People Versus Privilegentsia: Feudal India declines as common man rises

A few days ago, when I was standing in line at an airline counter, I was rudely shoved aside by two men checking in an absentee dignitary. Not wishing to make a scene, I urged the flight attendant to intervene. Amazingly, she told them to queue up. In that simple statement, she challenged the feudal culture of privilege that has sapped this nation''s spirit for five decades.

 
In the event, the grandee in question sat right next to me in the aircraft. I complained to him about the run-in with his staff members. He took umbrage and curtly told me that his busy schedule necessitated that he is checked in. I was taken aback that he seemed to be justifying the discourteous behaviour of his staffers.

 

To my mind, the attendant at the airline counter deserved a medal for egalitarian behaviour. It reinforced my growing belief that India is finally getting rid of the privilegentsia raj.

 

The privilegentsia is an outgrowth of the state-centric model of governance that India pursued for most of its life as an independent country. It refers to the clutch of bureaucrats, politicians and academicians who ruled over the fate of millions of decent, hard-working people. It was a curious perversion of democracy that the people, who as voters should have held their rulers accountable, were instead held in thrall by this ruthless clique.

 

The privilegentsia has been part of my consciousness since I was 13. I remember going to a popular movie with a friend, only to find that the show was sold out and ticket counters closed. A tout came up to us and offered us tickets at twice the price. We looked at each other and decided on the spot to pay the scalper''s rate.

 

My friend''s father, a senior official in the state government, found out about it and admonished us for encouraging the black market. He was very clear: "You should have called my office and we would have phoned the manager to get you tickets. Plus you would have been given complimentary passes", he said.

 

Even at that tender age, I wrestled with the proposition: Free tickets through influence or scalped ones from the black market. I concluded that both options were equally dubious. Since then I began to question the system in which the choice was between influence and black money. In those days, if you had no influence or money, you had to stand in line for a Friday release with a red-haired Pathan bouncer to contend with.

 

Influence peddling and kickbacks were par for the course in the India of old. Either you paid extra cash or used influence. The ability to get things done without black payment was a mark of a person''s social status. Growing up in the miasma of the privilegentsia raj, I could do no more than accept it in a sullen manner. When it got too much, I took the middle-class way out: I moved to the United States, not just to enrol in a graduate programme but really to make a dignified living.

 

Today, things have changed dramatically. To go back to my movie example, touts have become irrelevant and so have free passes for the privilegentsia. With multiplexes springing up in every neighbourhood, no 13-year-old has to deal with the problem I faced. The explosion of choice has challenged both the black market and the privilegentsia raj. I remain convinced that the privilegentsia raj, for all its ideological posturing, is a bigger blot on public life than the black market.

 

Over the years, the government''s emphasis has been on poverty and, lately, on religion and caste. But the common man cuts across all considerations of class, religion and caste. He is not necessarily poor; he may be religious and caste-bound but, above all, he is a citizen seeking to lead a dignified life that the privilegentsia and its handmaiden, the black economy, have denied him all these years.

Today, it is more difficult for politicians and bureaucrats to lord it over the general population. For the last 50 years, they have managed to sell the misbegotten notion that they are taking from the rich to give to the poor. Despite all that Robin Hood posturing, governments have sucked up to the rich and hoodwinked the poor. It worked okay when there were a handful of rich people and the vast majority was poor. Today, both poor and rich are on the fringes of mainstream society. An explosive growth of the middle class has put the privilegentsia on notice.

 

As the UPA government celebrates its first year in office, I believe that a part of any success it hopes to achieve will be traced to people like the woman at the airline check-in counter, who showed the VIP''s flunkies their place. Her act should be honoured with a fanfare for the common man.

(An edited version of this post will appear in http://http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com, May 11, 2005.)

