Not enough mechanised slaughterhouses in 1995

An argument in favour of mechanised slaughterhouses


Eighty two per cent-it is the same number for the percentage non-vegetarians and percentage Hindus in our polity. So all the anti-meat and slaughter noise is coming from no more than a significant minority. The question is, should the tail be allowed to wag the dog?

There are 3,600 antiquated municipal abattoirs today and a mere five, yes, just five, modern, mechanised ones in India. It is self evident that when antiquated slaughterhouses operate, they create pollution, disease, stink and offence. The critics, as a consequence, have forceful appeal, whether they are green, religiously motivated, swarajists, against export of our animal resources, ahimsa police or assorted camp followers.

It would be callous not to denounce the processes by which most of our “meat” animals are herded to brutal slaughter at municipal establishments with scant concern for their suffering. Where, behind crumbling walls housing inadequate and crude facilities, a grim carnage takes place every single day; where, blood and offal are released into open municipal drains. Where and whereabouts, carcasses piled high on groaning ox carts are thrust along neighbourhood streets as flies buzz and maggots feast.

Still, the demand for meat from the non-vegetarian population both domestic and external won’t go away. If official slaughter is not permitted and organised proficiently, then let us be prepared for illegal and slip shod methods to take their place. And other related issues like the possibility of depletion of our animal resources through mechanised and efficient despatch of animals in modern slaughter houses are valid only if taken in isolation. But then, there are arguments to match against the export of rice or fruit or even cement and steel for that matter. What is the spell that prevents a comprehensive supply side resource mobilisation approach which can address problems like these instead of turning them into taboos?

We could, when it comes to animals reared for meat, insist on accelerated breeding programmes supported by wasteland cultivation of ecologically friendly fodder. We could “beef” up this fodder with vitamins and food additives from our pharmaceutical factories. We could have our cake in terms of draught animals, (though these are almost always bullocks with a lesser role in the procreation process), and eat it too, literally as meat on the table. Because with an 82 per cent preponderance , it should be acknowledged by all parts of the political and economic debate that animals are going to be eaten despite health warnings against excessive meat consumption and religious proscriptions, however strict.

Consider also that it was Prohibition, perhaps, that led a young Mohandas Gandhi to try forbidden meat even though the alleged goat that he clandestinely consumed seemed to bleat in his ears all night!

Mechanised and automated facilities are nothing new after all and cannot be looked at as trail blazers in 1995. Wherever they have been put in, they have reduced the opprobrium associated with animal slaughtering and met a persistent demand in an efficient way.

And for those who criticise all animal slaughter let it be said that being humane calls attention to both ends of the stick. Goats and chickens are part of the religious ritual, particularly as “sacrifice” to several of our religions. And as for cattle and swine, let us ask if it is enough to rush in to protect our cows and pigs against slaughter while letting their brothers and sisters wander on arterial roads causing hazards to human life and limb, half-starved and badly neglected, often diseased and suffering, eating garbage provided by an uncaring populace and always sloppy municipalities?

(600 words)

By Gautam Mukerji
First published on the Edit page of The Economic Timeswww.economictimes.com in 1995

Post script

Today you do have a very vocal PETA ( People for the ethical treatment of animals) and other famous and not so famous animal rights activists. You also have bird-flu outbreaks from time to time. Meat eating, both the "white" and "red" kind goes on unabated and I'm sorry to say the plight of the slaughteree and the state of the abattoirs is no better than when I wrote the above article in 1995.

Cellular telephony: India 1997

Cellular telephony will soon be as common as carrying a pen or wearing a watch

India opened up its telecommunications sector to modernisation only three years ago. The privatisation of basic telephony has been mired in teething troubles and is beginning to reach the starting blocks only now. The first manifestation of the new policy therefore has been the entry of private operators, typically joint ventures between reputed Indian companies and global majors in the field, in the relatively high-tech area of GSM based cellular telephony. Cellular telephony was introduced first into metro cities, fanning out to the circles in a year or two. The total number of cellular subscribers at the end of year three is rapidly approaching the million subscriber mark. This compares favourably with China, in the context of the first three-year time frame. Looking ahead to the first decade, say by the year 2004, given the size of India’s potential subscriber base, cellular telephony usage in India may well resemble China’s 8 million subscribers, making it among the largest cellular telephony markets in the world.

The ITU( International Telecommunication Union) has recently urged India to view the advent of telecommunications, both basic and cellular as an engine to fuel “economic activity” rather than the rather socialistic accent on providing telephones in “every village or home,” enshrined in the National Telecom Policy of 1994.

The manufacturing of telecom equipment in this country has anticipated this trend. Growth rates range from a healthy 120 per cent for certain product categories to a phenomenal 2,500 per cent for brand new technology introduced for the first time into India. While these figures pertain to both fixed and mobile telephony, consider present phone density as a measure of the road ahead. In 1997, the average is only 1.5 telephones per hundred of the population. Is is as low as 0.2 phones per 100 persons in rural areas and still paltry at 3.4 phones per 100 people in urban areas despite 84.7 per cent of all the telephone exchanges being located in urban areas. The need and potential for growth are therefore immense.

There has been a flurry of activity on the infrastructural front despite political instability. DoT( Department of Telecommunications) is in the process of restructuring itself to compete with the private sector and has been divested of its regulatory functions. These have been invested in the TRAI(Telecom Regulatory Authority of India) and this organisation has demonstrated its vision and independence by taking a number of bold and visionary decisions in short order. Other government monopolies such as MTNL( Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Limited) and VSNL(Videsh Sanchar Nigam Limited) are raising funds to carry out ambitious value addition programmes to prepare for an era of competition now well underway. The cellular operators themselves have banded together to project their industry issues via the COAI(Cellular Operator Association of India).

Meanwhile, prices of cellular handsets have tumbled in India, mirroring the global development of this easy way of staying connected. The latest trends are towards the bulk purchasing of cellular phones to bring down the prices even further. Cellular operators are offering ever better schemes which bundle more and more free airtime with the purchase of a handset. In some instances, the schemes are so attractive that they actually make the first year or eighteen months of cell phone usage virtually free of charge. In addition, the airtime rates themselves are reducing rapidly in the search for both a higher subscriber base and increased airtime usage. Technology protocols to permit roaming between circles and other countries are being implemented at a rapid pace. Entry barriers are therefore receding into history.

