A suicide mission or an intention to demotratize fashion? A deep-dive into Sabyasachi Kolkata x H&M collaboration

 

What happens when a fast-fashion company collaborates with an Indian couture fashion designer to woo the millennial market across India to climb up the retail ladder? In terms of absolute numbers, at 426 million, 36 per cent of India's population comprises of millennials which is much higher than USA and China. So, obviously, for retailers, the Indian millennial appears to be a drool-worthy cohort to target.

Has such collab taken place earlier in India? Well yes, in 2005-6, Manish Arora’s brand Fish Fry collaborated with Reebok to create limited-edition footwear. Though I have no clue whether this collab helped Reebok to increase sales (and vice versa) but we all know that Reebok is not H&M and Limited Edition is a different ball game than retail mass market! However, I am more concerned about Sabya or Pepsi (we used to fondly call him at college) aka Sabyasachi than H&M. H&M (in the fiscal year 2020, global net sales of the H&M Group amounted to about 20.2 billion U.S. dollars) has nothing to lose in India, at this moment. Being a 2.76B conglomerate worldwide and targeting India for Rs 2,000 crore in turnover from India (BS 2020) what they have to lose if this collab fails?

 In other side, with a net worth of Rs. 109 Crores and a popular TV show called Band Baaza Bride (many episodes are almost rags to riches stories presented as bridal dream), Sabyasachi successfully built the desire among Indian millennial to wear his creations during their wedding. The spending in wedding across India is super-big. As mentioned in the Firstpost, the Indian wedding industry, estimated to be worth $50 billion (by a KPMG report in 2017), will reach 35 percent of pre-COVID 19 levels in 2021. We all know that the idea of ‘eventful gala shadi (Indian wedding)’ has been fed to the mind of every girl child in India for centuries. In India, the marriage is not only an occasion for two individuals to unite but also an occasion (which has become a good example for my lectures on conspicuous consumption theory) where most of the families splurge to exhibit their social status. This is where Sabya got his niche, like many other Indian designers who survives over the shaadi season. However strategically, he has been able to spread his cloths to all other occasions, celebrated in India. Sabya is also very good to map the millennial mind-set and remains active in instragram with worthwhile causes/ issues to exhibit his support through collections / shoots (ie. plus size model, gender inclusive garments etc.). Though he did his share of insta-mistakes and in one post he stated that ‘overdressed’ women are emotionally wounded, which outraged the netzines. But he was quick to float an unconditional apology. So, Sabya has a love-hate-love relationship with millennial gen not only for his clothing but also the statements. But till date, Sabyasachi kept himself confined in niche luxury market. Though, last year we applauded him for his collaboration with Citta organization to create beautiful school uniforms for the underprivileged students of Rajkumari Ratnavati Girls school in Jaisalmer.

We all know that collab is not new for Sabya. In 2017 Sabyasachi, Kolkata collaborated with Christian Louboutin, Paris (famous footwear couturier) to present an exclusive, ultra-limited edition capsule collection for women and men. Exclusive sari fabrics of Sabyasachi were reinvented through classic Christian Louboutin styles for this luxury collection. L’Oreal Paris had an exclusive range of lipsticks with colors selected by Sabyasachi. Bombay Dyeing collaborated with him to launch a range of bed spreads. One can easily observe that he collabs are not only in one tangent but there is no pattern in it! Right from footwear, lipsticks to bedspreads! Then why am I concerned with his Collaboration with H&M?

Let me tell you two case studies. One is of Diane von Furstenberg. As per Harverd Business Review Diane von Furstenberg created the multifunctional wrap dress in 1972,which captured the imagination—and the pocketbooks—of a generation. By 1976, she had sold more than five million of her designs and was hailed by Newsweek as “the most marketable woman in fashion since Coco Chanel.” Von Furstenberg didn’t stop there: She developed a line of beauty products and fragrances and stamped her name on everything from luggage to eyewear to jeans to books. The strategy worked at first. Von Furstenberg’s premium name generated high margins for every product it adorned, regardless of the category. But a few years into this heady growth, the brand lost momentum. Revenues and profits plummeted, and, ultimately, von Furstenberg had to sell her design and cosmetics houses to pay off debts. Another case is of Pierre Cardin. HBR stated that the brand’s early extensions into perfumes and cosmetics in the 1960s succeeded so well that the company began to sell licenses indiscriminately. By 1988, it had granted more than 800 licenses in 94 countries, generating a $1 billion annual revenue stream—and profits plummeted. It wasn’t until the Pierre Cardin name started appearing on wildly nonadjacent products such as baseball caps and cigarettes that margins collapsed. Initially, the brand extensions into the perfumes and cosmetics categories were successful because the premium degree of the Pierre Cardin brand transferred undiminished into the new, adjacent categories. Though, the fashion critics call these expansion and ‘beautiful failures’ as Cardin’s motivation to democratize fashion, but Mergen Reddy and Nic Terblanche strongly put forth their opinion in Harvard Business Review in 2005 that ‘Luxury brands better not extend’ to keep their exclusivity alive.

