The Curious Stall

Ash to star in Bhopal fillum?

2007-05-16T23:46:00.000-07:00

I just came across a Times of India headline that asks "Can you gas the truth?" How did I come across it? Well, I have a Google news search set to pick up any articles containing the keywords "Bhopal" and "gas" because I'm currently researching for a book I'm working on the history of activism that followed the 1984 gas leak at the Union Carbide plant in Bhopal.

Whereas many readers were probably more interested in the article for what it might say about what Aishwarya Rai is doing on her honeymoon, I was attracted by the fact that a feature-length film will be made about the struggles individuals who survived the tragic disaster in 1984 have had to go through in the intervening years.

Apparently, according to IMDB, the film has been in the works since December 2004. I've never seen any of Ash's films, so now I am torn as to whether I should try to start watching them so I am caught up when the Bhopal film comes out, or wait and have my first exposure to her in a film about such a serious matter.

I'm genuinely hoping that Ash, as executive producer, and producer/director Zachary Coffin, will spend an extended amount of time with survivors in Bhopal. Though the story of the film will be based on a fictional character, it is important that they capture the depth of the struggle survivors have faced. There are many unique aspects to the disaster and the way it has impacted people in Bhopal. I don't imagine these would be easy to capture on film, especially if the filmmakers have not done their homework.

I'm also hoping that the film is done in a way that reflects the reality of the situation in Bhopal. There is a strong movement that is constantly innovating new tactics on the international scene. But it is a movement that is underwritten by the many Bhopalis who have struggled for nearly 23 years to get adequate compensation and force the government to disburse their claims and clean up the contamination left behind by Union Carbide.

There is still much suffering in Bhopal. The film should not shy away from depicting this. But it should also demonstrate the one shining success that has grown out of the disaster: the Sambhavna Trust Clinic. Where suffering has been alleviated in Bhopal, it is largely due to the community-based health care model employed by Sambhavna. But in conveying the success of Sambhavna, the film should not go down the "City of Joy" route in which viewers are ultimately left unmotivated to take personal responsibility to act because of the belief that those who are suffering are being taken care of by people like the the Stephen Kovalski character (or, in the case of Bhopal, Sambhavna).

Done well, the film could remind viewers around the world of the dark side of globalization and the failure of our legal systems and governments to deal with the inevitable harm done to people by faceless corporations. But it must do so in a way that respects the people of Bhopal, especially those from the bastis adjacent to the former Union Carbide plant. They are the ones, after all, whose voices must be heard.

So time will tell whether Ash can capture the strength and dignity of women like Rashida Bee and Champa Devi Shukla. For the sake of Bhopal survivors and potential future victims of disasters caused by multinational corporation, I hope she does.

In the meantime, let's hope that the news media can refrain from the type of awful play on words ("Can you Gas the Truth?") that editors at the Times of India must have thought would be funny.

Indian adoptions in the U.S.

2007-05-08T13:30:00.000-07:00

I just came across an interesting article in the Times of India about the number of Indian children being adopted by residents of the U.S. I specifically wrote "residents" of the U.S. because the article quotes Women and Child Development Minister Renuka Chowdhury as saying that most of the adopting couples in the U.S. were "NRIs suffering from guilt for having left India and feeling a sense of responsibility towards their motherland."

If this is true--and I suspect there may be a bit of truth to it though most likely this is an anecdotal observation made by Ms. Chowdhury and not anything the Ministry has examined systematically--then it raises the question of why there aren't more children being adopted by couples in other places with significant NRI populations.

The article reports that after the 945 children adopted by couples in the U.S., the next highest countries were Italy (419), Spain (301), Denmark (194), Sweden (123), Switzerland (86), Germany (79), Belgium (72), Australia (68), UAE (63) and the UK (53).

I am guessing that the couples in the UAE who adopted Indian children fit Ms. Chowdhury's guilt theory of adoption. However, these are most likely not the (almost all male) exploited laborers from Tamil Nadu, Kerala, and other parts of India who are recruited to work in the UAE's booming construction industry. More likely they are the engineers and other technical experts who leave India to work in the oil industry in the Gulf.

What I am getting at is that there must certainly be a class basis for the adoption patterns. Similar to their well-to-do compatriots in the Gulf, Indians in the U.S., many of whom do well in the IT industry, are in a position to adopt a child from the motherland. I don't have an explanation for the high numbers in Italy and Spain. I would be interested in seeing, for each country, what percentage of the couples adopting are made up of at least one NRI. My guess would be that the rate in the Scandinavian countries is less than for the U.S. and European countries.

But what of the African countries with large NRI populations? South Africa, in particular, ought to be in the list of Ms. Chowdhury's guilt theory of adoption holds. And what about Kenya? I'm not as familiar with the status of NRIs in South Africa or Kenya, but from what I understand the NRIs in these countries are rather successful in monetary terms.

Then there's the UK. If the guilt theory of adoption is mediated by class, as I am proposing, then might this explain the low number of children adopted by couples in the UK? As with South Africa and Kenya, I am not familiar with the status of NRIs in the UK. I'm assuming it is rather mixed (working class and white collar/upper class)?

Maybe there is another explanation that has to do with the cultural norms of the NRIs, regardless of where they reside. For example, might there be differences between Gujaratis and Bengalis when it comes to families supporting their children's interest in adoption? Or, maybe rather than the cultural traits they take with them upon leaving India, there are new cultural norms that are acquired in their adopted countries. In the U.S. there is definitely a recent and widespread acceptance of the practice of international adoption. Maybe this practice is less common in the UK?

I'm really raising a lot of questions, rather than making any claims I can't possibly support, in the hopes that readers might have some experience that can explain this interesting trend of adoptions.

Business Week's "The Trouble with India"

2007-03-15T10:03:00.000-07:00

What is "The Trouble with India?"

The headline of the cover story of Business Week's March 19 issue appears to offer some skepticism about all the "India Rising" rhetoric that has come out of Time (see “India Inc.” cover story June 26, 2006), Newsweek (“The New India,” March 6, 2006 cover story), The Economist (“Can India Fly?” June 3, 2006) and other mainstream U.S. news magazines over the last year.

In the end, however, Business Week's "The Trouble with India" seems to suggest that amidst some of the obstacles to continued growth are more opportunities for innovation (and, in turn, growth).

The article's author, Steve Hamm, author of the Wipro-focused book Bangalore Tiger, even writes in his blog:

I spent nearly a month in India late last year reporting for the story, and, I must say, I became emotionally wound up in the efforts by hundreds of Indians I interviewed to create what some of them called a New India. They weren't just talking about the economy, either. The country's sometimes disfunctional politics and widespead corruption are a heavy burden on its economy. To me, the most powerful force in India is hope. I believe the Indian people can throw off the shackles of bad government and corruption the way they did colonial rule. But it won't be easy.

I think the article can be interpreted a number of ways. In fact, all of the recent articles touting India's growth and potential also acknowledge the infrastructure and corruption problems. But Hamm's article, despite its ultimate optimism that somehow the sheer force of India's economic momentum will resolve its infrastructure problems, seems to be one of the first to focus explicitly on these obstacles.

In the Indian blogosphere, Random Thoughts of a Demented Mind's Haseena Atimbum takes aim at Hamm's reporting here. Indra Drishtikona briefly mentions the article here. There's a brief mention of the article at a number of other blogs. At milieu Sreekumar raises the interesting question of how to balance investment in insfrastructure with social sector investment. Om Malik, at GigaOM, believes "the infrastructure and other issues are linked to the agricultural sector."

In both print media and the blogosphere, I'd like to see a more constructive discussion of India's infrastructure challenge. Are there positive models of infrastructure development that can be packaged and implemented in other parts of India? Is there any critical thinking about how to prioritize infrastructure needs? And, finally, has anyone really laid out with clarity the obstacles to infrastructure development, beyond merely pointing the finger at "corruption?"

India Rising Redux

2007-02-27T20:25:00.000-08:00

A recent BBC series titled "India Rising" takes what I think is one of the more balanced approaches to the question of whether India's growth is benefiting the rural poor.

The series was part of a larger week-long BBC focus on India that ran 3-11 February.

I've blogged about the "India Rising/India Shining" rhetoric before, so I won't add my views here. Instead, here's a synopsis of each episode in case you can't listen to all five:

Episode 1 "New Wealth": The economic optimists, whose only complaints are government corruption and inadequate infrastructure, dominate this episode.

Episode 2 "Inside India's Heart of Darkness": The life of rural villagers in Bihar

Episode 3 "TV Nation": My personal favorite, this episode asks tough questions about changing Indian culture and the adoption of consumerism without taking sides.

Episode 4 "Can it All Hang Together?": Mostly set it Chattisgarh, this episode asks whether India's social fabric will be torn apart by people, such as Naxalites, who perceive that the headlong rush towards development is leaving some people worse off than they were.

Also, for any readers in India, you might be interested in a BBC photo contest. You must be in South Asia and your photo must be taken with a mobile phone. Sounds interesting...

The Zavelogue's Final Entry

2007-01-05T11:04:00.000-08:00

I had a lot of mixed emotions upon returning to the U.S. In this final entry from the India Zavelogue I explain some of the feelings and the origins of The Curious Stall:

It's been more than a month since my last entry. Although we've been busy, the real excuse for failing to bring the Zavelogue to the type of dignified closing that I think it deserves has to do with all of the very mixed emotions I have been having.

We were in Seattle last week for my cousin's wedding. My mother rented a house for the week, and we stayed there with her and my sister's family. It was the first time in a long while, probably ever, that we all got to spend so much time together. I had a good time, but I guess outwardly I seemed troubled. My sister thought I seemed very depressed and suggested I try medication. Her dismay with my behavior caused me to think about what I was feeling.

I think I can narrow down my emotions to two related factors: (1) our re-assimilation happened too quickly and left me without an opportunity to transition between what we experienced in India and what we were returning to in the U.S.; (2) in the six weeks since we've been back, few people with whom we've interacted have expressed any real genuine interest in what our experience was like.

First, here are some pictures to illustrate the three types of environments through which we transitioned:

India: Lots of cows and blazing hot

Switzerland: Lake Geneva and the Alps

San Francisco: Fog and the Golden Gate Bridge

Re-assimilation
I can't say what would have been the most appropriate way to make the transition back to life in the U.S. I'm pretty sure, though, that hopping from India to a week in Switzerland was not the best way. India ranks near the bottom in most measures of GDP, health, and literacy. Switzerland ranks near the top. Perhaps the best approach would have been to return directly to our home. We certainly enjoyed getting to see our respective families in Maryland and Seattle, but those weeks were tough knowing that the journey was over on one hand, but also that we were not yet really home.

Then there was the--for lack of a better word I'll risk sounding cliche--culture shock upon returning to the U.S. This was a little different than the shock of jumping from India to Switzerland. Switzerland is a wealthy, and therefore expensive, place. Switzerland is all about quality of life. But the wealth of the U.S. manifests itself differently. In the U.S., we know we are a wealthy society because of the amount of stuff we consume, not because we have a high quality of life. In fact, despite our levels of consumption, we do not have a high quality of life. For example, despite our wealth, Americans tend to be less healthy, on average, than our counterparts in other parts of the developed world.

My point is that American consumerism made the transition tough. For the six months we were in India, I felt virtually no compulsion to consume. That's not to say that I didn't consume. It goes without saying that to exist one must consume. In fact, we consumed more than the basics. And while in India we certainly consumed far more than the average Indian, even if you exclude all the gifts and items we bought to bring back with us.

What I mean when I say I felt no compulsion to consume is that I was not exposed to the types of goods, nor advertisements for such goods, that gave me a "I'd really like to have that" feeling. As much as I'm a critic of American consumerism, I am implicated just the same. That's precisely my point. Living in the U.S. without being sucked into the practice of justifying extravagant purchases as somehow "essential needs" and not whimsical "wants" requires a herculean effort.

For six months I never visited a shopping website. And though we spent a fair amount of time in shopping malls, where the only decent children's play areas could be found, I never bought anything for myself except a book or two. Yet within two days of returning, even without having watched a minute of television, I found myself wanting. Do I need a new computer? Absolutely not. But Apple has some really nice new iMacs and laptops. My consumer mind begins trying to convince my rational mind that I do need a new computer. After all, my PowerBook got pretty banged up while in India and the nearly full hard drive seems to slow down basic tasks.

I don't recall having gone through that sort of internal dialogue while in India. Yet it's precisely such a dialogue, and one in which the consumer mind wins the debate, that is crucial to a thriving consumer society.

Interacting with others
Returning has also been difficult because in some unidentifiable way I feel like the experience in India has changed me, and yet I don't know how to communicate this change to others, nor do others ask me anything other than superficial questions about the experience. I write some of this off to the fact that I explained in fairly great detail what the experience was like right here in the Zavelogue. I can imagine that regular readers don't have a lot of questions about what the experience was like. That's probably why, in some cases, people we've seen for the first time in six months greet us as if we've just returned from a weekend trip to Santa Barbara. Part of what I am trying to explain here is the strangeness of feeling like we just slipped right back into our lives without missing a beat. One source of my anomie comes from not wanting to feel that way.

As for interacting with strangers, it's as if I want there to be a big sign over my head saying "Hey! I've been in India the last six months!" It's not that I want any special attention. I would like for people to know that the experience changed me, but this information may be irrelevant to a stranger. It's more that I feel like I have some insights that are interesting, if not also helpful for understanding some of the global changes happening as a result of globalization.

This is why I have to get going on my book. But I also want to get ideas out there right away, which is why I am closing down the Zavelogue and launching a new blog called The Curious Stall. Postings will be much less frequent, less personal, and a tad bit more intellectual. Read the first entry to find out why it is called The Curious Stall.

The Curious Stall will be a way, in the short run, for me to continue working out some of the feelings I discussed above. But I also want it to be a place where a much wider audience engages ideas about the changes through which India as a nation is going, and what these changes mean for its people, other people around the world, and our understanding of ourselves.

With that, I promise not to recycle any more content from the Zavelogue. I've got a pile of topics I want to write about in The Curious Stall. From here on out, expect more original content, and hopefully, more frequent content.

Technorati tags: consumerism, American culture, culture shock

Reverse Culture Shock

2007-01-05T08:51:00.000-08:00

I thought some of the Indian readers of The Curious Stall might enjoy reading about our observations when we returned to the U.S. after six months in India. The following is taken almost word-for-word from my entry in the India Zavelogue on May 29, 2006 (follow the link in the title of this entry to see the original).

We landed back on U.S. soil on Saturday at about 12:30 p.m. Eastern Daylight time. Even though there were mostly Americans on the flight, it was strange walking through the terminal and being in the presence of so many Americans again. Americans, on average, tend to be somewhat larger than Europeans, and orders of magnitude larger than Indians.

I've heard some debates recently about whether there really is an "obesity epidemic" in the U.S. Just spend some time away from the U.S. and then, upon returning, plop yourself right down in middle America. I think this would resolve any disagreements.

I'm sorry the first observation back in the U.S. has to be such a negative one. But it was hard not to notice.

On a more positive note, our return went smoothly and despite our initial observations we are quite pleased to be back. In a matter of 24 hours, we managed to acquaint ourselves with two quintessentially American activities...driving a minivan and shopping at Wal-Mart [Note: for readers in India who might not know about Wal-Mart stores, just wait and soon enough you'll have them in India]. We had to rent a minivan at the airport to accommodate all of our luggage.

Then, once in Easton, on Maryland's rural Eastern Shore where my in-laws/Marion's parents live, we needed some basic supplies. Easton is probably like many towns in the U.S. It has a Wal-Mart and very few other options for basic shopping (this is just one of the many reasons more and more Americans are learning to dislike Wal-Mart). So we went to Wal-Mart for diapers, deodorant, razor blades, and a new sippy cup for Luc who has been off the bottle for about ten days now. Unlike typical Americans, we actually made it out of Wal-Mart with little more than we actually needed.

After that we went to a supermarket to get some basic provisions. I think Claire (my 3-year old daughter) was a little overwhelmed at all of the options. She kept grabbing things off of shelves and throwing minor fits when we told her she could not have them.

