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Divining the mind of the Indian Consumer

I am at the Microsoft Leadership Conclave in Dubai. Yesterday, we had a chance to listen to Prasoon Joshi, Executive Chairman, McCann Erickson, Asia Pacific. He presented his understanding of the current day Indian consumer interspersed with memorable ad campaigns created by his team. It was f***ing brilliant.

Here are his key insights and his explanations why:

1. Entertainment orientation – there used to be a time when listening to the news was a serious affair. All of us remember the – Shhh! Father is watching news – episodes from our childhood. Today news is entertainment. It is being presented as such. Discovery channel presents animal life by weaving them into stories complete with names etc (Monkey by name Tina is doing this or Tiger by name Pintoo is doing that etc). Gone are the days  when we could simply talk about the features of the product. Today the same features have to be packaged with entertainment mixed in.

2. Reality Orientation – our movies have always been escapist. Usually the same love triangle stories with the song/dance sequences as the spices. Today the Indian consumer is confident of facing reality. Movies like Black or Taare Zameen Par or Rang Der Basanti are released for the mainstream audience and are huge hits. If you compare Indian Idol and American Idol, Indian Idol shows a lot more about the background of the contestant. The stark reality seems to inspire and instill hope in the minds of the Indian consumer and it sells.

3. Upgrade orientation – in the past when we bought products it was all about how long it will last. I bought this watch 20 years ago etc. Today the consumer wants to change the cell phone every 18 months with the latest and greatest features. Clearly the consumer wants to make a statement.

4. Promos are not harmful – there is a general tendency to feel that promos harm the brand. That is not true. If the brand promise is strong, the promos actually enhance the brand. Shows several coke, mastercard promo ads to make the point.

5. Digital revolution – the internet is changing a lot of things. Eventhough the internet penetration is not that high. Consumer generated content can be a big tool. But for that to happen we need to create compelling content that the consumer will feel like playing
with. He shows the spoofs of Dove ads done by consumer and also his own chlormint (du bara math poocho) ad that was spoofed.

6. Real is Virtual – virtual is all that most people have seen. Most people have never been to a cricket match or an awards show in person. All they know is how it is seen on TV. We are headed towards an age when kids are asking “mom, how come you don’t look like the moms onTV?”

7. The “And” Consumer – Indian consumers are not satisfied with this or that, they want this and that. This maybe due to the increased confidence and buying power of the consumer.

Then he took some questions –
1. I asked him about whether entertainment orientation and reality orientation was conflicting? He said no. He said even reality has to be packaged with entertainment.

2. Someone asked – sprite always spoofs pepsi isnt that bad? Prasoon said – coke never retaliates directly but uses sprite to do that. Since sprite is positioned as an irreverent brand, the spoofs are part of its character.

Overall, Prasoon Joshi is a great example of the kind of world beating talent that India has today in many fields.

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The Real History of India Part 10 – The Abominable Caste System – Indian Fact or British Fiction?

Prolog:

Last week, we covered one of Islam’s key contributions to India. There is plenty of material out there to undertstand the bad things done by the Islamists, which is why i wrote about some good things they did. Any discussion on India’s history is not complete without considering the caste system. In this post, i want to cover the caste system using 3 different scholarly viewpoints. Thanks to Aditya and one other contributor who wishes to be anonymous, i came across the works of Nicholas Dirks. Thanks to Senthil for introducing me to Dharampal, the brilliant Gandhian Scholar who decided to look directly into the sources of British wisdom about India – the papers published by British officers on various aspects of India. Thanks to Priya Raju, I came across A.N. Sattanathan’s A Sudra’s Story – Sattanathan was the first Backward Classes Commission Chairman of Tamilnadu, who rose up from a disadvantaged background.

What was the caste system like Pre-British?

It is essential for us to understand whether the caste system existed in India before the British and if so, in what form did it exist? Most of the knowledge about India’s caste system came from British historians like James Mills/William Jones. Or from European Historians like Max Mueller and others who were influenced by the British historians themselves as well as made their own contributions to the discussion and influenced British opinion. It is these opinions that have mattered when it comes to gaining an understanding of India’s caste system. From my readings, it appears there is a lot of distortions in the way the caste system has been understood.

Reading the works of the 3 people i mention above, has given me some clarity on the caste system.

