The 2nd IRS reports are out. It is show time folks for papers and publications! More so because it has come out from the mother of all surveys IRS. Be that as it may for the experts for the ordinary readers the outcome is decoded in the form of ads. It’s time for a series of ads from publications, big or small, to appear as victory parade in magazines and newspapers. They come out in different size and shape but have almost a ritualistic resemblance with each other in the layout and display of content. Proclamation of the glory of the victor, description of the loser, the score card in pie and bar charts and finally the flag off line.
Very often the tableau of the vanquished and the victor follow each other. In this carnival everybody has his own basket of achievement and not necessarily they need to come from a particular survey. Statistical figures are available right left and center from sources professional not so professional, from the amateur compilation of numbers done by summer trainees of business schools to a personal survey done by an enterprising journalist for his routine column in paper. Put them in the form of a pie and bar chart they all look so smart, real and credible like the outfits of cops and army generals in the Bollywood movies. Print them in black and white or in color, if you are willing to garnish the visual appeal, they sport a very credible badge of authentication.
How important is the source? Because in most cases sources are typed in the small prints a la conditions apply format- a statutory formality. what roles these ads play in the media tournament?Do they really impress media experts and marketers or they are more narcissistic in nature and have their own feel good factors for their existence?
Friday, December 18, 2009
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
Is Bharat influencing India?
I was traveling from Benares to Delhi by train. A group of young management students were traveling in the same compartment; while some of the boys and girls were from Kanpur Allahabad quite a few were from the class one and two towns who were perusing their management course in Benares and were then going back home for a short visit after one round of semester exams .
I watched them with interest as they talked about their career plans, exams, films, brands, products; pulling each other’s legs. There were umpteen numbers of things coming out of their haversacks and tote bags –creams, shampoo, spray, chocolates, wafers, chewing gums, and attachments of their gadgets. Grooming was an important subject of discussion apart from career and gadgets and it was interesting to hear boys and girls sharing grooming tips. Hair and hair care was an important subject across the sex.
I was pleasantly surprised to hear the name of cooling oils in the discussion. I thought cooling oils were down market brands to these management students but it was not. One girl said some of these brands were loaded with good stuff for hair care and were quite effective in extreme summers. Yes perfume was an irritant “I wish there is a pure coconut version available in the cooling variant. Cooling effect is caused by menthol and it is a safe ingredient. We take it in many forms; then why not in hair oil and use specially in those scorching summer days.” My curiosity really got tickled and I asked how she got into using the product. She said she picked it up from one of her room mates from small town India .Influence from the bottom of the pyramid! I thought .... Is this one of a kind or an emerging trait? If this is true then sooner or later big brands need to look at the so called local down market products in a new light; or was I reading too much?...
I read the following from the interview of the Marico CEO today in Afaqs:
"Cooling oils, we are prototyping in Bihar and Andhra Pradesh. It is a seasonal product. Typically, cooling oils do well during the summer season. In-home consumption of cooling oils is very high, which is what excites us about this product. The segment is one of the fastest-growing in the hair-oil category, clocking a CAGR (compound annual growth rate) of 13-15 per cent. It is clearly important for us to be there."
13-15% CAGR! Where is it coming from? Just an organic growth or Bharat has started influencing Indian consumption pattern? If that has started to happen then Banphool, Navratan and Himtages of the world may have already taken a stride from being thanda to being cool.What do you think?
I watched them with interest as they talked about their career plans, exams, films, brands, products; pulling each other’s legs. There were umpteen numbers of things coming out of their haversacks and tote bags –creams, shampoo, spray, chocolates, wafers, chewing gums, and attachments of their gadgets. Grooming was an important subject of discussion apart from career and gadgets and it was interesting to hear boys and girls sharing grooming tips. Hair and hair care was an important subject across the sex.
