Power of I

Marketing experts say that brands reflect the personality of individuals and the societal aspirations, if this indeed true then I-Power is in and We is out. I pods, I phones, I mate……. And the list of brands prefixed with I …… goes on and on.

Today it is all about I or self. Individualistic or self worth is more important than team (what an irony, TEAM means Together Everyone Achieves More) No one is interested in teams, I come first before Team, (not in dictionary alone) Team work or we did it are mere jargons that is confined to slick presentations and PR.

Everywhere you see it , I did it syndrome , one up man ship is all over, it starts at an early age parents are too worried that their children will fail in the game of one up man ship that they shadow box other parents through their children right from nursery. Nursery admissions are definitely a case in point and schools pander to this by having interviews with parents to decide on admissions.

Once admitted parents literally push the child to master everything Music, Dance, Karate, Sports and what not as some parents proudly state about their child’s achievements ……….’I like to push the envelope at an early age so that my child is ready to take on the world’…………

I mania spills into sports too that athletes by hook or crook wants to be the winner, Landis and now Marion Jones are recent examples of the I generation that had to bite the dust after all the earlier denials of wrong doing. Even when team wins the focus is on the player Icons. David Beckham, Tendulkar are some good examples of I power over Team power. The current on and off field tantrums of Indian cricketer Sreesanth clearly shows how media is focusing attention on the wrong Individual, rather than sidelining him for his pugnacious behaviour media goes out to woo him that the poor bloke thinks he is a hero while everyone around him are either laughing at him or pitying him.

I told you so is a favourite corporate game where individuals wait for colleagues to fail since no one wants to help the other lest one out do the other and does all possible to ensure the other fails even when the company as a whole fails……common reaction is ……….. ‘I told you so…….great he failed, what if it impacts all of us negatively’……….. . The I play between the Ambani brothers led to the split of one of the most dynamic corporate houses in India.

The I generation is also too busy (act busy is more right) that they have no time for anyone and everyone. Bigger the city more the busier they are, after all, they need to reflect the aspirations of a growing and demanding city.

Media has had a great role in shaping up this I generation, Star worship culture has been taken to very sycophantic heights thanks to the media. Public persons especially politicians use media to create positive spins around them to cultivate the Indispensable Image. Both TV and Radio are at the forefront of this I culture that today we have some VJ’s and RJ’s who go to any length to promote themselves in the guise of doing public service.

Films are the opiate of the masses especially in India, films no longer sell on stars and story line they need an Item number to survive. So we have a new trend Item girls, Mallika Sherawat, Rakhi Sawant and their likes are definitely a product of this I syndrome.

Today it is all about reality shows, Big Boss and Big Brother clearly underscore the power of I, to the uninitiated it is a show in which everyone tries to have the other eliminated to win the grand prize for him self or her self. Mind you the winner takes it all. If you want to see selfishness, falsehood, pretences, gossip, slander, racial jibes (remember Shilpa shetty), back stabbing and greed this is the Mother of all Shows. Never has life imitated art so well or is it vice versa.

The greatest leveler is the Internet; thanks to technology I can have a virtual identity, voice, gender, friends, career and what not. You cannot have another medium that really gives power to the Individual.

I guess I would not be publishing this if not for Internet and why do I do it, after all, I want my voice to heard or my verbiage to be read.

Come on ,whose afraid of the I generation am I or we not a part of it? Long live I-Power .

Of 'Birds and the Bees' - Need for Sex Education in Schools

In recent times there has been a steep increase in the number of female attacks and rapes in the country. The number of rapes have gone up throughout the years . In 2012, 433 rape cases were recorded in Delhi whereas till 15 August this year, 1,036 cases have already been registered in various police stations across the city according to a study by DNA in collaboration with AC Nielsen . Female molestation cases are also up by 500% . In addition to that ,there are more than 2 million people living with HIV in India. Nearly a million new infections have occurred in the last two years, 50 per cent of which are among young people. Apparently, there has been a lot of thinking and discussion on this regard in our country on providing ‘sex education’ for growing children.

The changes in the family and society from an extended family to a nuclear family have had serious implications on the emotional and social mindset of children. During the times of extended families, an alert child who has crossed puberty would easily absorb the basic facts of life. These facts were taken in as a package, along with emotional and social overtones. 