A useful article on Public Relations - Hindustan Times

What strikes me about this debate is that in the battle of two giants, Hindustan Times and The Times of India, not only have the fundamentals of journalism been challenged but also another less-understood but nevertheless legitimate business-like public relations has been trashed. One of the contributors calls public relations a “cheaper alternative” to advertising. Just how wrong this perception is should become plain from the following:

After living in the United States for two decades, studying, teaching and practising journalism, I returned to India to set up IPAN in the late Eighties. One of our early clients was Citibank. Before the launch of their credit cards, a senior executive presented me a fact sheet that detailed the advantages of owning and using a credit card. “We need this to appear on the front-page of every business daily and the business sections of every general interest newspaper,” he told me. The Citibank offering was the first serious attempt to create a credit card business in India.
Somewhat stunned by his demand, I told him he was better off asking an advertising agency to buy space in newspapers and magazines. “We are in the news business,” I told him and explained that to make it to the front pages, we need to make front-page news.

Together, we worked out that the early users would be people who travel abroad and have experienced the credit card culture. I told him that the media would take note if Citibank could persuade Indian customs to accept credit cards in lieu of cash duty payments and if they could convince the Airports Authority to create special lounges for credit card holders in various airports. We further agreed that car owners were another target group and if Citibank could get petrol pumps to accept credit cards, it would further business prospects.

Citibank did all these things and made big news.

This was in 1990 and the rest is history. Car loans, ATMs and various other consumer financial services followed. It was the first ever instance where ordinary people, who had been beaten up by the nationalized banks, were actually empowered. In the wake of Citibank’s success, there was a boom in the automobile and the consumer durables industries — at first in the metros but rapidly in the hinterland.

That year too, a bright young executive from Hong Kong came to see me and asked if I could help him fulfill his mission. He said he represented a company called Satellite Television Asia Region (STAR) and his company’s plan was to beam television programs into India via satellite. He asked for our help in identifying potential cable operators who could transmit the signal to viewers.

We went to work and in six months STAR TV was up and running. The operation ran into all sorts of problems as the government tried to put spokes in the wheel. In the end, because it was a huge business opportunity for the cable operators and a source of entertainment and information for viewers and because we undertook a high-profile advocacy campaign on its behalf, STAR TV survived and thrived and changed the face of television in India.

In 1992, the Indian Soaps and Toiletries Manufacturers Association (ISTMA) approached my firm for help in reducing the prohibitive 120 per cent excise duty on their products. Since 1978, when the duty was first imposed, they had tried in vain to get it reduced. They had used the standard approach of advertising and lobbying.

We persuaded them to use the advocacy approach that targeted editorial space in the media. They agreed and, to cut a long story short, they succeeded. The 1993 budget reduced the duty and subsequent budgets reduced the levy even more. The boom in the business is for all to see including the fact that the industry had enough disposable income to fund India’s hugely successful foray into the Miss World and Miss Universe contests and its support of the surging fashion industry in India.

There are plenty of other stories to tell about the role of public relations in the resurgence of hope in India. Our work with Pepsi not only ensured competition in the soft drinks business but it fueled the boom in cricket. Thanks to ITC, we played a seminal role in the emergence of golf as a popular sport. Also as PR counsel to DHL, we were part of the growth of the courier business in India. We helped PVR popularize multiplex cinema in India.

Equally, we spread the word about the Internet on behalf of Cisco, the productivity of personal computers with Microsoft or the use of computers in schools through the work we did with Intel.

The entry of fixers and ‘suits’ (faux management types) into the public relations business has subverted its original advocacy role. Instead of being advocates in the court of public opinion, many of today’s practitioners operate on the margins of the great media circus. Their antics neither inform nor entertain. These poorly educated men and women “work in PR because they are outgoing and like to meet people”. They believe PR is about knowing newspersons rather than what’s news.

Over the years, thus, PR has become transformed into a commodity offering, which is why perhaps there is this debate. Increasingly, PR companies sell access to the media as their raison d’etre. I believe that this was why some media companies have responded with rates on editorial coverage. It is time for sensible journalists and public relations people to put their heads together to save both their professions from being crucified on a cross of gold.

(An edited version of this post will appear in Hindustan Times, February 2003.)