All in all, Claire and Luc (2-year old son) seem quite happy to be back. A big box with gifts from my mother was waiting for them. Then there were more gifts from Marion's mother. But mostly I think they just enjoy, for the first time in six months, having a lot of space to explore without us having to worry about their safety. We've been in hotel rooms for over a month, and there's just no room to get space from one another. In the huge house we're in they can escape not only from us, but also from each other. Last night, after baths, when I tried to sit down with Luc next to Claire and her Grandear (what she calls Marion's mom), Claire said, "No, don't sit down, I just want some peaceful time with Grandear."

Other signs of cultural adjustment ... Luc is calling the horses at Uncle John's "cows." Maybe he saw too many cows in India and now thinks all large, four-legged, hoofed animals are cows. He also had an odd reaction to Splash, the black lab of the house. He kind of screamed, not really in a scared way, but in a startled way. We saw plenty of dogs in India, but mostly insisted that the children stay clear of them. Then this morning when Splash went on a walk with us, Luc seemed to be fine, and even excited to have Splash along.

Neither Marion nor I have felt very reflective, so at this point we don't have any great revelations to share about how our experience has changed us, or what we think about India (or the U.S., for that matter), now that we're back. Mostly we just feel a sense of relief and exhaustion. Marion also feels like she has a drill pressed to her head. She's had another migraine more or less since we left Geneva.

Just the other day, a little more than six months after writing the above, I completed the final report that I owed the Fulbright Program, which had sponsored my research in India. Given the additional time that elapsed, I was able to reflect a little more meaningfully on the experience. In it, I wrote "It's actually quite difficult to explain to people here in the U.S. what India is like. Most descriptions make it sound like a place you wouldn't want to travel to, much less live in. What I have tried to communicate is the beauty of the people and the spirit and energy of the place, both of which are all the more palpable precisely because India can be such a loud, dirty, and in-your-face kind of place."

Next I'll post one more entry from the India Zavelogue. It will be the last entry that appeared. Shortly thereafter I began The Curious Stall. Stay tuned...

Technorati tags: consumerism, American culture, Wal-Mart

Globus, Part II

2007-01-04T21:12:00.000-08:00

In my previous post I discussed Globus and its India-inspired shopping theme. Here's another post from a few days later after I'd reflected on Globus's "Mumbai/Bombay" marketing campaign a bit more:

The whole idea of selling "India" bothered me, and I've had a little more time to figure out what it is that is so bothersome.

We happened to discover another Globus in Lausanne, so I picked up a copy of the Globus catalog. Actually, the catalog is more like a lifestyle magazine cum catalog. Amidst the product images and descriptions, one finds articles about Mumbai, for example, and recipes for Indian dishes. Following a recipe for Butter Chicken, there might be a picture of bowls for sale. Only these are not your typical department store bowls. Keeping with the Globus Mumbai/Bombay theme, the bowls for sale are made of banana leaves pressed into the shape of a bowl and then dried. Restaurants in India often provide these bowls to take away customers, and some street vendors serve up their fare in such bowls. Of course, Globus offers the chic urbanite from Europe the ability to purchase these bowls and then in the comfort of their own home eat from them the food prepared following the recipe Globus provides for "authentic" Indian dishes.

I bring this up again, and in more detail, because since returning to the U.S. we've noticed several other instances of "brand India" for sale. At least two of the catalogs Marion has come across here at my in-laws have whole lines of India-inspired clothing for sale. All of a sudden it seems that it's hip to be Indian. It's possible that it's been hip to be Indian for some time, and that we never noticed. Or perhaps we've become hyperaware of all things Indian outside of India now that we're back from India ourselves.

Either way, the fact that it's hip to be Indian irks me. Appreciating "brand India" is very different than having any sincere appreciation for the country, its cultures, or its problems. So when western consumers turn India into a lifestyle, I find it troubling on a number of levels. First of all, its not terribly hip for Indians to be Indian, at least not in the U.S. While in India, we talked to at least one Indian who left the U.S. after 17 years because he had found it inhospitable in the post-September 11 culture of fear.

Why would it have become inhospitable for him? Because the color of his skin leads Americans to the presumption that he is either (a) Muslim, or (b) from the Middle East, and therefore a threat. For an Indian in the U.S., in other words, there is nothing hip about having dark skin. Even within India it's not hip to have dark skin. Advertisements for sunscreen urge people to use sunscreen not to protect their skin from the sun's harmful UV rays, but rather to keep their skin light in color. India is still very much influenced by the caste system, and the upper castes tend to have lighter skin.

So I am bothered by the fact that "being Indian" is really only hip if you're not Indian. But more bothersome is the fact that, most likely, none of the more than half a billion Indians living in poverty are benefiting from the commodification of their lifestyles. I guess it's too bad that they never patented their traditional fashions, their stainless steel bowls, and their terra cotta chai cups, all of which are now for sale at Globus for sums 10-100 times what the same items fetch in India. Take the hip hop industry in the United States, at least here you have a model for returning a bit of wealth to a traditionally exploited and oppressed segment of the population through the commodification of its culture.

Now here's the kicker...Globus was founded in 1907 and is one of Switzerland's oldest retail stores. When I discovered this, I thought a little more deeply about the way in which Globus is exploiting India. The west, after all, has been doing this long before anyone ever heard of Globus. World's Fairs at the end of the 19th century were a way to expose people to the exotic ways and wares of other cultures (as well as to promote the glory of the host country). The British made the practice a science in the form of the British Museum, where everything from Egyptian mummies to African pygmies were put on display for the curious Brits to see.

I guess Globus prompted in me the question of where the line should be drawn between spreading cultural awareness and capitalizing on a culture's transient popularity in wealthy fashion markets.

Technorati tags: consumerism, Globus, Indian culture

India Redux in Geneva

2007-01-04T20:03:00.000-08:00

I've been so delinquent lately in maintaining The Curious Stall that I am resorting to re-posting some of the entries that appeared in the India Zavelogue, the travelogue where I blogged during the six months my family and I lived and traveled in India. I think the entries that I'm plagiarizing from myself are very much in the spirit of the types of things I've been writing about here at The Curious Stall. So read on, and if you're interested in more of the personal account of the experience we had in India, follow the links to the India Zavelogue where there are well over 100 entries.

The first entry I'm borrowing from the Zavelogue comes from an experience we had in Geneva, Switzerland, the first place we stopped after leaving India. Enjoy...

There's a department store in Geneva called Globus (warning: French and German only). As far as we can tell, the store's gimmick is that its displays and decorations reflect a different city or region of the world every month or so. We walked into Globus and for a second thought we were back in India. "Mumbai/Bombay" was the theme for May and June, 2006.

Globus in Lausanne, Switzerland (photo from Globus website)

OK, that's not true at all. We didn't mistake Globus for India for a second. In fact, what was surprising to us was the way that "India" had been branded. The idea of India--its cultural uniqueness--was what was being sold at Globus. But it was, of course, a completely sanitized version of India. One section of the store had an autorickshaw on display. It looked like an authentic rickshaw, probably shipped from India (or more likely, from the Piaggio factory in Italy where, except for Bajaj rickshaws, India's rickshaws are made). The rickshaw had some actual dirt on it, but was for the most part stripped of the filth typically covering an Indian rickshaw (except for Mohammed, our driver in Ahmedabad, who kept his rickshaw very clean).

In other parts of the store tiffins, the little circular "lunch boxes" that Indians use, were used in displays. Water jugs, turbans, ceramic cups and other little touches were also used to give an "Indian" feel. But make no mistake, there was nothing Indian feeling about Globus. Elements of Indian culture and society had been co-opted by the Globus design team to sell consumers high-end products, many of which one would have great difficulty finding in India. For example, by purchasing a simple-looking pair of leather sandals, for around 100 euros, one can imbibe the spirit of India without actually being there.

It was hard to imagine what the average (i.e., poor) Indian would think entering Globus in all its branded India glory. My guess is that a dweller of Dharavi, India's and Asia's largest slum, would have walked into the very same Globus we visited and said, "Hmm, my life is for sale here. Why would people want to buy my life?" Yes, indeed, why would a wealthy European want to buy the trappings of Indian culture?

I'll write more about Globus, and more specifically the commodification of Indianness, in the next entry.

Technorati tags: Globus, consumerism, Switzerland

Goodbye to Kolkata's "underdeveloped" rickshaw pullers

2006-12-18T15:26:00.000-08:00

On Dec. 4, BBC News reported that West Bengal's state assembly finalized a bill that bans hand-pulled rickshaws, a plan that's been in the worls for some years.

In the BBC report, West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharya is quoted as saying "Westerners try to associate beggars and these rickshaws with the Calcutta landscape, but this is not what Calcutta stands for. Our city stands for prosperity and development."

According to the mayor of Kolkata, Bikash Ranjan Bhattacharya, "This inhuman mode of transport should have stopped years ago ... We can't imagine one man sweating and straining to pull another man."

I raise this issue not to argue whether such a ban is wrong or right. Certainly one would hope, perhaps naively, that officials are true to their word when they promise that a rehabilitation package for rickshaw pullers who will be out of work is forthcoming. Yet even if a rehabilitation package materializes, it will only be made available to licensed rickshaw pullers, according to the chief minister.

Instead, I raise this issue because I am interested in the rhetoric employed to justify the ban. Bhattacharya claims that Calcutta stands for "development." By extension, then, he must be implying that rickshaw pulling is a sign of underdevelopment. Does he, perhaps, also mean to suggest that rickshaw pulling is uncivilized? If so, is rickshaw pulling uncivilized because it is inhumane (the word the mayor used to describe rickshaw pulling)?

Or is it uncivilized because it is premised on simple machines--the wheel and lever--as opposed to the advanced machines (e.g., autos, streetcars, subways) of developed societies? In other words, isn't this ban really about changing the world's image of Calcutta? Perhaps this is no different than the motivations for New Delhi's subway?

I understand the argument to ban rickshaw pullers on humanitarian grounds. I have seen Calcutta's rickshaw pullers. I have ridden in a rickshaw behind a barefoot puller treading asphalt streets that must have been 55º C. I believe there must be a healthier and safer way for these men to make a living. But I object to officials using the rhetoric of concern for humanity when, or if, their motives truly lie elsewhere.

Since I quoted at length from Yunus' Nobel Prize acceptance speech in my post yesterday, let me conclude with another excerpt from his speech:

I support globalization and believe it can bring more benefits to the poor than its alternative. But it must be the right kind of globalization. To me, globalization is like a hundred-lane highway criss-crossing the world. If it is a free-for-all highway, its lanes will be taken over by the giant trucks from powerful economies. Bangladeshi rickshaw will be thrown off the highway. In order to have a win-win globalization we must have traffic rules, traffic police, and traffic authority for this global highway. Rule of "strongest takes it all" must be replaced by rules that ensure that the poorest have a place and piece of the action, without being elbowed out by the strong. Globalization must not become financial imperialism.

I wonder, are Calcutta's rickshaw pullers being thrown off the globalization highway? Or is something else going on here? And might this be an opportunity for one of the "social businesses" Yunus promoted in his speech; a business that could provide rickshaw pullers with a basic guaranteed income and better working conditions?

In case readers are interested in seeing what other bloggers are saying about this issue, check out Indra's Drishtikona, Pareltank, or Isaac Schrödinger.

Technorati tags: microfinance, Kolkata, globalization, rickshaw

Follow-up on Yunus/Grameen post

2006-12-17T13:05:00.000-08:00

I finally had a chance to read the full text of Muhammad Yunus' Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech. I was glad to see Yunus make explicit the link between pverty and peace. Back in October, when it was announced that Yunus/Grameen had won, I posted an entry summarizing what various people were saying about Yunus and about the Nobel committee's decision.

In that post, I quoted an editorial from The Economist that argued that Grameen and Yunus did not deserve an award reserved for peacemakers: "This year’s winner is an admirable anti-poverty campaigner, but it is a stretch to call him or the Grameen bank peacemakers." I then went on to argue that The Economist must not understand that peace is much more than the absence of war. Yunus' speech, from which I quote at length, made this point beautifully:

By giving us this prize, the Norwegian Nobel Committee has given important support to the proposition that peace is inextricably linked to poverty. Poverty is a threat to peace.

I believe terrorism cannot be won over by military action ... We must address the root causes of terrorism to end it for all time to come. I believe that putting resources into improving the lives of the poor people is a better strategy than spending it on guns.

Peace should be understood in a human way − in a broad social, political and economic way. Peace is threatened by unjust economic, social and political order, absence of democracy, environmental degradation and absence of human rights.

Finally, Yunus revealed his sociological intellect when he described the self-fulfilling prophecy of poverty:

We get what we want, or what we don't refuse. We accept the fact that we will always have poor people around us, and that poverty is part of human destiny. This is precisely why we continue to have poor people around us. If we firmly believe that poverty is unacceptable to us, and that it should not belong to a civilized society, we would have built appropriate institutions and policies to create a poverty-free world.

We wanted to go to the moon, so we went there. We achieve what we want to achieve. If we are not achieving something, it is because we have not put our minds to it. We create what we want.

In my previous post on microfinance, I sung its praises without also acknowledging its limits. For example, microfinance is not ideally suited to complete capital-intensive infrastructure projects (e.g., water provision, sanitation, road construction and maintenance, etc.). But Yunus, in his speech, elaborated on the concept of social businesses. Such businesses, when focused on needs other than microfinance, may develop the capacity to deliver larger-scale infrastructure projects. According to Yunus, social businesses

will be a new kind of business introduced in the market place with the objective of making a difference in the world. Investors in the social business could get back their investment, but will not take any dividend from the company. Profit would be ploughed back into the company to expand its outreach and improve the quality of its product or service. A social business will be a non-loss, non-dividend company ... The challenge is to innovate business models and apply them to produce desired social results cost-effectively and efficiently. Healthcare for the poor, financial services for the poor, information technology for the poor, education and training for the poor, marketing for the poor, renewable energy − these are all exciting areas for social businesses.

In Grameen, Yunus has already given us a social business that provides financial services to the poor. Let's hope that in another five or ten years we're celebrating a Noble Prize winner who, following in Yunus' footsteps, pioneered a social business that educated or provided health care for the world's poor. Such achievements are vital to a future world in which peace prevails.

Technorati tags: microfinance, Grameen, Muhammad Yunus, Nobel Peace Prize

Consumerism and dowry

2006-12-17T12:30:00.000-08:00

I recently received an email from a reader of the "Consumerism in India: A Faustian Bargain?" series I posted back in August and September. For a refresher, you can click here to go to the first entry in the five-part series, or to view all my posts tagged "consumerism," click here.

Nicoletta, an Italian woman beginning a PhD program in Indology, wrote to ask what I knew about the influence modern consumerism in Indian society is having on the practice of dowry:

Many scholars and commentators have stressed a correlation between the increase in dowry demands (and its murderous manifestation) and a more consumer oriented society in India, especially among middle urban classes. Is for this reason that the research project I'm about to start will be an attempt to take a critical look at global consumerism in India, linking it to the practice of dowry. What I want to try is to start reconstructing the "social life of things" belonging to the dowry list on a intergenerational bases ... I was wondering whether you know single scholars and research centres in India dealing with the issue of dowry from my same point of view and which can assist me in the field phase of my research project.

Here's an excerpt, with some modification, from my response:

Your research idea sounds very interesting.

You might be interested in checking out the following blog entry at POV, it offers a brief summary of a recent book by Vrinda Nabar called Caste as Woman.

As per your specific questions, unfortunately I'm not an expert in the area of your interest, so my suggestions are limited.

In terms of the concept of the "social life of things," I would recommend you read a book by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and Eugene Halton called The Meaning of Things: Domestic Symbols and the Self. It's now about 25 years old, but I think remains one of the best analyses of the way that we attach symbolic meaning to everyday material objects in our lives. It's focus is on the U.S., but theoretically I think it might be useful for you.

With respect to your research, I'd be interested in hearing more about the approach you plan to take. It sounds like you might, quite litrerally, inventory the items included in dowries across generations in particular families. Presumably you would, as well, compare changes in the make-up of dowries across families in order to understand how consumerism is more or less influencing the dowry practice in different castes, for example.

I would be very interested to see the extent to which modern consumer goods, especially those valued largely for their labels, are becoming a standard part of dowries.