One clear consequence of liberalisation is the influence of global trends coming into play, whether it be in terms of expanding bandwidth in digital satellite technology or other forms of convergence, between telephony in all its fixed, wireless and GSM modes on the one hand and television and the computer on the other. Future trends indicate multiple access and interactivity, which will be impossible to restrict or legislate against. It is already possible to make an overseas Internet phone call at the price of a local call and the technology is improving as I write. The advent of the mini-M satellite telephone sets is another case in point to illustrate the unstoppable. Cellular operators are now turning their attention to greater value addition by way of interconnectivity with other media like the PC( personal computer) and the Internet so that the customer can be mobile and still have the ever increasing benefits of the multimedia environment.

The survival of the telecommunications sector in its broad and global sense will depend more on expanding its user bases. Technology itself is proving to be the great opener of doors, and governments, monopolies and the like can do nothing to stop it.

The present companies which have entered the sunrise industry of cellular telephony operations in India have grasped the nature of the sea changes to come and decided to defray the start up expenses as early birds. They know the only direction possible is straight ahead to spectacular long-term growth and profits. Fixed telephony will grow exponentially through the WLL (Wireless-in-local loop) route, and there will be an ability to switch between fixed and cellular networks at will on the part of the user. Tariffs will tend to converge as well, making it less and less relevant to make the switch to effect economies. The golden age of cellular telephony will come when the subscriber base is sufficiently expanded to lower tariffs to levels approximating those of fixed telephony. This will have to be viewed in tandem with the drastic reductions expected in the costs of long distance communications via the benefits of the world-wide-web and its multimedia capabilities boosted beyond present belief by the rapid proliferation of broad banding satellites.

It won’t be long, no more than a decade, before cellular telephony becomes as common as carrying a pen or wearing a watch. India will be among the front runners in this phenomenon, because the world is going to see to it. A practically virgin frontier of unending possibility is not a chance that telecom majors can afford to pass up.

(1,011 words)
By Gautam Mukerji
First published in THE HINDU www.hindu.com in December 1997

Post script.

The shape of the future circa April 2007:

Witness the advent of Vodafone-Hutch and the stellar prosperity of the Bharti Group but have we almost reached the end of the line for fixed line telephony and even a lot of cellular telephony?

MTNL and BSNL( Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited) have announced plans to provide free broadband and city-wide wi-fi connectivity by 2009. These government agencies are very good at driving down prices as we have seen.

The days of cellphones as we know them today using the services of operators to connect may give over and to a some extent, already have ( viz. Skype) to Internet video telephony.

All the private cellular operators are scrambling to take a position in 3G( high-speed wireless broadband) and the Government is considering bandwith resale and allowing privates and new players to bid for spectrum. It will bring down costs... The more things change, the more they seem the same but I can't see the consumer complaining.

The turn of the middle class

The turn of the middle class


America leads the world in press freedom. From the clutch of dailies run by early press barons like William Randolph Hearst to the mass circulation weeklies like Time and Newsweek nowadays, The Americans set the agenda on global issues. Attitudes and opinions worldwide are subliminally governed by what the American journals decide to think and write.

The American Press has long assumed the role of a constitutional watch-dog, forever asserting the founding principles of liberty, equality and fraternity derived from the French. This high moral tone sustains through the entire gamut of media presentation, acting as a yardstick by which the global village is judged.

For a developing country like India, living with one foot in our feudal and caste stratified past, and the other placed tentatively in the democratic and republican present, it results in an inferiority complex. A complex that makes our pundits hector the masses as if to say, I know better but you don’t. You don’t, because you live in a feudal mind-set while I am a modern thinking internationalist.

The Americans, who are the arbiters, find it discordant that our intelligentsia won’t take responsibility for the state of affairs. We sound focussed and intelligent and yet cannot translate our perception into effective action. Excuse making is a national pastime at which we happen to be very good. Implementation, it is readily conceded, is faulty because the hoi-polloi don’t understand.

Everywhere in India, capable people glibly expound a doctrine of despair and cynicism. The underlying thrust of the commentary is that we are rapidly going from bad to worse. All talk of progress is hog-wash directed at the dumb masses to manipulate votes and make money willy-nilly.

The question is, who is responsible for the situation, assuming the cynical consensus to be true. With easy facility, each one of India’s intelligentsia feels sure that they themselves are not to blame. They don’t answer the next question that springs to mind- that is, if they are blameless, and there is much not working properly, why don’t they fix it? This is when the crowd thins rapidly as the cynical consensus breaks down. Everyone is too busy with his own life to change the country.

It is high time that the educated middle classes, now 250 million strong, come to terms with their ostrich-like mentality. High time they realised that the masses look to the “sahib” for direction, not contempt. Educated Indians are in charge of the country’s destiny. It is their duty to drive the country forward safely and with responsibility.

This sense of responsibility is the only way for us to shed our inferiority complex. The middle class may have an enormous task ahead, but the sooner they get started, the better. If inspiration is required, look back at history. In the first half of this century, less than 30,000 Brits, Viceroy and Tommy included, ran an Indian Empire stretching from Burma to the Arabian Gulf.

India Gandhi once expressed the opinion that corruption is found everywhere in the world, among rich nations and poor, and so we should look at the issue as a global social evil, rather than flagellate ourselves for being particularly venal. The truisms in this remark are quite obvious, but there is another important message buried in her attitude. She did not think we had anything to apologise for to the world, while readily conceding there was much to be done.

Self-regard is important for the middle class to form conviction, but this is not a clarion call to Swadeshi jingoism. India cannot be right in all seasons, but neither should its best and brightest form the opinion that it is beyond repair.

After nearly 50 years of self governance, we have taken a great many strides. Consider the swollen ranks of the middle class itself. This number of 250 million, up from a total population if 350 million at independence, has significant skills and impressive buying power, and is being targeted with great interest by most advanced economies. The middle class population in India is, after all, the entire population of the US.