I was pleasantly surprised to hear the name of cooling oils in the discussion. I thought cooling oils were down market brands to these management students but it was not. One girl said some of these brands were loaded with good stuff for hair care and were quite effective in extreme summers. Yes perfume was an irritant “I wish there is a pure coconut version available in the cooling variant. Cooling effect is caused by menthol and it is a safe ingredient. We take it in many forms; then why not in hair oil and use specially in those scorching summer days.” My curiosity really got tickled and I asked how she got into using the product. She said she picked it up from one of her room mates from small town India .Influence from the bottom of the pyramid! I thought .... Is this one of a kind or an emerging trait? If this is true then sooner or later big brands need to look at the so called local down market products in a new light; or was I reading too much?...
I read the following from the interview of the Marico CEO today in Afaqs:
"Cooling oils, we are prototyping in Bihar and Andhra Pradesh. It is a seasonal product. Typically, cooling oils do well during the summer season. In-home consumption of cooling oils is very high, which is what excites us about this product. The segment is one of the fastest-growing in the hair-oil category, clocking a CAGR (compound annual growth rate) of 13-15 per cent. It is clearly important for us to be there."
13-15% CAGR! Where is it coming from? Just an organic growth or Bharat has started influencing Indian consumption pattern? If that has started to happen then Banphool, Navratan and Himtages of the world may have already taken a stride from being thanda to being cool.What do you think?
Thursday, December 10, 2009
Child as a metaphor
In the current communication and entertainment world portrayal of child as a child is becoming few and far between. In fact a child has almost ceased to represent his own community .The consumption era ,post globalization, is about 10 years old and the entire consumer community is still being nurtured in the nursery of consumption. In a sense every consumer young, old, middle aged is a child except the children themselves, at least a look at the communication around us seem to say that. Media, brands marketers are all pampering this nouvo- child consumer community.
Look at the popular entertainment programmes –BigBoss; is it not an adult version of playing dolls house? All fun and pranks of childhood are packed in this show –the childish tantrums of grown up people , silly issues to start fight , pulling down some body’s shorts , stupid tasks and all the four letter words punctuated with whistles to replace childhood gaalies . Pati patni Aur woh – another version of playing family. There are beautiful children in this show but they are almost used as props –sometimes planted, sometimes taken out in this game.
There are successful movies in last couple of years which are centered round children’s life, normal or otherwise, but somehow the child is not the talking point in them .Taare Zameen par comes closest to the portrayal of a child as a child but then again a major part of it is about a batch of unreasonable children called parents and teachers. Black – seen from the child’s point of view is almost a shocking example of how clueless adults are about a child’s world. One agrees with Aamir Khan’s observation ---that the message the film gives is that to teach and tame a wild child who is also deaf and dumb is to shout at her, dunk her in water .The child started learning not by the method and guidance of a specialist teacher but all by herself out of her agony to express! What is the marketing proposition of Paa , the struggle of a child suffering from progeria or the challenge of a 68 year old playing a fast aging teen ager , and the inverted real life story where a celebrity son playing Paa to a celebrity septuagenarian father!
Ad world is full of metaphoric children- the ailing child in nappy ad is solving the social conflict of a working mother with the certificate of a lady doctor that by packing her child in a diaper she is doing the most sensible thing. The fetus in the RO ad is only a symbol of safety; ads of banks, insurance show worrying, anxious, all knowing children behaving like adults to drive home a marketing message. Amidst these portrayal there are a few refreshing commercials where children appear with all their childish glory .The baby bottom being cuddled in a diaper ad, or a child making a cell phone call to his dad to complain against mom and seriously believing that his complain has reached destination, the little boy fighting the dirt in the puddle to console her baby sister …. We all fondly remember them. Is it because they are rare and scarce in the communication world of today and our inherent desire to see them with all their innocence and impishness?
Look at the popular entertainment programmes –BigBoss; is it not an adult version of playing dolls house? All fun and pranks of childhood are packed in this show –the childish tantrums of grown up people , silly issues to start fight , pulling down some body’s shorts , stupid tasks and all the four letter words punctuated with whistles to replace childhood gaalies . Pati patni Aur woh – another version of playing family. There are beautiful children in this show but they are almost used as props –sometimes planted, sometimes taken out in this game.
