a point. There we all were sitting cross-legged under the tamarind tree and the two Brits asking all the questions about the difficulties of life in rural India were distinctly under-dressed.

''Where are your earrings?'' they asked Eildon Dyer from Christian Aid. ''Don't you have any nose studs?'' they demanded of me. ''Where is your gold?''

The women of Pasupathi had dressed for the occasion. Bangles, earrings to die for, nose studs in each nostril, and wedding rings on several toes. There was no doubting that their families had stumped up handsomely for their dowries.

I, on the other hand, could boast no more than a pair of thin gold hoops in my ears, two copper bracelets for my rheumatism, and a Mickey Mouse watch with a blue plastic strap. If you have no jewellery in Pasupathi you are a nobody, a nothing. Mickey and I knew when we had been put firmly in our place.

These women didn't just want to know why we were so bereft of portable capital. They wanted to know why we were there. ''We only see white people go past in cars,'' they said. And to think I believed the days of the Raj were over.

Once we had dispensed with the jewellery issue we got on to equality, education, and the cost of bringing up female children. With new loos recently installed in the village (the hole in the ground variety with two footplates, no mains sewage, and a mosquito lurking in every bowl to bite parts a certain lager never dreamed of), our new chums laughed like drains because, while Eildon's husband thinks they have an equal partnership, he never cleans the toilet.

Just like us in Scotland, they are plagued by husbands who drink too much, police who don't take domestic violence seriously, politicians who promise the earth and give you nothing in return for your vote, and the price of fuel.

Not that the Pasupathi women have had to queue at the nearest Esso station in recent weeks. These women walk it, or take an overcrowded, wooden-seated bus to town for special occasions.

What they do face, however, is a rise in the cost of kerosene, their cooking fuel. The Indian government refuses to subsidise the hike and when society puts obstacles in the way of even making a living or taking a loan because of the caste you belong to, higher cooking costs are the last thing you need.

It was under this and a dozen other tamarind trees in southern India that I heard the effects of globalisation discussed in more depth than I've heard outside a documentary on the World Trade Organisation. Our Pasupathi friends could certainly give Clare Short and George Foulkes a run for their money, and they would have told the Prague summit to shut up, sit down, and let the real issues be discussed.

Globalisation is a word peasant farmers use. It is currency among village women. It is a word the gem cutters and the cotton weavers know.

Not surprising, really. In rural India, farmers were asked by the government to undergo a ''green revolution''. They were told to use hybrid seeds which needed more water, more pesticides, more chemical fertilisers. Their harvests, however, didn't match up to the money and effort they had to lay out. They had to borrow for the first time and got into debt with money-lenders because the Dalit (low-caste) people haven't been allowed to use the banks.

One Dalit farmer told me: ''The government made us use methods which needed more investment and more capital. They are only interested in market-oriented crops like flowers and cotton, not in crops for our own consumption. This globalisation has spoiled our families' economic position.''

Globalisation means Indian fruit markets are glutted with New Zealand apples while their own farmers can't get a price for their own crops. The gem cutters and the weavers have experienced similar situations. Only the big boys get a look in and the small operators are being pushed out of business.

All some families have left is the gold hanging from their wives ear lobes; the gifts they brought with them to their marriages.

Unless these families become members of microcredit groups which help them get lower interest loans, they are heading for homelessness under blue plastic sheets

on the streets

of Bangalore, Trichy,

or Madurai.

World trade is the next big issue on the aid agencies' agenda because they

see that unless level playing fields are created, the big divide is going to get bigger.

In other words, as long as white people go on passing by in cars, the gap between north and south, developed and developing, rich and poor, will stay as wide as it ever was when Clive turfed the priests out of the Hindu temple in Trichy and garrisoned his troops there a couple of centuries ago.

We talk about loving our neighbours and send off our direct debits to help the ''Third World'', but do we ever think about the realities of poverty and the effects of our consumerism fever on the women of Pasupathi?

Let's stop looking for ''cheap'' and forget charity. Let's give people dignity by enabling them to make a decent living. The people in southern India are burning buses to make their point to the state. We could start feeling the heat ourselves if we don't play fair.

If only the phrase ''global village'' could mean a bunch of women from two continents gabbing about earrings under a tamarind tree. But it doesn't. It means a powderkeg is under the tree and if we don't play the game, we deserve whatever we get.