I went on to tell Nicoletta that I would post an entry about her research interests, in the hopes that a reader or two might have some suggestions for her. I know there are many outstanding organizations in India working on reforming the practice of dowry. If you are a reader who has any familiarity with such organizations, please leave information about them in a comment to this post. I will make sure the information gets back to Nicoletta.

More importantly, I'd like to hear some discussion on this topic. Sociologically, the melding together of traditional practices with contemporary ones is one of the most fascinating aspects of globalization and the spread of consumerism. My guess is that there are parallel changes happening within the dowry practice. On one hand, among some segments of the population, the dowry practice is slowly eroding. But on the other hand, I suspect that Nicoletta is on to something--the way many Indians are embracing consumerism must be intensifying dowry practices, both with respect to the quantity and make-up of the goods constituting a dowry.

I hope some readers, more familiar than me on this topic, will share some thoughts.

Technorati tags: dowry, consumerism, Indian culture

Indian "Heroes" on American TV

2006-11-28T21:35:00.000-08:00

I know in the past there have been a few discussions in the Indian blogosphere about desis appearing on American television programs. For example, there was the desi couple that was one of the first two teams to get booted from this season's "Amazing Race." I don't watch much MTV these days, but a student told me about a couple of desis on an MTV show called "My Super Sweet 16" where rich girls' parents spoil them on their 16th birthdays. So I looked into it, and sure enough, in episode 25 there were Priya and Divya. The summary of the episode begins like this:

Texas has two princesses when 15 year old Priya and 18 year old sister, Divya, throw a bash for a birthday and graduation. As one of the richest families in the city, the two only want the most extravagant World Indian-themed party there is.

For another take on Priya and Divya (and an account of a more modest sweet 16 birthday, see this archived post at Sepia Mutiny).

My real point in this frivolous post (I'll get back to more serious topics in the coming days) is that there is a hugely popular show this television season the entire premise of which is based on a professor of genetics from Chennai who begins tracking down "ordinary people who ... possess extraordinary abilities" (from the show's tag line). Of course, these people with extraordinary abilities (e.g., teleportation, spontaneous self-healing, flight, etc.) are all Americans. But Mohinder, the Indian character's name (played by Sendhil Ramamurthy), returns to Chennai in later episodes after momentarily giving up on figuring out the mystery of his father's death (it was his father who first hypothesized that evolution has produced people with special abilities).

Now, this is no low-budget TV show. It's on NBC, in a primetime slot, and has proven to be a big hit. Yet it seems as if the producers have cut all the corners possible in shooting the scenes that are supposed to be in India.

In the scene below, from the pilot episode, you can get a sense of what I mean:

(Sorry, I'm having trouble embedding YouTube video in Blogger beta. For now, here's the link.)

Be sure to watch at least a couple minutes in, until you get to the part where Mohinder is lecturing to students, presumably at the University of Madras. Then keep watching to see the scene where Mohinder walks through a supposed monsoon rain.

In later episodes there are quaint shots of Mohinder in a "bustling" Chennai market. I put bustling in quotes because the market in the scene bustles nothing at all like a real Indian market. Sure, the show probably didn't have the budget to go and shoot in India, but they could have gotten some better consultants to help them re-create some more believable Chennai-like scenes.

Technorati tags: Heroes, My Super Sweet 16, Amazing Race

The U.N. Global Compact: Why are Indian Companies Faltering?

2006-11-28T18:59:00.000-08:00

First off, my apologies to the smattering of regular readers for such a gap between posts. In the academic calendar there are times of the year that are busier than others, and the last month has been one of those times. But the semester is near an end, and after I complete the manuscript I've been working on for a Dec. 1 deadline, I should have time to begin posting more regularly. Believe me, the ideas are stacking up.

For now, here's a quick post about the United Nation's Global Compact. The Global Compact was introduced in 1999 by (soon-to-be-former) Secretary General Kofi Anan with the aim of bringing together companies, UN agencies, labor, and civil society to commit to upholding ten universal principles in the areas of human rights, labor, environment, and transparency and anti-corruption.

The links above will take you to detailed explanations for each of the ten principles, to which companies may voluntary agree. So that you don't have to follow the links, here are the principles:

Businesses should support and respect the protection of internationally proclaimed human rights; and
make sure that they are not complicit in human rights abuses.
Businesses should uphold the freedom of association and the effective recognition of the right to collective bargaining;
the elimination of all forms of forced and compulsory labour;
the effective abolition of child labour; and
the elimination of discrimination in respect of employment and occupation.
Businesses should support a precautionary approach to environmental challenges;
undertake initiatives to promote greater environmental responsibility; and
encourage the development and diffusion of environmentally friendly technologies .
Businesses should work against all forms of corruption, including extortion and bribery.

On the corporate side, participation in the Global Compact involves a voluntary commitment to the ten principles. Companies are required to submit an annual "Communication on Progress" that details the steps they are taking to implement the principles. What does a company get for participating? It gets to participate in Global Compact events such as "Learning Forums" where companies share best practices for upholding the principles. A participating company also gets to use the Global Compact name and logo in promotional materials.

There's a lot of debate about whether the Global Compact really makes any difference in a company's conduct. My guess is that the difference, if any, is minimal. But when the Worldwatch Institute recently reported that the UN de-listed 335 companies from the Global Compact (the UN press release on the de-listing is available here), it occurred to me that the transparency of the Global Compact listing process gives average citizens ways to hold companies accountable. According to the UN, de-listing is a strategy to maintain the integrity of the Global Compact:

This step conforms to the Global Compact's Integrity Measures ... The Integrity Measures state that any company that has missed two consecutive annual deadlines to submit a Communication on Progress (COP) will be regarded "inactive" and marked accordingly on the Global Compact website.

Since the de-listed companies can be viewed at the Global Compact website, I compiled a list of the Indian companies that were de-listed:

Bharat Aluminium Company Ltd.
Bongaigaon Refinery and Petrochemicals Ltd.
Cement Corporation of India
Air India
Dena Bank
Central Cottage Industries
Excel Industries Limited
Hi-Tech Carbon
Hindustan Organic Chemicals ltd.
Engineering Projects India Ltd.
Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd.
Apollo Hospitals
Mishra Dhatu Nigam Ltd.
Mineral Exploration Corporation
Mazagon Dock Ltd
Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd.
Kudremukh Iron Ore Company
Kolam Information Services PVT. Ltd
Infrastructure Development Finance Company Ltd.
Hindustan Sanitaryware and Industries Ltd.
Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd.
Semiconductor Complex Ltd.
Scooters India LTD
Quadra Advisory Private Ltd.
Punjab National Bank
PSi
Priconser India Pvt. Ltd.
North Eastern Electric Power Corporation Ltd.
National Textile Corporation Ltd.
MMTC
Wadia Group
Unit Trust of India
Transnational Supply & Service
The State Trading Corporation of India
The Shipping Corporation of India Ltd.
Telco Construction Equipment Company Ltd.
Tata Tea
Tata Industries Limited
TAL Manufacturing Solutions Limited

Some of these companies may have failed to submit a COP because they are no longer committed to upholding the principles of the Global Compact. In other cases, they may not have the resources to devote to developing a COP. Given the number of companies from developing countries among the 335 that were de-listed, I suspect there is a common obstacle preventing companies from maintaining their commitment.

Regardless of the reason, I figured readers of The Curious Stall might be familiar with one of the companies in the list, or even have a contact, and be able to find out why some of these companies have failed to submit their COPs. Perhaps through the blogosphere we can do a little collaborative research and put a little pressure on these companies to stay committed.

If you know anything about any of the companies listed above, even just general information about what kind of business the company is engaged in, feel free to post it here. Many Indian companies have no web presence, so it is difficult for me to find anything out from where I blog. Who knows, perhaps we can collect some information that might be useful to the UN's Global Compact office in providing better support to companies in developing countries that want to stay committed to the ten principles.

Technorati tags: India economy, Global Compact, United Nations

Diseases of Poverty, Diseases of Affluence

2006-10-21T05:26:00.000-07:00

I've been meaning to blog again about the rising rates of diabetes in India. My previous discussion, with some links to other bloggers' views on the issue, can be found here and here.

I think there is no doubt that the rise of diabetes is, in part, a function of changing lifestyles among the relatively small part of the Indian population that is reaping the benefits of the country's economic growth. There is another potentially important factor, and I will blog at greater length about that soon.

In this post I want to point out the dialectical nature of globalization (or economic liberalization, if you like). Only under the logic of globalization can a country experience both diseases of affluence and diseases of poverty. In a Marxian sense, this may be another important historical contradiction, or perhaps simply another manifestation of the central contradiction of capitalism (its simultaneous need to expand and its unsustainable exploitation of labor). Globalization, after all, as some argue, is merely the latest phase of capitalism.

This idea occurred to me as I read "The Hungry Bellies of South Asians..." at pass the roti. Commenting on the 2006 Global Hunger Index, a report issued by the Deutsche Welthungerhilfe and the International Food Policy Research Institute that uses three indicators to measure the extent of hunger in 97 developing countries and 22 countries in transition, Desi Italiana quotes the following from an article at Outlook India.com:

“Another value of the index is to demonstrate which countries have not been able to use their available economic resources effectively in reducing under nutrition,” Ms. Wiesmann noted.” High income inequality is one of the factors that causes countries to have higher levels of hunger and under nutrition than would be expected based on the gross national income per capita.”

Weisman, the IFPRI researcher who developed the index, does not go on to explain why high income inequality would exacerbate the problems of malnutrition and hunger. Perhaps the reason is obvious, but I will state it anyway: income inequality translates into disparities in power (not just economic, but political and even cultural power); and those with power work to maintain the status quo.

>Look at this optimistic headline from the Hindustan Times: "India shows improvement in tackling malnutrition: Index." But the article goes on to note that:

The hunger index for India has shown that from a score of 41.23 in 1981, it dropped to 32.73 but is holding steady at 25.73 for the years of 1997 and 2003. Bangladesh on the other hand would show its hunger index dropping from a score of 44.40 in 1981 to 28.27 in 2003.

I would be willing to bet that there is a pretty close correlation between the beginning of India's economic rise (and thereby the beginning of its growing income inequality and power disparity) and the slowing of the decline of its score on the Global Hunger Index. I am not arguing that globalization does not reduce poverty. I believe it does. But I also believe that it reduces poverty at a slower rate than alternative approaches.

Consider the following quote, from an article on Expat that draws from Welthungerhilfe’s f="http://www.welthungerhilfe.de/1550.html">press release on the report:

Ingeborg Schaeuble, Welthungerhilfe's chairwoman, said stable countries like Ghana have managed to reduce hunger, malnutrition and the child mortality rate ... "It is, however, wrong to think that economic progress alone is enough to reduce hunger," said Schaeuble, who is the wife of German Interior Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble.

"These countries cannot make headway without investing in agriculture, health and education. This is particularly applicable to countries which have endured acute crises and war," she said.

This is precisely my point. Currently, India's investments in agriculture largely benefit the economic elite, and its investments in health and education are dismally inadequate. Now, back to diabetes. Type 2 diabetes, at least to the extent that it is linked to the diet and lifestyle of affluent people, is likely to get the attention of India's political leaders.

Globalization is slow to reduce poverty because it operates under the same logic of, or arguably is the same as, capitalism. This logic privileges continued growth of the system above all else. Social or environmental problems are never dealt with sufficiently unless there is the potential for profit in their solutions. Yet in the constant push for growth, internal conflicts emerge. Marx focused on class struggles. Perhaps coexisting diseases of poverty and affluence are part of the synthesis of the dialect.

For Marx, or Hegel for that matter, dialectics consist of a thesis, antithesis, and synthesis (a term not preferred by Hegel). The coexistence of diseases of poverty and diseases of affluence could be viewed as part of the dialectic nature of globalization. But it might be that their coexistence is actually part of the synthesis of the dialectic of capitalism. In other words (bear with me as I simplify some of Marx's thoughts), the ever increasing exploitation of the labor class by the capitalist class, and the ever increasing income inequality that comes with this exploitation, is resolved through universal sickness.

The ultimate resolution, of course, will depend on whose sickness does them in first. Presumably, the "haves" will use their economic power to manage their diseases of affluence while the "have nots" continue to suffer. This is certainly, more or less, what the medical system in the U.S. looks like. Perhaps India will follow a different path.

Technorati tags: poverty, Global Hunger Index, diabetes, globalization

As long as everyone is blogging about Grameen Bank...

2006-10-13T19:28:00.000-07:00

As most of the globally conscious citizens of the world know by now, Dr. Muhammad Yunus, the founder of Grameen Bank, the original microfinance bank, has won the Nobel Peace Prize (technically he won half the prize while the Bank itself won the other half).

In short, microfinance is the ultimate antithesis to World Bank-style lending. Rather than massive loans given to governments of developing countries to undertake colossal mega development projects like dams, microfinancing finds single individuals, or sometimes a small group of individuals, and provides extremely small loans. Through a number of clever strategies, legitimate microfinance institutions like Grameen Bank are able to achieve extraordinary repayment rates. The individuals assuming the loans not only pay back the borrowed money, but develop skills to reinvest the surplus capital earned through the initial investment of the loan.

Here's what a few bloggers have been saying about Yunus and Grameen winning the award:

From Shobak, on the inspiration Grameen offers the world:

Current politics is a death-bound roller coaster, and the passengers can't disembark. People are always banging on about the resulting short supply of optimism. The stories are there, inside and outside the borders - vested with the Innovative NGOs, Tireless Activists, Young Turks and Culture Agitators."

The Globalization Institute Blog jumped on the optimism bandwagon, noting that the Institute "has been advocating a greater emphasis on microfinance in the international development community so we are delighted by this appointment. And we're doing research on how to take microfinance forward."

Kamla Bhatt has a nice summary of some of the major media coverage in her entry, including the following quote from an editorial by Gabriel Rozenberg, Economics Reporter for The Times:

Grameen shows us the poor and the destitute not as pitiable charity cases condemned to their lot, but as thwarted entrepreneurs who just lack the means to improve their families' lives. It is a profoundly optimistic view of human nature. With this inspired choice the Nobel Committee has lit a path that could lead to the eradication of poverty in our time.

And then, just in case there is too much optimism out there, we have The Economist offering its reaction in an editorial titled "Losing its lustre":

Friday October 13th, the Norwegian part of the Nobel Institute ... named the recipient of the 2006 peace award ... [T]he award was given to Muhammad Yunus and Grameen bank in Bangladesh, which promotes lending to the poorest, especially women ... [b]ut the Nobel committee could have made a braver, more difficult, choice by declaring that there would be no recipient at all ... This year’s winner is an admirable anti-poverty campaigner, but it is a stretch to call him or the Grameen bank peacemakers.

When The Economist also questions last year's winner, Kenyan environmentalist Wangari Maathai, claiming that "she has done a lot to plant trees in Kenya, but not much to promote peace," it becomes apparent that there are those who fail to understand how poverty, which emerges out of resource scarcity, is linked to conflict. "Peace," The Economist must not realize, is much more than the absence of war.

Now, what does microfinance have to offer the average citizen of a developed country who wants to help in the fight against global poverty? Most of us place some sort of vague trust in charitable and philanthropic organizations, believing that their modest work will somehow make a difference in the face of widespread poverty. Others believe that institutions like the U.N., or even the World Bank, are responsible for, and dealing with, the problems of poverty and inequality.

But these institutions are large and faceless, and if they are not working effectively to eradicate poverty, the average citizen feels powerless to change them. Many people might perceive microfinance as a tool of similarly large (though not as large as the World Bank) and faceless institutions, and therefore assume no ability to become involved. But the beauty of microfinance is that it is micro. This means that loan amounts are so small, on average, that even a lower-middle class American can contribute a small percentage of her or his annual earnings to a lender that can, in turn, make a loan to a farmer, shopkeeper, or other entrepreneur in need of a cash jumpstart.

But still, how would one find a bank engaged in microfinance, and do these banks give individuals an opportunity to make investments that can be turned around in the form of loans? They may, but there's a major obstacle in that few want to do the research to find out. There's an impressive organization, called Kiva, that has figured out a way to remove the obstacles. Kiva uses the Internet to allow people like me to lend money directly to a person in the developing world. This cuts out the massive overhead of a large bank. It gives me, the "lender," a sense that my money is actually making a difference in someone's life. If I'm happy with my investment, when my loan is repaid I can have Kiva roll right back into the lending pool so that I can help someone else.

