Globalized Indians
Globalization - Students and Changing Attitudes.
Throughout history it has been found that changes are ushered by the youth. And what better represents the youth of the day than the students. Students today are a community who are directly exposed to the means and also to the ends of “Globalization.” With the advent of new information technology, industrial production and liberalized world trade, drastic changes are happening around us and they have a multidimensional effect on the entire population as a whole and students in particular. The society is changing in different directions because of variations in local resources and local conditions brought in as effects of globalization. Globalization is not as new concept and the arrival of Aryans in India is also considered by many as globalization. Some others visualize the voyages of Columbus, Marco Polo and Vasco da Gama as steps towards globalization. In the early stages of history the agents of globalization were traders, preachers, adventurers and soldiers. However, in true economic terms the first phase of globalization may be considered to have started around 1850 after the industrial revolution that lead to colonization and along with the brought trade to different parts of the world. This phase of globalization had an untimely death in 1914 with the beginning of the First World War. The world war had divided the nations into closed groups that did not allow trade with outsiders. The modern phase of globalization started in 1989 with the GATT and WTO where nations tried to work out rules for governing the trade between the different nations, which however remained inconclusive and remains so even today. The government of India started a process of economic reforms around 1991 and that may be considered to be the initiation of globalization in India. These reforms resulted in the collapse of the license raj prevailing in India and opened India to global competition. Within a few years global players reached India and suddenly Indians had something that they had very little - choices. Suddenly Indians realized that the best of the world was gettable provided they could afford it. People started to think beyond Ambassador and Maruti and started looking at Opels and Fords. In came the cola giants – Coke and Pepsi. And the Indian brands Thumsup and Limca found themselves unprepared to face competition. They fizzled out from the market and later merged into the giants and in that way became global. The shoes became fashion statements and Bata had to compete with Nike, Reebok and Adidas. Clothes and apparels suddenly got classified as branded and non-branded. The tailored clothes got replaced by readymade garments. The tailors’ role reduced to making alterations to these readymade clothes. In this onslaught of globalization many Indian brands disappeared, some survived on merit and some survived by symbiosis. Between all that came the IT revolution. It made the people, especially the youth to think global. America was no longer ‘phoren’ (foreign) and UK was no longer ‘Bilayat.’ America was now only a flight away and UK was a distant second choice if one could not get to the States. Amidst this process somewhere a telecom revolution took place and everyone got stuck to their own ‘CELLS.’ Every person now got identified by numbers- cell no, make no, vehicle registration no, credit card no and….
When that entire process was going on, the students became a target group. The mercenaries in the advertisement firms recognized that the student community was the easiest to address. Students were open to new ideas, receptive and vulnerable to true/untrue claims. Moreover, students could be addressed in groups and they also provided a channel for easy transmission of ideas. So schools and colleges were turned into potential sources of customers. Students unknowingly fell into a trap of unending chain of supply and demand. They were supplied with all sorts of apparels and accessories and just when a student was up-to-date a new product was launched which created a new demands in the market. The students were attacked with a two pronged strategy. Firstly, products were created which had an immense demand among the students and children. Secondly, when a product could not be created then a demand was created by repackaging or modifying an existing item. In order to effectively market new products, advertisements targeted and used students and, particularly children as children’s desire are usually fulfilled by parents. In order to explain this concept we consider a few specific examples. To begin, we start with the youngest, the toddlers. A few years back, in the Indian context, with respect to infant hygiene only nappies existed and those were basically pieces of cloth stitched together by the grandmother. Infants grew up healthily and most people hardly knew anything about diapers. But thanks to aggressive advertising, nappies suddenly became a messy thing that had to be washed and dried and ironed and disinfected and something that caused nappy rashes and all sorts of serious infections. An infant was safe only if he/she was using a HUGGIES or a PAMPERS. On the other hand, advertisements also discretely reflected that those not using these diapers were backward, dirty and were lagging behind. Parents wanting to provide the best for their children dished out extra money to buy these disposable diapers at five times the cost of a cloth nappy. Similarly, a huge segment of products specifically for infants and children have been created which includes baby cream, baby oil, baby shampoo, baby soap, baby powder where again parents have to a lot more than the normal products.
