Looking Glass

Looking Glass
Amrita Shah

Old values and the Web czars

These days everybody seems to be making predictions about the future. And the common and definitive thread running through them all is the Net. Such technology-based forecasting has been rife in the West for a while but now India too seems to have gotten into the act. If common perception is to be relied upon then the way we live, love, earn, shop, communicate, govern, eat and be entertained all hinges on the computer.

I am wary of such assertions. For a variety of reasons. First, with a mere five lakh connections in the country we have some way to go before we can even begin to exploit the power of the Net. Second, claims about technology-led social change are usually exaggerated. Take any major invention of the past: Telephones? Airplanes? Essential, can't imagine life without them and yet there is life and a lot of it apart from them.

But I am quibbling. I am certain the Net is going to make a huge impact on our lives and the world as we know it. It's just notgoing to happen this afternoon. And yet all the attention focused on the Net and the computer industry has had an impact, a completely incidental impact, that might have more immediate ramifications on our society.

To explain I need to go back a couple of decades. Recently I fished out the India Today special issue on the `80s. `A Momentous Decade' as the magazine called it was said to have heralded a new era of economic dynamism. The stock markets were booming, industrial growth was up and even infrastructure was in robust shape. New entrepreneurs had emerged, the middle class was growing and the image that symbolised the times was of an urban landscape crawling with Maruti cars.

Ashok (Ash) and Babita (Babs) with one child, a TV set, car, cook n grill range and stereo system were a representative `80s middle class couple `living for today even if it was on credit.' Television had gone colour and viewers had been treated both to a measure of freedom (Janvani, Newsline, election specials) andentertainment (Hum Log, Tamas, Ramayana).

In the film world Amitabh Bachchan had been replaced by not one but many angry young men. But check out the images selected by the same magazine just ten years later and they have undergone a sea change. AIDS, the plague, mobile phones, a range of cars and consumer durables, go karting, amusement parks, discotheques, crime, designer drugs, teenage sex... Infrastructure has gone from `bad to worse', the environment is `on the brink', trains and airplanes have collided and defence expenditure has more than trebled.

Individualism is on the rise, the emergence of satellite television has created a breed of couch potatoes. And the overwhelming social preoccupation of the last decade is shown to be glamour -- beauty queens and beauty treatments. It is not as if the `80s did not have their problems. They did: it was the decade of separatism and the Delhi anti-Sikh riots. It was not as if the materialistic trends of the `80s did not evoke criticism: Rajiv Gandhi with hisDior sunglasses and Lacoste T shirts was perceived as the acme of conspicuous consumption.

And yet comparing the two decades the `90s emerges as one of crass excess and misplaced priorities. And falling values. Take the big scandals of the two decades, for instance. Bofors involving kickbacks of Rs. 64 crore resulted in electoral defeat for the Congress. The stock market scam of the `90s involved an amount of Rs. 5000 crore and Harshad Mehta still retained the admiration of many of his fans. It is tempting always to believe things have gotten worse but there is no getting away from the fact that the last few years indulgence has been glorified as never before.

How does the Net obsession fit into all this? I read a perceptive comment recently on how the Web/infotech czars were society's new icons. And how different they are from the industrialist/cricketer/film star/fashion designer/beauty queen that has been propped up by the media in recent times! They have glamour alright - enterprise, brains and lotsof dosh. But as pin up boys these earnest men with their laptops are more reminiscent of the bright boy in the middle class neighbourhood of the `70s who worked assiduously for years and got ahead, the kind that bar an occasional Rahul Dravid one doesn't get to see any more. They appear to be more interested in work than in a flashy lifestyle, don't display extravagance (Azim Premji's habit of travelling economy has been much commented on). They put money into development (Nandan Nilekani of Infosys and R.V. Jagdeesh made contributions recently towards the development of Bangalore) and talk about issues such as education. As role models these are very different from the pretty boys and girls we've had over the last few years. And their presence might, even before the Web revolution occurs, lead to a re-endorsement of some of the old values we seemed to have shed in the last decade.