At first I was skeptical about whether this was really a viable solution to global poverty. From the information on its website, including glowing endorsements from such media outlets as NPR, ABC News The Wall Street Journal, and Business Week, Kiva seems to have a solid foundation and a model that is already proving effective. I'm sure the most cynical among us can find reason to criticize Kiva's model of microfinance. The Economist, after all, found it rather easy to criticize Yunus and Grameen for not doing enough peacemaking to deserve a Nobel Peace Prize.

But I have to wonder, if such a model were in place six or seven years ago, when many cotton farmers in India began going deep into debt, with usurious interest rates, to buy Bt cotton from Monsanto and other biotech companies, would it have made a difference? In this case, probably not. The reason is that Bt cotton, and all of the other industrial inputs required to grow and harvest such volumes of cotton (or any other crop), are far more expensive than typical microfinance loans would cover.

What's at issue here is the use of technology at a human scale. For example, a hydroelectric dam is not a technology at a human scale. Huge institutional investors, and a stable government infrastructure for managing costs and overseeing construction, are central components to any large-scale dam project. Can a technology, whether a dam that produces electricty or a genetically engineered seed that produces increased yields, really benefit a person if he or she has little or no control over it, and in using it becomes severely dependent on others?

One of the ideas behind microfinance is that it gives people at the bottom of the pyramid a little bit of control over their lives. Not too many mega-dams have made profoundly positive impacts on people's lives. Nor have we heard many promising stories about genetically modified seeds leading to beneficial economic transformations in people's lives (the African farmers in my last post not withstanding). But the stories that come out of the microfinance community are truly amazing.

There are already plenty of organizations in India engaged in microfinance (see here for a thorough article on implementing the concept of microfinance in India, drawing on examples from elsewhere in South Asia). With time, hopefully, the legitimate and credible organizations that are doing good work will rise to the top and those that only aim to take further advantage of people will fall by the wayside. For now, I'm headed back over to Kiva to see if I can find a Ugandan barber, or a Kenyan street vendor, or an Indian tailor who need a small loan to invest in some improvements that will help grow their businesses.

Technorati tags: microfinance, Kiva, Grameen

Monsanto: Africa's Johnny Appleseed?

2006-10-05T18:10:00.000-07:00

For readers who may not know who Johnny Appleseed is, let me explain. Johnny Appleseed is an American legend. Say Johnny Appleseed, and almost any American who attended school in the U.S. or watched cartoons will know who you are talking about. The legend is based on an actual person, John Champan, who traveled around much of the American Midwest in the early 1800s spreading his apple seeds. Basically, he taught people how to grow apple trees. He became a legend, according to his wikipedia entry, "largely because of his kind and generous ways."

Well, according to a post at The Globalisation Institute's blog, it sounds like Monsanto is becoming the Johnny Appleseed of Africa. In all fariness, "How global business is inceasing crop yields in Africa," the title of the entry, merely reports on the results of a study by the Enterprise Africa! project, part of George Mason University's Mercatus Center. According to the report, "the 'combi-pack' - a package containing hybrid maize seed, fertilizer and herbicide for subsistence farmers - is helping to tackle hunger in Africa."

From the report's summary, the benefits of the combi-pack sound unassailable:

Farmers in KwaZulu-Natal and Mpumalanga provinces who use Combi-Packs along with no-till, or minimum-till, agriculture have increased maize yields. Now, the farmers raise enough maize that they can feed their families and then sell the excess, earning money to fix homes, buy clothes, and pay school fees.

Furthermore, Combi-Packs combined with no and minimum till agriculture have had beneficial effects for the environment, reducing erosion, and conserving water. Swelekile Alina Nkosi, a farmer in Mlondozi in rural Mpumalanga, enjoys these benefits. “I’m so happy with this way of farming. What will happen when I’m old I don’t know, but one thing is good, and that is now there’s no water cutting through, so my soil is conserved.”

If you doubted the benevolence of the combi-pack, here's the clincher: "Farmers call the combi-pack 'Xoshindlala,' a Zulu word that means "chase away hunger."

But wait, what is the most incredible thing about the combi-pack?

The striking thing about the combi-pack is that it is not produced or distributed by aid workers - it is sold by the Monsanto Company to the farmers for a profit. Many critics of globalisation argue that multinationals will never help the poor, because it is not in their financial interests to do so - but Monsanto is proving them wrong. The sale of combi-packs is a mutually beneficial transaction: both parties are made better off by the sale than they would have been otherwise. It is also an excellent example of markets helping the poor.

I don't want to be too cynical, so I'm not going to suggest that anything about this report is untrue. But with just a little digging, I discovered that among Enterprise Africa!'s partners are several free-market think-tanks like the Free Market Foundation and the Institute of Economic Affairs. With a little more digging, I wonder if one might discover that Enterprise Africa! gets a little of its funding from Monsanto or some of Monsanto's "philanthropic" partners.

And even if it is all true, the cynic in me is saying that there must be some sort of catch. At the very least, as these farmers earn income from the surplus that the combi-pack helps them grow, I suspect Monsanto will be right there waiting to sell them the next level of seed/fertilizer/herbicide pack, with the promise that they can grow, and earn, even more.

If the combi-pack is everything that this report makes it out to be, and if my suspicions are wrong, then let's hope Monsanto is developing a combi-pack for India's farmers. Oh, and as long as Monsanto is being so magnanimous, perhaps they can compensate all of the people around the world who have suffered the health effects of exposure to some of the toxic chemicals Monsanto has blessed us with.

Technorati tags: Monsanto, GMOs, agriculture

Africa: India's next great source of labor?

2006-09-27T21:04:00.001-07:00

Jen Brea at Africabeat recently blogged about a new World Bank book that says China and India are part of Africa's "Silk Road." The idea is that Africa is poised for great economic growth through increasing trade with India and China. According to the book's promotional site, it is the first attempt to offer "systematic empirical evidence on how the two emerging economic giants of Asia— China and India—now stand at the crossroads of the explosion of African-Asian trade and investment."

According to Brea, in her post titled "Africa as China and India's 'New Economic Frontier,"

There has long been chatter about labor shortages creating upward pressure on Chinese wages and the fact that Chinese products may become less competitive, if not in first world markets, then in China's own domestic market. This is where the potential for Africa to use its comparative advantage - a low-cost labor force - comes in. If that labor force were mobilized, it could produce products for Indian and Chinese consumers at lower prices than many Indian and Chinese producers.

My question is "Where does it all end?" When India begins depending on cheap labor in Africa, then where will Africans turn to find their cheap labor? And in the meantime, what will happen to the 600,000,000 Indians living in poverty whose own government bypassed them for even cheaper labor in Africa?

India has solved one problem, it has found a sound engine of economic growth. And from what I have read lately, it sounds like some of the IT sector growth is stimulating the manufacturing sector. There was a New York Times article earlier in September titled "A Younger India is Flexing its Industrial Brawn," about which Kamla Bhatt and chacko, among a few others, blogged. The main argument is that India has a younger population, no one-child policy, and hence a more robust workforce that is situated to step into the gap left if and when China falters.

Aside from the infrastructure and other obvious differences between India and China, India has another major hurdle to overcome: many manufacturing jobs require basic level of education, some even demand English language skills; at the very least, most manufacturing jobs require literacy, if not in Engligh then in Hindi. But the vast majority of the 600,000,000 Indians living in poverty, those who most need whatever new manufacturing jobs India creates, do not speak functional English, nor do many of them read or write in their mother tongues. So educating them, even just to the level to function in a factory job, is quite a challenge, and one that government after government has been unable/unwilling to take on.

But even before getting to that point, I want to return to my original question. Where does it all end? Does Africa have a labor pool that exceeds India's when it comes to the basic skills required for manufacturing jobs? If so, then maybe we'll see India shift its attention to Africa to get more cheaply the consumer goods its middle class increasingly demands.

But I don't think Africa is any better off than India (I realize I am comparing a country and a continent, crude as it is). The real race will be to see who will be the first to provide the basic social infrastructure needed to raise the labor pool to certain basic standards. Even then, in the greater scheme of things, I'm quite skeptical. The production-consumption cycle of global capitalism--a cycle in which prodcution processes are moved around the world to find the cheapest resources and cheapest labor, and completed goods are then moved back to the wealthiest parts of the world where they are consumed--is utterly unsustainable.

And, yes, I'll be the first to admit (since even environmentalists seem wary to bring it up), Americans must seriously consider lifestyle downsizing. We need to find ways to live richly without plundering the world's resources, and without setting a goal for the rest of the world that we simply cannot afford to have everyone achieve.

Technorati tags: India economy, Africa, China

"Primary financial cause of farmer suicides"

2006-09-25T21:12:00.000-07:00

I'm still trying to carve out the time to post a critical sociological analysis of the farmer suicide issue in India. I'm compelled to make a brief post now, especially after reading "Just heart alone won't suffice," at The Indian Economy Blog (originally posted here on The Acorn), in which Nitin Pai writes:

It has been the The Acorn’s case that [the farmer suicide] crisis is caused by the government’s determined refusal to allow market forces to play in the agriculture sector. Its policies have created perverse incentives: leading to a scarcity in formal sources of credit that is the primary financial cause of farmer suicides.

Such a position is not surprising for a blogger who writes at The Indian Economy Blog. "The solution to India’s ‘agrarian crisis’, therefore," Pai continues, "lies not in government largesse, but in its retreat. It lies in making rural and agricultural markets work."

"Markets, markets, markets, let the markets do their thing," seems to be the refrain of free market believers like Pai. As a sociologist, I cringe at the notion of reducing social complexity to the abstract, and reified (the process by which our own socially constructed concepts become a part of our reality), notion of "market forces." On the other hand, I'll admit, the solution suggested in the end seems to make some sense:

Politicians, intellectuals and farmers all need to accept that small loans are more expensive and must be priced accordingly. Thus an answer to the credit needs of small farmers in India is to free up interest rates, not just in terms of regulation but in terms of acceptability. At the same time, the government should permit a whole spectrum of credit providers, formal and informal, to enter the field and compete with each other so that they can enhance the total credit flow and eventually bring down costs. No regulation can control supply and price simultaneously. So if more credit has to flow to farmers, the price (interest rate) must be deregulated. Initially it may go up, attract more players and then they will compete and bring down the rates. Ironically, this lesson from the housing and consumer finance market has been missed by our policy-makers. (Pai is quoting from here).

Sure, I can agree that there are some problems with the loan market. I just wish that the economists would take a step back and ask "Why are farmers in India borrowing money?" I need to do more research before I settle on the answers to this question. But my suspicions are that (a) the Green Revolution was the initial impetus behind more capital-intensive agriculture, and that (b) the Biotech Revolution has wratcheted up to yet another level the capital needed to farm in India today.

So let's not scoff at the "terrible and perverse incentive" created when Manmohan Singh promises money to help the widows of farmers who have committed suicide. They are simply the latest victims of at least 50 years of decision-making that has had unintended consequences. Economists have a nice short-term solution in the goal of fixing the markets so that loans are not so burdensome for farmers who are subject to uncontrollable forces like the weather. But in the long run, making agriculture increasingly capital intensive, as I believe the Green and Biotech Revolutions have, makes agriculture profitable only for large agribusinesses that can afford the overhead and absorb the losses when weather, insects, or other forces destroy their crops.

Two long-term solutions come to mind: (1) use microfinance mechanisms to wean farmers from the expensive inputs required for "conventional" agriculture and to transition them back to organic farming; (2) create "work transition" programs that can slowly move farmers into new types of work as their land is taken over by large agribusinesses (which do not create jobs).

Again, these are preliminary thoughts. I welcome all types of feedback. I am continuing to try to understand this issue and will write more on it in the coming weeks.

Technorati tags: India economy, farmer suicides, agriculture

Old colonial tricks in new bottles

2006-09-20T20:24:00.000-07:00

Over at grist, an environmental news and commentary site, there's a nice post in the gristmill blog by Tom Philpott. Philpott lays the foundation for his argument by drawing on a 2001 book by author Mike Davis. The book, titled Late Victorian Holocausts: El Niño Famines and the Making of the Third World, uses as one example strategies employed by the British to gain from droughts in India:

Davis lays out in devastating detail (first chapter available for free here) how in the 1870s, high-living colonial administrators dismantled the old Indian system for handling droughts, replacing it with one in which the price of grain floated freely based on global supply and demand. Thus, when a drought struck a grain-producing region in India, the grain price surged. The only buyers who could then afford it happened to reside in merry olde England.
The subcontinent's railroad system, paid for by taxes imposed on the Indians, very efficiently carried grain being produced in the non-drought areas to ports for shipment to the mother country. Its cutting-edge telegraph infrastructure, also financed by colonial taxes, transmitted price hikes rapidly. Famine thus rippled throughout India, including in non-drought-stricken areas.
Tens of millions perished in a series of famines in late 19th century India; before, when drought struck a certain area, food would move in from luckier areas and famines were rare. Davis claims the English took advantage of these not-so-natural disasters to consolidate its grip on the subcontinent. It was all very efficient, really.

Philpott uses this example from Davis' book to draw a parallel to the neocolonialism of the biotechnology companies that sell Indian farmers expensive Bt cotton and other seeds. Only, because the Indian government, as part of economic liberalization, is pushing for an industrial agriculture system, there is no support to bail out farmers who wind up in debt and, after a failed monsoon or other disaster (natural or otherwise) have no crops to sell and no money to repay their debts.

In other words, in the 1800s the British used their might to impose on India a system in which the British could squeeze every last rupee out of the Indian farmer. What's the difference today? Seems like old wine in new bottles. The British are gone, but the west has managed to convince India of the virtues of free markets and expensive advanced technological solutions to age-old problems like famine. And in the place of the British, the Indian government itself is imposing austerity on the Indian farmer. Meanwhile, the EU and U.S. refuse to lower their subsidies for domestic farmers and tariffs against imported agricultural goods (a pretty good summary of the failed Doha round of WTO negotiations can be found here). It's quite a racket. And who benefits?

Technorati tags: India economy, farmer suicides, agriculture

Elsewhere on the "Diabetes in India" story

2006-09-15T07:50:00.000-07:00

So far, most of what I've read in the blogosphere about the NY Times article on Type 2 diabetes in India can be categorized as "Yeah, it's a problem, we know it" (see here). At Sepia Mutiny, a post on the article has prompted 140+ comments, some of which suggest that the article fails to consider explanations for the rise in diabetes other than increasing affluence.

But over at pass the roti on the left hand side, Desi Italiana has posted a nice take on the issue. Titling her entry "'Modernity' and mithai: a deadly combo," Desi Italiana points out that the link between diabetes and increasing affluence calls into question all the "India Shining" rhetoric. "What's funny," she points out, "is that despite the facts that the author provides - such as the lack of health care and health insurance, the 300 million hungry bellies and the cruel poverty - words like 'developed,' 'progress,' and 'modernization' abound."

Desi Italiana goes on to ask:

With more than 300 million people hungry, 290+ million without sanitation and drinking water, half of the population illiterate, inaccessible health care, and the AIDS epidemic spiraling out of control, where is the "modernity," "development," and "progress" in India? Is India considered to be modernizing and progressing just because it has a middle class?

Thank you for asking the types of hard questions that seldom get asked. Here is my answer:

A "developed" society, in an efficient, sustainable, and just manner, must:

Replenish its population
Adequately and fairly produce and distribute food/water, energy and shelter
Maintain the physical and mental health of its members
Pass on important knowledge to each subsequent generation
Regulate human behavior so as to maintain social order

The article on diabetes in India, and the problem with the spread of AIDS pointed out by Desi Italiana, suggests that maintenance of health (3.) is not currently being achieved. In my previous posts, I tried to make the point that under a consumer culture, traditions and customs essential to the passing on of important knowledge (4.) are diminished. Widespread malnourishment, urban slums and farmer suicides all suggest that India is struggling to produce and distribute food/water, energy and shelter (2.) in an adequate and just manner.

On the other hand, except for occasional communal violence, social order (5.) appears to be more or less maintained. This means that, arguably, India is accomplishing only 1. with any great success (perhaps with too much success).

