Great Indian Hustle?

How important are brands and their re-call for you? I did not consider it till the other day that Brands are like people within your homes. The well behaved ones merge seamlessly within the household setting bringing back better top of the mind recall. The problematic ones linger in memory as mistakes or the ones that you fell for with dire consequences. I recently brought the second “Samsung” in my house. The first one a TV has been a work horse, patiently taking in the rigors of movement from Trivandrum to Pune to Chennai. The second one is an Air-conditioner. On hindsight, what reaffirmed my decision to go for this particular AC brand (besides the aggressive pitch of the salesperson, who probably knew as much about air conditioning as me), was the good that I associated with this person called Samsung, a mute spectator who has jovially switched off and on to my commands and catered to all my television centric whims and fancies without a trip to the service center or a call to its call center. When I go shopping for a DVD tomorrow, the shiny flat thing with Samsung written on it will shine brighter than other brands on the shelf.

How does good experience foster brand loyalty? The concept is simple, yet there are thousands of companies, spending billions of dollars in advertising revenue without understanding this simple truth. Take the example of Reliance. I had an allergy for this business group. But then Reliance is what it is, all encompassing and inevitable. I realized this when in my last job, the company offered an official Mobile connection from Reliance. I asked if their were other options. They said no. So I ended up being a Reliance user despite my reservations. To compound matters we also took a Reliance WLL phone at home (that one-number-talk-time-free-carrot did me in). The corporate service was functional, anyway I was not at the receiving end, my company was. On the personal connection side, the sales guy duped us (apparently) by asking for a deposit of Rs. 1,000/-, which was not reported in their books. As usual getting the deposit back was a nightmare and we still haven’t got it. Then the experience of going to pay bills to a Reliance Shop was another nightmare. The Reliance world shop was like a fish market. The guys manning the helpdesks were a verbally abused lot. Customers were furious for being over-charged, their connections being cut, their bills not being posted, the general service and attitude of the service staff and what not. Since the bills were shooting through the roof, we decided to switch to BSNL. Letting a client go is an art, and the interpretation from Reliance’s side of this art was to have their manager talk to me and throw some discounts at me, when the basic reason why I wanted to leave was the loaded perception that “you guys have cheated me”. Now who in the world likes to be cheated? “Being conned” is a very infuriating feeling, because i have to admit implicitly to myself that I was foolish enough to let that happen. Tell me, which discount will address this grievance. The postscript of the story is that when I “switched” the bills came down by 50%.

When we moved to Chennai, we decided to go TATA. Now TATA is an institution known for its steadfastness and values driven way of doing business. We ordered two offerings from them, the DTH service and the internet service. The internet service does not work for 12hours in the evening, although the scheme that I subscribed for is “Un-interrupted broadband connection”. What is worse they waived off the installation charges when I shelled out 4 months of payment in advance for the connection. Now I want to opt out, but they promise to fix the matter time and again to no avail. The DTH service was another scam that I gleefully walked into, once again. They offered 4 months of free service if I booked on that particular day through a credit card online. I did it, and am yet to receive the DTH box, or any call back from them despite it being more than a week since the booking was done. I called up their call center today, and the manager lady their amidst profuse apologies politely tells me that it actually takes a couple of weeks to deliver the box, and that the sales guy who spoke to me had mis-guided me. What a manager!

I stand on the rooftop and yell to the service providers in the India of today, “Here I am the average gullible, keep it simple, non-intrusive customer who will pay for anything though my nose, if you show value and get me hooked by the quality of the recall…..” there seems to be no takers……Scams are all about doing the “one trick pony” thingi multiple times with different people within a specified period of time before the word spreads out and you are put to task by the market……….I am wondering “Is this the great Indian Hustle?”.

India Poised......for me??

I am baffled. At work, I articulate and represent an India that is taking leadership positions in the technology world. Indeed, I run that spiel with my clients everyday. Innovation hub, highly qualified engineering talent, strong legal and institutional and social framework and a supporting political establishment. The message to the “client” is, that this is a growth story that will go on….and on and on.

I come back home and switch on NDTV and I see gruesome black bags of bones surgically separated from 3-12 year old bodies by an ex-Stephanian and his servant. The police and the NGO’s did a fig about reported violations from the accused. Then I read about the killing of a person who stole a hammer from a scrap shop. The man was desperate to save his one kidneyed daughters life. After beating him up in a gruesome manner, the scrap shop dealer and his colleagues raped the mans wife brutally, came back and killed him. I switch to other channels and they are still showing those plastic bags, another set of bones were found. Then there are struggles related to massive farm land acquisition under the guise of SEZs. Industry making inroads into rural India? Or is India Inc. up for sale?

Why do I have this sinking feeling in my heart despite all the “India Poised” sloganeering. One would ask, what have these isolated crime incidents got to do with the India growth story? Dig deeper and you will find that rural India is paying a heavy price for sustaining our in-equitable foreign investments and billings funded growth story. The so called India urban growth story has built a whole unorganized cartel of service providers who need to build up the growth story, to assure the urban consumers that all is well and will continue to be well into the future. Builders turned property Don’s, Industrialists turned Retail chain shahenshah's, Power Brokers turned Politicians and vice versa and right at the bottom of the food chain is the hapless urban consumer, whose only job is to spend, spend and spend, to sustain this ecosystem. And as long as the dollar billings happen, youngsters will get jobs, they would want to buy homes, they would want to party well and eat well. Where does this ecosystem encroach upon, then? The great rural landscape of India. The rural India that is already crumbling at the impact of urban transformation. The young men in villages have long migrated to cities. Agricultural yields are on a down ward spiral. Debt’s are heavy, leading to suicides that invariably leave families with kids and women to bear the burden of survival for the rest of their lives. To this environment walks in our cartel, armed with ready made growth plans, projects, FII's and a promise of eternal prosperity. State Government conveniently looks the other way, as it lets the farmer negotiate with the corporate, the sale of his agricultural land. That is be some equitable negotiation, isn't it? The average farmer does not know mutual funds, not does he have a financial consultant to advice him how to spend his new found fortune. He takes up the modest way to the local toddy shop and drowns his troubles there. When the money is over, he hits the cities, doing odd jobs, or simply ends his life. This could be an illusory account, but as we all know, not far from truth.

Yes, India is poised, for me, because i can get impossible salaries simply because others are getting it (hope my employer is not reading this post). India is poised for me because I can buy a new apartment every 10 years and change my car every 5 years. India is poised for me, because I can take my family for a vacation abroad. India is poised for me because I have the liberty to ideate, think about the future and keep this blog updated (sic!). But guess what, the “India Poised” story does not just end with me.

Parents from Nithari Village who have lost their children, wife of the scrap worker, the nameless debt ridden farmer who is contemplating the noose in Nagpur, the clueless land owner who is negotiating his SEZ designated land holding with a snazzy corporate babu, the tsunami effected family where the woman has to sell off her kidney to keep the home fires burning. India is all but “poised” for them after all; the only difference is that they do not have wings to fly, and they have to take the leap with me.