Consumerism! New Riches Changing Behaviour

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"People are working harder, the social mobility and economic opportunities are creating new riches." ... ***in the metropolitan cities.*** The semi urban and rural portions of the country continues to reel and in many cases, is worse off than 20+ yrs back. The agro community in the rural areas and the SMEs and MMEs for most non-IT mfr. sectors in the semi urban areas are clearly reeling.

But as people have said, many contingents of the salaried urbanites as well as the corporate class have benefitted.

Maybe I look at things a bit differently, but I seriously am thinking twice as to this entire consumerism galatta. True, I know of people who made their bank because of it, but in many cases, it's just "virtual income"- aka. debt. You can buy many consumer items such as cars with a very low downpayment nowadays. So, I suppose, if I was making Rs. 10,000 a month I can now realistically buy a car whereas in the "old days" i'd just have to drool over one off an auto mag. But we also have to deal w/ more debts nowadays. Roll over financing has become a household norm in India's cities.

Technically, today, w/ a salary of Rs. 10,000, I can get a 11 month paycheck adjusted loan. This is 1,10,000 rupees. Out of that, I can get myself a car, a split A/C, a fat TV system, a blackberry device...all on finance. But it really bites when the "repayment" phase comes. So, I suppose if you don't go too crazy, you can still live w/ consumerism.

I can understand that consumerism gives people more love for money, but the degree to which it has "evolved"- especially in the cities, is pretty disgusting. An auto mechanic, for example, in Chennai tried to charge me Rs. 6,000 for a bloody carborateur overhaul. He didn't know I know about car mechanics also. In all due honesty, it just needed a cleaning and a set of calipers repaired. The total sum is no more than Rs. 250. 100 for labour and 150 for the parts. Any chimp can fix it. But...if I had no idea, I woulda prolly got cheated hardcore. I wouldn't mind people overcharging to say, 500...but from 250 to 6000...?!?!?!?! This sort of behaviour induced by consumerism is indeed sickening and it really puts a HUGE blot on India.

I've always been confused w/ consumerism. Seriously, do you really need a 60 inch plasma TV, a 2 ton AC on 5 rooms and an exotic aquarium in your bathroom? Do you really need to visit Malaysia or Dubai once in 2 months? Does your wardrobe really need all those fancy sounding flashy designer names?

All those things sound fancy and cool to own/ to do, but we should remember that they are OUR tools. They work to complement our comforts and not the other way 'round. Consumerism is ok as long as some pplz. get access to stuff that wasn't there before...but it becomes ugly when consumerism becomes a lifestyle ritual. Some pplz. ridiculously sacrifice family for material accumulation and this is seriously f#$ked up to the core. The city most notorious for this in the south is Bangalore.

Some couples w/ children now work like crackheads from dusk to dawn + overtime. All for apparently "giving the children a better future." What a pile of horse-c#$p. What's the use of striving for the well being of a kid if you don't even recognise...or are "too busy" to recognise his/ her existance?! This part of consumerism is downright wrong and is very bad for nation building in the future. No sound nation comes without a sound family. This is really what I hate about consumerism.

I hate to report that this "India shining" gulag aka "consumerism" has done very little for India's rural and semi urban peoples- except the ultra rich who have a base of ops in the cities. Now with a more liberal economy, the "rules of business engagement" are more lenient and pplz who take maximum advantage are the large scalers. They now blatantly transfer ALL the burden of credit to the SMEs and MMEs. That's jacked too...

I dunno just my 2 Rupees on the subject...

By devharsh on Wednesday, May 19, 2004 - 06:07 pm:

the debate on whether consumerism is good or bad for india is continuing unabated.some degree of reconciliation has to be brought in amongst the proponents of ever increasing consumerism and those who oppose it on all counts.
there is both a bright and a dark side to this phenomenon.
the bloating indian middle class with increasing disposable incomes has brought india into the centre stage of global economy.today the world is looking towards india as a very lucrative market.with the demand curve flattening out in the developed world, multi national corporations are looking towards countries like india and china to move larger volumes.
also with htis consumerism quite a bit of dynamism has come into our economy.
the dark side is that in this process,we have developed a myopic outlook. contrary to what appears in the urban centres , large portions of our country are still reeling under abject poverty.
what is required in such a scenario is to seek out ways to let prosperity trickle down to the millions of poor. an ostrich like attitude at this juncture, regarding the state of our economy is going to create more social problems and will end up making the situation all the more volatile and choatic.

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