Now, this probably sounds rather harsh. My point is that India should continue to "develop" and "progress," but without blindly embracing some abstract, and therefore ultimately unobtainable, notion of what development is. A society has become modern or developed only when it uses the knowledge, technology, and other innovations of the last 200 years to meet the above conditions, for the vast majority of its members, in an efficient and just manner.

Of course, by this standard, one could conclude that the U.S. is failing to meet the basic standards of a developed society. Well, maybe the U.S. should not be the standard to which the developing world looks.

Technorati tags: India economy, diabetes, development

Epilogue to the Consumerism in India Series

2006-09-13T10:07:00.000-07:00

An article (login may be required) in today's New York Times provides the perfect epilogue to the now-concluded five-part series "Consumerism in India: A Faustian Bargain?" (Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5) In the series, I focused more on the psychological and social consequences of life in a consumer society. I also touched on the impacts on the lives of people implicated in the global chain of production and consumption. What I did not mention were diseases of affluence. Adult onset diabetes, now more widely known as Type 2 diabetes, is a perfect example:

In its hushed but unrelenting manner, Type 2 diabetes is engulfing India, swallowing up the legs and jewels of those comfortable enough to put on weight in a country better known for famine. Here, juxtaposed alongside the stick-thin poverty, the malaria and the AIDS, the number of diabetics now totals around 35 million, and counting.

The future looks only more ominous as India hurtles into the present, modernizing and urbanizing at blinding speed. Even more of its 1.1 billion people seem destined to become heavier and more vulnerable to Type 2 diabetes, a disease of high blood sugar brought on by obesity, inactivity and genes, often culminating in blindness, amputations and heart failure. In 20 years, projections are that there may be a staggering 75 million Indian diabetics.

I don't have much to say about the article at this point. I just wanted to make sure that readers are aware of it and that the issue gets some attention in the blogosphere. The only concern I will raise is what I imagine is the dominant attitude towards this problem. The attitude, characterized by Dr. A. Ramachandran, the managing director of the M.V. Hospital for Diabetes, in Chennai, is captured in the following quote from the article:

“Diabetes unfortunately is the price you pay for progress."

I realize that Dr. Ramachandran does not represent all Indians. But if this is how India responds to the problems of consumerism and affluence, some of my predictions in the "Consumerism in India" series about the future of India looking more and more like troubled western consumer societies are already coming true. Perhaps for India, the future is now.

Technorati tags: India economy, diabetes, New York Times, consumer-society

Consumerism in India: A Faustian Bargain? (Part 5 of 5)

2006-09-12T14:34:00.000-07:00

The Bigger Picture

Before bringing this series to a close, I want to place India’s move towards a consumer society in a larger framework. India, after all, represents a microcosm of the larger globalizing world. For within India exists the same tension permeating global society. The tension is between those individuals who have benefited from economic liberalization and who have become full-fledged citizens in the consumer society, and those individuals who struggle to provide for themselves and their families the basic essentials for survival, reaping little or no benefits of economic liberalization or the consumer society.

Let me elaborate on this tension by examining the way in which the current global arrangement allows citizens of the developed world to deny any personal responsibility for the consequences of consumption. In fact, not only do we deny any responsibility for the ways in which our consumer lifestyles lead to global problems like climate change or local problems like sick workers or communities contaminated by industrial wastes, we go so far as to propose that the solution to the problems of the developing world is even more consumerism.

To function, a consumer society depends on consumer blindness to the broader social, cultural, and environmental consequences of our marketplace decisions. American-style consumerism has done very well at keeping the American consumer from understanding the nature of the damage done by the production and distribution of our cheap goods. As a result, Americans think it makes perfect sense that we have a right to our big SUVs, to our cheap disposable goods, and to our cheap out-of-season produce shipped to us from around the world. We work hard, so the argument goes, these things are available to us in the marketplace, and therefore we have a right to spend our hard-earned money on them if we so desire.

photo by flickr member "jennie"

How do Americans fail to make connections between our consumer choices and matters of social justice for people elsewhere around the world? After all, we make connections between heroine or bootlegged DVDs and terrorism, and define it as our moral duty to abstain from purchasing any products that might aid terrorist activities. We also make the determination for others that the production and consumption of pornography, tobacco, alcohol, and drugs, can be dangerous for certain members of society. So we regulate the production and distribution of such goods and services. Yet we don't regulate our own companies when they operate overseas in ways that would clearly be in violation of U.S. standards, and we certainly don’t regulate our own consumer behavior even though our decisions in the marketplace may perpetuate global systems of injustice.

The U.S. grew economically wealthy as a country during the last half of the 19th and the first half of the 20th century. This growth was a result of visionary leaders, innovative entrepreneurs, and hard-working immigrants who came in search of the American dream. Many of them achieved it. But in the mid-20th century, when it began to become apparent that some of our growth was made possible through various forms of internal exploitation (e.g. child labor, the labor of illegal immigrants, and other forms of exploitation of labor, as well as through exploitation of the environment in the form of pollution for which corporations did not have to pay), we passed laws to put constraints on these forms of exploitation. Corporations determined that they could escape these constraints by moving to other parts of the world where, because of range of factors, regulations were either non-existent or unenforced and industry in any form was welcomed.

Today, these same corporations are able to provide Americans, as well as other developed societies, with the cheap goods to which we believe we have a right. At one time, Americans could make purchases in the marketplace and be somewhat assured—because most everything we purchased was made in the U.S. and therefore met American labor, environmental, and human rights standards—that our purchases were not harming people or the environments on which people depend for their livelihood. Today we live in a global marketplace and therefore do not have the luxury of being so presumptuous.

But the successful consumer society buffers its members from the material universe of consumerism. Consumers cannot be permitted to know the true costs of their consumer lifestyles for fear they would either reduce their consumption levels or demand goods manufactured to certain basic social and environmental standards. This has largely worked in the U.S. since we have been able to off-shore most of the uglier aspects of the material universe of consumerism. India is one among many of the destinations. Whether collection of our obsolete and hazardous electronic waste, destruction of the retired ships we used to transport our cheap goods, or exploitation of cheap labor to manufacture textiles, semiconductors, or other goods, Americans are largely isolated from the hazards involved in the production, distribution and disposal of our consumer goods.

Living amidst eWaste: photo by flickr member "Greenpeace India"

Can India similarly protect its privileged consumers from the harsh realities of producing, distributing, and disposing of cheap consumer goods? After all, not only are there are few places left to “off-shore” the ugly aspects of the material universe of consumerism, but most of the ugly aspects already coexist with among India’s malls, gated communities, and other trappings of developed world consumerism. If through the process of globalization Americans have managed to export not only our hazardous waste and dangerous jobs, but also our belief that in a consumer anyone who works hard has the opportunity to enjoy the fruits of her or his labor in the consumer marketplace, then maybe India can shield its full-fledged consumers from the knowledge that their consumerism sustains domestic and global inequality.

But perhaps Indians will find other motives for rejecting, or at least accepting on their own terms, American-style consumerism. Indians have always maintained a healthy suspicion of U.S. motives with respect to their country. Now should be no time to relinquish this skepticism. It may seem as if Americans want Indians, who make up a huge untapped market, to join us in our consumer lifestyles. But I doubt Americans wish for Indians to join us because we have some deep sense of compassion and justice that leads us to believe that Indians must be given access to the same quality of life as us. If we were motivated by a deep sense of compassion and justice, we’d call into question our own lifestyles, which are only sustainable to the extent that others around the world are denied some of the basic comforts—like clean drinking water—that we take for granted. Americans, or more specifically the American government, first and foremost support India’s transition to a consumer society because it is good for the American economy, not because of any concern for India’s millions of citizens living in poverty.

India: An Improvement on the Consumer Society or a Faustian Bargain?

With all this criticism, readers might be asking whether I have a solution. Suggesting an alternative approach to economic development has not been the purpose of this series, though I think a reasonable approach would combine a mix of large-scale development projects that are sensitive to local people and small-scale development projects that protect and nurture the very crafts, skills, and traditions that make India what it is today. Rather, my aim has been to point out that even if consumerism is the path India pursues, Indians should be asking some difficult questions. How will consumerism change India and Indians? Can India tailor its own uniquely Indian consumer society that avoids the pitfalls of western-style consumerism? If India embraces a patently western-style consumer society model, will it have "sold its soul" as the legendary Faust is purported to have done?

Indians don't seem to be asking these questions. Instead, what I hear many educated Indians say is this: “Sure India is changing rapidly and we have no idea what it will be like in 20 years. But we have no option, this is the only hope we have of taking care of our people.” Even if consumerism is the approach that India follows, which already seems to be the case, Indians ought to enter into it with a critical perspective that may help them avoid some of the negative outcomes, like those discussed in this series, that unquestioning American consumers now experience.

Consumerism in India: A Faustian Bargain? (Part 4 of 5)

2006-09-05T23:12:00.000-07:00

In the last installment of the “Consumerism in India: A Faustian Bargain?” series, I concluded by suggesting that consumer capitalism, in order to maintain a constantly increasing rate of growth, reshapes or even breaks down existing cultural traditions. Without cultural traditions, from which people derive a sense of belonging, a sense of being loved, and ultimately their very sense of who they are, people turn to the consumer commodities of the marketplace to fulfill these needs.

Cultural change happens all the time. Historically, however, such changes come from the ground up. They emerge through people’s indidivual or collaborative efforts to solve the problems of everyday life. In a consumer society, cultural change happens largely from above. New cultural objects in a consumer society, the commodities that we consume in the marketplace, are produced by corporate executives who survey the market and attempt to “solve the problem” of how to make a profit. A new Maruti or the latest pair of Levis do not solve any problems of everyday life. If anything, they simply create new problems like planning for the maintenance and replacement of our newly purchased goods.

I ended the last installment in this series by proposing that Indians should be asking “What will the future India look like if change continues to be driven by a market orientation rooted in the culture of consumption?”

We in the West tend to assume that democracy and free markets are the solutions to the world’s problems. When a society embraces consumerism, so the assumption continues, its problems are solved for its people are finally doing well enough to have discretionary income to spend. India has democracy, it has free markets, and it is rapidly embracing consumerism. But is consumerism a good fit for India? What are the flaws with historical or present systems of provisioning of goods in Indian society? Are these flaws really overcome by the consumerist model of provisioning? And if so, do the new problems that the consumerist model brings outweigh the benefits gained by overcoming the problems with the old model? The following anecdotes are not intended to answer these questions, but rather to prompt further discussion about the questions.

Let me describe a few observations I have made about shopping in India that point to some potential obstacles to the development of a consumer society on an American scale.

Clearly India is working hard to make American-style consumerism take hold. Currently, however, except for the up-and-coming malls beginning to dot the landscapes around India’s major metros, shopping in India is largely a matter of visiting local markets with tiny shops, averaging only 500 square feet, and with pretty limited selection. In these venues, “browsing” in true consumerist style is definitely not facilitated nor generally practiced. Browsing is essential to a successful consumer society since it is through browsing that we make impulse purchases. If we purchase only that for which we perceive a need, then the consumer society becomes too dependent on marketing messages to convince consumers of a need for a product. Through browsing, however, we convince ourselves in ways that we perceive are free of the influence of advertising that we need or deserve something we had not previously intended to buy.

Street Retail in Ahmedabad's Night Market

I raise the possibility that consumerism may not be a good fit for Indian society because Indian retail models, many of which appear to be based on high employee-to-customer ratios, are simply not conducive to browsing. For example, in Bangalore one day, my wife and I decided to step into a toy store (the one on Brigade Rd. for those of you who are locals) with our two children—at the time aged 3 1/2 and almost 2. We were perplexed when we encountered a virtual wall of employees making it impossible to push one's way through the store. Employees actively discouraged our children from browsing by taking from them the toys they had picked up and placing them back on the shelves. My sense is that the high employee-to-customer ratio approach is based on a belief that the employee can best tell the consumer what he or she needs. Another example should illustrate what I mean.

Photo by flickr member "grande illusion"

Jewelry shopping in India is serious business, and given the cultural significance of gold, perhaps whatever I observed in jewelry stores is less an attempt to strive for American-style consumerism and more a function of unique cultural characteristics. Nevertheless, my observations are worth noting. As at the toy store, jewelry stores operate with a high employee-to-customer ratio. The customer is constantly tended to, whether providing a chair to sit in or a cup of tea to drink. But as with the tiny shops in a typical Indian market or bazaar, browsing is not possible. At the jewelry store, however, the reason has little to do with space and everything to do with the fact that over-attentive employees insist on bringing the products to the customer. In one case, my wife described to an employee the type of earring she wanted. The employee then proceeded to bring her styles of jewelry completely inconsistent with her expressed preference.

Another type of store that employs some of the same “overwhelm-the-customer-with-attention” techniques is what I suppose you could call the silk superstore, or textiles-only department store. Upon entering one such store, a chain in Kerala called Jayalakshmi, we were instantly bombarded with attention from at least 8 to 10 of the 30 or so employees working the main floor. We were instantly asked what we were looking for. In the practice of browsing, the consumer only knows what she or he is looking for after it is discovered. Discovering what one is looking for is challenging with an employee always at one’s heel. And if the customer has a purchase in mind, and shares this information with an employee, the employee then becomes the expert in determining what the customer wants.

House of Alukka's: A Major Kerala Jewelry Store Chain

Now, back to my point. These examples of what can best be described as awkward approaches to customer service are probably in some way an outgrowth of an attempt by India’s retail sector to woo the reluctant Indian consumer. In time, I am sure retail in India will develop new models that are conducive to more spontaneous consumerism. If so, then why is this a problem? Again, as I set out at the beginning of this entry, the problem has to do with the way that consumer capitalism forces the transformation of certain existing cultural traditions in the interest of expanding markets and constant growth. Top-down, market-driven change represents a homogenizing force. After a certain length of time, India will cease to look like India. Instead, it will look a lot more like American society.

Obviously Indians will still eat different foods, practice different religions, and speak different languages than Americans, and there will still be plenty of internal diversity (just as American society has racial, ethnic, and religious diversity). But all of the richness and diversity of India’s cultural traditions will be diminished. Rather than at the well or open-air market, Indians will find community at the mall or Wal-Mart, the way many Americans do. Americans lack a culture rooted in historical traditions based on religious, utilitarian, and other approaches to functioning in everyday life. Instead, our culture is rooted in the transience of fashions and fads manipulated by profit-seeking capitalists. The harder India tries to become a consumer society, the greater the likelihood that its culture will follow the same path.

Already, in the last ten to fifteen years, much of the richness of Indian culture has been diminished. Beautiful terra cotta vessels, once used throughout India to collect and transport water, have been largely replaced by brightly colored plastic vessels. Similarly, today one is hard pressed to find chai served in disposable and biodegradable terra cotta cups. Instead, train passengers receive their chai in plastic or paper cups. At a deeper level, as India’s rural regions become transformed by the forces of globalization, people are abandoning traditional handicrafts and other ways of life that evolved over thousands of years.

I realize that I am once again verging on a romantic and monolithic notion of Indian culture. I’ll take whatever criticisms come my way. But let me make it clear that I am not suggesting that India resist consumerism in order to preserve some quaint, idealized version of Indian culture. Instead, I’m trying to be provocative and to compel Indians to begin asking some difficult questions about what is most valued about India’s cultural heritage, about what is worth preserving, and about what parts of Indian culture are vital to what it means to be Indian, as diverse a set of meanings as that identity might hold.

In a way, these are some of the questions that Vroom, the character from One Night @ The Call Center who I discussed in the last installment of this series, was asking. Vroom is calling for India’s youth to question consumerism and to look inward for a more authentic sense of identity and source of meaning in life. I use the example of Vroom because his is likely a more credible, and definitely a more widely heard, voice than my own. In fact, some might argue that it is hypocritical for me, an American, to ask Indians to question consumerism’s hold on them. After all, Americans have long since embraced consumerism and accepted the commodified form of culture that comes with it. I would counter this critique by pointing out that in the U.S., except for the Native Americans who Anglo-Americans had largely obliterated by the early 20th century, there were no longstanding cultural traditions to protect. It was partly because of the lack of identity on the part of displaced British colonists that consumerism as a source of identity was able to take root in America.

