Celebrating the Humble Plastic

Santosh Desai, the famous brandman, write I regular column in the Times of India. I have always wondered what qualifies a person to write "freewheeling" columns in national dailies? But to stick to the point I wanted to make. I was inspired to make this entry by his article on steel which appeared today. For me it is the humble plastic which needs to be celebrated today as a great business facilitator, great leveller and a great insider to all that we do.
Remember those silly paper bags made by poor widows and chidren, which could not even hold soggy salt [there was no plastic packed tata salt then], remember those metal buckets that used to adorn most bathrooms and those aluminium mugs which kept millions of bums clean every morning? Remember the humble bathroom tin door on a wooden frame? They have all lost out to the plastic and various versions of it. On the dining table there are plastic plates, plastic cutlery sometimes even plastic food [I am exaggerating]. In case you forgot not many years back airlines used to provide real cutlery not the plastic one which can only poke yout tongue or cut your lips. Not to forget milk in glass bottles, coke in glass bottles. We have travelled a long way since then one brand of whiskey very successfully switched to glass bottles for 500 ml servings.
Then of course there is the great recycle potential of plastic as office bags, as tiffin carrier, as everything really.... you just have to look what we get in and what we get out of our houses and you would be convinced that the civilisation as we know it, would cease to exist wihtout plastic. This is the biggest triumph of humanity in recent years and we are like typical humans celerating the success in such a way that we even describe human emotions with reference to plastic: plastic smile for example..... It looks like soon we will have to shrink in order to make room for plastic in this planet. My personal observation is that in India Bombay is the real plastic city both literally and figuratively.
Victory to Plastic!

Amazing Biharis

It is amazing how Biharis continue to be in the news in spite of no known bomb blasts in Patna sicne the salad days of JP Narain and George Fernandes. In this day and age it takes a lot to be in the news for a people and state which does not have a Narendra Mody, a Mamta Banerjee, any serial blasts, no cyclones, no big investments, No Behen Mayawati not even an Amar Singh.
How do Biharis do it year after year? And prove that when it comes to newsworthiness it is unique. It is a simple recipe really.... but supreme sacrifice mixed with a little violence turned inside. The sacrifice story is simple... either there are floods or they are beated up on other states. As perhaps the largest group of internal and seasonal migrants in India, Biharis have been threatened from Kashmir to Maharashtra. This trend is likely to extend to Bangalore soon [my driver's cousin has a pan shop in Bangalore and he is eating up local jobs there, I guess] and perhaps reach Chennai very soon. One day it might also cross the Palk Strait and enter Sri Lanka. In the north, the past time of Bihari baiting is likely to go any further than Kashmir unless, but who knows the next frontier may be Afghanistan or Pakistan may be even China. In any case I will probably not live to see the day when a prospective US presidential candidate makes "Bihari Bhagao" the main plank of her election campaign. With the expanding frontiers of migration and unlimited supply of migrants, Bihar is sure to continue to grab headlines just by the virtue of being beated up by everyone across the country and perhaps across the globe [that will be true globalisation Bihari style].
The second method of getting in to the newsheadlines is natural with extremes of weather forces working on a poor people, Bihar is going to be in the in the monsoons, summer and winter. Unless the weather becomes moderate or the people become rich enough to fight the elements. Both seem very unlikely in the very long run.
It is by being at the receiving end of the weather and every body else that Bihar manages to beat otehr states in grabbing coverage. Sometime when it does not work [rare is such an occasion] there is always the inward looking violence - just kill a few people of other caste and get killed; or burn some trains in your own state; or attack trains passing through your own state. Endorsing the negative perception that most of the country holds about Bihar. Who is to blame? I do not know. But two things are simple: a migration is an economic and social process and cannot be stopped by clubbing a few Biharis. Second, politicians who have screwed up the state along caste and communitarian lines have no right to preach to others who are treating Biharis as outsiders.
By the way whatever happened to the floods in Bihar this year? Has the breach in Kosi been mended? Have people returned to their villages? How did they celebrate Diwali? No news? Not even a human interest story?

Diwali and a Mature Consumer

It is long believed by marketers that children influence the consumption patterns of parents not only in relation to goods and servies consumed by them, but also with regards to goods and services consumed by the adults in the family. It is around this belief that some proud parents happily declare "you know my ten year old son told me not to buy Laura but settle for Civic" or that VAIO was better than HP". it is little wonder that many of the so called kids channel are full of advertisements that have nothing to do with children. I too had a taste of these baby mature consumers in the last few days two. In the first instance, my daughter asked me one evening while I was trying to put her to bed "dad do children make crackers"? I said yes several lakh of them are employed in making crakers and that there was a whole history of Child labour beginning with the Industrial Revolution were little boys where send down the mines and up the chimneys. The next demand was obviously to buy firecrackers "lots of them" but withiout noise. It made me realise how tiny consumers were very mature... there was guilt of consumption, there was greed for consumption and there was awareness behind what was to be consumed at th instersection of guilt and greed. In the second instance, while watching TV with my daughter, I noted with excitement the ad for a famous children's movie and before I could tell my daughter "we must watch it together", she said "how stupid, do they expect us to watch a movie at 9PM on Diwali evening"!
I am learning fast from my new teacher, what to consume, how to consume, how to prioritise comsumption and what not to consume......

Prime and Sub-Prime

At the sub-prime of my life and with lack of a degree in economics it is a bit of a dare devilry to talk about the so called sub-prime crisis that is causing much heart-burn everywhere. Don't worry I am not going to go deep into the problem and suggest authentic remedies - there are hosts of people doing just that [they never read English and are not aware of the adage "too many cooks spoil the broth"]. I am here just to make my little bowl of soup and move on. The so called sub-prime crisis which is the grandmother of all crises now faced by financial institutions across the globe, has been played out in a way that seems to give the impression that poor americans took loans and were unable to play. And by implication, poor people across the world are bad news for lenders. This inference is dangerous: firstly because poor people need loans more than rich; and more importantly, empirical evidence from micro financing institutions show that poor people have the best record of repayment [he pays up for he needs another loan after repayment].
What has not been brought out clearly that the present crisis has been brought about by the greed of a few persons, who had huge powers of manipulating, cheating and otherwise doing anything possible to increase their variable salaries and performance based bonuses. They were usually very rich people and they wanted to become richer. The surprising thing is not that such people would be greedy. What is surprising thing is that they could hold everyone including mighty governments to ransom and get away scott free in the name of free markets. It is time that some of these people were brought to book and made to face the music. And the sub-prime crisis should be promptly renamed super prime crisis.