New Delhi, April 3 -- Walk through any major city - Delhi, London, or New York - and a quiet transformation is underway. Korean ramen packets line supermarket shelves, bubble tea chains dominate youth hangouts, and sushi has become as commonplace as sandwiches. These are not just changing tastes; they are signs of a deeper shift in global power.

For decades, globalization was understood through the logic of Western expansion, captured in George Ritzer's concept of "McDonaldization", a system defined by efficiency, calculability, and uniformity. But that paradigm is increasingly being unsettled. What is emerging instead is a model where culture travels not through Western cultural standardization, but through narrative, identity, and ever...