There are successful movies in last couple of years which are centered round children’s life, normal or otherwise, but somehow the child is not the talking point in them .Taare Zameen par comes closest to the portrayal of a child as a child but then again a major part of it is about a batch of unreasonable children called parents and teachers. Black – seen from the child’s point of view is almost a shocking example of how clueless adults are about a child’s world. One agrees with Aamir Khan’s observation ---that the message the film gives is that to teach and tame a wild child who is also deaf and dumb is to shout at her, dunk her in water .The child started learning not by the method and guidance of a specialist teacher but all by herself out of her agony to express! What is the marketing proposition of Paa , the struggle of a child suffering from progeria or the challenge of a 68 year old playing a fast aging teen ager , and the inverted real life story where a celebrity son playing Paa to a celebrity septuagenarian father!
Ad world is full of metaphoric children- the ailing child in nappy ad is solving the social conflict of a working mother with the certificate of a lady doctor that by packing her child in a diaper she is doing the most sensible thing. The fetus in the RO ad is only a symbol of safety; ads of banks, insurance show worrying, anxious, all knowing children behaving like adults to drive home a marketing message. Amidst these portrayal there are a few refreshing commercials where children appear with all their childish glory .The baby bottom being cuddled in a diaper ad, or a child making a cell phone call to his dad to complain against mom and seriously believing that his complain has reached destination, the little boy fighting the dirt in the puddle to console her baby sister …. We all fondly remember them. Is it because they are rare and scarce in the communication world of today and our inherent desire to see them with all their innocence and impishness?
Tuesday, December 8, 2009
I am not through with news yet. Just imagine this has happened within a span of a couple of years make me marvel at how so few people express their surprise at this step change . We as a nation , I sometimes feel, are far more malleable and amenable to change than we appear to be from outside.
With the entry of 24x7 news channels we have entered into a hitherto unknown super market of news. TV screen is the new show window of these proliferating news channel malls .Like the retail revolution news retail itself is still in the infancy of merchandising. In most cases they appear in pot potpourri platter where a kurkure news is served next to a staple news. Similar anomaly is visible in the ways news is being treated by different channels. Some shows value in the speed of delivery. Some believe in recreating, enacting, and dramatizing it. Some believe in threadbare presentation of facts to the so called invited experts and urge them to chew and convert it in to easily digestible pulp for common consumption. In a product parity market the value addition is done through expert interpretation.
Amidst all these changes and treatments there is almost a conscious effort by the news channels to up front and assure the viewers that the essence of news have not changed. Khabar wohi jo such dikhaye. It’s a different story that for some channels the truth of the news is not in the topic but in the process. They take a potent nugget of information and start beating it on the anvil of truth. A breaking news shouts eureka about some silver screen idol’s illegitimate child .The subject is then taken through a mock process of information distillation-special correspondence, latest info, visual aid, expert comment, opinion poll, charts, diagrams .Stretch the truth to its last point of elasticity, wring out the last drop of juicy interpretation a la reality shows which take hours to announce a couple of winners.
The exercise has become more elaborate with news becoming a 24x 7x 365days a year affair. To construct of a day (twenty four hours) through news only is to drive home the point that each and every item is important, interesting, valuable and therefore eminently consumable. You need not have any other passion or diversion in your life and before you realize you have already spent the whole day through camera eye with poor Prince stuck inside the ditch.
From this perspective, news challenges the existing concept of a brand. Brand sets itself in a localized frame of consumption with the consumer; Coke with the mood of togetherness and refreshment, AXE when we are in the mode of glorifying male libido etc. All brand stories has a duration and consumption time and setting. Being 24x7 news channel brands do away with this boundary and demand nonstop interaction with its consumers. Channel will churn out news and value even when you are asleep and you will be poorer in your experience for the amount of time you have closed your eyes.
