PUBLISHED IN PIONEER NEWSPAPER - 15th Aug 2011

A BRAND OF PATRIOTISM


  Indians are amongst the most patriotic people I know. I believe that this is not merely because we are a relatively young nation which emerged after a prolonged struggle from its colonial past but also because we generally tend to wear our hearts on our sleeves. We’re rather more like Americans in this matter than the British who, increasingly embarrassed by swearing loud allegiance to Queen and country, have in recent times allowed many national symbols – most crucially their flag – to be high-jacked by the Far Right.

  It was while living in London, in fact, that I observed with some amusement the refreshingly uninhibited manner in which Indians adopted a cheesy slogan like ‘India Shining’, the equivalent of which would have made most modern day Brits cringe, although they too have had their ‘Rule Britannia’ of yore. Clearly, in the years it took for cynicism to gradually ingrain itself in the British psyche, Indian nationalism cheerily grew to jingoistic proportions, fuelled by its film industry that continues to capitalize on this trait, churning out highly popular patriotic movies like ‘LoC’ and ‘Chak De India’. 

  However, there is another observation I have been making since I moved back to India two years ago, this one with considerably dimmed glee. And that is the penchant even the most patriotic Indians continue to have for foreign-made consumer goods. Now, as someone who enjoys dressing eclectically, I wouldn’t dream of lecturing anyone on the virtues of khadi and home-spun but when did we ever travel so far down the road from Mahatma Gandhi’s burning of British cloth to think of indigenously made goods as being so very infra-dig? And it’s not just clothes it’s everything: from cars to cosmetics and electronics to fresh fruit, if an Indian consumer is faced with a choice between desi and imported, it’s a very tiny minority that would make the ‘patriotic’ choice from what I can see. While in a supermarket the other day, I spotted a woman at the tills with a trolley full of basic food like biscuits and cereals, all of them emblazoned with foreign logos. I claim no moral or consumerist superiority, especially as someone who has spent many happy years enjoying a variety of world cuisines. I merely ask what it is that drives us to be so uncharacteristically disloyal to the home country when it comes to spending our money on goods with a Made-in-India label.

  It could, of course, merely be those long years of being denied foreign maal that has made us crave it to such an extent, for who does not understand the attraction of forbidden fruit. Thankfully we no longer need to dash across to Nepal and Singapore to buy a bottle of perfume or a microwave oven but it will be a long, long time before we stop gasping with incredulity at the range of goodies our own malls are crammed with, and an even longer time before we spurn the Sonys and Samsungs for Videocon and Voltas. Old habits simply die hard, I suppose. Additionally, the average consumer tends to think of even the most overtly ‘Indian’ product – particularly where it comes to high-end electronics – as being not entirely Indian anyway, not when it is broken up into its component parts.

  To a great extent, we turn away from buying Indian goods because the old lack of confidence persists despite vast technological improvements. For far too long we have had to suffer poorly made and improperly finished products and, despite barely any discernible difference, our hands automatically reach out for L’Oreal rather than Lakme. 

  Living in a showy, image-conscious city like Delhi has also shown me the extent to which wealthy Indians are often slaves to symbols of prestige and, of course, that predilection will to some extent drive imports of expensive branded items. I can’t help seeing the Dior bags clutched by women at parties as being akin to little Linus’s security blanket in Charlie Brown comics. Similarly, it becomes vastly important to a businessman to signal to the world that he is amongst that tiny, tiny minority in India who can afford to buy a fully-imported Audi or Jaguar. With that purchase, he has instantly cast himself in a bracket above virtually all other Indians. 

  However, at the lower end of the car market (in terms of sheer numbers, a highly lucrative market that both foreign and Indian companies are scrambling to colonise), customers are seeking something else altogether – which reveals a far less pernicious Indian trait in fact – and that is value-for-money. It would be a rare customer who would concern himself unduly with where exactly which component part was made when all he seeks is a decent and reliable car at the most competitive price. It’s the same trait that makes the Indian even further down the economic scale choose a Chinese-made padlock to one made in a factory in Noida. If anything, the ‘Made in China’ label signals ‘stack ‘em high and sell ‘em cheap’ but why should the average Indian  customer care beyond that he’s getting a product which looks strong and is far cheaper than any others on the shelf. 

  Should one do something to prevent this flow of business to our already more prosperous neighbour? If we did, would it not be getting uncomfortably close to the nanny-ish ‘Be Indian Buy Indian’ sloganeering of the protectionist years? The very idea of slowly opening up our markets signals a maturing economy and surely its corollary should soon follow too in the shape of a maturing consumer. Choice is healthy and choice will at some point surely lead to sensible buying behaviour. And is it not a fair expectation for patriotic motivations to also be built into that choice? If we all believed that, by buying Indian, India itself would thrive and, in turn, return the benefits to us, wouldn’t we all do it?

  The problem is that all but the very naïve believe that free market economies are truly free. In India, this goes back to the time the British introduced the idea of ‘free trade’ which was, as one of the characters in my historical novel ‘Rani’ says, ‘free for no one but the British’. All that happened was that raw material moved freely and cheaply from India to British factories where they were converted it into clothes which, in turn, moved freely back to India to be sold at a much higher price than it would have done had it been left where it was in the first place!

  It’s not that different now, despite our freedom, despite our democracy. How many more scams do we need to uncover before we fully recognize the cosy nexus that exists in reality between the politician, the industrialist and the media baron, these relationships often oiled by another player, the merchant banker. A British newspaper recently suggested that the system would be far more accurately described by the word ‘corporatism’, rather than ‘capitalism’ for, in reality, it’s a world in which only a very small number of people are enriched while the lowly consumer/tax-payer inevitably emerges as the biggest loser.

  I, as a savvy price-conscious customer, should be pleased at the news that India might shortly open up to Foreign Direct Investment in the retail sector, one of the last bastions of old protectionism. And perhaps I would have, had I totally bought the argument of its proponents that the purchasing power and reach of a Walmart or Tesco would source and make available to me ever cheaper goods from all over the world. But all that will happen – as it did in the UK – is that my local shop-keeper, the man who stocks his daal and rice in gunny sacks, will be pushed out of business and, very soon, I will be completely at the mercy of whatever prices Tesco chooses to charge me for these same things.

  The message to Indian manufacturers is simple: customers here are, by and large, an easy-going bunch who, though a little too enamoured of phoren, can be very easily persuaded to buy Indian if they are convinced that it is a high-quality, well-made product that also provides value for money. The best example is offered by Bollywood who, despite the fiercest competition from Hollywood (that would dearly love the patronage of India’s millions), has found a hundred ways to highjack and hang onto Indian hearts, making over and again a brand of entertainment that is uniquely Indian, of the highest quality and yet offers great value for money.   

  But what is the duty of the Indian consumer who sincerely wants her country to prosper? There are sadly too many reasons to disbelieve that merely buying Indian goods and supporting Indian manufacturers will suffice. Besides, this places the onus far too firmly on the shoulders of the ordinary citizen. Not that I would mind and, especially on a day like Independence Day, I would willingly cry out for others to follow my example in this matter. If only I had more faith in my country’s desire to return my loyalty with fair prices, good value for money, zero corruption, no black-marketeering, and a genuinely free economy.