Media entrepreneurs have other worries. Even though trained mediapersons are in short supply, they can still be hired for next-no-nothing, such is the pull of the television screen. Marketing professionals, however, belong to a different breed. Unless they get an attractive compensation package, they would go back to peddling noodles, beer, cigarettes and fly-by-night financial schemes or begin running donor-funded private NGOs.
With costs galloping and advertising revenue in decline, managers of television stations have been forced to cut corners on small things. Rough flooring, frayed curtains and tightly-monitored transport are common features of private studios. The embarrassment of riches in broadcasting is apparently fraught with concerns more pressing than unfettered freedom of expression.
During stage preparation in the studio of a private channel sometime ago, the host of the program was apologetic about quality of the conversation desk. In an off-hand manner, he mentioned that even an upmarket dining table cost more than 75,000 rupees. He clarified that he was talking about imported steel-and-glass furniture, not the intricately-carved wooden artworks that decorate the living rooms of the rich.
The anomaly of spending nearly 100,000 rupees for a dining table in a society that ate its meals by hand while sitting on straw mats in the kitchen until quite recently is striking. A bamboo-and-thatch house for a family in Tarai or a stone-and-mud dwelling in the hills and mountains probably costs less. The consuming classes of Nepal have reasons to feel unsafe, live as they do in an urban island of prosperity amidst the roaring sea of rural poverty.
It is not for the welfare of the poor but for their own survival that the media and society needs to correct its ways and learn to appreciate that the top of the pyramid in a stagnant economy is a shaky place.
CONSPICUOUS CONSUMPTIONThe Ministry of Finance has persuaded the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to lend it US$ 42.05 million. Ostensibly, the loan is meant to ease balance of payment deficit. That’s just a jargon for transferring the cost of living beyond the means of country’s economy to future generations. The fund, however, will meet merely a fraction of total import bills. With ballooning consumption and shrinking production, the proceeds from what Nepal exports is barely enough to pay for import of petroleum products.
Caught in the quicksand of rampant consumerism, the challenge of keeping the country out of the debt trap is not going to be easy in the coming days. Perhaps Maoist Supremo Pushpa Kamal Dahal was correct in assessing that the street protests following May Day rallies were mere precursors of the tsunami to ensue if undeserved privileges of the elite, gross inequality in society and the blatant self-interest of the aspiring classes are not checked by proactive and pro-poor economic policies.
Envy is the motive force of conspicuous consumption. A connoisseur wants a bigger car and a smaller laptop, a larger house and a tinier cellphone, and more powerful air-conditioner but power-saver lighting system in a bid to impress others rather than to satisfy his own desires. Adam Smith, the patron saint of capitalism, never married, and was unaware of the pressures that in-laws can create to pursue material possessions. When life revolved around basic needs and small pleasures of everyday life, the butcher, the brewer or the baker could function out of self-interest quite well in cooperation. But what does a 10 million rupee SUV-owner in Kathmandu have to do with the survival needs of a cowherd in rural Kailali?
It can be argued that the taxes received from car imports have the potential of being ploughed into animal husbandry programs. That is such a circuitous route of channeling resources into public welfare that its benefits are almost invisible. In any case, the logic of having nearly a dozen private airlines and thousands of for-profit bus operators in a country that doesn’t have a single public transport system save Janakpur Railways is hard to explain even to economists let alone a layman.
It’s not just the urban-rural divide of consumer economy that has sown seeds of envy and jealousy. The lot of the urban poor is hardly better. The contradictions between pot-holed roads and palatial buildings, posh restaurants and putrid hospitals and shiny shopping malls and gloomy government offices are so obvious that only the comfortable classes can refuse to see that all it needs to blow is a demagogue willing to lit the fuse for the explosion of unmet expectations.
GREATER GOOD
In the creed of greed is good, there is no place for self-restraint and the unfashionable notion of living within one’s own means. Borrowing has lost the stigma once attached to it and loans are often sought to acquire the second car or even a diamond-studded jewelry set. It would be futile to wage a war against what amounts to nothing less than opiate of the consuming classes. The redemption has to be sought in altering the perception of good life.
Politicos look good in their starched laweda-suruwals matched with designer jackets and imported shoes. Kamij-Suruwal stitched out of rough cotton would probably send a stronger message of self-reliance. The Bhadgaunle or Dhaka topi can stay. It may be cheaper to import fine cotton, but local weave is an honor that has been denied to Nepali artisans since generations.
Nobody except the concerned trader benefited from NRs 150,000 bed that was reportedly imported for the comfort of hard-working dignitaries of the country. An ordinary piece of wooden furniture creates jobs down the line for carpenter, labor, logger and the farmer utilizing marginal land for sisam plantation. It all may sound silly to those whose idea of having a good time is enjoying Brazilian chicken, fried in imported fat and dipped in expensive sauce, at a fancy joint and then taking a stroll at the nearby shopping mall. But every single job created for the poor is a step towards prolonging their own privileges. The notion of greater good (The benefit of the public) is not just socially desirable, but also an economically sound political proposition.
The media too needs to rethink its role in a society where there are more television channels than universities and more casinos than academies of arts and literature. The relationship between media and society is said to be a two-way street where each affect the other in mutually-reinforcing manner. Polarities held in balance by opposing tensions of aspirations of the poor and limitations of the economy have begun to sag. Portrayal of highlife as the desirable life is adding to the mounting frustrations of the masses. It is not for the welfare of the poor but for their own survival that the media and society needs to correct its ways and learn to appreciate that the top of the pyramid in a stagnant economy is a shaky place.
cklal@hotmail.com