Nicholas Dirks

Dirks’ strategy was to focus on a region of Pudukottai, formerly a Princely State that was ruled by kings from the Kallar martial caste (now part of the Mukkulathor community). His choice is brilliant because as he explains in this paper, British tampering is likely to have been minimal. In that paper, he shows how the pre-British caste system functioned as a socio-political-religious-economic structure.

Colin Mackenzie was the Surveyor General of India, another remarkable man, who collected a lot of material on India’s history as his side-project. It is the Mackenzie collection that formed the basis of later British works about Indian history. Dirks shows in another paper how the whole Colin Mackenzie collection used flawed techniques to collect information on India’s society. Dirks also made the startling observation that there was a ridiculously small number of references to caste in the Mackenzie collection.

Based on these and other observations and extensive field work in South India, Nicholas Dirks published what is seen as a landmark publication on the caste system – Castes of Mind, in which he proves that the caste system as seen in India today is completely a British creation (of course, he doesn’t say the caste system didn’t exist before this). Here is an excellent review of this great book, by Champakalakshmi, a noted Indian historian.

Dharampal

Dharampal, on the other hand, decided to rely upon the various reports published by British collectors and officers about the state of India’s education system, technology etc. Given that these reports were produced by the officers in charge of the territories they were reporting on, Dharampal’s data seems quite reliable. Since the caste system atleast in the modern context is closely tied to the education system, i decided to read The Beautiful Tree – containing Dharampal’s description of the pre-British education system.

This book contains a lot of material including reproductions of the reports of the British officers. i found it extremely useful to understand what the British thought about India. In this book, Dharampal, proves that the the Indian education system was extensive, there was a school in every village which taught the Hindu curriculum and there were also higher institutions somewhat like modern day colleges where more advanced subjects were taught etc. He also proves that there was no real discrimination based on caste in the education system.

Sattanathan

It is when i read Sattanathan that i realized that there is a big mistake that many Indologists make by equating the caste system as practiced in Tamilnadu with other states. The key difference from other states lies in the fact that Brahmins formed just 4% of Tamilnadu’s population and that percentage still holds (i think it is now 3%, citation needed). In other states it is between 15-35% (citation needed).

Let us look at some statistics that Sattanathan reports on Page 185:

It is on record that between 1894 and 1904, in the provincial civil services, out of 16 officers 15 were Brahmans, among 21 Assistant Engineers, 17 were Brahmans, out of 140 Deputy Collectors 77 were Brahmans, and out of 128 district munsiffs, 98 were Brahmans. This was inevitable, as, according to E.F.Irschick, who had made a deep study of this subject, during these years, between 67 percent and 71 percent of the graduates of the Madras University came from a single community: Brahman.

further on page 155 he states:

Towards the end of the 19th century, 80 to 90 percent of all jobs available to Indians were occupied by Brahmans, and they were dominating other professions also. It is needless to quote statistics of the number of Government servants, lawyers etc. of this period, as these are often quoted in other reports and publications.

My inferences

I have read a lot of material on the subject and what i have quoted is the choicest parts of the material i have read. i was able to draw these key inferences when i put all the three pictures together:

1. From Dirks’ writings, it does appear that the British made the caste system into what is today and hence the blame must fall on the head of the British. But if you look at Dharampal’s research, we have to conclude that the caste system did have the foundational aspects of the abominable system we see even today. Though, I agree with Dirks and Dharampal, that because of the British, the caste system became more ossified, i am not able to agree that the evil aspects of the caste system was a British creation.

2. Dharampal, on the other hand, has clearly shown that there was not much discrimination based on the caste in the pre-British education system. But the big problem in Dharampal’s work is this – what did people do after they passed out of the education system? His own research shows that the students went back into their own caste’s professions many a times dropping out of the education system completely.

3. Now, when you look at Sattanathan’s data, the picture gets completed. It is what they did after the education that matters and it appears that is where net effects of the discrimination are seen. The British Macaulay system accentuated this further by first focusing on the Brahmins, handing them an almost monopolistic dominance of the jobs.

Epilog:

It is interesting to note that given the dominance of the Brahmin community, Tamilnadu was faced with the unique situation of having to resort to reservations for the majority community (non-brahmins) to level the playing field. I think this is unprecedented in the history of affirmative action anywhere in the world. When i wrote in support of affirmative action a while ago i was not aware of the extent of the caste system in Tamilnadu. Brahmins used to live in segregated areas – agraharams and also had segregated eateries (Brahmanargal sappidum idam or Brahmins only eatery). It is in this sort of a context that we must look at Periyar. There are people who attack Periyar for his atheistic policies and/or his marriage to a young girl. Everyone has flaws and I am sure Periyar did as well. Without Periyar, this unnatural dominance of a rank minority would have continued forever. Periyar’s contribution to the social reformation of India, especially Tamilnadu is unparalleled, making him one of the greatest sons of India.

