The Purpose Of The Others

A few weeks ago during the ongoing US Presidential election campaign, President Barack Obama made a speech where he controversially used the words "You didn't build that" in reference to how individual wealth creation is dependent on social institutions and structures. The soundbites of the speech were relayed on the news networks and on the internet (below):

The immediate para of the "You didn't build that" part of the speech was:

"If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help.  There was a great teacher somewhere in your life.  Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive.  Somebody invested in roads and bridges.  If you’ve got a business -- you didn’t build that.  Somebody else made that happen.  The Internet didn’t get invented on its own.  Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet."

-US President Barack Obama

Something about this speech felt familiar. Deja vu perhaps? Then the speech faded from memory.

 During this morning's journey to work, I heard words that brought this speech back to mind. I was listening to one of my brother's music CDs when an old telugu song came on. This song too talks of the futility of self-absorption and calls for the realization of the organic nature of human existence within the social framework. The song was from the telugu movie "Rudraveena" called "Chuttu Pakkala Choodara Chinnavada" ("Look Around Little One") written by Sirivennela Sitaramasastri. 

The last stanza of the song roughly translates to:

Every grain you eat, was produced by this community

The life in which you take pride, was shaped by this society

When the time comes to repay your debt, are you fleeing?

Will you burn the boat, after you've crossed the stream? 

 

 Both the song and the speech have a socialist tone. In the song this message is contrasted against a mystical and spiritual understanding of human existence. While the same message is used by Obama to counter an existential interpretation of free-market individualism. Put together, these interpretation have sought to project socialism as a beacon to refute both the atheistic & worldly as well as the religious & other-worldly interpretations of human existence.

 But in this effort to glorify socialism in poetry and prose, one aspect that remains unanswered is the extent to which collectivism is an end as opposed to it merely being the means. This element of vanity within socialism was captured by the comedian John Foster Hall in his often quoted pithy one-liner:

"We are all here on earth to help others; what on earth the others are here for, I don’t know"

- John Foster Hall

Links:

1. http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2012/07/13/remarks-president-campaign-event-roanoke-virginia

2. http://www.lyricsintelugu.com/2010/07/rudraveena-lyrics-chuttu-pakkala.html

3. http://audensociety.org/vivianfoster.html

Energetic Panel

This morning moving solely on an impulse for Ghee Idlis served at Purna Tiffins in Krishna Nagar, we started from my place at 10 and made our way through Film Nagar. There we were hit in the face by a colossal hoarding placed strategically on the foot-overbridge opposite the Film Nagar Cultural Centre/Club (FNCC). It was a campaign billboard for the upcoming elections to the FNCC. If ever there was a way to make sure your constituents memorized your face (and the faces of everyone of your proposed "energetic panel" in the order of their importance/portrait size), this was it.



After getting our quota of idlis, we headed back to base. But the traffic began to clog at Jubilee Hills Checkpost and sure enough it was because of the most common cause of traffic jams in Hyderabad - one Mr. Harish Rao. The protesters were fired up and we were filled up - no contest. So we took detour after detour and in due time got back.

I guess the common thread between the two experiences was politics. The Film Nagar Society membership costs upwards of Rs. 25 Lakh and has a waiting period of over 10 years and therefore their members-only annual elections are literally and allegorically "above the road" on which common people commute. The street protests by the Telangana activists on the other hand was very much "on the road".

Though the real common thread of it all is my undying affection for good food. Again, both literally and allegorically.

Not Wealth Or Power

In his speech today, announcing the death of Osama Bin Laden, US President Barack Obama said something that was cut from most of the news broadcasts. It came right at the fag end of the 9 minute speech and as such has little significance in relation to the gravity of situation. Taken by itself, it may seem like just another platitude. But these messages within messages are put out there for a purpose, they serve to reaffirm the tenets of a nation (highlighted in red below). They are meant to convey, in this case, a sense of consistency and justice and thus their righteousness.

Excerpt:

"The cause of securing our country is not complete. But tonight, we are once again reminded that America can do whatever we set our mind to. That is the story of our history, whether it's the pursuit of prosperity for our people, or the struggle for equality for all our citizens; our commitment to stand up for our values abroad, and our sacrifices to make the world a safer place.

Let us remember that we can do these things not just because of wealth or power, but because of who we are: one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all."