This country now feeds itself, all 950 million people, with surpluses to export. A far cry from over 50 million famine deaths in British-ruled India in the 19th and first half of the 20th centuries.

The roads, railways, air travel, telecommunications, armed forces’ capabilities, technical and management abilities, distribution and marketing, planning and forecasting, music, art and entertainment, health and legal redress, have all undergone changes for the better.Consumerism has been unleashed, making us hungry for improvements and competition.

The intelligentsia sneer at all this, calling it names, comparing our inept handling of issues to the streamlined West. They point a finger at all the urinating in public, the dirtiness, the smell, the vandalising of public property, bureaucratic inertia, callousness, apathy, violence, lawlessness, instead-almost in counterpart. They imply nothing can save this country except some sort of pest control, themselves exempted of course!The fact is, this haw-hawism will not carry the middle class very far. To display more ennui than purpose is a good way to be over-run.

It is no use whining about the uppity Mandalisation of the polity if there is no will to lead. There is too much hollow posturing and abdication instead of responsibility and action. A facile adoption of Western ideas qualifies us as Wogs, no more no less. Uninvolved rejection of affirmative action programmes amount to dilettantism, and will lead to decline, even dismissal.

The Indian middle class needs a banner under which it can unite. This flag need not be a political party. It definitely does not need to be a religion. The unifying factor can be a change of attitude. This is a crucial juncture in India’s progress. It is the turn of the middle class to take charge. They need to apply all the things they know, in everyday life, and stop blaming everyone but themselves for the shortcomings of the nation.

(1003 words)

By Gautam Mukerji

First published in THE HINDUSTAN TIMES www.hindustantimes.com on Sunday February 25th, 1996 in the PERSPECTIVE column on the Edit page

P.S. Infosys Technologies, the greatest Indian middle class success story was not very well known in 1996... nor were most of the top twenty companies we see today. Eleven years can indeed be a very long time.

Under-utilising bourse power circa 1997

Under-utilising bourse power


Nobody said an economy has to be in the pink before the investors get interested. But it is necessary to look promising if there is to be any enthusiasm. Money being an essential coward has no desire to languish in uncertainty. The pressing need in India is investment in infrastructure, as the deficits in areas like electricity threaten to engulf us. However, no seasoned investor feels happy to venture into a long term investment if policies are half-hearted and deeds do not match words.

The world regards India and China as the two greatest potential markets where even a low penetration rate for goods and services could dwarf much higher percentages elsewhere. But there is a proverbial catch–we Indians cling to a host of provisos and codicils when we liberalise our economy. This way we land up being neither fish nor fowl. China, on the other hand, has brazenly divorced ideology from economics and created a vibrant growth scenario as a consequence.

Take the progress of the Indian stock market in recent times by way of contrast. The Government has studiedly inferred that the stock market is no barometer of the real economic ground realities. What this means is quite unclear. It implies that the bourses should fend for themselves without government aided succour. Yet, it predicates its own investment plans on what they can hive off in the self-same bourses. They also regulate it mercilessly. This is truly baffling. Do we want to make money or do we not? Is it a free market operation or the old licence-permit Raj?

Realising from time to time that it has gone too far when the stock market heads steeply southwards, the Government makes conciliatory noises. Lately, there are new hints and portents and the market is somewhat enthused but the measures are never more than half-loaves. The badla issue has gone the whole distance for two years only to come back to the point where it started. An ill-conceived MAT and tax on exports has proved counter-productive because they are virulent anti-growth measures. Where does this retrograde thinking come from? Is it because of some confused notion of social justice, in theory! Because, in practice, we have one of the most profligate governments in the third world with no care about its own expenditure whatsoever.

The powers-that-be must realise that the share price indices are not only a product of speculation and the gambling instinct but also of solid achievement in one of the top 20 among industrialised nations. The sensex is like a referendum on the performance of the economy of-the-day, as the potential of the nation. Should it then be treated so cavalierly- being wooed one day and spurned the next?

Once again, we are on the threshold of a rescue package of sorts expected in the budget presentations of 1997. We are also in the 5oth year of our independent nationhood. It might be opportune to divorce political short term gains from the workings of the greatest potential engine of growth the country could wish for. The stock market could surpass the banks and lending institutions if the Government made the right moves to encourage it.

It is true that the foreign investment which could flow into a resurgent stock market cannot build power plants or ports for us. But if the FIIs are able to make money in a buoyant stock market, they can work as goodwill ambassadors in favour of India. There is a well worn adage that goes “money talks”. If India is seen as a destination second to none in 1997 on the stock markets, it is likely that the foreign direct investment waiting in the wings will follow suit. The paranoia which attends the idea of “capital flight” has more to do with no hope situations than a bright bouncy capital market.

The situation is ripe because masses of well configured company stock is beaten down to historic lows and the price earning ratios are very tempting. The worry is that bottomed-out as the market may be, how long will it be before the gravy train rolls around! The Government has the answer to this question.

Are they going to take out double taxation on dividend? What about MAT? Dare we hope for the old badla which everyone understands? Will they put in a small 10 per cent of the vast reserves of providend fund money into the bourses? One sincerely hopes that the Government makes some bold moves.

The small investor who used to wait patiently in the sun in serpentine queues to invest in primary issues has been vanishing fast. Many are nursing grievious wounds from a stock market that has eroded their capital by over 50 per cent. Apart from naively believing in the much touted “equity cult”, he had brought himself to risk his arm but has been looking at his stock market affair as one of the more ruinous things he ever did. Why should this be allowed to continue if the Government objective is to make companies raise their own capital from shareholders?

A buoyant stock market will also bring down the high interest rates on fixed term investments which is dangerous in the long run. A thriving equity cult can do wonders for revenue deficits with low taxation as a mate. In the end, equity is shared risk in the enterprise that people can take. What they want out of once and for all is the strangulation provided as an unwelcome bonus by inconsistent government policy.