The situation is fundamentally different in India. For Vroom, that India’s youth are embracing the consumer lifestyle is troubling because it is a lifestyle being sold to it by the same people who they are helping in the call centers. I think Vroom is contending that if the youth generation does not opt out of this lifestyle, they, as much as any multinational corporation or government economic policymaker, will be responsible for India’s failure to realize its real potential. In a broader sense, I think Vroom’s fear is that India, and India’s youth in particular, is becoming trapped in a consumerist lifestyle that once embraced cannot easily be abandoned.

In the final installment of this series, I will focus on the way in which American consumer culture creates a convenient bubble, within which the consumer is comfortably oblivious to the consequences of the consumer lifestyle. This is achieved, in part, by shipping off to other countries much of the dirty work—the resource and labor exploitation—involved in delivering to us our consumer goods. I’ll conclude the series by asking whether the same relationship will hold for India. Can India “ship off” the ugly dark side involved in the production of consumer goods so that its consumers can live in the same sort of denial as American consumers?

Another good use of blogging...

2006-08-28T13:48:00.000-07:00

Don't worry, the fourth installment of "Consumerism in India: A Faustian Bargain?" is coming shortly. But since my last post I realized I forgot to mention another nice example of using blogging to give voice to the voiceless.

Over at randon-typing, Aneesh has posted a conversaton he had with what Americans would call a "gopher." (link to the English translation, though read the original post as well for some context). Only this was no intern getting coffee for a corporate executive. This gopher was a 12-year old boy working at a seat-cover shop (for those who haven't been to India, seat-cover shops, which supply replacement seats for the widely used motor bikes, are common in most cities).

There are very interesting similarities and differences between this boy's views and the autowallah that I discussed in the previous post. After the boy tells Aneesh a story about a classmate who has deliberately failed the fifth standard so that he can continue to get free meals from school, Aneesh tells him "Don't you do things like this. Study well and you'll get food automatically."

The boy replies: "One never gets food automatically, you have to work for it, no matter you study or not." Like the autowallah, this boy has developed a realist orientation to life borne out of his own experiences and first-hand observations.

On the other hand, the boy shows much greater optimism about the changes that "development" is bringing to his life and the lives of people in his colony. The autowallah, when asked whether all of the "India Shining" talk has changed anything for him, responded "Kya bakwaas, gharib aadmi gharib ho raha hai, aur aamir log aur aamir" (What bullshit, the poor get poorer and the rich get richer).

Here's how Aneesh's boy responded when asked "development, what does it mean?"

"it means, the coming of newer things to the city, the beautification of the city, people getting jobs. You know bhaiyya 4 people of my colony are employed by the service." Later the boy asks Aneesh if he has been to the new mall, about which the boy says:

"What a great place it is. The bijli ki sidhiyaan (the escalator) are fantastic. They take you up and bring you down, automatically. Mangal City (another mall) is useless, they only have the up escalator. It's like as if they want you to stay there forever, it's one-way."

I'm not going to try to find any deeper meaning in what these two first-hand accounts by people who do not currently, and likely will never, have a blog to spread their views tell us about economic development in India. They are important stories, and the world should hear more of them.

If anyone knows of others who are using the blogosphere this way, please let me know. I'd like to begin keeping a record of these types of accounts. Comment here or email me at zavestoski [at] gmail dot com.

Blogging at its best?

2006-08-28T11:31:00.000-07:00

I'm interrupting the "Consumerism in India: A Faustian Bargain?" series because I came across a post today at a now defunct blog called Subehshaam that should be read widely. The post is titled "dekho sabse sasta wallah" (the cheapest one), and retells the story of an exchange between the blogger and an autowallah.

I think it's vital that bloggers remember that we're all talking to people similarly privileged (either by birth, hard work, or a combination of both). When we read debates about whether India's growing economy is or is not benefiting the millions of Indians living in poverty, the voices we never hear are those whose present conditions and future hopes we are debating. An example of such a debate can be found in Nitin's "Puncture Mishra" post at The Indian Economy Blog and the 46 comments that followed.

The blogger relating the conversation with the autowallah has helped remind us all how important it is that we hear not just each other, but also the voices of the autowallah's, and everyone else trying to make a living and make sense out of the changes India is going through.

The following part of the conversation, which began with the driver saying to the blogger "I have never understood why you all argue with us over 5-10 rupees," best illustrates my point:

Finally, I asked, "Uncle, aap yeh lecture har savaari ko dete hain, zyada paise lene ke liye ya mujhe hee diya hai?" (Do you give this lecture to all your customers to get more money, or just me?" He said, "Meri baat sirf haqeeqat hai, aap samjhne na ya samajhe." (My talk is only reality, regardless whether you understand it or not."

Do we understand his reality? And perhaps as important, is our talk, all our blogging, a meaningful reality?

Consumerism in India: A Faustian Bargain? (Part 3 of 5)

2006-08-26T22:38:00.000-07:00

Consumerism, Identity, and Resistance in India
In Parts 1 and 2 of this series, I defined consumer culture and then discussed some of the consequences of finding an identity within a consumer society that is characterized by a rapidly shifting, and therefore unstable, system of cultural meanings. But what does all of this have to do with India? The obvious answer is that inasmuch as India continues down the path of a consumer society, citizens in India will increasingly take on all of the problems with consumerism as a form of social organization that were discussed in Part 2.

In this installment, I want to explore whether there is any evidence of concern among Indians about the transition to a consumer culture. I think there is evidence, modest though it may be. To illustrate, let me turn to Chetan Bhagat's One Night @ The Call Center, a fictional book about six employees at Gurgaon call center. The book, which is a bestseller in India, is less about life working in a call center, and more a vehicle for the author to critique India's headlong rush into consumer capitalism. For a summary, see here. For blogger reviews, see here or here.

In the following passage, the characters are returning to their call center after an extended break at a nearby nightclub. Shyam, the main character who seems to be complacent with being a team leader at his call center with the potential to move up the call center hierarchy, is talking to Vroom, who continues to work in the call center despite having deep reservations about its effect on him and his generation:

At the corner of Sahara Mall we passed by a Pizza Hut. It was closed. Vroom went up and stood in front of it. I wondered if he had really gone crazy; was he expecting pizza at this time?
We stood near the entrance. On our right, there was a thirty-foot wide metal hoarding of a cola company. A top Bollywood actress held a drink bottle and looked at us with inviting eyes. Like a fizzy drink was all it took to seduce her into bed.
Vroom walked close to the actress’s face.

Photo by Flickr member "afterimagery"

‘What’s up dude?’ I said.
‘You see her?’ Vroom said, pointing to the actress.
I nodded.
‘There she is, looking at us like she is our best friend. Do you think she cares for us?’
‘I don’t know. She is a youth icon man,’ I shrugged my shoulders.
‘Yes, youth icon. This airhead chick is supposed to be our role model. Like she knows a fuck about life and gives a fuck about us. All she cares about is cash. She doesn’t care about you or me. She just wants you to buy this black piss,’ Vroom said, pointing to the cola bottle. (p. 211-212)

As a sociologist, I am interested in the reasons for this book’s popularity. The success of the author’s first book, Five-Point Someone, offers a partial explanation. Another explanation is that there is a message that resonates with readers at some level. Vroom is speaking for a segment of the population that is disillusioned with global capitalism’s promise that consumer culture is India’s economic salvation.

Photo by Flickr member "patangay"

Near the end of the book, Vroom speaks even more explicitly for his generation, the “youth generation:”

The government doesn’t care for anybody … Even that “youth special” channel, they don’t care either. They say youth because they want the damn Pizza Huts and Cokes and Pepsis of the world to come and give their ads to them. Ads that say if we spend our salary to have pizza and coke, we will be happy. Like young people don’t have a fucking brain. Tell us what crap to have and we’ll have it. (p. 213)

And then, in a speech aimed at saving the call center from lay-offs that Vroom and Shyam’s manager calls “rightsizing,” Vroom offers what could be considered a rallying cry for his generation:

My friends, I am angry. Because every day, I see some of the world’s strongest and smartest people in my country. I see all this potential, yet it is all getting wasted. An entire generation up all night, providing crutches for the white morons to run their lives. And then big companies come and convince us with their advertising to value crap we don’t need, do jobs we hate so that we can buy stuff—junk food, colored fizzy water, dumbass credit cards and overpriced shoes. They call it youth culture. Is this what they think youth is about? Two generations ago, the youth got this country free. Now that was something meaningful. But what happened after that? We have just been reduced to a high-spending demographic. The only youth power they care about is our spending power. (p. 253)

Vroom wants to know why his generation is up all night working in call centers and not hard at work building up India’s infrastructure, discovering alternative energy sources, reforming its government, or in other ways changing the country for the better. Instead they are stuck inside the call centers, working through the middle of the night, so that they can have enough money to buy the cultural commodities of the very people whose problems they are solving in their call center jobs. In a sense, Vroom seems to be asking "Will the embrace of consumerism have been worth it if in the process Indian’s lose a sense of what it means to be Indian?"

Photo by Flickr member "k1mk1m"

There are some very interesting parallels between Vroom’s speech to the youth generation at the end of One Night @ the Call Center, and Karan’s speech over the airwaves at the end of the top-grossing film "Rang De Basanti." In a future post, I’ll discuss the similarities between these two recent Indian pop culture phenomena, the most striking of which might be that both One Night @ the Call Center and "Rang De Basanti" received very strong, and very mixed, responses from readers/viewers. In both cases, it seems that people either hated or loved the book/film.

Now back to my point. Vroom’s concern has to do with the potential for the lure of consumer luxuries to stifle the talents and promise of an entire generation of Indians. For me—and I’ll admit I am merely someone with some training to understand social organization and social change who also happens to have lived in India for six months—the problem with consumer capitalism is the way in which it forces the transformation of certain existing cultural traditions in the interest of expanding markets to meet the system’s demand for constant growth.

I understand that this is sensitive terrain I am now treading. I certainly do not mean to romanticize India or its culture. Nor do I want to lump all Indians into one category. But there seems to be no denying that consumer capitalism is brining changes to India. Indeed, every Indian I spoke to about these matters admitted that India is experiencing rapid change. The changes will mean different things for different people, depending on who you are or where you fit into the cultural mosaic of India. Ultimately, every Indian should be asking “What will the future India look like if change continues to be driven by a market orientation rooted in the culture of consumption?”

I’ll offer one possible answer to this question in the next installment of “Consumerism in India: A Faustian Bargain?”

Technorati tags: consumerism, Indian culture

Consumerism in India: A Faustian Bargain? (Part 2 of 5)

2006-08-18T14:37:00.000-07:00

The Social Costs of Consumerism

Photo by flickr member "Dreamer7112"

In the previous entry in this series, I offered a definition of "consumer culture." In this entry, I will discuss why, given this definition, consumer culture is problematic.

Historically, cultures have maintained social order by defining needs and desires appropriate to particular people at particular times. A consumer culture views needs and desires as uniquely individual and limitless. Social order, in turn, becomes destabilized. Where social order is uncertain, the development of a meaningful and stable self is disrupted. Furthermore, because consumer culture commodifies everything, space outside the marketplace ceases to exist. Consumers who want to return to being citizens, and who want to begin to create new meanings and impute new values to themselves and the social order, cannot find nor create social space in which to do it.

In short, consumers eventually find troublesome the attempt to make life meaningful inside the almost infinite world of consumer goods. This is what I observed among the subjects I studied in 1998, as part of my dissertation on the Voluntary Simplicity movement in the U.S. The "simplifiers" I interviewed and surveyed all had chosen to simplify their lives after becoming exasperated with the stress of making life meaningful through the consumer lifestyle. Most of the subjects I interviewed experienced a crisis of self—a moment in their lives when they asked themselves “Who am I?” All the consumer goods, though useful in constructing various facades, had failed to provide them with an authentic sense of self.

Admittedly, only a small number of people ever reach this point of crisis. But consider the possibility that most consumers are on a trajectory towards such a crisis. Some of us will reach a crisis point and reject consumerism as a source of self-meaning. Others may reach this crisis but decide that the problem is not consumerism itself, but consuming the right set of goods. The American mid-life crisis—in which the individual disposes of old possessions and constructs a new self-identity by consuming new fashions, a new car, or other new material goods—exemplifies this strategy. Still others may go on convincing themselves that material goods will make them happy and give their lives meaning, while in denial that something about this strategy is unsettling. Finally, there may be some individuals who can truly find happiness and a deep sense of self-meaning through the acquisition of material goods. But if this number is small, is a consumer culture really the best way to go about structuring our social lives?

Whichever category we fall into, all consumers must spend time negotiating our way through the sea of advertising messages urging us to define our identities through consumer goods requires great psychological work. Consumers must filter, process, and/or avoid selling messages that are mostly superfluous and unsolicited. When marketers portray the goods and services they promote as indispensable vehicles for the realization of such virtues as authenticity, self-worth, happiness, and fulfillment, consumers are forced to invest time and energy into evaluating the extent to which one consumer choice or another will garner them the cultural assets (e.g., esteem, prestige, love, belongingness) they may be seeking.

Photo by flickr member "y entonces"

But if there are psychological prices to pay for life in a consumer society, some might suggest those unable to pay the cost should simply opt out. According to this argument, failure to acquire important cultural resources by making choices within the consumer marketplace, and the social and psychological burdens following from such a failure, are the fault of the individual. This is certainly consistent with the individualistic orientation of selfhood advocated by Americans. But such a narrow vision is flawed for two reasons.

First, it assumes that our consumption practices are only meaningful from the point of consumption onward. After all, we consume to convey meanings about ourselves to others. This is the symbolic universe of consumerism. But there is a material universe as well. In this universe, the material goods we consume have real consequences in the lives of people who live in and around the places where the goods are manufactured and later disposed of. Failure to function within the symbolic universe of consumerism may be due to consciousness of, and concern for, the consequences of consumption in the material world.

The second problem with the narrowness of the “blame-the-individual” response is linked to the first problem discussed above. The problem is that not everyone has the option of opting out, now matter how strongly one might object to a social system in which cultural resources essential to self-survival and to the maintenance of the social structure are procured through the consumer marketplace. On the contrary, some people are excluded from ever opting in. This problem may be less pronounced in a country like the U.S. where the widespread availability of consumer credit gives all but the most marginalized members of society an opportunity to opt into the consumer lifestyle. But in a country like India, where at least half of the population is currently excluded from the shopping malls and multiplex cinemas, “opting out” is a ridiculous notion.

One danger of consumer capitalism is that it carries with it a legitimating rationale that allows us to dismiss members of society too marginalized to participate in the consumer lifestyle. According to consumer capitalism’s legitimating rationale, a consumer society is a free and open society in which anyone who works hard has the opportunity to enjoy the fruits of her or his hard labor in the consumer marketplace. From this perspective, anyone left out of the consumer lifestyle simply has not yet worked hard enough.

This rationale also allows those with social advantages to justify consumption of luxury goods while fellow members of society around them live in unacceptable poverty. People who have worked hard to acquire wealth, the argument goes, should be free to spend their wealth in whatever ways they want. I will return to the problems with this argument in a later installment in this series. First I want to introduce a counterargument to the notion that life in a consumer society is burdensome.

What I have so far described as burdens, some perceive as valuable opportunities for acquiring the cultural competency needed to sustain a meaningful social existence. In fact, many people actively seek more marketing information than is available passively. People will pay an entrance fee to auto shows, wedding shows, boat shows, home shows, garden shows, and other types of product-based exhibitions. What do they get for their money? They get what they must perceive as valuable information about new products and other consumer goods and services. That people seek out this information suggests that marketing messages may not always be burdens, and in fact can be desirable commodities in and of themselves. Indeed, any time a consumer pays for the privilege of wearing clothing that doubles as an advertisement, she/he demonstrates that self-commodifying advertising is often perceived to be an opportunity rather than a burden.

In other words, the perceived burden of failing to create a meaningful self through socially expected ways (i.e., material goods) makes subjecting oneself to marketing messages worth the burden. In a consumer culture, mass-marketed consumer identities represent a form of almost universal currency (except for those too poor to opt into the system of meanings). Choosing to engage non-consumer-based identities, therefore, is like trying to exchange a form of currency that is not recognized in consumer cultures.