Link:
Text of the Speech: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/barackobama/8487354/Osama-bin-Laden-killed-Barack-Obamas-speech-in-full.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_character_studies

They don't like me happy

I was one of the guys out and about on the midnight of April 2nd, hugging strangers, shouting ridiculous slogans, clapping, punching the air and scaring dogs. India had won the world cup, and my buddies and me were determined to join the street party. It was more about not missing a significant expression public joy than being huge cricket fans. So we drove all around the city to witness the hooligan shenanigans in full show. There were bike and car stunts for us to see, the police were happy but weary. It was an experience which was scary but exciting.

But what actually took place at the world cup, what it means for 70 million viewers to watch a single event on TV in India and what the events means in the long run are three very different things. First, what happened was the Indian cricket team winning an event it was tipped to win. Second, it was the biggest viewership by far for any event or show in the history of Indian television, this therefore will be the touchstone in the future whenever the Indian viewers' attention is needed. Third, the longer term meanings though are hard to get now. Sports events have a euphoric galvanizing effect on the supporters or at least 70 million of them in this case, but how does that effect the larger population of 1210 million Indians remains a question.

In all this there have been voices of dissent. The opposition steadily comes from sources that see the event as a drain on the collective attention of the public. This attention, they say, would otherwise focus on issues that are more relevant to their own lives. During the coverage of the world cup, the media pushed a number of pressing issues to the fringes. There was a certain sense of abandonment of daily responsibility of their reporting duty. And the public did need constant reminders to not indulge themselves too much in the building those floating castles.

This being the case, there has to be a sense of proportion even in those high moral ground arguments. A case in point: The Hindu today carried an Open Page section by Narendra Shekhawat which linked the farmer suicides and the world cup coverage. This is a case of confusing the the profound with the ephemeral. If an argument can be made that the world cup has hijacked other news, then by the same logic it can be argued that these conscience-keepers are piggybacking on the excessive coverage to sell something unrelated. If there is a middle class guilt complex, it has to be channeled better. Rubbing guilt onto people for simply being happy seems cruel.

Links:
http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/open-page/article1761700.ece
http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/todays-paper/article1597522.ece

This Too Shall Pass

Stock photo agencies such as Getty Images supply advertisers with the images they need to get their message across. A few advertisers don't bother with either buying stock photographs or sending out their own photographers to do the job and use pictures off the internet which may well be unlicensed. All this is fine as long as the piece of communication does its job. Sometimes though, while the message may be clear enough, the images used can hijack the whole communication's intent.

This was the case last January when India's Ministry of Women and Child Development published an ad on the occasion of 'National Girl Child Day' . It carried a Pakistani Air Force Chief's image as purportedly being a 'son of an Indian mother'. This led to hue and cry in the media which left the government embarrassed not because it had used an image without proper permissions but because it didn't check if that particular image can damage and undermine the objective of the communication exercise. The damage was done because that one image went completely against the grain of the message - projecting images of successful Indian male icons and their obvious debt to their mothers.

The latest Frontline magazine's back cover (above) carried an advertisement for the magazine 'Competition Success Review' and informs of some attractive subscription offers. Right at the bottom they have this image of a well groomed man giving the reader a thumbs-up and a raised eye brow - an anthropomorphic representation of 'success' I presume. The communication does work at the basic level, except the man's face seemed familiar. His name is Stephen Colbert - an American satirist who does a killer impression of the over-confident, self-indulgent, conceited right-wing politician on Comedy Central's show 'The Colbert Report' - a character that is enormously funny but not one to emulate. In the Indian marketplace though, where he is a non-entity - this advert will pass under the radar as have many others before it.



Links:
http://www.colbertnation.com/home
http://www.exchange4media.com/e4m/news/fullstory.asp?news_id=39575&section_id=1&tag=6400

A to B

October 12th saw the "Meter Jam II" campaign in Mumbai - a boycott of auto-rickshaws and taxis as a protest against the service delivery methods. This campaign by and large has the interests of the harassed middle-class at heart. The auto and taxi drivers, themselves middle-class aspirants though would not miss the hypocrisy in the campaign: passengers paint themselves as customers with rights while overlooking the more basic right to a decent living of the poorer driver. The campaign, being organized by advertising professionals rather than civic activists is an indication of the principles at work in this protest.