(915 words)

By Gautam Mukerji
First published in THE PIONEER <>as the lead Edit article on February 15th, 1997

Justice delayed is justice denied

Justice delayed is justice denied


There are close to a billion Indians. Assuming that about 50 per cent is age compatible to litigate and file, or are respondents in, just one case each, there would be half a billion cases in our courts. To compound the clutter, reflect on the fact that cases are constantly being filed. It is par for the course that an average case takes up to 10 years to settle between court dates and other myriad impedimenta. So who’s afraid of the judicial process?

Not the civil-case litigant because it will be years before the verdict rolls around and then with appeals and moves to higher courts he can safely bank on another decade of indecision. The criminal is somewhat worse off, because he’s often arrested and remanded first and the questions begin only afterwards. But even for murderers and their ilk, once bail is obtained, they can look forward to years of freedom no matter which way the verdict eventually goes.

It was interesting to see the Government trying to look after its own peace of mind by seeking to impose penalties and non-refundable and steep deposits on public interest litigation. Because apart from the exercise of the vote, the common citizen has no grip at all on his netas and “administrators”. However, as a move to restrict “mischievous” litigation in general, the proposal has merit.

What can be done to preserve our fundamental right of being equal before the law and yet move towards speedier justice? We definitely need to decongest our courts. This can be done by steeply increasing the costs of litigation and simplifying the law itself. It might be worthwhile to expand the size of the judiciary and the size of the penal awards as well.

Many innovations can be taken from the American system which caters to an incredibly litigious population of only 220 million people. When an American threatens to sue someone it carries weight because the law guards individual liberty and the awards, if successful, can wipe out the loser. American lawyers are permitted to take a case on speculation, arranging to take a cut of the award money rather than legal fees, letting the poor litigate. Perhaps we also need to reintroduce juries. Juries introduce commonsense because they comprise of non-legal people. The only recourse to battle rising corruption is an efficient judicial system so that the righteous can stand their ground and the crooked make their moves at their own peril.

Today, the system is too slow for both sides and so most of the inequity takes place outside the portals of justice with little or no relationship between the two. Too many litigants are abusing the judicial process, taking advantage of its archaisms and legal cul-de-sacs to place things in limbo. A new judicial commission needs to sit down and prune the deadwood from the law and its administration. Too often the law is made but not enforced. There are layers of laws on top of outdated or colonial ones or even Mughal ones, which are no longer relevant. All this deadwood must go. If we could have simpler and clearer laws and rapid enforcement of them we could start to build the order that every decent individual craves. To bring about the changes calls for a glasnost that will shake the foundations of our judicial probity. But to not do so will make a mockery permanent. Justice may be purposely blind but there is no need to turn it into a cripple. What can be done? Should court dates be set by clerks or computers? Should unintimated absences of litigants, judge, registrar, witnesses etc. result in adjournment?

Two things are clear. The Indian judicial system and laws need to be modernised and the citizen of India deserves speedier justice. Because a lot seems to be happening to bring crooks to book of late perhaps this is the right time to get the system itself geared up to deliver.

(664 words)

By Gautam Mukerji

First published in THE PIONEER www.dailypioneer.com on February 14th, 1997 under the headline CONCERNS

Direct selling: everybody gains

Direct selling: everybody gains


Tom Peters, the management guru, lives in Montana on a salubrious ranch and runs his office in California with the help of a GSM telephone, modems, internet, computers, e-mail and faxes. He visits his organisation from time to time, just to put faces to names and assess body language.

For the rest, Peters fishes for trout as he weaves his books or seminars in his head or on a lap-top, rides horses, plays with his children, has candle-lit dinners with his wife, all in a surfeit of quality time that he has created for himself. Quixotic as this sounds, the man must be doing something right if you look at the kind of bucks he makes.

What has this got to do with direct selling? Well, here’s another idea-think of those New Zealand bungee jumpers. Sure, it takes courage to leap off bridges into the abyss. It takes the jumper upside down to within scraping distance of doom, jerking him practically half way up again. It’s the elasticity one is referring to, and the excitement.

Direct selling has these two virtues. Freedom and privacy, even as you are one digital connection away from help, should you need it. And, elasticity. You can work as much or as little as you like. You can choose the size, heft and ingredients of your sandwich, determine your pay packet, find ways to pat yourself on the back or kick yourself in the shins.

From the customer end, there’s an element of luxury involved in the shop coming home to sell to you. Rich people who bought jewels and furs had this sort of service. Now the Americans have found ways to democratise it. Even in India, direct marketing from the glossy mailers to the VPP post parcel is making rapid inroads. Catalogues are being advertised. There are televised exhortations to buy direct. There are price advantages, lower overheads. Keen, entrepreneurial, self-employed people. Internet banking is here too. What lies beyond the next bend in the Ganga?

Home offices, Home PCs certainly. These are already entrenched. Direct marketing is growing in relevance in this new world of informed choice.

In India, we are used to vendors and tradesmen. Traditionally they have brought fruit and vegetables, pickles and fish, crabs and sweet meats and offered to refill lumpy cotton mattresses. But the mattresses all turned into Dunlopillo and Coir and the victuals are better a short drive away. What remains an attractive proposition is the catering to one’s wants rather than one’s needs, brought, as of yore, to our doorsteps, but with a difference, a high-tech spin.

Probably the biggest of the direct mail successes internationally has 2.5 million distributors spread over 70 countries pumping up a turnover in excess of 6 billion US dollars. These are people from a variety of professional backgrounds, different economic and educational levels and a multiplicity of cultures.

So what does it mean to the customer? Home delivery really. The neighbourhood Kebab Walla isn’t a patch on the home delivered pizza. That is why one tips the pizza man and argues with the Kebab Walla, unkindly casting aspersions on the meat he uses.

Direct marketing, tele-banking, 24 hour access, all singing “customer is king”. It is going to be a long-term phenomenon, growing wings with time.

The good part is that anything that provides some comfort to all will find its place in the sun. Manufacturers are happy that their products are taken off their premises; distributors are earning margins without having to pay for inventory; the company, like the hen mother, is supplying bon mots and know-how, scrutinising products and developing networks. And the customer is getting pampered.

Welcome to the world of making your own sandwich and liking it too.