Where finally are we landing then? In the domain of news or in the domain of another 24x7 TV channel where all programmes are carried under the tag line of news bazaar? Why should we value its news if it emulates the entertainment value of any family channel under the garb of news? At least other channels are far more honest in their intention of providing nonstop entertainment. There is a bigger truth in acknowledging the need of fiction in our life. It is interesting to note that a work of fiction tries to draw its value by coming closer to fact and the fact tries to value add itself being fictional.
The fundamental change, I feel, that has taken place is not in the area of fact or fiction, news or entertainment but in the changing status of the audience for whom these programmes are made and presented. We all have ceased to be a passive recipient of information but have become active consumers of value. And value does not lie with the service provider or manufacturer any more. Today as Prof. C.K Prahalad has said that value needs to be co created with consumers. The news channels can provide the platform around which the consumers can co create their own experiences. For example the reality of a road accident is surrounded by a bigger reality of potential risk that every parent, children, pedestrians and common man on the street are exposed to. They would probably value portrayal of that reality of life with more force, urgency, and drama so that it impacts people who matter to end the problem rather than vivid .What do you think.
With the entry of 24x7 news channels we have entered into a hitherto unknown super market of news. TV screen is the new show window of these proliferating news channel malls .Like the retail revolution news retail itself is still in the infancy of merchandising. In most cases they appear in pot potpourri platter where a kurkure news is served next to a staple news. Similar anomaly is visible in the ways news is being treated by different channels. Some shows value in the speed of delivery. Some believe in recreating, enacting, and dramatizing it. Some believe in threadbare presentation of facts to the so called invited experts and urge them to chew and convert it in to easily digestible pulp for common consumption. In a product parity market the value addition is done through expert interpretation.
Amidst all these changes and treatments there is almost a conscious effort by the news channels to up front and assure the viewers that the essence of news have not changed. Khabar wohi jo such dikhaye. It’s a different story that for some channels the truth of the news is not in the topic but in the process. They take a potent nugget of information and start beating it on the anvil of truth. A breaking news shouts eureka about some silver screen idol’s illegitimate child .The subject is then taken through a mock process of information distillation-special correspondence, latest info, visual aid, expert comment, opinion poll, charts, diagrams .Stretch the truth to its last point of elasticity, wring out the last drop of juicy interpretation a la reality shows which take hours to announce a couple of winners.
The exercise has become more elaborate with news becoming a 24x 7x 365days a year affair. To construct of a day (twenty four hours) through news only is to drive home the point that each and every item is important, interesting, valuable and therefore eminently consumable. You need not have any other passion or diversion in your life and before you realize you have already spent the whole day through camera eye with poor Prince stuck inside the ditch.
From this perspective, news challenges the existing concept of a brand. Brand sets itself in a localized frame of consumption with the consumer; Coke with the mood of togetherness and refreshment, AXE when we are in the mode of glorifying male libido etc. All brand stories has a duration and consumption time and setting. Being 24x7 news channel brands do away with this boundary and demand nonstop interaction with its consumers. Channel will churn out news and value even when you are asleep and you will be poorer in your experience for the amount of time you have closed your eyes.
Where finally are we landing then? In the domain of news or in the domain of another 24x7 TV channel where all programmes are carried under the tag line of news bazaar? Why should we value its news if it emulates the entertainment value of any family channel under the garb of news? At least other channels are far more honest in their intention of providing nonstop entertainment. There is a bigger truth in acknowledging the need of fiction in our life. It is interesting to note that a work of fiction tries to draw its value by coming closer to fact and the fact tries to value add itself being fictional.
The fundamental change, I feel, that has taken place is not in the area of fact or fiction, news or entertainment but in the changing status of the audience for whom these programmes are made and presented. We all have ceased to be a passive recipient of information but have become active consumers of value. And value does not lie with the service provider or manufacturer any more. Today as Prof. C.K Prahalad has said that value needs to be co created with consumers. The news channels can provide the platform around which the consumers can co create their own experiences. For example the reality of a road accident is surrounded by a bigger reality of potential risk that every parent, children, pedestrians and common man on the street are exposed to. They would probably value portrayal of that reality of life with more force, urgency, and drama so that it impacts people who matter to end the problem rather than vivid .What do you think.