The want for sex education in schools reflects the fact that even in a culture where comics and general movies include explicit references to sex, children's ignorance about their own bodies has not diminished over time. Similarly, parents seem as reluctant to initiate the necessary conversations as they have ever been. The Internet and widespread online access has made it easy for young people to get the wrong kind of information about human sexuality. Sexually explicit videos are only a click or two away on today’s smart phones and other electronic devices. 

Even when the system was implemented in many of the states, the response had not been welcoming . 11 of India's 29 state governments have either banned or are in the process of dropping sex education from school programmes. Reasons included 'overtly explicit teaching modules' and 'pictures that were too graphic'. Private schools are continuing with lessons, but many have watered them down to avoid controversy. The sex education in the country is 'highly retrograde’ and immediately requires a revamp. The material covered in the class must be medically accurate and age appropriate. It must cover a range of topics including healthy relationships and STD and pregnancy prevention including both contraceptive methods and abstinence.

Social Media To The Rescue!

In crisis and disaster situations throughout the globe, social media has emerged as the ‘power of many’ to help prepare and mitigate the after-effects. Preparedness has been always been better than response in such situations.  Had it been a giant cyclone, a flood or even a building collapse, it is really exciting to see how technology and social media are used to improve the reach of information and manage disasters effectively in today’s global scenario. 

Social media had been projected as a major lifesaver during many disasters with a noted few being cyclone ‘Katrina’ , the Uttarakhand floods and the recent ‘Phailin’ storm in the Indian subcontinent. Access to information has become as important as access to food and shelter. It has also become perishable, making accurate and real-time information on demand. 

How social media can help? 

People use social media to communicate during crisis. During such instances, the number of tweets and facebook posts surge as well.  Mining data from social media is a great way to get a sense and map social media data about crisis areas and make use of it for planning and disaster recovery measures.

Google Crisis management is a public interest initiative to help find missing people during a disaster. It combines the power of contributors as well as the people looking out for information to generate a media for communicating in times of distress.

Sweetest time for democracy !

With the announcement of the Assembly elections for five states, I feel the citizens are having the sweetest time for democracy at the moment. Firstly for the reason that this time we won’t see convicted politician’s being in the list of candidates and secondly, because of the fact that the NOTA option would be appearing in the list for the first time in history. The election commission has also proposed to deploy ‘awareness observers’ who would enable more people to come out to vote.

The ordinance that was passed in the parliament, which doesn’t allow convicted politician’s to compete in the elections is undoubtedly a good step towards having a cleaner and healthier competition among the candidates, eventually benefitting the public who experienced the irony of  tainted politicians coming into power again and again. The Aam Aadmi chief and Anna Hazare can be regarded as the mentor for such a change in the political system, although all the other parties were enthusiastic in taking credits on the ordinance. 

Awareness observers wil be deployed to oversee measures for voter awareness and facilitation with the aim of increasing electorate turnout. The election commission is also taking measures to educate candidates about filling up all columns in their affidavits at the time of filing their nominations. The Supreme court had recently ruled that in cases where columns are left blank, the nominations are liable for rejection.

The NOTA option is a first step towards the establishment of an electorate’s “right to reject.” , a step that could put pressure on parties to field better-qualified politicians. It is not only an option to reject the candidate but can be a sign of rejecting the policies that a party proposed and their previous performance. At present voting ‘None of the above’ is just informational, but in the future it might have the capability to signal a new election. This is considered as a most welcome move in a country where nearly a third of the members of the lower house of Parliament are facing criminal charges, according to the Association for Democratic Reforms, a New Delhi-based advocacy group for transparency in governance. NOTA is considered to be  public-friendly version of the Section 49 -0 , which was earlier discussed about in this blog.

Many people go to vote but are they all satisfied with their votes? The new measures will be a better way for the dissatisfied to show up their presence. Although we would still have to wait and see the benefits of the EC measures, the change is positive and I do not have even a faint feeling of doubt that it would encourage more and better candidates in future elections.

PJay

Smart Phone and Dumb People ??

When I was growing up I remember our generation was termed, GenX, neXgen or something like that I recall from the plethora of ads showered upon us by the multinationals.