The next target group was the primary school students. Simple items of every day use of this group of students got branded. Tooth brushes, dresses, tiffin boxes , water bottles, crayons, comics, health drinks, note books, toys – almost everything was advertised in television and everything got branded with Disney characters like Mickey and Donald. Two classic examples are the GI-JOE toys for boys and the Barbie dolls for girls. A girl’s collection of dolls is never complete if she does not possess a Barbie doll. Similarly, a boy’s collection of toys is incomplete without a few GI-JOEs. What impact does these war toys of GI-JOE or the sensuous image of Barbie has on these kids is a different question. Another common practice to attract this group of people is the concept of freebies. With almost every product targeted at this group an attractive free gift is offered. Frisbees with Complan, watches, tiffin boxes and water bottles with Horlicks, GI-JOES and Hot-Wheels with McDonalds and the list is unending. At times the freebies are a bigger attraction than the original product and the poor parents are compelled to buy these. In one particular case the kids bought Uncle Chips in order to collect the Pokemon cards given along with, and the poor parents ended up eating the chips. Moreover, with the advent of cartoons network and TV games, the children got detached from the playground. A common sight today is young people with high powered spectacles and frail looking physique with the mother always stuck behind like a protective guard, assistant or cheerleader.
The high schools students have been targeted differently. They are allured by chocolates, snacks, gizmos and trendy fashion accessories. Class note books have been branded and so have been pens and pencils. A student is classified as being computer savvy or not. Students do not erase their mistakes anymore; they either delete them or undo them. Similarly, a student’s intelligence among his peers is estimated by his skills in computer games.
As the students move out of the schools and go to the colleges he is suddenly given a lot of opportunities to explore. He is out of the cocoon created by the parents and closed gates of the school and is free to fly. He now goes to the shops without his parents and looks at everything in his own perspective. This new experience of looking at the products of globalization beautifully packaged in the shelves of sleek shops slowly turns the student himself into a product of globalization. The age old concept, that a college is a place of learning or, a temple of knowledge, has been replaced by the concept of “a great place to make friends” (remember advertisements of a famous private university). Most of the advertisements of the educational institutes today reflect more on the ambience, facilities, and infrastructure whereas less importance is given to studies. Internet and computer facilities invariably find a mention in these brochures but most brochures tell nothing about library and faculty. Many institutes in fact run without regular faculty employing only part-timers with microscopic salaries. Similarly, the scope of classroom studies has also changed over the period of time. The concept of a teacher has been changed to that of a disseminator of information. To elaborate on this aspect, a teacher now only suggests topics in the class and at most times provides notes. Information about a subject or topic is easily accessed through the internet. Only that part of the information that is more difficult to understand is made easier in the form of notes or sometimes explained by the teachers. The students depend more on private tuitions than on classroom teaching. Leaving aside the ethical aspects, it also demonstrates that the teaching profession itself has been commoditised. If a student does not like a particular teacher he changes him/her just as he would change his brand of cold drink or chips. This change in attitude of the students and to an extent, their parents have severely changed the education scenario. Colleges today are more important as centres of examination rather than centres of learning. Students therefore attend classes more for their attendance than anything else. But this mistrust and commoditisation of the education system has been done not only by the students but by the system itself. The system depends on curricula which at most times is absolutely boring to the students and at times obsolete. Moreover frequently leaks of question papers and manipulation of marks have still further reduced the credibility of the system. In most colleges of the north east, there is a shortage of seats at the plus two level whereas at the under-graduation level there is a surplus of seats. This peculiar situation is due to the intensive movement of students out of the north east to other parts of the country. Allured by the glitter of the big cities as seen in TV and the desire to earn more in order to procure more products of globalization, the students of north east move out in search of a better life. At times higher education is no more than an excuse for relocation. We frequently came across parents who proudly say that their wards were studying in Pune and Bangalore, but when asked about the exact nature of courses expressed that they were pursuing something to do with computers. The relocation factor has become so dominant that after the class 12th exams towns in north east are flocked by “higher education agents.” On the other hand places like Bangalore have become guardian-less cities. Young people, both students and first-time earners throng the streets in strange attires and with more strange behaviour, attire and attitudes. In their endeavour to look different and more Americanized, these young people try to refine and redefine themselves so that they are more and more associated with modernity aka globalization, for globalization is also defined as the “McDonaldization of the world” or as said by Dr Henry Kissinger, “What is called ‘globalization’ is really another name for the dominant role of the United States.”