Monday, December 7, 2009
News-heading towards a new horizon
News has a built in problem of being perishable. Having been born out of the past news also suffers from a second hand syndrome. The construct of news defies completeness. Keya latest chal raha hain ?keya naya khabar laye ho? Sun en me aaya… these are the dialogues that are associated with the world of news. And more often than not news and rumor like Siamese twins get inseparably joined in the same structure making it difficult to separate one from the other.
Efforts have been made for ages to tackle these built in problems of news. Eye witnesses got special importance in the eyes of law people in power employed special agents to give first hand feedback .Messengers ran the Marathon to report the news of battles. Epics portrayed the need of running commentary from the point of action in the battle field. Sanjay represented the dual role of a broadcasting channel and a news reporter in himself in the Mahabharata. Sage Vyaas would have been really surprised to see how his brilliant idea has cloned itself into scores of news channels and are moving the heaven and the earth to look for their action field of Kurukshetra. The demands of a new generation consumer, market forces, and evolving technology all have put their own bits to make news change colours fast. In those days news was meant for kings and his men, common people have got nothing to do with it. They were busy leading their own lives. In fact being in the news was not even good news for them. Only in the fairy tales the son of a farmer would hit the headlines winning the double jackpot of half the crown and a full princess.
Today one look at the papers will tell a totally new story. Men in power are conspicuous by absence unless they are part of some drama and story. Newspaper have changed colours literally, mast heads give way to pictures of mega stars. Almost every news item is illustrated with scantily dressed models .News today needs dressing up and garnishing of glamour to appear attractive and the readers are none other than the common mortals. Who would have believed that there was a time, not very long ago, when the newspapers used to look at advertising with lot of suspicion? Leading dailies would reject ads if they were not happy with content. Front page of the news paper had its own sanctity. As competition hot up situation took a dramatic turn; News papers today carry a huge payload of brands along with its regular consignments of news. In order to accommodate this additional load of valuable brand baggage they have gone into a bloating binge. Every morning your favourite newspaper cannons on your door along with the bulk of a thick rim of classified advertisement pages. Magazine covers open up like Draupadi’s sari into an eight page gate fold.
Once news got out of the confines of official rigidity it starts celebrating its freedom by taking cues from the world of entertainment and popular culture .It wanted to be anything and everything at the same time-enlightening, exciting, forthcoming, dramatic, demonstrative – news start carrying too many adjectives and agenda at the same time. The new recipe made news wear many hats and out fits. The crime reporter looks no less dangerous than the crimes he reports, the dress of Bollywood and page three reporters can vie with the items they are presenting; your daily destiny forecast comes from a person who looks more of a tantric than a reporter. Today in order to be a somebody you need more than talent the x factor . The trend seem to have caught up with the news channels ...what do you think ?More on this next time meanwhile post your POV
Efforts have been made for ages to tackle these built in problems of news. Eye witnesses got special importance in the eyes of law people in power employed special agents to give first hand feedback .Messengers ran the Marathon to report the news of battles. Epics portrayed the need of running commentary from the point of action in the battle field. Sanjay represented the dual role of a broadcasting channel and a news reporter in himself in the Mahabharata. Sage Vyaas would have been really surprised to see how his brilliant idea has cloned itself into scores of news channels and are moving the heaven and the earth to look for their action field of Kurukshetra. The demands of a new generation consumer, market forces, and evolving technology all have put their own bits to make news change colours fast. In those days news was meant for kings and his men, common people have got nothing to do with it. They were busy leading their own lives. In fact being in the news was not even good news for them. Only in the fairy tales the son of a farmer would hit the headlines winning the double jackpot of half the crown and a full princess.