(624 words)

By Gautam Mukerji

First published in THE PIONEER www.dailypioneer.com on December 6th, 1997 in their Second Opinion column

Have card, will spend

Have card, will spend

Young people, in transition from adolescence to adulthood are caught with a foot in both worlds. They tend to have two tastes at the same time. One responds to quality enshrined in international branded products, like Reebok, Nike and Benetton. The other pays homage to the whacky, the “cool”, the kitschy poster, grunge music, chatpata tastebud teasers, shock value!

It is important for a teenager to surge towards adulthood, wear grown-up make–up, shave at least once a week and be up-to-date on things like the price of Mercedes Benz cars and Mont Blanc pens-things that they are clearly not in the league of. At the same time, it is equally important for them to leap into parental laps with their coltish bodies, complaining they are not hugged enough anymore.

The young person is a seething mass of awareness and retrogression, a whirling manifestation of the chrysalis to butterfly syndrome. They pose a great challenge to the creative art of marketers who target their seemingly shallow pockets. It is no easy job to attract, let alone keep their interest. The pitch has to be one part teddy bear, one part Schwarzenegger and one part Sharon Stone. The kitsch can be Indianised of course, but woe betide any prosaic soul that plays fast and loose with the ingredients!

The spending power of youth is demonstrated by the size and opulence of the music and entertainment industries. In India, it is surging towards adulthood, crossing over from fillum music to techno-bhangra, pop, rock and back, like a hyperactive gymnast. The underbelly of booze, drugs and sex may not be of epidemic proportions, but certainly has a role in drawing the flies to the honey pot.

On the wider canvas of clothes, computers, cars, cosmetics, sports things, myriad gadgetry, the youth are a well-informed set of influencers. Besides, the traditional divide between earning and spending has become blurred in the age of plastic credit. This applies to their parents, bless their dependent card providing hearts. Pocket money is a dinosaur. Impulse buying is in. Have card, will spend.

Marketing to youth has to be a responsible activity. You cannot sell blood and guts revolution. You can sell environment and AIDS awareness. Young people are allergic to companies jumping on the bandwagon, intrusively pushing their messages as they piggyback on a promo. They are equally resistant to blatant product advertising, responding much more gamely to a pitch that seems to encourage them to make their own choices. The language is important. It makes the difference between inclusion and alienation. AR Rehman has scored this 50th year with Vande Mataram but only because he understands the pulse of the young.

Sports and the lure of the body beautiful is a ‘90s phenomenon. Still, the important thing is to pitch the endorsement of the sports celebrity right. Imagination is everything. It is life enhancing. Rationality is boring. Between these extremes lies the challenge, right in the centre of the cleavage. Understanding the mind-set is important. It is international in perspective but has to be rooted in local symbolism. The start line is important and so is the implication. Anybody who takes these near adults for fools will soon encounter the comeuppance to his pride. This is an aspirational and sensitive market, fashion conscious and quality savvy, fun loving and given to hormonal surges. Enter at your own peril if you have no sense of humour…

By contrast, if you happen to be possessed with the missionary zeal of a reformer, the sensitivity of an artist, the idealism of a prophet, or the unbridled imagination of a Spielbergian genius, come, and welcome, to the magic theatre. Your audience is sitting on the edge of its seat, agog, waiting to bless you with gold for your coffers.

(631 words)

By Gautam Mukerji

First published in THE PIONEER www.dailypioneer.com on November 19, 1997 in the Second Opinion column

Direct Selling: New way to push sales

New way to push sales

Multi-level marketing (MLM), an advanced form of Direct Selling, with its rapid growth pattern, may well emerge as the most common method adopted by marketing experts in the 21st century. It is a wonderful blend of the personalised contact method of direct selling coupled with the high-tech tools of the Information Age. Since 1991, global retail sales in the direct selling industry have nearly doubled, and the trend is very bullish. The motivation of over 22 million distributors in 90 countries currently generates a phenomenal estimated US $ 78 billion in sales. Still, large as this figure undoubtedly is, it is small compared to the global retail sales made from showrooms, shops, supermarkets, boutiques and spot promotions.

Direct selling internationally is stretching to encompass more and more innovative areas. Products and services as diverse as air treatment systems, discount telephone services, credit cards, vacation packages, apparel, stereo equipment, and a wonderland of other catalogued goodies, all from reputed manufacturers, are now within its ambit.

India represents an enormous potential for direct selling. Six leading international companies have already marked their presence in India. They are: Amway India Enterprises, Avon Beauty Products, LB Publishers & Distributors, Lotus Learning, Oriflame India and Tupperware India. This early bird list represents a heady blend of international market leaders.

Amway, shortly to commence operations in India, employs over 13,000 people directly and has over three million distributors worldwide. The Amway approach is to build on the personal contacts of its distributors. Distributors sell to those they6 know and sponsor new distributors who also do the same thing. Thus one gets a continuous outward spiral of growth and a substantial multiplier in sales. Other forms of direct selling include door-to-door canvassing of potential customers within a given territory and the party plan, in which the sales person identifies a host who gives a party where the products are demonstrated and result in sales.

Multi-Level Marketing is the ideal vehicle for entrepreneurs seeking a new opportunity. It offers flexible hours and a low cost entry to being one’s own boss. No special educational qualifications are necessary. This provides a window of opportunity to a host of individuals including executives, housewives, the self-employed, anyone who wants to enhance their earnings with a part-time enterprise. Distributors earn their money through commissions and bonuses.

Direct selling dispenses with intermediaries and is an efficient mover of goods directly to the consumer. The direct sales distributor is free to concentrate on what he or she can do best: identify new customers, demonstrate products, take orders and deliver the merchandise. The company meanwhile takes on the crucial responsibility of developing new products, promoting them and making them readily available. It is the company that forecasts sales and does most of the forward planning.

The future of MLM in India will depend on to what extent it satisfies consumer needs and aspirations. The availability of quality products, reliable after-sales service, competitive pricing and a highly motivated set of distributors should be decisive. Direct selling is a perfect fit for the unique entrepreneurial instinct and originality of the Indian businessperson.

(536 words)

By Gautam Mukerji
First published in The Hindustan Times in the AD-MARK section on November 13, 1997.