Throughout history it has been found that changes are ushered by the youth. And what better represents the youth of the day than the students. Students today are a community who are directly exposed to the means and also to the ends of “Globalization.” With the advent of new information technology, industrial production and liberalized world trade, drastic changes are happening around us and they have a multidimensional effect on the entire population as a whole and students in particular. The society is changing in different directions because of variations in local resources and local conditions brought in as effects of globalization. Globalization is not as new concept and the arrival of Aryans in India is also considered by many as globalization. Some others visualize the voyages of Columbus, Marco Polo and Vasco da Gama as steps towards globalization. In the early stages of history the agents of globalization were traders, preachers, adventurers and soldiers. However, in true economic terms the first phase of globalization may be considered to have started around 1850 after the industrial revolution that lead to colonization and along with the brought trade to different parts of the world. This phase of globalization had an untimely death in 1914 with the beginning of the First World War. The world war had divided the nations into closed groups that did not allow trade with outsiders. The modern phase of globalization started in 1989 with the GATT and WTO where nations tried to work out rules for governing the trade between the different nations, which however remained inconclusive and remains so even today. The government of India started a process of economic reforms around 1991 and that may be considered to be the initiation of globalization in India. These reforms resulted in the collapse of the license raj prevailing in India and opened India to global competition. Within a few years global players reached India and suddenly Indians had something that they had very little - choices. Suddenly Indians realized that the best of the world was gettable provided they could afford it. People started to think beyond Ambassador and Maruti and started looking at Opels and Fords. In came the cola giants – Coke and Pepsi. And the Indian brands Thumsup and Limca found themselves unprepared to face competition. They fizzled out from the market and later merged into the giants and in that way became global. The shoes became fashion statements and Bata had to compete with Nike, Reebok and Adidas. Clothes and apparels suddenly got classified as branded and non-branded. The tailored clothes got replaced by readymade garments. The tailors’ role reduced to making alterations to these readymade clothes. In this onslaught of globalization many Indian brands disappeared, some survived on merit and some survived by symbiosis. Between all that came the IT revolution. It made the people, especially the youth to think global. America was no longer ‘phoren’ (foreign) and UK was no longer ‘Bilayat.’ America was now only a flight away and UK was a distant second choice if one could not get to the States. Amidst this process somewhere a telecom revolution took place and everyone got stuck to their own ‘CELLS.’ Every person now got identified by numbers- cell no, make no, vehicle registration no, credit card no and….
When that entire process was going on, the students became a target group. The mercenaries in the advertisement firms recognized that the student community was the easiest to address. Students were open to new ideas, receptive and vulnerable to true/untrue claims. Moreover, students could be addressed in groups and they also provided a channel for easy transmission of ideas. So schools and colleges were turned into potential sources of customers. Students unknowingly fell into a trap of unending chain of supply and demand. They were supplied with all sorts of apparels and accessories and just when a student was up-to-date a new product was launched which created a new demands in the market. The students were attacked with a two pronged strategy. Firstly, products were created which had an immense demand among the students and children. Secondly, when a product could not be created then a demand was created by repackaging or modifying an existing item. In order to effectively market new products, advertisements targeted and used students and, particularly children as children’s desire are usually fulfilled by parents. In order to explain this concept we consider a few specific examples. To begin, we start with the youngest, the toddlers. A few years back, in the Indian context, with respect to infant hygiene only nappies existed and those were basically pieces of cloth stitched together by the grandmother. Infants grew up healthily and most people hardly knew anything about diapers. But thanks to aggressive advertising, nappies suddenly became a messy thing that had to be washed and dried and ironed and disinfected and something that caused nappy rashes and all sorts of serious infections. An infant was safe only if he/she was using a HUGGIES or a PAMPERS. On the other hand, advertisements also discretely reflected that those not using these diapers were backward, dirty and were lagging behind. Parents wanting to provide the best for their children dished out extra money to buy these disposable diapers at five times the cost of a cloth nappy. Similarly, a huge segment of products specifically for infants and children have been created which includes baby cream, baby oil, baby shampoo, baby soap, baby powder where again parents have to a lot more than the normal products.
