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by Alladi Venkatesh
 Not a day passes without
a newspaper or a magazine devoting its pages to the developments
in India and China. In world affairs, size seems to matter.
Both countries have a population in excess of one billion,
and together they make up close to one-third of the world’s
humanity. In comparison, the entire population of Europe is
300+ million, a little over the size of the U.S. India and
China are like two giants waking up from a deep slumber while
the rest of the world watches with awe and amusement.
On my last trip to India, I witnessed evidence of the ripples
of change caused by this colossal awakening. First is the
diffusion of IT into many sectors of the Indian economy and
society. Second are the changing lifestyles of the younger
generation, those from ages 18 to 29, who are driving much
of this transformation and, in the process, threatening cultural
norms and changing them for good.
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Café Coffee Day - Indian Version
of Starbucks
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What is known throughout the world is how the software industry
in India has burgeoned and how the country has become an ideal
site for off-shoring practices. What is less known is the
impact of the IT diffusion on the Indian middle class, a population
of approximately 350 million people who are at the vanguard
of the emerging information and consumer economy. For instance,
I was impressed with the information and communication revolution
that is taking place at the household/consumer/citizen level.
While every household may not have a PC (many in the urban
areas do), there is no question that the mobile telephony
is spreading like wild fire. For example, in the city of Chennai
(formerly Madras), every commercial taxi has a mobile phone,
not just a
telephone that connects the driver to his employer, but a
dialing device that links up with the customer. If a family
wants something repaired in their home, they can contact the
repair man via a cell phone as many households do not have
a land phone and don’t see the need to own one. If you
are hungry and too tired to cook, you guessed it, the cell
phone connects you to the pizza service (pizza, Indian style,
of course). Parents and children are constantly in touch as
they are in the U.S. (The children don’t necessarily
like it, they would rather be cavorting with their peers.)
All social networking is done using the cell phone.
In addition, people in India seem to be more adept in using
mobile devices than I have found in the U.S., where the mobile
phone is largely used for two-way communication. The average
Indian consumer uses more features on the cell phone. In fact,
the very first encounter of many Indians with the Internet
is via the mobile phone. When I visited a family in Hyderabad,
one of the younger members of the family in her late teens
was downloading pictures onto the family TV – photos
that she had taken using her mobile phone during a holiday
visit to a distant city. There was no digital camera, just
the handy little phone. What was remarkable about this event
was that there were about twenty members of the extended family
gathered around the photo show while the young woman was explaining
the sites she had visited and the people she had seen. There
was not a single PC in sight in the home; all she needed was
a mobile phone and a television set.
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Socializing youth in Café Coffee
Day
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It is the urban youth who are at the center of such changes,
which are occurring with great speed. I am referring to young
people between the ages of 18 and 29, but what I say is also
applicable to pre-teens and the 30+ crowd. First, the degree
of self-confidence and general knowledge displayed by this
group is most impressive. They seem to be very conscious of
the changes in the country and the role they are playing in
this process. Sure, they look to the West and especially the
U.S. for various signals, but this is not so much in deference
as to be kept informed about the happenings in the rest of
the world. I saw how much their social world is changing when
a young woman (a Hindu) told me that she met her fiancé
(a Roman Catholic) over the Internet. This would have been
unthinkable just a few years ago in traditional India. And,
when they are not indulging in the mobile electronic culture,
young people are meeting in coffee shops, discotheques and
bars (especially in cities like Bangalore). There are even
Indian versions of Starbucks – who better watch out
– that have sprung up in major cities. Café Coffee
Day, started hardly three years ago by a young entrepreneur
and coffee lover, has 500 branches all over the country and
is expanding. What is incredible about all this is that these
social venues are targeted specifically to the younger generation.
They are now seen as the market to capture.
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Where tradition meets modernity
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Finally, to illustrate the developments in India, let me
conclude with a sight that I will never forget and had the
good fortune to photograph. On the street where my immediate
family lives, every Friday, a sacred elephant slowly struts
by. It is guided by a mahout and blesses families by gently
lifting its trunk to accept bananas and other fruit from the
blessed ones. The elephant’s visit is considered very
auspicious, especially by those who have infants and children.
As I was watching this sight, I saw an elephant exiting through
the gate of a house while an automobile was entering. This
struck me as an ideal metaphor for how tradition meets modernity
at the liminal frontier of the domestic and community space.
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