Where will you be at the millennium...

Where will you be at the millennium and what’s going to happen then?

Everybody has heard of the YK2 problem, the havoc it will play with our records unless we lay out the manna to software companies, who’ll do up everything to three digits instead of two, and thus avert major information blues.

But isn’t it just typical that something as administrative as digits too few should dominate newsprint when we talk of the year 2000? It appears that the tyranny of petty science and pedestrian rationality is obscuring the woods for the trees.

What we should really be getting heated up about is the survival of the species for an entire thousand years and, closer to home, the triumphs of the twentieth century over its perverse side. But there’s precious little urge to celebrate, burdened as we are with paradoxes-procedure over substance, content over mood, sex over love.

Technology, that mutant ninja turtle begat by science and imagination has a poetic soul. In the 21st century, prosaic as most of mankind has become, it is technology that will lead us by the nose and help us realise the potentials of our better selves. Better computer controlled transport will set us free to roam. The Internet, WebTV, ubiquitous wireless telephony, and their interactive friendship, will keep us from getting lonely. Sperm banks will address our dynastic urges if we are squeamish about real life relationships and cloning new –born can be rapidly aged to the same stage as its deceased predecessor. Monstrous and Frankensteinish it may seem, but history tells us that, once invented, technology juggernauts on along its inexorable course. Legislation as we know it is being emasculated, not only by a weakening of the enforcing will but by the sheer advances in technology itself. It is technology that has now become aspirational, leaving mankind to purvey its saliences like a fruit seller, pointing out the luscious and the shiny in the hope of making a sale.

The 21st century beckons us towards a world of exploding choice. It will be a designer reality with everything from religion to the shape of our noses available on spec. The individualism that this will foster will change the nature of the trends because the largest number following something, will not necessarily make a stronger statement than those opting for marginal and fringe choices. Everyone will have the same guns and can choose where to fire at. It will be an age of technology as the great equaliser.

Disease will be headed off before it occurs by genetic manipulation. On the potentials and abilities front, men will design their sons into supermen with the characteristics they cherish deep in their psyches. Every form of narcissism will be rendered legitimate. With virtual reality, people will fashion their own virtual experiences, destroying the power of frustration forever.

I am sure some of us cling vainly to the idea of retribution to seize upon a moral plank that is supposedly immutable. Note that Time Travel and the consequent redesigning of cause and effect has once more engaged the attention of serious physicists. Retribution for violation of natural laws presumes that there is no going back. But what if that becomes possible, and going forward too?

And where is this NASA exploring the outer reaches of the galaxy leading towards? Will we not discover other dimensions and habitable planets in the 21st century? I will wager that if they exist, we will find them. After all, mankind found out that the world was round by the same exploratory process.

The laws of physics and chemistry, of biology and natural science, are changing almost as rapidly as the new humanities. The millennium may well be the threshold of a technological renaissance that will turn everything we hold dear today into a historical footnote, something which went before the new commandments replaced the old.

A thousand years of recorded history have nearly gone by, but it is as well to remember that this is still an applet in the sands of time that has run through the hourglass. The world has changed manifold since the ice started melting and the mountains first thrust into the sky. Civilisations have come and gone, many contributing lasting gifts to the future. But now, the acceleration is of a different order.

Only annihilation by nuclear apocalypse can set us back, and since there is an intricate balance of power in place, even that cannot be counted on to reduce the world as we know it, to a tangled skein of radioactive rubble. Still, only if that were to happen, or a pestilence descended, so horrendous and unstoppable, that it killed almost everyone, only then, would the 21st century resemble the centuries preceding it in some sense.

But to me there seems little chance of this Armageddon coming about. Mankind is headed for an era of enormous refinement, not by dint of individual labour, as in centuries past, but as a collective inheritance of the many, from the visionary work done by the few.

I would urge you to think about how you’ll bring in the year 2000. We are indeed privileged to be alive at this time and the millennium calls for the greatest celebration of your life.

(874 words)

By Gautam Mukerji

First published in The Pioneerwww.dailypioneer.com as “Towards a designer reality” on January 22nd, 1998 on the Edit page in the Second Opinion column

Attitude

Attitude

To some people from the old school, “attitude” is synonymous with paying attention or not. But to others, and not just lately, it is the differentiator that makes you your own person, distinctive, unique, but not too rarefied, because it’s not much point striking wonderful postures without an audience.

For the young, coming into the angst and yearnings of hormonal upheaval, “attitude” is at best a fragile thing, sometimes strong as a giant and at other times incoherent, inchoate and subdued as a church mouse. Older people cannot tell it apart from personality traits in general, resorting to well worn adjectives like “vivacious” or “dour” or colloquial descriptions like “pataka” and “cold fish”.

So why is it that today “attitude” is the major consideration in marketing programmes, advertising, and social positioning? The answer is wonderfully simple—all sorts of personality traits and environmental influences have been converged to create a sharply etched self-image which is tuggingly sympatico, being both aggressive and vulnerable at the same time. It extends to clothes, shoes, cars, hairstyles, colours chosen, holidays taken, drinks preferred, stress on the body beautiful, sensible eating, design, working hard at one’s aspirations and playing to win. In short, an absolute plethora of things that are sitting on the razor’s edge between wants and needs. The “me too” generation has run on into history hand in hand with their “try harder” compatriots. That sort of self-deprecation for being second best does not cut much ice these days. But how frightening! After all, how can everyone be a winner? The answer is direct and doable—develop yer “attitude” of course! Attitude that says I am me and I am the best at being me.

The concomitants of developing attitude are a thorough self-examination in order to highlight the trendiest aspects of both the inner and outer selves. Then, having got the colours onto the palette, it is necessary to paint the wide picture, inclusive of the accruements that extend this “attitude” thing. Now do you see why there are salesmen at the door??

The whole thing, to be sure, is running quicksilver away, akin to the cow jumping over the moon, and the “dish” eloping most willingly with the enterprising and devastatingly whatever “spoon”, (chamach?)

Entire films convey little more than a mood today, its current translation being “attitude”. So do certain novels, paintings and a whole lotta popular music. It was Noel Coward who said—“Strange how potent cheap music is”. And I say, you can say that again!

