Who is Justin BieberIJ Well, ask those who went to hear this western singer from different metros of the country all the way to Mumbai. And what did they get to hearIJ Justin lip-syncing or in other words simply moving his lips as the songs and music were played from behind like in a movie. But his many Indian fans still did not get dejected. At least, they could see the popular singer of Canada live, in flesh and blood. WhyIJ Don’t ask the reason. This is what brand does. And rightly do they say, the marketers, that build a brand and sell trash. This is what is being done by the marketing gurus of the developed world for whom India is nothing but an enormously huge market to sell almost anything and everything. It all started in the late 50s. The time when the so-called developed countries found their domestic markets getting saturated. The developing or the under-developed countries, the nomenclature does not matter, were considered as markets to sell, rather dump, their products. But for this they needed to create the market, some kind of a readiness first. So they began their exports with Hollywood, the films which would create a class that willy-nilly would become the brand ambassadors of the developed West. What Hollywood was doing was dishing out western culture, western values, and western ideas as modern, trendy, developed notions of life. The fact that the West was the reference group came handy and the subliminal or latent marketing slowly started working. An elite group gradually began to be created who would swear by the likes of Richard Burtons, Clint Eastwoods, and Gregory Pecks. With Bollywood looking to Hollywood as the benchmark, the size of western admirers started swelling. Our own Dilip Kumars, Dev Anands and Raj Kapoors became poor country cousins of these Hollywood stars. To strengthen western values, the infiltration of those many schools in the name of many western saints in backward regions of the country paved the way further. This created an elite young class that would swear by western values and read Harold Robins, Nick Carter and Alistair Maclean, while their Indian counterparts would be satisfied with Gulshan Nanda or Ibney Safi. For the young girls, the preferred literature was Mills and Boon to understand the soft emotions of the West and emulate. This systematically created an Indian class whose size only grew and a fertile ground was being cultivated to reap rich harvest. It is only an extension of that past much accelerated with the advent of social media tools like WhatsApp and Facebook afflicting the kids, the youth and even the old to the point of addiction. What more to expectIJ Rightly do we find that Temple Run and Subway Surfers occupying the prime time of the young children as gaming apps. It is no longer the era of political imperialism. And where is the needIJ Cultural imperialism subjugates much more. Macaulay must be rejoicing in his grave. As Indians, young and old, take on to gaming, our country — that once used to be known for its knowledge — is gradually turning thought-deficient. As we succumb to the marketing blitzkrieg and get dominated by the western ideas, ideals and idols, Indianness and originality gradually evaporate into thin air. For those hippies and yuppies, we have our own WhatsApp geeks.
The writer is a professor of management and public Speaker,he can be reached at ppathak.ism@gmail.com