The next in-thing was the Information generation - this is the breed of next generation youngsters who have all the information in the world at the tip of their fingers by means of device they prefer calling smart phone. Mind you the important word here is "information", which is far from "knowledge". Gone are the days when people would plan in advance for long queues by bringing along novels newspapers or something creative to do.

In the metro ride last week, there was a 40 year old lady trying to use her Nokia small screen, a guy in thirties on his Blackberry and then this teenager on his Nokia browsing Facebook. The guy had his dad talking to him all the time but not once did he peep out of his smarty device. Texting his friends, messaging them, talking in the cryptic messenger language [ttyl, brb, gtg and what not] - was very abyssal to say the least.

I was reading an article in the Wall Street Journal a few weeks ago. A nice argument on : Is internet the best way to assimilate information and gain knowledge. The argument against the internet went something like this "when you research information on internet, you are faced with a huge amount of information which is most of the time superficial. Also the number of links for any topics are so many that the mind wanders from page to page and grasping is at a very amateur level. The probability of this information being retained is significantly lower. " In a more traditional way, when the information is obtained from books, the understanding is in much more depths because of the power of concentration.

This brings me back to the information generation and its future. Convenience is one thing, but if people start spending their spare time Facebook-ing and twittering on 3-inch screened smart devices, they are going to develop the attention span of a raccoon. Technological enhancements are going to make things easier for us, but what are we going to end up with?

Smart Phone and Dumb People ??

The Milkman of India - Amul Story

Let it be a sumptuous glass of milk , the happy faces of women in Gujarat, or the little girl in the big hoardings in your local neighbourhood,  the story of Amul has had a dimension of its own when it comes to independent strength and sheer intent of a citizen to change the system and bring about a revolution.  This needs enormous courage and determination especially in a nation like India, which have always been in the clutches of “rulers” rather than “contributors” from the very beginning of times.

 One amongst them is Dr  Verghese Kurien who is one of the rare examples in today’s world which is otherwise engulfed in corruption , scams , hypocrisy and mediocre politics. He was the man behind the “Amul” brand and the person who envisioned and executed the white revolution.

 

Recently I had a chance to read ‘The Amul India Story ’, a book on the rise of Amul.   The story is about an unknown, sleepy village ‘Anand’ which rose to be the ‘Milk Capital of India’ . Verghese Kurien had completed his MS in Mechanical Engineering from Michigan State University on a scholarship from Governement of India after which he had been posted in ‘Anand’ (Kaira district of Gujarat) to take up the milk production department run there. Soon he had a meet with Tribhuvandas Patel , a visionary, to take up a role in a newly found co-operative model milk society. The co-operative society aimed at delivering nutritious milk from well-bred cows in a hygienic way to millions of people around the country and market the food brand in the name of ‘Amul’ . It also aimed at empowering women and involving them in various departments in its production.

He was a great visionary and had his own way of implementing his plans towards the welfare of employees and the success of the company.

Amul Co-operative system – common collection centres which had no distinction on the basis of caste , creed or religion.

Operation Flood – Spread over 23 states, 170 districts, and 90.000 village co-operatives . It changed India into the world’s largest milk producer and exporter.

Rural Upliftment – He believed that progress in rural areas is quintessential to transform our country into developed country

 

Manthan , a rare , low budget movie directed by Shyam Benegal and costing around million rupees was produced by Gujarat’s dairy farmers with each contributing a rupee.

Discovery – While the experts from New Zealand and Europe re-iterated that buffaloes milk cannot be coverted to milk powder, he discovered and demonstrated the whole world that how it can be done on a commercial basis

Ad campaigns – Amul had one of the longest running ad-campaigns and the most interesting ones too. The chubby little girl who comes in a polka-dotted dress was the mascot for its campaign. The ads were pun-intended and had strong baselines based on current happenings. They stood up for every public cause and often had to bring down their hoardings due to protests made by several political groups and firms. Here are a few that I loved . You can also see the entire collection from their archives . You'll love them !

 

 

As I start a new phase of my career, I hope I would be motivated by the great personalities who stood for the greater good of public as well as contributed towards the development of our home country.  These people who have impacted the life of people by the sheer intent and indomitable spirit are always a role model for the new generations to be socially responsible and successful citizens of the nation.

 

Here's a video of the amul ad too...