"...You can never formulate a protest only in terms of interests. You can never say I am being oppressed; you have to say oppression is wrong. That’s the only way you can formulate a protest. The moment you do that, the principle becomes universal. Not universal in the sense of 100% universal, but it finds for itself a class which goes beyond you. Then what happens is that, you will have to speak for many more people, which again has its own further consequences. So a perpetual expansion of the principled concerns is unavoidable in the very fact that a protest has to be expressed in terms of universal values."

Hyderabad based late civil-rights activist K Balagopal in an interview

In a campaign like "Meter Jam", this aspect of expansion of a cause and understanding the consequences is missing. The only "class" commuters are willing to be clubbed along is with other passengers, while unwilling to view themselves as stakeholders in the larger civic transport system and so on. To these activists, the problem is simply one of supply chain inefficiency that needs censuring and not a symptom of social inequity or the breakdown of the rule of law.

The rent-seeking ways of the drivers speaks of lax regulations and patronization of their unions by the civic government together lead to extortionist practices. Till a mechanism is worked out where the government does its duty of regulation with tact and imagination while remaining unbiased, any number of protests by the commuters and the transport unions will result in little except advancing the careers of the campaigners.

Links:
http://www.meterjam.com/
http://www.ndtv.com/article/cities/meter-jam-in-mumbai-commuters-boycott-taxis-autos-43861
http://www.ndtv.com/article/cities/meter-jam-ii-mumbaikars-say-no-to-autos-taxis-59126
http://www.dnaindia.com/speakup/interview_we-won-t-organise-meter-jam-3-but-will-help-people-seek-results_1451760
http://balagopal.org/

Having Your Say

Today's papers are abuzz with news of yesterday's papers. In some centers (not Hyderabad though) The Hindu and The Times of India let advertisers have a go at communicating not just with words but also through voice. Volkswagen bankrolled the campaign for its new launch - Vento. And going by the response, the newspaper-embedded Chinese-made photo-responsive audio chip is da bomb!

"While the innovation startled most readers, many found it interesting and arresting. But it had some unintended consequences as well. At many places, calls were made to the police with people suspecting the device was a bomb. Mahim in Mumbai witnessed a scare after a pedestrian heard a ''beeping sound'' coming from a garbage bin and alerted the police. A bomb squad reached the spot, near S L Raheja Hospital, and found that it was the audio-ad..."
-Times of India

Link:
http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/09/volkswagen-plants-audio-ad-in-print-newspaper/
http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/2010/09/22/stories/2010092252880500.htm
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Volks-populi-Audio-ad-in-TOI-creates-a-buzz-literally/articleshow/6604113.cms
http://www.moneylife.in/article/78/9296.html

Could It Be Murder?

Yesterday was a slow day at the office in the telugu language news media. And so it was that word of a heinous incident had come to their attention. A dead girl was found stuffed inside a suitcase placed in a busy area of the city.

I got a call in the evening urging me follow the electronic media's coverage of the incident. Apparently the stellar journalistic instincts of the TV9 news channel reporters had again kicked into high gear. They had finally found a story where they could fully flash their investigative brilliance.

Reporter starts her inquiry with the most probing of questions (the sensational coverage as narrated to me over the phone):


Reporter [already smug]: "Sir, do you think this is a case of murder?"

Cop [equal to the task]: "We cannot answer that question at this point. We have to conduct a complete investigation to know the full details of the incident"


Their next step might be to flash a 'lost & found' for the suitcase owner on the perpetual scroll, their motto after all reads - "for a better society". Keep watching meanwhile.

Link:
http://expressbuzz.com/cities/hyderabad/woman%E2%80%99s-dead-body-found-in-a-suitcase/195213.html
http://hindu.com/2010/08/04/stories/2010080461000500.htm

For Domestic Consumption

In the aftermath of the Greek debt crisis, there is a hunt on to find the next country that lives beyond its means. The business news media tries to connect the dots and extrapolate from the existing. The sovereign debt crisis story needs its sequels and there must also be some nondescript lessons learnt. After all, a pattern cannot be tagged to be so without repetition. So it is that Hungary has emerged as a suitor. But strangely enough the unwanted attention on its economy is of its own doing to a great extent.

Hungary has gone the way so many countries have gone before it by mixing economics with politics. A new government in place with new promises of tax cuts to keep has met its old enemy - reality. In such cases the only logical way out is to blame the outgoing government and make it known widely that the economy inherited is the weak link. But when this message gets too loud, then there is a danger of people outside the target audience listening in. And that according to Goldman Sachs is the reason for the mini run-on-the-economy that was triggered by the Hungarian government officials comparing themselves to the Greeks.

