Talking of levellers

If you look at technology, irrespective of the field of application, you will notice that technology is a great enabler. Two-wheelers and four-wheelers enabled people to travel independently (I mean without having to depend on public transport like buses and trains). Photography was once the domain of photographers. And then came digital cameras. Their piggy back on mobile phones had a great symbiotic effect - the mobile phone user base was much larger than that of camera, but it provided a ready territory for selling. So almost everyone who had a mobile phone became a photographer, just by buying a new mobile instrument that had a camera.

On a whole new dimension, I found something interesting. Technology became an enabler for countries too. India has enough consumer information technology that it is soon catching up with the US. So it is a leveller in a different sense. I always thought that businesses were migratory - towards where they had low cost / high profit / both opportunity. So were business people - you can find many Gujaratis in Africa, US, many Punjabis in the UK, Andhrites in the US and so on. Domestic migration too is not uncommon. There are many Saurashtrians in Tamilnadu as well, living for many generations. However such migrations were due to trade. These days it is technology that is driving migration. It is not very uncommon to see foreigner knowledge workers working in India. These knowledge workers have been migrating, just because companies migrated owing to technology availability in India. During the protectionist era, various sections of Indian establishment complained of brain drain. Now India is facing the reverse brain drain. Now issuing visas is a two way process - Indians moving to the West and Westerners, to India.

Isn't technology a great leveller?
More later,
K Venkatesh

Social responsibility of marketers

A particular sight today left me a little disturbed...

I saw a labourer, in torn shabby dress and without footwear, loading sand on to a tractor. This sight is not uncommon, for I live in India. However, what disturbed me most was that he had plugged earphones and listening music from a portable digital music player. It is also very common to see vegetable vendors on the pavements using mobile phones and auto-rickshaw drivers with such devices listening to the music while driving on the streets. So where's the concern and why get disturbed?

It is good that the technology is able to percolate to the economically lower strata of societies, due to lower cost of production and commoditization. Technology is still more expensive than basic necessities such as food, safe drinking water and sanitation facilities.

As a technology marketer, it is hard for me to accept the fact that technology companies succeed with their aspirational products in societies where social priorities should have been elsewhere - food, water supply, healthcare and other bare necessities of life. This is true of non-technology companies too, but the impact is higher in technology markets because of fast obsolescence.

It is incorrect for any government restrict people from buying goods that they want. Controlled economies like in pre-liberalized India (pre-nineties) have shown that controlling the supply side hinders economic growth. The economic globalization has contributed to world-wide aggressive marketing, while governments in many countries have failed to improve living conditions in the meantime. Two decades ago politicians in India promised food, water, electricity in their election manifestos. Not much of these promises have been kept. What is more interesting is the politicians are now promising televisions and mobile phones. WiMax may make their way to the manifestos soon!

If societies give higher priorities to aspirational goods and services ignoring basic necessities, there definitely is some problem. This will accelerate consumerism and the poorer become poorer. Accelerated consumerism is inherently bad for any society because it can only be fuelled by credit. Retail credit can lead to large scale misery, as the US sub-prime mortgage crisis has shown with its world-wide impact...

There is a social cost to marketing...
K Venkatesh