Next week, i want to cover some aspects of the Indian education system, as seen by Dharampal because it has some valuable clues into the process of Aryanization.

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The Real History of India Part 9 – One of Islam’s delectable contributions

Updated Apr 15,2008: Rachel Laudan was kind enough to respond to my email to say that she does not have much knowledge of Ethiopian to answer the question. She has however said she knows someone that might be able to answer. Stay tuned.

Prolog:

A key reason I started this series is to debunk ideas that threaten the very fabric of India’s great diverse culture. One of the ideas, that is oft repeated these days, is that the India of pre-moghul, pre-British time was pristine and rich. And that the British and Islamists have spoilt everything India had and have left an abjectly poor country in their wake.

I am 100% sure that the British and Islamist Kings did god-awful unspeakable things to India and its people. No one in their right mind will condone any type of invasion or oppression of this type. Not withstanding the fact that the India of today didn’t exist then. Therefore to speak of “Indian” as a valid term for the region pre-1947 is a historical flaw, but that is besides the point.

We, in India, do one of 2 things these days – either anything that the invaders brought is worthless or the idea is a Hindu idea. The Islamists and the British fall under the former category, whereas Buddha and Mahavira and Parsvanath fall under the latter category. This is how our history is being distorted for political reasons. I would not be this upset, if i didn’t realize that the youth of this country are being fed this poison and they are lapping it up. A culture that is known for its tolerance is quickly becoming bigoted and that is extremely scary.

Roots of North Indian Cuisine

Some background for non-Indian readers – most often, when we come across an Indian restaurant abroad, it serves North Indian cuisine. With the rise of the software industry which is dominated by South Indians, one does find South Indian fare these days. But they are still quite rare.

Myself and Priya Raju love Ethiopian cuisine. Anyone that has had both Indian and Ethiopian food will easily attest to the fact that the spices are quite similar. We used to wonder how this similarity came about, but we could not find the answer. We were also confused by how far Ethiopia is from India, both culturally and geographically.

Couple of days back, I came across this brilliant article by Rachel Laudan that traces the roots of the Mexican Mole. Again, the similarities of Mole to Indian curry is unmistakeable. But then how did this happen? Mexico is so far away from India that anyone connecting these 2 cuisines will be met with a loud snicker. Per Laudan, Octavia Paz, Nobel Laureate and erstwhile Ambassador to India from Mexico, tried to do just that.

Laudan continues on and proves that the Mexican Mole is indeed connected to Indian curry but the connection happened through Persia! When Babur came to India, he brought the cuisine with him which has mesmerized Indians since then. The sherbets, the pilafs (pulao) and the tandoor are all through this Babur connection. And it went to Mexico from Spain which had acquired the cuisine through the Islamic connection as well.

An excerpt from the article:

The influential Persian culinary tradition is yet to be studied in detail. When the Abbasid dynasty established its capital in Baghdad in the eighth century, the Islamic world was able to draw on a sophisticated Persian culinary tradition that stretched back a millennium. The ancient Greeks had been awed by the luxurious cuisine of the Persian emperors Darius and Cyrus. Successive dynasties had continued to refine the cuisine that became the model for fine dining throughout the Islamic world. After the Mongols destroyed Baghdad in the first half of the 13th century, the center of Persian culture and its cuisine shifted back to the Persian heartland. It was here that the Moghuls learned the style of cooking that they took with them to northern India.

If this is not a signal contribution of the Islamists, what is?

The Ethiopian Connection

As for Ethiopian, we still don’t know the answer. But my guess is that it is also from the same Islamic influence. Interestingly, the Ethiopians call their curry powder Berbere. Here is another excerpt from the same Laudan article:

One of the most important was the Iberian Peninsula, whose southern two-thirds came under Arab rule in the eighth century. Watered by five rivers and greener than either their arid homelands or the other lands they had conquered, al-Andalus, as Muslim Spain was called, held out to the Arab and Berber settlers the promise of being a culinary paradise on earth.

Notice the phrase Berber settlers in the last line? Maybe this is why the Ethiopians call it Berbere? Wonder if Rachel Laudan knows the answer. BTW, Rachel Laudan has a blog if you want to read more.