Then, there’s shoes. Lots of character readers look at shoes. And nail polish in deathly hues for those who like to divine by looking at hands. The walk, the talk, the multi -layered hair styles, almost shorn to the skin in places, and seductively long in others. Consider the conditioner, shampoo and gel wallahs when you try to translate this sort of seeming inanity into sales. It be indubitably true that there is nothing if there is no tomorrow, but today, here and now, your best bet is to acquire an attitude and don’t be embarrassed about the ingredients. Remember, it’s older than “Blue Suede Shoes”, even older than “Play it again Sam”, older than Othello’s blind jealousy or the merchant of Venice’s greed, older than Karan’s heroism and Lord Krishna’s cosmic amorality. It’s one old dude. “Attitude ‘98 is a time capsule dug up to define the millenium generation.

Attitude today, no relation of the magazine with similar mien, can be a vocal, mute or action packed expression, but oddly, it has quite a lot in common with both dancing and sex. This dancing thing, the mating ritual, is perennially popular with every kind of creature that moves. It was George Bernard Shaw, among the most quotable of quotables, who said dancing or the waltz “ is a perpendicular expression of a horizontal desire”. Heh, heh! Clever. Still, I suspect that’s exactly where “attitude” is headed, rather like buying condoms at the chemist, and why ever not? All the swank cars, the glitzy bars, the wiggly women, the hunky men would be out of business without it, and the rest of us would have nothing to emulate. What a famine of a thought!

But it’s not all simpering and pizzazz. There is a good deal of true grit involved. That’s why “Dirty Harry” Clint E and J Wayne plus drawl were/are such icons, not to mention my favourite Bruce Willis, causing the more questionable sections of society to die harder in each successive saga of vengeance and retribution.

Perhaps the best quote on this one is from Marshall Foch of France, viz. “My centre gives way, my right retreats, situation excellent. I shall attack.” The brave man signaled this message to General Joffre during the second battle of the Marne in July/August of 1918.

But all this machismo is a lure, no more, in the serious business of attitudinising. The last word must still, as always, go to the lover. So come on out from under the Madison County bridge Clint, and wherefore art thou Romeo, and down boy Wayne Bobbitt, I fully believe you can, and let me congratulate you on a simply superb attachment!

So be well, and if your spirits start to course their way towards your boots, and it isn’t the Robbie Burns night kind, remember there is someone out there in the cosmos and probably in your bed, who loves you, and makes your life complete.

(917 words)
By Gautam Mukerji

First published as "Do you have an Attitude '98" in The Pioneerwww.dailypioneer.com on February 14, 1998 on the Edit page in the Second Opinion column

The scourge of VIP security-crores wasted on the unworthy

The scourge of VIP security--crores wasted on the unworthy

The statistics on guarding our politicians, administrators and other VIPs have run completely amuck. Countless crores are being spent conferring astoundingly wasteful security blankets around the people’s representatives and senior bureaucrats, past, present and future. It starts with gun-toting guards and expands into building fortresses, converting hundreds of cars with armour plate and bullet proof glass and even air-freighting them hither and thither to provide round-the-clock-safety from Behmai to Berhampore to this privileged caste. Planes are chartered in the name of security. Trains are diverted and roads are blocked, also in the name of security. The costs are spiralling out of all proportion but the juggernaut of VIP security lumbers on oblivious.

In addition, the process of hanging about protecting these people and lining the route of their meanderings, dehumanises and trivialises the police and para-military forces. They are reduced to being glorified gate-keepers as opposed to the upholders of the law and justice they were meant to be.

The matter has reached comic proportions in the present era of raft like coalition governments and multiple parties. The concern for the poor does not manifest itself in one effective austerity measure applicable to our rulers. That this ludicrous security apparatus with its “blue” and “red” books and its “Z” category big wheel is an intrusion on the freedom of ordinary people and a waste of resources, does not bother anyone in power.

It is true that the law and order situation is somewhat shaky. But that applies to all of us. Why should the privilege of safety be the perquisite of an exalted few when the rest of us are paying for it? Unwarranted use of the police force and other para-military outfits to guard our rulers flies in the face of our own requirements. The cake is certainly not big enough to go around. So, our rulers have cynically relegated the public to third class status. I say third class because the bosses of the private sector inhabit the second class in the security pyramid. They emulate their counterparts in the ministries and government, keeping and maintaining the private security industry in the pink. Only the public gets next to nothing. Only the public is given short shrift by the police. The public has no voice when even scribes are beaten up by the “guards” and consequently no power. The public is nobody and of no count.

This was not what our constitutional fathers wilfully begat forty-seven years ago. This is a subversion of their intent and purpose. This is not a flowering in the traditions of Westminster and Capitol Hill but inspired by the antics of banana republics and the dictatorships of more “proletarian” countries. Democracy in a secular republic has been hijacked by the few masquerading as the saviours of the many. Why should this process not be checked now? What would be the fallout of an open-style of government? Has the ruling caste decided to live only for itself?

The feudalism of centuries past has reared its recreated head in an orgy of self-importance. There is no more need to protect our rulers. If they are vulnerable to attack let their political parties fund their protection, not the national exchequer. Let bureaucrats take on private security agencies at their own expense.

The categorisation of security threats and its manifestation among the political elite has become a rampant status symbol. This may serve aprodisiac purposes for the jaded beneficiaries but how does it help the public whose money is being squandered?

Only the government can do something about its own profligacy. The answer is political will at the top. Only the politicians themselves can shed this security cover. Only they have the power to bring about a change. They should not worry about their lives any more than the next man. The fact that they seem to do so is a reflection of the hubris that has set into our body politic. Hubris is not substantial and certainly no answer to mortality. We are a nation of karmic souls. Nobody is going to die unless it is written. So why not strengthen the police force and let it create a safe environment for all instead of fortresses for the political classes?