Photo by flickr member "ilmungo"

If consumer cultures existed within closed systems, it could be argued that they offer an elegant solution to the problem of identity and social order. The real problem posed by consumer cultures, however, has to do with the impacts of the flows coming into, and going out of, the societies in which consumer cultures function. By "flows" I mean the natural resources being exploited outside the system to create the meaningful goods inside the system, the material (and often hazardous) waste leaving the system, and the cultural creep wherein the meanings of the lifestyles and goods within the system begin to influence cultures outside the system.

In a world where various societies' cultures are almost instantly linked through telecommunications and the Internet, the creep of consumerism into other cultures is inevitable. This is not universally problematic. Many cultures have adapted to consumerism with little disruption to the social order. In India, however, the transition is taking place with such speed, and with such a disruption of previous forms of identity formation and livelihood, that there are already signs of disillusionment (as evidenced in the violence in Bangalore following Dr. Rajkumar’s death, which I wrote about in “30 Days: ‘Outsourcing,’ The American Perspective (Part 1 of 2).”

I’m not proposing that India, or any society, should reject consumerism. In theory, there are certainly better alternatives. In practice, consumerism is the only option for many societies. My main hope is that, somehow, societies beginning to embrace consumerism can evolve their own unique consumer cultures that not only produce thriving economies, but that also, and more importantly, offer people more meaningful and less market-based ways to develop a sense of self.

In the next installment in this series, I’ll explore the possibility of such an alternative form of consumer culture evolving in India by focusing on a few signs of resistance to the creeping culture of consumerism.

Technorati tags: consumerism

Consumerism in India: A Faustian Bargain? (Part 1 of 5)

2006-08-15T20:54:00.000-07:00

In Part One of this series, based on a lecture I delivered at the University of Calcutta in March 2006, I define “consumer culture” and begin to discuss some of the implications, good and bad, for individuals living in a consumer society.

Note: I'm grateful to Joe Rumbo, with whom I originally developed and wrote about some of the ideas in this series.

When the University of Calcutta’s Department of Business asked me to offer a lecture on “anti-consumer” attitudes, I was grateful for the opportunity to revisit research I had done several years earlier on this burgeoning phenomenon among a small but significant number of Americans. At the time of my lecture, I had been in India for four months working on research about struggles against multinational corporations that pollute local environments and harm people’s health. Much of this pollution is the direct result of the manufacturing of goods for Western consumers, and increasingly for the growing number of new middle-class Indian consumers.

The basic logic goes like this: Capitalism requires a constantly expanding economy. Economic expansion takes place, among other ways, through the mass production of more goods in more efficient ways (efficiency is achieved by reducing the cost of inputs like raw materials and labor). These efficiently produced goods then need to be consumed. With saturated consumer markets in U.S. and most of the developed world, countries like India represent the next great hope for capitalists looking for new consumers.

There are two forms of pollution in this process. The first is the obvious environmental pollution that results from manufacturing processes (e.g., the chemicals that are emitted into air and water in the process of manufacturing plastic and electronics for the production of mobile phones). In this essay, I want to focus on the other type of pollution that results. I call this second type of pollution the pollution of culture and mind. It results as the proliferation of consumer goods, and the cultural meanings ascribed to these goods--meanings that are mostly created by the agencies marketing the goods but also to a lesser extent by the people consuming the goods--transforms a culture. As the culture becomes transformed, marketing messages and the system of meanings attached to material goods begin to occupy more and more of our mental space.

Environmental pollution is a profound problem, but can be addressed by a combination of technical solutions and social restructuring. Pollution of culture and mind is more difficult to address because we don’t see it as a problem the way we see people suffering from exposures to industrial hazards as a problem. Even if we did see it as a problem, there are no technical fixes and we lack a vocabulary or discourse for thinking about solutions.

So, the question I want to explore is whether, in the process of pursuing developed-world levels of economic growth, India is “selling its soul” as the legendary Faust is purported to have done (and as some might argue the U.S., the unparalleled consumer society in the world, has already done)? I’ll begin by defining what I mean by a consumer culture, and in the next installment I will discuss some of the downsides of the American consumer society in order to highlight some of the changes western-style consumerism is likely to bring to India.

Consumer Culture Defined
As a sociologist, I should begin with a distinction between society and culture. A society can be defined as a group of individuals bound together by a set of social arrangements, sometimes called social structures, intended to facilitate the accomplishment of certain essential tasks to sustain itself. These tasks include, but are not limited to, reproduction of members, production and distribution of food, clothing, and shelter, maintenance of health, education of its members, and the passing on of the patterns and practices that govern the society.

Culture, which can be viewed as a set of tools people use to function in society, has a certain amount of overlap with the above definition of society. I will define culture as the tangible and intangible, or material and symbolic, resources available to the members of a society to carry out the tasks needed for sustaining itself. Thus we arrive at a more formal definition of consumer culture, which I borrow from a book titled Consumer Culture & Modernity:

“[Consumer culture is]… a social arrangement in which the relation between lived culture and social resources, between meaningful ways of life and the symbolic and material resources on which they depend, is mediated through markets” (Slater, 1997, p. 8)

In other words, in a consumer culture, the role of the consumer is to find and purchase in the marketplace whatever material or symbolic resources she or he needs to function in society. Status, prestige, esteem, love, and even salvation—in a consumer culture, all of these intangibles are available in the marketplace. This is not to say that one can no longer gain the admiration of others through good works alone. But as more and more individuals purchase the goods that earn them the admiration of others, genuinely earned admiration is cheapened. Cultural meanings and values become encoded in material goods, and eventually it becomes easier to communicate information about oneself through possessions than through deeds.

In a consumer culture, everything we need to function in everyday life—from food and shelter to gossip and fun—is obtained primarily through markets. Culture continues to be produced and reproduced through forms of consumption that take place outside of markets, but consuming in the marketplace becomes the default strategy for making everyday life meaningful.

For now, I don’t want to place any value judgments on consumer cultures. There are many useful aspects of consumer cultures, some of which I will talk about in future installments in this series. I begin with this definition so that we can start to think about what it means for a society when it makes a transition from one type of culture--for example one derived largely from religious beliefs and traditions--to another type of culture such as a consumer culture.

All significant cultural shifts unsettle the members of a society in some way. Is there something about the shift to a consumer culture that results in a greater amount of anxiety or even social disorder than the shift, for example, from earlier cultural traditions to the Age of Enlightenment? I know I am using the idea of culture rather loosely in suggesting that the Age of Enlightenment represents a unitary culture, but just consider the question for the sake of discussion. If there are past cultural shifts that have similarities to the shifts many contemporary cultures are making to a consumer culture, then we ought to understand these past shifts in order to better prepare for today’s ongoing transformations to consumer cultures. And if there are not similarities, then we need better critical thinking about what is happening around the world today.

Consumer cultures will be the dominant global cultural form by the end of this century. In the remainder of this series, I hope to make a modest contribution to understanding what this transformation means with respect to India. My hope is that my ideas start some dialogue that might help today’s cultural leaders make the transitions to consumer cultures smoother for their societies.

Technorati tags: consumerism

30 Days: "Outsourcing," The Indian Perspective (Part 2 of 2)

2006-08-15T20:44:00.000-07:00

The TV show 30 Days is typically aimed at dispelling some misconceptions one person has about some other group of people. One nice feature of the “Outsourcing” episode is that it showed not just what outsourced jobs mean for Indians, but also how Indians view Americans and American jobs.

If you are not familiar with Morgan Spurlock’s show 30 Days, be sure to read the previous entry about the “Outsourcing” episode featuring American Chris Jobin living with a family in Bangalore for a month and working in a call center.

On Chris’s first day in the call center training program, he feels compelled to let the gentleman in the seat next to him know that his job was outsourced to India. As he explains to his new friend that he is currently unemployed, his friend responds: “I thought that if they lose their job, they’re going to get another job. I never knew that they were unemployed or something. I mean it’s really out of my mind. I can’t imagine Americans, I can’t believe that you don’t have a job. You’re an American.”

The point of this exchange, and a point that is made in other conversations Chris has with his host family, is that Indians working in business processing operations (e.g., call centers) do not think of themselves as taking away jobs from Americans. And even if they are in some way aware of Americans losing jobs to cheaper Indian workers, the assumption is that the unlucky Americans will find other jobs.

Does Chris explode this myth for his Indian friends? Not exactly. Why? Perhaps because it is not really a myth. Americans who lose their jobs to outsourcing may not find other jobs immediately. But because most of the jobs lost to outsourcing are held by educated professionals, the chances are they will find other work. In the meantime, most of them have a safety net. Sure, Chris had to sell some stock to pay his bills, and if didn’t find a job soon he wasn’t sure how he’d be paying future bills. But he had a family that could support him in the meantime. It’s also possible that Chris might have to wind up settling for a job for which he is overqualified (and for which he would most likely feel underpaid). But aren’t these insignificant sacrifices in the bigger scheme of things?

He might even have some health care coverage held over from his previous job. What a far cry his life is from an Indian who lives on the margin, without health care or even adequate housing. Chris realized this by the end of the episode, and expressed a genuine sense of gratitude that he had the chance to start his life over.

My point is that there is something valuable to be learned from the Indian perspective. When you realize the stereotype many Indians hold of America as the land of abundance, and then really reflect on what that means and all that we take for granted, you realize that for once the stereotype holds true.

Technorati tags: outsourcing, 30 Days, Morgan Spurlock

30 Days: “Outsourcing,” The American Perspective (Part 1 of 2)

2006-08-15T20:05:00.000-07:00

A recent episode (2 August) of Morgan Spurlock’s “reality” TV show, 30 Days, deals with the issue of outsourcing. I was surprised to find that there has been no discussion of the episode among bloggers of Indian origin, especially desi bloggers who have access to this program unlike India-based bloggers.

In the broader blogosphere there has been a modest number of postings about 30 Days’ “Outsourcing” episode, but almost exclusively on pop culture and TV blogs (e.g., see here, here, here, and here).

Before I offer my own analysis, let me provide a bit of background on the show. Morgan Spurlock became relatively famous for his high-grossing 2004 documentary “Super Size Me” in which he attempts to subsist solely on food from the McDonald’s menu for 30 days. He followed up the success of this film with a 6-episode season of 30 Days on the Fox-owned FX cable channel. The premise of 30 Days is that in each episode a person leaves the comfort of their own lives and moves into a situation that will challenge their own beliefs and attitudes. In other words, the main character quite literally “walks a mile (or 1.6 kms) in someone else’s shoes.”

For example, last season’s episodes included a devout Christian living with Muslims, an anti-gay man living with a gay man, and Spurlock and his then-fiance abandoning their comfortable New York City lifestyle to live on minimum wage jobs in Columbus, Ohio. This season the show premiered with an anti-immigration activist living with a family of illegal immigrants in East Los Angeles, which brings us to this season’s second episode.

Here is the TVguide.com description of the episode:

Outsourcing is explored as a New York computer programmer follows his former job to Bangalore, “the Silicon Valley of India.” Chris Jobin, 37, finds he can't get it back (he'd need “Indian experience,” he's told), but he easily finds work---prestigious work---at a call center. But first Chris must take “American training.” It's “raining jobs,” Chris marvels, but the training is part of the price India must pay. “This culture,” he says, “is bending and reshaping itself to match ours.”

What is interesting about the outcome of this social experiment? First, Chris’s experience, at the very least, conveys the range of responses Americans have to outsourcing. Chris represents every American’s worst nightmare, that you will be the one whose job is sent to India. The first response most Americans have is an understandable, albeit narrowly self-interested, concern with the loss of American jobs (since one of those jobs may end being your own). One important message the episode gets across is the incongruence between concern for loss of American jobs and anger directed at Indians who are the beneficiaries of the new outsourced jobs.

A second American response to outsourcing, which is characteristic of what I will call “enlightened free market champions,” is captured by Chris’s father. At a family dinner prior to Chris’ departure for Bangalore, his father says about outsourcing: “I think it’s a good thing. I think it’s going to create a growth market and a place to sell American products and services ... If companies don’t take advantage of cheaper labor resources, then they become less competitive, they disappear, and the jobs disappear with them.”

Side note...
I find it interesting how free market advocates pull out the “let’s think about the long-term” argument when it justifies near-term impacts on workers; but they won’t consider long-term perspectives, like reducing global greenhouse gas emissions for everyone’s future benefit, when the short-term impacts are borne by corporations.

Back on point...
This seems to me to be the primary perspective, albeit largely unspoken, underlying U.S. support, substantive or in spirit, for India’s economic development. At its extreme, people use this line of reasoning to justify the loss of thousands of U.S. jobs. More significant is the way in which this perspective--that companies must remain competitive or they will go bankrupt and the jobs will be lost anyway--illustrates our reification of this thing called “the economy.” We treat the economy, and its growth, as an entity somehow independent of all the human actors who make it up. As a result we become overly focused on measuring growth quantitatively through numbers like GDP. Meanwhile, overlooked is whether or not quantitative indicators of economic growth are even correlated with qualitative measures of the improvement of the human condition.

The reification of the economy relates to the final perspective some Americans have on the outsourcing controversy. Blame, so this perspective holds, lies not with Indians working outsourced jobs, but with the corporate executives who pursue the bottom line in yet another example of the pursuit of abstract numbers, like stock prices, over real improvement in people’s quality of lives.

The “blame the executives” view is more or less the perspective Chris’s mother exhibits when she points out that executives after the almighty dollar are the real culprits of outsourcing. It is also the view expressed by a commenter to a post about the episode on the blog TV Squad: “Chris shouldn't of showed anger towards [Indians] ...its not their fault. It is the douche bag CEOs and VPs that send the work over there, they are just willing to take it...”

So, what actually transpires in Chris’s 30 days in Bangalore? He is told he cannot get a job as a programmer because he does not have enough Indian experience, but he does get a job in the call center where is host, Ravi, is a manager. Through his job at the call center and his interactions with Ravi and his family (especially Ravi’s wife, through arranged marriage, Soni), Chris comes to realize that (a) people in India needed his outsourced job a lot more than he did; and (b) that the influx of outsourced jobs, and the money they bring with them, is causing tension within Indian culture and society.

As an example of Chris’s first realization, take the following statements:

Indians have a much tougher daily life. They suffer through a lot of things that we don’t have to deal with, and they smile. Outsourcing is a step. What’s going on here is giving India a real chance to become economically viable. “

Knowing that probably like 16 people are surviving off of my one job ... it’s almost like charitable at that point. They need the job way more than I do.

As an example of his latter realization, take the tension Chris observed between Ravi and his wife, Soni. Soni fulfills her duties in the house (cooking, cleaning, and organizing the extended family’s religious rituals and cultural traditions), but she has an education and wants to test her skills in the new marketplace of jobs.

The other example of Chris’s realization that India’s economic growth is causing some internal strife occurs while he is surveying some of the damage caused during the unrest that ensued after the death of famous Kannada film actor Dr. Rajkumar. Crowds marched, often out of control, many vehicles were burned, and building windows were broken with rocks and chunks of concrete thrown by the rampagers amidst the largely peaceful gathering of mourners. Eight people were killed by police firing into the crowds.

As Chris observed:

“People were throwing rocks at the fancy new buildings. And it seemed almost like an economic outcry from the poor people of this city. There’s so much wealth around them and they’re starving ... There is millions and millions of dollars here, but there is no visible signs of it being used to take care of their own people.”

This kind of observation and analysis of the violence following Rajkumar’s death was almost completely absent from the Indian English language media (I can’t speak for how the Kannada dailies covered the violence, but perhaps a reader can inform me if the coverage was any different than the superficial stereotypes of mob violence doled out in The Hindu and Times of India).

The lone exception was a profound analysis offered by Rajendra Chenni in an editorial in The Hindu’s “Friday Review” section on April 21, in which Chenni writes:

In these times of globalisation (that is abdication of the state of its social welfare responsibilities) the state is seen as a handmaiden of the rich. In the absence of any politically mature people's movement, the anger and frustration of the deprived is ventilated in frenzied acts of destruction ... One doesn't want to make a case for the violence, but social analysis is impoverished by the blanket refusal to understand the language of violence. As long as we continue to ignore the double speak of development, modernisation and globalisation through which it privileges a few and orphans the many, there will be many occasions when the masses resort to the language of violence.