The next target group was the primary school students. Simple items of every day use of this group of students got branded. Tooth brushes, dresses, tiffin boxes , water bottles, crayons, comics, health drinks, note books, toys – almost everything was advertised in television and everything got branded with Disney characters like Mickey and Donald. Two classic examples are the GI-JOE toys for boys and the Barbie dolls for girls. A girl’s collection of dolls is never complete if she does not possess a Barbie doll. Similarly, a boy’s collection of toys is incomplete without a few GI-JOEs. What impact does these war toys of GI-JOE or the sensuous image of Barbie has on these kids is a different question. Another common practice to attract this group of people is the concept of freebies. With almost every product targeted at this group an attractive free gift is offered. Frisbees with Complan, watches, tiffin boxes and water bottles with Horlicks, GI-JOES and Hot-Wheels with McDonalds and the list is unending. At times the freebies are a bigger attraction than the original product and the poor parents are compelled to buy these. In one particular case the kids bought Uncle Chips in order to collect the Pokemon cards given along with, and the poor parents ended up eating the chips. Moreover, with the advent of cartoons network and TV games, the children got detached from the playground. A common sight today is young people with high powered spectacles and frail looking physique with the mother always stuck behind like a protective guard, assistant or cheerleader.
The high schools students have been targeted differently. They are allured by chocolates, snacks, gizmos and trendy fashion accessories. Class note books have been branded and so have been pens and pencils. A student is classified as being computer savvy or not. Students do not erase their mistakes anymore; they either delete them or undo them. Similarly, a student’s intelligence among his peers is estimated by his skills in computer games.
As the students move out of the schools and go to the colleges he is suddenly given a lot of opportunities to explore. He is out of the cocoon created by the parents and closed gates of the school and is free to fly. He now goes to the shops without his parents and looks at everything in his own perspective. This new experience of looking at the products of globalization beautifully packaged in the shelves of sleek shops slowly turns the student himself into a product of globalization. The age old concept, that a college is a place of learning or, a temple of knowledge, has been replaced by the concept of “a great place to make friends” (remember advertisements of a famous private university). Most of the advertisements of the educational institutes today reflect more on the ambience, facilities, and infrastructure whereas less importance is given to studies. Internet and computer facilities invariably find a mention in these brochures but most brochures tell nothing about library and faculty. Many institutes in fact run without regular faculty employing only part-timers with microscopic salaries. Similarly, the scope of classroom studies has also changed over the period of time. The concept of a teacher has been changed to that of a disseminator of information. To elaborate on this aspect, a teacher now only suggests topics in the class and at most times provides notes. Information about a subject or topic is easily accessed through the internet. Only that part of the information that is more difficult to understand is made easier in the form of notes or sometimes explained by the teachers. The students depend more on private tuitions than on classroom teaching. Leaving aside the ethical aspects, it also demonstrates that the teaching profession itself has been commoditised. If a student does not like a particular teacher he changes him/her just as he would change his brand of cold drink or chips. This change in attitude of the students and to an extent, their parents have severely changed the education scenario. Colleges today are more important as centres of examination rather than centres of learning. Students therefore attend classes more for their attendance than anything else. But this mistrust and commoditisation of the education system has been done not only by the students but by the system itself. The system depends on curricula which at most times is absolutely boring to the students and at times obsolete. Moreover frequently leaks of question papers and manipulation of marks have still further reduced the credibility of the system. In most colleges of the north east, there is a shortage of seats at the plus two level whereas at the under-graduation level there is a surplus of seats. This peculiar situation is due to the intensive movement of students out of the north east to other parts of the country. Allured by the glitter of the big cities as seen in TV and the desire to earn more in order to procure more products of globalization, the students of north east move out in search of a better life. At times higher education is no more than an excuse for relocation. We frequently came across parents who proudly say that their wards were studying in Pune and Bangalore, but when asked about the exact nature of courses expressed that they were pursuing something to do with computers. The relocation factor has become so dominant that after the class 12th exams towns in north east are flocked by “higher education agents.” On the other hand places like Bangalore have become guardian-less cities. Young people, both students and first-time earners throng the streets in strange attires and with more strange behaviour, attire and attitudes. In their endeavour to look different and more Americanized, these young people try to refine and redefine themselves so that they are more and more associated with modernity aka globalization, for globalization is also defined as the “McDonaldization of the world” or as said by Dr Henry Kissinger, “What is called ‘globalization’ is really another name for the dominant role of the United States.”
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