(725 words)
Gautam Mukerji
February 24, 1997

First published in The Pioneerwww.dailypioneer.com as "All for security,or security for all?" on Sunday, March 2nd, 1997 under Perspective

An argument in favour of continued liberalisation

An argument in favour of continued Liberalisation

Time was when all we knew was frozen in time. We implemented Laskian socialism and gave every commanding height of the economy to the public sector. Typically, we did not throttle the private sector but put a strict watch on it instead. All around us we had either /or choices and life was as simple as the Fiat and the Ambassador. A man knew where he stood.

Time came when the citadel developed not just cracks, but structural faults, serious enough to threaten the entire edifice. There was no money in the Treasury. Creditors examined manicured finger nails for long moments when we went cap in hand for loans. We were forced to change economic policies which had driven us nearly bankrupt, and that is when the confusion began.

Bureaucrats, used to intoning shibboleths on “ maximum employment” and “social objectives,” underwent culture shock when confronted with “return on investment” and “viability”. Manufacturers churning out goods made with pre-world war technology, when technology itself was young , scurried to modernise, still dazed from the upheaval of the breached walls. They called their heads of Research and Development to lunch, eyeing them with a new respect now that R& D might turn out to be more than just a tax dodge.

Foreigners streamed into our city hotels clutching shiny plastic credit cards, purveying all manner of enabling know-how, designs to revolutionise our infrastructure and multiply our options. Media folk coined images of springing tigers and lumbering elephants, to depict an economy awakening. Think tank gurus extolled the virtues of the largest working democracy in the world, replete with an independent judiciary, a free press and the “steel framework” of an extensive bureaucracy. Opportunity stared us in the face as we emerged from the socialist shadows, blinking in market driven sunlight.

Now we are four years down the high road towards an open economy. The Treasury coffers look genteel now, far from over flowing yet, but bound to grow, nudged by an annual GDP doubled since liberalisation began.

Throughout our socialist years the gross domestic product managed to “grow” at no more than a miniscule two percent. A statistic dubbed the “Hindu rate of growth” by international sceptics, ironically contrasting India’s population explosion with her economic performance. Even our present pace is not much faster than the proverbial pilgrim’s, when compared to Pacific rim economies posting annual growth in double digits!

We could catch up if we want to. The bulls are indeed snorting behind the arras of cyberspace but the bears are still squatting in the arena. Four years down the road of our boldness we have developed cold feet wondering when we saw the last mile stone and what was written on the gantry signs overhead.
more

Nostalgia hits us for that time past when it stood comfortably still. A time when all our defficiencies could be jettisoned at the altar of socialist ideology. When we comforted ourselves that, after all, “social justice” did not come cheap.

Meanwhile, the car we’re in keeps rolling inexorably towards the free market. It is no longer the familiar hold all Ambassador, nor the constant Padmini, but a new fangled Maruti mutating into a Peugeot, a Cielo, an Opel Astra, even a Mercedes as the kilometres flow by. We look with distaste at this apology for a high road impervious to the high tech machinery straddling it. There is so much to update now that the citadel is breached!

Where do we begin? Fact is we already have - four years ago, but now we are not so sure.That is why there are anarchic winds blowing around and opinions, like blades of grass are sweeping left, right, and, standing straight up, buffetted from all sides.

Change is scary, there I’ve admitted it, but we can either make room for it or collapse under our cumulative burdens like our erstwhile friends, the USSR. Every civic and infrastructural facility we have today is an anachronism:- roads,airports,stations,’phones, schools, colleges, hospitals, insurance, law courts like bedlam, gardens like garbage dumps, garbage dumps like mountains, adulterated food, contaminated water, sub-standard and expensive housing, inadequate and temperamental electricity - the list is so long we have grown apathetic to its ravages.

We cannot solve our problems fiddling like Nero as India gets mired deeper in the morass. Harking back to a mythical golden age in the long ago cannot wipe out the stench of present day decay. It is a symptom of a dying civilisation to refuse to look on the face of reality.

Luddites could not stop the Industrial Revolution. Hydra headed Fundamentalism will also, in time, be ironed out of the history pages, as a wrinkle is smoothed away. Discarded, not because of its ideological debilities alone, but overtaken by independent compulsions to modernise everything, produce competitive goods and services, carve a niche for India, in order to survive in the global village!

We can’t modernise unless we take the international help that is being offered. We fed our hunger with the Green Revolution. As a consequence, we have groaning surplusses after feeding a population doubled in the interim.We beat back drought with canals, irrigation, dams and wasteland reclamation. We did not do these things alone. The benefits are so profound that the word “famine” has been obliterated from the Indian lexicon. There were so many starvation deaths in the nineteenth century that it makes the losses of the holocaust look like a bus accident!

Reinventing the wheel will take too long. We have to take charge and pay attention to the terms on which we induct technology. Our intelligence must be harnessed to getting ourselves the best catapult to make up for the inward looking years. Today we might consider ourselves desirable because of a huge and potentially lucrative domestic market. We should be careful not to sit too long admiring ourselves. Suitors get tired of uncooperative damsels and settle for the charms of more pliable ones.

We should all get this clear - that a country the size and importance of India has no choice but to clamber to its new tryst with destiny inside shiny buildings of chrome and glass at the free market. There is no mileage in looking wistfully at quaint mud huts rushing by the car windows because they, and their ilk, cannot meet our burgeoning needs, and if truth be told, never have! We cannot afford to be “bloody but unbowed,” clinging to a tattered dogma on the threshold of the second millenium.

Our very own Swadeshi Camelot is waiting for us on the round table of global cooperation now; not among the crumbling ruins of our socialist citadel. We have to learn to enjoy the new found choices given us by the gods of technology. Techno Gods who have abstracted the gold and jewels from sovereign crowns and replaced them with invasive inter-networked information, beamed from the heavens.

If we go out and meet this brave new world head on we will not be intimidated by the glare. If we resist the inevitable, the tottering citadel will collapse on us.

That would be the epitaph fit for a dinosaur - a country grown too tired to adapt, an ancient civilisation preferring to climb into permanent slumber on the pages of history encircled with encomiums and laurels.


by Gautam Mukerji

First published in The Pioneerwww.dailypioneer.com as "India cannot modernise without international help" on Monday, February 26th, 1996 in the main Opinion slot on the Edit page