My point is that viewers should give Chris some credit for making such a connection, even just a day after the violence occurred, when few other Indians were making such a connection. Now, I am sure that many Indians would take umbrage with Chris’s attempt to link the violence following Rajkumar’s death to economic inequality and the claim that there are no visible signs of India’s increasing wealth being used to take care of its people. But events like the violence in Bangalore last April ought to give everyone pause--Indian or not. Throughout India’s economically booming metros, there seems to be a blindness to the intense poverty, perhaps facilitated by the euphoria the middle and upper classes feel about emerging economic opportunities.

“This is the only way,” they say, to put India on the global economic map and bring its people out of poverty. But by “the only way,” do these financially secure Indians mean that the only way is for India’s new wealth to be concentrated into the hands of a small number of economic elites (a social class that largely coincides with India’s historically most privileged castes)? It may such a blindness to “other ways,” and a refusal to see the growing discord among India’s most poor, that creates the type of powder keg we saw go off in Bangalore.

Now for a little self-reflection. Since returning from india back in May, I have been convinced that globalization is not good for India in the long run. It was only after watching Chris’s experience that I had the realization that globalization itself is not the concern. The creation of jobs through business process outsourcing, facilitated by India’s economic liberalization and certain external forces of globalization, is good for India. Chris learned this as well or else he would not have concluded that his job is better off in India than back in New York. My major concern has to do with the link between production and consumption as India’s economy grows.

Currently, India’s economic growth, as I have written about previously, is creating a western-style consumer class in India. But this consumer class is, for the most part, limited to those who are benefiting from India’s production-side growth (whether what is being produced is computer chips or IT services). There are certainly questions about how consumerism will transform Indian society and culture. But perhaps the more pressing question is how in-your-face consumerism will impact the masses in India for whom western-style consumption is an extremely distant dream, and one that for many will never be realized?

Maybe as Americans watch Indians embrace the consumer revolution, we can learn something about ourselves and the role of consumerism in our own lives. Chris’s 30-day experience in Bangalore certainly gave him a new way of looking at outsourcing:

I’m here talking about outsourcing to people, and about how Americans are losing their jobs and might have to sell their homes and move into an apartment. And then I look at these people and they’re getting jobs and they’re living in a prison cell, and they don’t complain. There’s a huge gap in the way people think on different ends of the planet.

But the gap that Chris is talking about is in terms of the way we think about our jobs in the global economy. In terms of our respective views on consumerism and finding happiness through material goods, there appears to be virtually no gap. Here lies my concern.

It’s a concern I will be writing about in a 5-part series I will begin shortly. Stay tuned.

Technorati tags: outsourcing, 30 Days, Morgan Spurlock, globalization

The Two Indias

2006-08-15T19:39:00.000-07:00

India’s current and potential future economic growth have been the focus of some pretty high-profile media sources lately. Stories in Time (see “India Inc.” cover story June 26, 2006), Newsweek (“The New India,” March 6, 2006 cover story), and even The Economist (“Can India Fly?” June 3, 2006), might lead one to believe that India’s masses are finally being lifted by the rising tide.

In the Indian blogosphere, there is much debate about whether the optimism of these stories is warranted. Here’s how the basic argument plays out: the optimists contend that market liberalization is working, but poverty eradication in India will take some time, and besides this is "The Only Way" that India can possibly hope to take care of its more than 1 billion people. Those more cynical about market liberalization’s current and future impacts on poverty--let’s call them the pessimists--argue that there may be some minor signs of poverty alleviation, but that there are still far too many Indians living in absolute abject poverty, and that the vast majority of India’s growing economic wealth is being concentrated in the hands of the elite.

Here’s an example of the optimist view:

“Poverty in India is real. It's pathetic. But it has been reduced Not by revolution (which never really benefit the poor, now, do they?). But by market reforms.

This sucks less than any other darn alternative out there.

And, this side of the Kingdom, in an imperfect, fallen world, where we don't have a magic wand to suddenly turn everyone into a saint, it's the only way there, I'm convinced more and more. [from a blogger’s post titled “India Shining: II.”]

The pessimists focus primarily on the problems of concentration of wealth, inequality, and a growing rural/urban divide, as illustrated in the following excerpts:

...somehow I believe that there are two India’s and never the ‘twain shall meet ... The ‘twain should meet, because only when you see what is happening, one might realize that the optimism on the surface ... is matched by a level of despondency at the bottom. [from “India A and B” on the blog Don’t Trust the Indian Media!]

“The new wealthy in India are quietly abandoning the state: paying for their own private police force and playing golf at private clubs. There appears to be little concern about supporting public services or about the poor who are stuck with decrepit hospitals and schools.” [from “A Tale of Two Indias,” A Guardian special report]

The pessimists go on to argue that the “India is Shining” viewpoint is largely held by the 12% or so of Indians who are currently benefiting from the country’s economic growth. The optimists claim that the country’s growth has already reduced poverty, and that the pessimists are unpatriotic socialists who’d rather see India stay at the 3-4% rate of growth of the 1980s.

Obviously there is a lot of enmity between the holders of these two views. In future entries, I intend to unpack both arguments and get beyond the “Has economic liberalization been good for India?” debate. After all, whether it has been good depends a lot on what India’s economic and social goals are.

Technorati tags: Indian economy, poverty, development

In HyperCity, India Gets Big Box Retail

2006-08-15T15:38:00.000-07:00

For better or worse, big box retail has arrived in India. Yet another sign of the dramatic changes India is undergoing.

Back in April, K. Raheja Corp. Group, a real estate and retailing giant in India, opened a 120,000 square foot HyperCity retail store in Malad, a Mumbai suburb already known for another K. Raheja Corp. project, the Inorbit Mall. The company plans to open somewhere between 35 and 50 more HyperCities throughout India's tier-I (e.g., Delhi, Bangalore, Chennai) and tier-II (e.g., Mangalore, Aurangabad, Lucknow) cities in the next ten years.

How much does this emerging market for big-box retail in India really represent a changing India? After all, only a very small percentage of India's population can afford to shop at a place like HyperCity. Nearly half of Mumbai's population, almost 6 million people, live in slums like Dharavi--ignominiously known as Asia's largest slum--and aren't likely to make it to the suburb of Malad, a good hour away by car or train. But poverty is meaningless when people embrace consumer debt. HyperCity seems to be anticipating a growth in the acceptance of consumer debt more than any sort of real economic prosperity among the country's poor. This may sound cynical, but when you learn that HyperCity has partnered with Hong Kong bank and Citi Financial to make sure rupee-less consumers can still make a purchase, it sounds more like the reality:

"It's our way of telling shoppers--if you don't have money to pay for something now, don't fret," according to HyperCity's South African CEO, Andrew Levermore, in an interview on rediff.com.

Until very recently, this sort of consumer debt was unheard of in India. Levermore also has his eye on other ways in which the Indian consumer is changing:

"We have a phrase here: 'It won't work in India - IWWII,' " Levermore recently explained in an article in The Guardian

"I was told Indian housewives want to handle their vegetables. They don't. They like it just like everywhere else: clean, wrapped in cellophane and free from everyone else's grubby fingers."

Let's return to the question: How much does a place like HyperCity really change a country of more than a billion people, especially when 97% of all retail spending in the country--a total of $258 billion--happens in traditional family-run shops taking up, on average, about 500 square feet of space? (statistics are from The Guardian article cited above).

If HyperCity proves to be anything like Wal-Mart, it has the potential to lead to vast change.

A small aside...
Admittedly, there is ongoing debate about the precise impacts Wal-Mart has on small businesses, rural communities, global supply chains, and workers and working conditions. But even if, on balance, there is a net "good," the fact that there is such opposition to Wal-Mart in the U.S., as evidenced not least of which by the many small towns fighting legal battles to keep Wal-Mart out of their communities, says something about perceived impacts.

Back on point...
If even a small fraction of the people working in India's current mom-and-pop retail sector wind up out of business, The 340 or so jobs created by each HyperCity will hardly balance the losses.

Of greater concern may be the way HyperCity is following the American big box model of suburban development. This is where land is cheapest, so obviously HyperCities, which are land-intensive enterprises, will be located in suburban areas. But unlike some of the uncertainties surrounding social impacts of Wal-Marts, the environmental impacts of Wal-Mart-style development are fairly well documented (for a conservative government view, see NASA's website on the use of satellite images to understand sprawl's environmental impacts; or Sierra Club's website for a good article on the link between big box sprawl and climate changing CO2 emissions).

But maybe the HyperCities of India, and other retailing magnates hoping to follow in HyperCitiy's footsteps, understand the social and environmental impacts their operations will have. This is what K. Raheja Corp. says about its commitment to social responsibility:

...increasing urbanisation leading to spiralling prices of real estate and higher pollution levels have necessitated the need to provide more green cover. At K. Raheja Corp, we identified this need and developed parks, children's play areas, beautiful traffic islands and similar facilities to do our bit towards creating a more equitable environment.

American companies who have made promises of social or environmental responsibility haven't always delivered on their promises (though what Wal-Mart does with its new image makeover, which includes a commitment to a sweeping environmental initiative, will be interesting). In the case of the K. Raheja Corp., I'm not sure that adding a little green cover is going to balance the impacts its development projects have. But I'd like to move away from the environmental impact argument anyway. It's too easy for critics to dismiss arguments coming from the west that the global south should reduce its environmental impacts to help save the world from the consequences of climate change.

Instead, let me conclude by suggesting that India should move ahead not just with HyperCities throughout India, but also with the opening up of foreign direct investment for retailers like Wal-Mart, Target, Home Depot, and Best Buy. I say this partly tongue-in-cheek. But in all seriousness, this seems to be the inevitable end toward which India is headed. Furthermore, real competition might mean that the company with the retail model that is most consistent with current Indian preferences and values will win out. Carrefour and Wal-Mart both learned following their failures in South Korea that a successful retail model in one part of the world doesn't always translate to another part.

Regardless of how the big box retail revolution in India proceeds, I would hope that Indians are able, in a way that Americans could only do after the fact, to anticipate and respond to the changes big box retail will bring: from the weakened social networks resulting from the vanquishing of local retailing and the increased time spent in automobiles to reach the new mega retailing outlets, to the increased individualism and diminished communitarianism resulting from the heightened focus on self-image and the pursuit of happiness through material goods that comes with the type of consumer capitalism epitomized by big box retail.

If, in fact, big box retailing proceeds in India in a way that is sensitive to local customs and values (here's where I become highly skeptical of my own hopes), then perhaps Levermore, the HyperCity CEO, will be right when he claims that "HyperCITY exemplifies all that India should be proud of," (from an article in The Telegraph.)

Technorati tags: Indian culture, consumerism

Change Happens

2006-08-15T15:20:00.000-07:00

"I am a bookseller--the owner and operator of a personal bookstore. We are, I'm afraid, members of a fast-vanishing tribe. I agree with those who say that the small personal bookstore is a somewhat picturesque carryover from the beginning of the nineteenth century. Yet there are still people who are so badly adjusted to reality that they insist on either writing books or selling them."

These were the words of Fred Cody, co-founder and owner of one of Berkeley, California’s most venerated institutions: Cody’s bookstore. I can’t exactly confirm when Cody said these words. My guess is that it was sometime between 1977 when he and his wife sold their landmark bookstore to Andy Ross, and 1983 when Cody died.

Ross operated Cody’s from its historic Telegraph Avenue location from 1977 until about a week ago when Cody’s closed its doors for the final time. In Ross’ speech at the closing of the Telegraph Avenue branch of Cody’s (two other branches--one in Berkeley’s chic 4th Street shopping area and one near Union Square in San Francisco--remain open), he echoed Fred Cody’s remarks from more than 20 years earlier:

“The marketplace has been the center of community life since the time of the Greek Agora. It is being systematically undermined by chain stores and Internet commerce, which feed on communities without offering a vibrant communal life.”

“I know that a day will come when the world will change again. And Americans will recognize that the fetish for branding, for predictability, for mass marketing is a sad and impoverishing myth, and that people will once again rediscover a richer world of ideas, and a store like Cody's at Telegraph, that thrived on that richness, will be reborn.”

What does this have to do with the social and cultural changes happening in the wake of India’s economic renaissance? Well, the obvious connection has to do with India’s historic or otherwise culturally significant bookstores. Will People Tree, in the Regal Building on Parliament Street in New Delhi, or any of the old Higginbotham’s bookstores in South India be able to compete in the new India against Crossword, India’s version of Barnes & Noble? Are there any bookstores in India, already out of business, that played important roles in India’s Independence struggle or other historically or socially significant events?

If so, then those who once frequented those bookstores will understand what’s been lost with the closing of Cody’s. Historically, Cody’s is significant for having provided shelter to activists chased from Berkeley’s People’s Park by police, and later by the National Guard, when in May 1969 they protested then-Governor Ronald Reagan’s attempt to suppress freedom of speech and freedom of assembly by fencing off the University-owned grounds on which the park sat.

In 1989, in what current owner Andy Ross describes as Cody’s proudest moment, employees of the bookstore voted to defend freedom of speech by continuing to sell Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses despite the fact that every major bookstore chain in the country was removing the book from its shelves. This decision was made more profound by the fact that the vote took place the day after a pipe bomb was detonated in the store in protest of the book.

According to Ross, “I think the importance of this story is to acknowledge the true heroism of Cody's workers who agreed to risk their lives in support of the principle of freedom of speech. They have received very little glory for this; and, God knows, it brought them no financial gain. It was a quiet, yet heroic, act of commitment that deserves acknowledgement here and should be remembered for all time.”

Here’s my point: Change happens. Cody’s closed its Telegraph Avenue branch for a variety of reasons, among them the emergence of discount big box booksellers and the Internet, the decline of Telegraph Avenue as a shopping destination, and broader cultural trends in people’s reading habits and interest in literature. In Berkeley, future generations won’t be able to walk into the Telegraph Avenue Cody’s and get lost in obscure books that the big chains won’t stock--books like Henryk Skolimowski’s Living Philosophy: Eco-Philosophy as a Tree of Life, a book I was fortunate enough to stumble upon when passing through Berkeley one summer during college.

What’s important is that a culture has ways of transmitting knowledge to future generations. How will future generations of Americans know what independent bookstores stood for--principles captured by Ross when he explained that “independent booksellers...are the carriers of the values of civility, diversity, and respect for literary individualism, values which are fundamental to a free and humane society”--once the independent bookstore goes the way of the public telephone booth?

Americans take for granted how certain cultural institutions embody many of the principles that we claim to hold most sacred--individualism and freedom of expression, for example. For India, the sacred principles may be different, perhaps they are derived from the Gandhian philosophy of self-sufficiency, but whatever the principles are (and given India’s diversity, I am sure there are many, not always agreement on what they are), there most certainly exist cultural institutions that embody them.

As India continues along the path of economic development, what safeguards are in place to preserve--whether tangibly in the form of buildings or places, or intangibly in the form of legends or lore--the cultural institutions that currently serve to transmit lessons about the importance of these principles from generation to generation? Without such safeguards, India risks becoming as existentially and spiritually depleted as the U.S. What a shame this would be for a country with thousands of years of rich spiritual traditions.

At least there will always be the cricket.

The Curious Stall: An Explanation

2006-08-14T20:47:00.000-07:00

In this entry I explain why this blog is named The Curious Stall. India is a curious place. This alone is reason enough to name a blog about the changes through which India is going The Curious Stall. When I decided to start this blog, my reasons for which I discuss below, I began looking through pictures I took while living in India with my family between November 2005 and May 2006. I came across a picture I took at the Ernakulam railway station in Kerala, India.

Indians are charmingly loose in their usage of the English language. The vendor on the platform probably meant to call his shop a “curios” stall (i.e., a stall where rare, unusual, or intriguing objects are sold). But in calling it a “curious stall,” he evoked in me not just a chuckle, but also a reminder of the ways in which India is changing. At one time, his stall very well may have had rare, unusual, or intriguing objects for sale. At the very least, the objects were probably hand-made, and therefore unique.

In 2006, his stall contains all the same cheap and mass-manufactured goods as almost every other train station platform vendor in India (I am not talking about food vendors, whose goods, with the exception of processed packaged foods, vary greatly from region to region). The items for sale are not curios and they are not curious. The fact that they are neither makes me curious about how India is changing. Hence, this blog is named The Curious Stall.

To learn more about me, visit my website.