Epilog:

The next one we will tackle is the idea that the evil caste system is a creation of the British! One of the main citations that is used for this idea is, the Gandhian Scholar, Dharampal’s works. Are there any other reliable citations that prove that the caste system is a British creation? If any of you know, please let me know.

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US Embassy in India moves from the bottom of the heap to the Numero Uno

Updated Apr 8, 2008:  The Dignity Foundation that specializes in catering to Senior Citizens has picked this post to be published in their magazine Dignity Dialogue. Thank you Dignity Foundation. We are honored.

The nightmare that it was

Obtaining a visa to the USA, be it any category, has to be amongst the most tortuous, most bureaucratic of processes we have come across. Obtaining what would be termed a routine tourist/business visa (B1/B2 as the US calls it) was utterly dreadful. I remember the first time, in 1991, i got the B1 visa, i had to stand in the queue outside the embassy building in Mumbai starting at the crack of dawn. There was not even a place to sit while we waited. Later in 1996, when i got a B1, this time in Chennai, again i had to stand outside the embassy in chennai’s blazing heat. Ditto for my H1 as well. Priya Raju also had the same experiences.

Once when the embassy officials were questioned on this treatment meted out, they claimed that the Indian citizens were standing outside the embassy of their own volition and was not required by the process. Of course, they conveniently did not discuss the point that they let in only a small number of people every day for the visa process (daily quota). That is what forced everyone to start assembling in the queue to try to get into the embassy. There was no concept of an apppointment system then!

Problems at the Port of Entry

In addition to this whole bureaucratic visa regime, we got the dirty looks, aggressive questioning at the hands of the immigration officials at the port of entry almost every time we entered the USA after a holiday. These happened even when we had a legit H1 visa (work permit). These events forced us to get the Green Card (Permanent Resident Permit). I don’t even want to begin getting into the kind of multi-year form-filling bureaucratic process that it was. But once we got it, atleast the harassment at the immigration counter stopped mostly.

Now that it is little more than 2 years since we came back, we decided that our transition to India was complete and we no longer needed our Green Cards. We decided to give it up and obtain a B1/B2 tourist visa to goto the USA to meet friends and family in Priya’s case and for work reasons (business discussions/meetings) in my case.

Since Priya has stopped working and is now into volunteering, i decided to try my luck first. I went through my office immigration dept, since i figured they must have a better system in place for businesses.

The New Process

I was pleasantly surprised, when i was told that, i just needed to fill a form online at the VFS USA website.
Before i filled the form online, i needed the receipt number of the visa fee paid in advance at the HDFC Bank. Since the office had given me that info, i filled the form easily, took a print out, picked the appointment time, which surprisingly was available the following week. I had a 2.15pm appointment, and i reached the embassy at 1.45pm just to give myself some cushion and i found people waiting, who had 3pm or later appointments. I couldn’t help recalling the embassy statement that people were assembling of their own volition!

I got in, stood in a few more queues all in airconditioned comfort, met one of the embassy officials around 330PM or so, got the visa and came out. What a breeze compared to 12 years ago.

Priya Raju tries her hand

In the next 2 weeks, Priya Raju decided to undergo the same process, submitted the form online, picked the date/time. She did this on her own because she does not work for my company any more. I didn’t want Priya to stand in the hot sun even for the 30 min that I did. I did some investigation and I was told that VFS USA, the site i pointed to, was selling a 200 Rs (4 USD) lounge coupon. This coupon allows the usage of a AC lounge, with a Cafe Coffee Day sandwich/coffee thrown in and best of all, they drive the visa applicant directly to the embassy right before the interview time slot. Once the applicant finishes the process, VFS USA drives the applicant back to the lounge. Priya was able to finish the process quickly like I did, with the additional comfort of not standing in the sun. Not to mention, that the USA embassy officials were very friendly. They were cracking jokes or making light hearted banter. Things could not be better for the USA embassies.

The 200 Rs for this convenience is a steal and we wholeheartedly recommend this, especially for senior citizens who travel a lot to the USA these days. VFS USA staff were also very friendly and helpful.

Since we have traveled to many countries, i wanted to give you all some comparison points. I am only talking about tourist visas, because i don’t have comparison points for work permits issued by countries other than USA and UAE.

Here is our rankings of the tourist visa regimes (of course, this only includes the countries we have visited so far):

1. USA’s current B1/B2 regime – the current online process is head and shoulders above all the countries listed below. None of the countries below use a online based process like the USA.