These messages of subtlety which are supposed to mean different things to different people are hard to pull off. It is especially difficult when the same message has to convey diametrically opposite views. So a comparison with Greece was supposed to alert and lower domestic expectations in Hungary but all it did was heighten international suspicions. The first lesson the Hungarian government might have learnt here is in the use of the double entendre. But the more important lesson has to do with scaring citizens into opting for policies that weren't in the campaign manifesto and how it all can backfire.

"For domestic consumption only" is tricky to achieve when the commodity is communication. In India this was a target of the austerity drive after the 2009 general elections and it involved a train journey for the Congress General Secretary Rahul Gandhi, no less! The message of tightening the belt was sent out through the exercise but the significance of it was lost on the outsider - mission accomplished. It is another matter that the grinding reality of poverty in India made these austerity measures a source of great amusement for the man with no belt or pants.

More Links:
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/b6d5ad48-726b-11df-9f82-00144feabdc0.html
http://www.moneycontrol.com/news/world-news/will-aim-to-meet-deficit-goal-hungary-_462372.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/10254462.stm
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5il4ORqz4woTzfBKJ4ziqsFyPr2wA
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Rahul-Gandhi-joins-austerity-drive-travels-by-Shatabdi-Express/articleshow/5012898.cms

All Action

This is a photograph from today's Times of India (courtesy AFP, it says) and must be the most frequently used image of the incident that newspapers around the world went with. It depicts a Pakistani commando carrying away an injured victim of yesterday's Lahore mosque attack.

A uniformed man running with a gun in one hand and a whole person under the other while in the midst of a hostile situation - action movie posters need to catch up.


http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/top-stories/2010/05/29/massacre-as-70-die-and-2-000-held-hostage-in-pakistan-mosques-115875-22294051/

Thank You for Calling Cherlapally

On May 11th, Radiant Info Systems announced that prisoners from the central jail at Cherlapally, Hyderabad were to be trained to handle BPO operations. The jail authorities finally had some positive news to share.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/India-to-get-first-BPO-behind-bars/articleshow/5919218.cms

What is probably either a CSR initiative or a cost-cutting move for the BPO company is seen by the British media as confirming something more sinister that they have kept alluding to from time to time. The British tabloids have reported for years that their citizens' information is not safe in the hands of Indian BPO workers and this adds to that narrative.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article7124634.ece
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/india/7715365/Call-centre-firm-to-employ-Indian-prisoners.html

In the quest for the least operating costs, the condemned possess a USP that can only be topped by slavery.

Petty All Around

How do you pat yourself for a job you didn't do? That's how:
http://www.newsweek.com/id/237413

If ever there was an urgent need for spin, this was it. After missing their beat, the US security authorities quickly got Newsweek's Christopher Dickey to reassure their public that what they infact successfully did is "psych out" the terrorists thus neutralizing the threat beforehand. Once psyched, any terrorist-at-large is of no further harm and can be trusted to plant bombs that can only fizzle. The suspect, Faisal Shahzad's Times Square car-bombing attempt must then be a demonstration of the mind-control powers the US agencies posses over such hapless terrorist wannabes.


Meanwhile the Indian media's own juvenile India vs. Pakistan one-up-man-ship innuendo contest has spilled into this case too. The US Federal Attorney prosecuting the case against Faisal Shahzad, a Pakistan-born US citizen will be the Indian-born US citizen Preet Bharara. Will it be Gadar all over again?

http://www.hindustantimes.com/americas/Indian-American-Bharara-to-lead-prosecution-of-Faisal-Shahzad/539647/H1-Article1-539715.aspx



Update, 6th May 3:30 PM:
Continuing in the spirit of taking credit for events that are out of our control: A few hours after I put up the original post I see that Newsweek Magazine has been put out for sale by Washington Post Co. - its owner for the past 39 years. US agencies aren't the only ones with powers!
http://www.newsweek.com/id/237401

Media Induced Morbidity Syndrome: They named it!

Mr. Anant Maringanti's brave attempt at understanding the absurdity of the mutant Telugu Language Media's macabre instincts for propagating mass hysteria (from Business Week):

http://kafila.org/2009/12/18/media-induced-morbidity-syndrome-anant-maringanti/