Today one look at the papers will tell a totally new story. Men in power are conspicuous by absence unless they are part of some drama and story. Newspaper have changed colours literally, mast heads give way to pictures of mega stars. Almost every news item is illustrated with scantily dressed models .News today needs dressing up and garnishing of glamour to appear attractive and the readers are none other than the common mortals. Who would have believed that there was a time, not very long ago, when the newspapers used to look at advertising with lot of suspicion? Leading dailies would reject ads if they were not happy with content. Front page of the news paper had its own sanctity. As competition hot up situation took a dramatic turn; News papers today carry a huge payload of brands along with its regular consignments of news. In order to accommodate this additional load of valuable brand baggage they have gone into a bloating binge. Every morning your favourite newspaper cannons on your door along with the bulk of a thick rim of classified advertisement pages. Magazine covers open up like Draupadi’s sari into an eight page gate fold.
Once news got out of the confines of official rigidity it starts celebrating its freedom by taking cues from the world of entertainment and popular culture .It wanted to be anything and everything at the same time-enlightening, exciting, forthcoming, dramatic, demonstrative – news start carrying too many adjectives and agenda at the same time. The new recipe made news wear many hats and out fits. The crime reporter looks no less dangerous than the crimes he reports, the dress of Bollywood and page three reporters can vie with the items they are presenting; your daily destiny forecast comes from a person who looks more of a tantric than a reporter. Today in order to be a somebody you need more than talent the x factor . The trend seem to have caught up with the news channels ...what do you think ?More on this next time meanwhile post your POV
Friday, December 4, 2009
Desi road to retail
Sher Shah Suri is one of the more fondly remembered emperors who had ruled India for a very short period of time. He did not build any spectacular mosque or tower nor did he construct any time- defying architectural wonder. He had built a road to control and manage the myriad problems faced by this diverse, multicultural, multilingual country. He had created a simple master plan, a road map in the literal sense of the term. Build a road and everything will fall in place was probably the management strategy he had hit upon. As the malls and shopping arcades are changing the face of the cities and metros jamming the thoroughfares for miles and for hours let’s understand what multiple commercial roles Indian roads play in ,some form or other, in every big city and metros of our country.
For us roads are more than the means of connectivity. The most shining examples of this are the weekly markets organized at different parts of the metro. Streets are our biggest employers. All footpaths are factory yards, roads are market places. And masterminding and managing these factory yards and markets are no business experts or entrepreneurs but ordinary people who are resilient and street smart .They have their unwritten laws honoured and respected across the board. If there is a problem it is the law enforcing authorities themselves. “Bulldozers are part of our floating existence…we are conditioned by the ad hoc ism of our life”. “The Corporation …they take money from us –Rs 5 everyday …..In some bazaars hafta is fixed for police as well …5-10 Rs, they don’t trouble you if you give them hafta …..in some areas even though space is sanctioned by Corporation, still police comes for money”… Small trader in Budh bazaar.
When corporate collapse people wail, lockouts, retrenchment, privatization, hit headlines but the small and commons take them in their strides and rebuild on jugad. During the day time it is a bustling street and no body can guess that within a few hours it will be literally hijacked by a shopping complex. Preparations are on step by step, imperceptibly. Stacks of folding tables start appearing at the non invasive corners. As the day progresses the entire market emerges almost out of thin air. The generator has arrived; the police have been taken care of. To day take charge of traffic in your own hands and survive. Buses, autos, bikes, bibijies ,bachhas and bahenjies vie with one another to make the most atrocious move, dodging and dribbling, crisscrossing their ways in this maze of a road supremely confident of one another’s ability to avoid any clash.
By the evening rows of collapsible shops complete with colorful display and electric light are fully prepared to take on teeming consumers pouring in from all parts of the city. The seamlessness of the operation indicates the professional expertise of the marketing guild. Who takes care of the requisite permissions , who manages the police , how the space is distributed and allotted , who arbitrate disputes, how merchandise are packed , unpacked and transported without any transit damage , how the garbage and left over are taken care of ? The questions are too many to hazard a proper answer.
In this magic market the toughest retailing activity takes place. Consumers from lower, middle, upper –all strata of the society hit the market place with the common agenda of hardcore bargain.
“ yahan roz ka struggle hai …. there is so much of competition, people go away even if someone is selling at 1 Rs less, price difference matters……..” a plastic bucket seller.