2. Switzerland – we didn’t need a visa to go here since we had a USA green card. How smart of the Swiss.

3. UK – typically a day’s job without any cumbersome documentation requirements

4. Canada – same as the UK

5. Norway – same day (Schengen Visa system) process. very friendly people at the embassy.

6. Peru – same day process, while the embassy had the third worldly looks, the process was quite smooth.

7. UAE – visa on arrival. quite smooth.

8. Italy – cumbersome documentation requirements, including 3 year tax returns, documents in triplicate etc. The officials gave us back our passports after 6 days. To top it, the officials were very openly proud that they had returned it in 6 days instead of the usual 7 days!

9. Greece – cumbersome documentation requirements, including 3 year tax returns, documents in triplicate etc. The officials were keeping piles of passports stacked in the office giving me and Priya the scares. And we had to go to the embassy multiple number of times. The instructions on the web did not match the real requirements and when we objected strenously they waived off a few of the requirements.

10. Egypt – cumbersome documentation requirements, including 3 year tax returns, documents in triplicate etc. In what is the funniest visa episode so far, the Egyptians wanted an authorized leave letter from my company before they would issue the visa!

11. Ecuador – we travelled to Ecuador in 2003 christmas. Based on the tour program we needed a 10 day visa. We were shocked when they told us the strangest thing we have encountered – if we needed a 10 day visa, they can only issue it 10 days before the travel date. I am not sure i have still understood what their law was. But it was the scariest thing then – since it was Christmas time, they also had an upcoming holiday 2 days before christmas all the way to 2 days after new year. Going by the calendar then, there was only one working day when we could obtain the visa and by their process they could only give us 8 days visa. We decided to take it eventhough it meant overstaying on the visa by their own regulations! I think this is by far the strangest visa regime we have encountered. Any way, when we exited Ecuador, no one cared that we had overstayed a couple of days.

Please don’t harass the tourists

If you look at some of the regimes we describe above, it is clear that these countries harass the tourist visa applicants. Little do they realize that the tourists spend a lot of money in their countries and keep their economy booming. I would urge these countries to design processes that don’t encumber the legitimate tourists under the guise of catching miscreants. If you don’t trust your own embassy officials to catch the miscreants without making the process arduous for everyone, it reflects poorly on your country and forces passionate travellers like us to avoid coming to your country. If a lot of us decide to avoid your country, it would be a huge loss for your economy.

Now a few words to my favorite country (other than India) in the world – the USA:

1. Thank you very much for cleaning up the B1/B2 process so much and making the process pleasurable for us instead of the nightmare that it was.

2. Please consider instructing your Immigration Officials at the port of entry to be kind to the people that come in. If your real objective is to find miscreants, harassing everyone that comes in, is not the solution. You should rather use software and other sophisticated systems to filter out the miscreants for you. No one minds being asked a few questions by the immigration officials, but no other country that we have visited harassed us at the port of entry. In fact officials in other countries were extra pleasant to us. [In Ecuador, where we found their visa process to be bad, they were the most pleasant that we have seen so far.] This is doubly strange because we did go through your Government’s process and obtained the visa legitimately. Don’t you think this reflects poorly on the whole process you have set up for visas?

Readers, please chime in with your opinions, good or bad about tourist visa regimes.

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Euphony performs for charity on Apr 26 – tickets for sale

My post last week received a comment about potential financial contributions to the CSR program.

I am happy to announce that my company’s band Euphony is performing. The concert will take place on the 26th of April (Saturday) between 4PM and 7PM at the Sir Muthu Venkatasubba Rao Concert Hall, Harrington Road, Chetpet, Chennai, India.

Proceeds from this show will go to a set of charitable organizations (the list is being finalized). By way of background, Euphony is a Indian Music Band comprising my company’s employees.

They finished runner-up in the Vijay TV ( a local TV channel) – Paadum Office program earlier in the year. I have personally seen them perform during company events based on which i can vouch for the quality.

Several Rs. 500 (USD 12.5) and Rs. 1000 (USD 25) denominated tickets are available. If you don’t reside in Chennai, India, we hope that you will buy tickets for friends and family residing in Chennai.

If you are interested, please write the quantity and denomination you would like in the comments section ASAP. We are working on a method by which you can pay the money directly to the charities without us getting in the middle. This will also avoid tax issues for us. Hope you will all enthusiastically support this social cause and enjoy the concert as well.

Thanks in advance for your support.