These markets are conversations; conversations of concession; the dialogues that are carried in between munching of mumphalis, sips of hot tea in plastic cups, marketed by mobile chaiwalas. There are arguments that get abruptly snapped by the arrival of a cud -chewing bull demanding it right of passage between the buyer and the seller, deal that gets dragged twenty yards away from the stall of origin and is struck with earnest arguments, frantic pleading and gentle pull at the pallus of departing didis and bahenjis. Conversations which are shocking in their exchanges and counter exchanges, frank, engaging in their practice of persuasion and primitive in their agenda to win.
On the street everybody is adult, every body is ajad, your rules are as good as mine –adjust, accommodate, win and enjoy. Sher Shah was right! Give them a street they will create their own road map.
For us roads are more than the means of connectivity. The most shining examples of this are the weekly markets organized at different parts of the metro. Streets are our biggest employers. All footpaths are factory yards, roads are market places. And masterminding and managing these factory yards and markets are no business experts or entrepreneurs but ordinary people who are resilient and street smart .They have their unwritten laws honoured and respected across the board. If there is a problem it is the law enforcing authorities themselves. “Bulldozers are part of our floating existence…we are conditioned by the ad hoc ism of our life”. “The Corporation …they take money from us –Rs 5 everyday …..In some bazaars hafta is fixed for police as well …5-10 Rs, they don’t trouble you if you give them hafta …..in some areas even though space is sanctioned by Corporation, still police comes for money”… Small trader in Budh bazaar.
When corporate collapse people wail, lockouts, retrenchment, privatization, hit headlines but the small and commons take them in their strides and rebuild on jugad. During the day time it is a bustling street and no body can guess that within a few hours it will be literally hijacked by a shopping complex. Preparations are on step by step, imperceptibly. Stacks of folding tables start appearing at the non invasive corners. As the day progresses the entire market emerges almost out of thin air. The generator has arrived; the police have been taken care of. To day take charge of traffic in your own hands and survive. Buses, autos, bikes, bibijies ,bachhas and bahenjies vie with one another to make the most atrocious move, dodging and dribbling, crisscrossing their ways in this maze of a road supremely confident of one another’s ability to avoid any clash.
By the evening rows of collapsible shops complete with colorful display and electric light are fully prepared to take on teeming consumers pouring in from all parts of the city. The seamlessness of the operation indicates the professional expertise of the marketing guild. Who takes care of the requisite permissions , who manages the police , how the space is distributed and allotted , who arbitrate disputes, how merchandise are packed , unpacked and transported without any transit damage , how the garbage and left over are taken care of ? The questions are too many to hazard a proper answer.
In this magic market the toughest retailing activity takes place. Consumers from lower, middle, upper –all strata of the society hit the market place with the common agenda of hardcore bargain.
“ yahan roz ka struggle hai …. there is so much of competition, people go away even if someone is selling at 1 Rs less, price difference matters……..” a plastic bucket seller.
These markets are conversations; conversations of concession; the dialogues that are carried in between munching of mumphalis, sips of hot tea in plastic cups, marketed by mobile chaiwalas. There are arguments that get abruptly snapped by the arrival of a cud -chewing bull demanding it right of passage between the buyer and the seller, deal that gets dragged twenty yards away from the stall of origin and is struck with earnest arguments, frantic pleading and gentle pull at the pallus of departing didis and bahenjis. Conversations which are shocking in their exchanges and counter exchanges, frank, engaging in their practice of persuasion and primitive in their agenda to win.
On the street everybody is adult, every body is ajad, your rules are as good as mine –adjust, accommodate, win and enjoy. Sher Shah was right! Give them a street they will create their own road map.
Any long absence needs an explanation. Who do you explain; there is no teacher with a register to mark you absent. I think the absence is from one self. If you are not blogging you are not logged on to yourself. Life is lived through one's own self. Connectivity is done though one's own identity. In this big ever expanding world you only can be your own conduit. Plug in log in give identity to yourself and get on with your life. Too much of philosophy, now some fresh posts...
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