In a truly diversified pluralistic nation like India, democracy is a romantic idea but not in the space of lux. According to my Theory of Adopted Differentiation (2006) I have stated how the urban In’glo’dian youth segment continuously adapts to various sophisticated, complicated yet cool look and attitude to differentiate themselves from the mass. This cohort not only continues to differentiate themselves through fashion but also through various gadgets, social media platforms and communication tools. The brands don’t understand that all the youth in this country doesn’t belong to same psychographic segment and there are multiple examples of failures when they tried to democratise the product. Very good example is Orkut, a social media which was popular at a time and the moment it strated to get crowded with ‘locale’, the in’glo’dians left it. This is happening with facebook too. The fall of Blackberry also can be credited to their greed to democratise the product by offering an affordable BB. The failure of historic car Nano (from tata Motors) can also be attributed to the same. In the year 2009 I have predicted that Nano will have a downfall cause Mr. Rata Tata tried to democratize the automatable market with a statement where he stated that Nano will replace all two wheelers with four wheelers! Unfortunately, he failed to understand that automobile is not a consumer good (unlike a two wheeler) in India but an item of ‘desire’ and luxury. One climbs up the social ladder by buying a car. I can envision that Sabyasachi is also heading towards the same disaster through this kind of collaborations. He failed to understand that H&M is not a luxury brand but a rapidly saturating retail business entity. A survey conducted between mid-September and mid-October 2019 (as YouGov-Mint Millennial Survey) shows that Indian millennials are much more likely to purchase high-value assets compared to either pre-millennials or post-millennials in the coming years. Among millennials, it is the richer lot who are more likely to make high-value purchases or buy consumer durable. So, obviously, the richer millennials will look for better and more distinct luxury products/ brands, which will differentiate them from the not-so-rich cohorts.

However, the Pierre Cardin syndrome is very common among many designers who want to ‘reach further and expand’, and finally fall. In India, the moment Sabya becomes accessible to all through H&M, the In’glo’dians will drop out from his palate. Yes, as the result shows, there will be a visible ‘great leap’ initially in sale and ‘all products will be sold within minutes’ but that is how every other fall started! Because, the mass retail not only kills the flavour of the brand but also the quality of products, which is suicidal for a couture brand. The extension and collaboration will work if he remains in his segment (luxury and couture).

Though, I must add that ‘Sabyasachi, Kolkata’ brand doesn’t belong to Sabyasachi anymore as the decision-making porwer being bestowed to Aditya Birla Fashion (a retail brand in India) as it bought 51% stake in luxury designer brand Sabyasachi for Rs 398 crore. So, I wonder whether Sabya already planned his exit from fashion business and hence never bothered for critical deep thinking about the impact of collabs on the way.

(first published at INgene: http://ingene.blogspot.com/2021/08/a-suicide-mission-or-intention-to.html) Copyright to Dr. Kaustav SenGupta

*Note: there was a fatal mistake of mentioning M&S rather than H&M. Must thanks Dr. Shalini to indicate that. Humbled.

Why fashion forecasting agencies are not successful in developing India-centric forecast

India (the largest democracy of the world) is forecasted to overtake China as the most populous country within a decade (by 2027), according to a United Nations report. China and India combined currently account for 38 per cent of the world’s population, with 1.43 billion and 1.37 billion people respectively. India is also the youngest country in the world with the millennial population as large as the population of USA . Though, it is interesting to note that even with the said population and demographic dividend, the nation still depends on fashion forecasts and trend reports that are not largely meant for India! The reports are typically developed in west and mostly either Europe centric or very 'American' unless they are focused on Japan/ Korean youth/pop culture. The question is why this country lacks an indigenous fashion forecast powered with our ethnicity, plurality, cultural richness and global vision. Or is it the market worth of Rs 20,000 crore (was US$ 102.2 Billion in 2018) is not lucrative enough to develop a forecast? The market is further projected to reach US$ 225.7 Billion by 2024, growing at a CAGR of 14.2% during 2019-2024. There are three key factors that I will explain below:

1)      One key factor is how this market in India is segmented. The branded Fashion market's size is nearly one fourth of this or Rs 5,000 crore. Designer wear, in turn, covers only about 0.2 % of the branded apparel market. Hence, three fourth of the market is still unorganized and dominated by family run shops at the bottom of pyramid which depends on age-old Judaad (manage) as ‘cut and paste’ method of developing their products. If we analyse the 0.2% designer wear, most of them designs the same lahenga-cholis (Indian ethnic wear), Salwars/ Kurtis and sarees years after year. Those who are in niche western-wear, are also not visibly experimental in their collection (apart from Manish or few Gen Next designers).  This is also because their clients seek ethnic wear from designers and buys western wear whenever they travel abroad (“oh, this one is Chanel ka latest collection… from our last holiday in Paris”). The dominant colonial gene still prevails, among many Indians. Moreover, the resell value of global luxury brands are much higher than the domestic designer-wear. The branded fashion market (largely family owned) is still at nascent stage and hardly allocates any money in consumer research or trend analysis comparative to their global counterpart. 

2)      Most of the branded market are into menswear (Rs 1,24,423 crore/ US $19 billion) where the scope to forecast ‘shift’ is much lesser than the women’s wear. Hence, the scopes of business for a fashion forecasting agency focusing on domestic market is not lucrative at this moment unless they can addresses the local nuances and attract all market players across the country.

3)      Another key challenge for the forecasting agencies is the vastness and plurality of this country. It’s cultural maze, socio-political tectonic-shift and ever-changing consumer mind-set baffles many. My theory of Adopted Differentiation defines the logic behind it. The sheer number of Indians (133.92 crores in 2017 comparing to 32.57 crores in USA) may sound lucrative but the segmentation is opaque and with multiple layers superimposing each other, the very mantle of consumer need remains a curtailed black-box.

The psychophysics of consumer response is key to understand the very essence of this market which very few could crack in past. Right from the automobile, electronics and fashion many brands that arrived in India lured by sheer number had to shut their shops in past few decades. Artificial Intelligence will not work to resolve cultural maze or mind-mapping. Essentially, a ‘human mind’ can only map another ‘human mind’ but the mind has to be from the same swarm. Unfortunately, most of the agencies working in India are depending upon their ‘global intelligence’ and not trying to build their ‘local hive’. Building local hive takes time, energy, patience and selection of right ‘mind’. However, with millennials taking over the consumption power with their voracious ever-evolving need (coupled with mounting ‘unhappiness’, ‘depression’, social stress and ‘rebooting identity’), the job of agencies looking for developing indigenous forecast will be tougher in future unless they hire and nurture the right home-grown team to execute the same.

(Original article published by Dr. Kaustav SenGupta, All copyrights reserved)

What corporates must know: How to leverage on India’s Millennials and Gen Z through gig economy

I am in expert panels and think tanks (honorary) of few companies, Govt bodies and startups for past one decade. The most common complaints from corporates that I keep hearing is about the job attrition rate among India’s Millennials and gen Z (collectively denoted as  “young workforce”). The companies (and their HR) are coming up with desperate innovative strategies to keep their young workforce “happy” and “loyal”. One e-commerce giant in Bangalore throws party every Friday at their classy glass-cased office space which converts into a mini dance floor (with live DJ, beers, breezers, snacks and surreal lights)! Others are throwing parties in every possible occasions (right from birthdays to break-up celebration). Some brands started giving stakes / shares to their employees. Some even invented new ways to ‘hold’ by inviting parents at office the to celebrate ‘mothers/ fathers day” (with top boss appearing as ‘lord Pluto” to bless all)! The huge steel building of an IT park in Chennai celebrates annual “family day” and I see the proud parents walking up to the ‘magnificent office” to attend this village fair like get together (with games, rides, parent of the year award, locally flavoured high emotion cultural performances  and what not). I am sure, these parents (and other siblings) will create a good amount of emotional stress to ensure that the young employee remains in the company . “see how safe, beautiful and respectful is this company.. . and you want to shift to that new start-up just because of few thousand rupee?” will be the stand of these parents, that the HR presumes.  

As published in Mint, according to the extensive “State Of The Global Workplace" report (2017), mere 13% of Indians (whether employed in the organized sector or otherwise) who feel engaged with their jobs.  The report quoted that the Millennials need to be appreciated, encouraged, given enough opportunities and training for their career growth to be kept engaged other than a good salary and professional growth opportunities. The Millennials also look for inspirational leaders. Even the workspace design makes a difference, according to the “Global Employee Engagement Report", released in 2017 by research firm Ipsos and office furniture company Steelcase. 

In an article in Forbes, points out the Mercer survey highlights that no fewer than 54% of Indian workers are seriously considering leaving their jobs, and that figure spikes to 66% in the 16-24 year age bracket. It also points out the other independent studies “confirm the correlation between intention to leave and actual turnover.” What’s puzzling is that the people considering leaving are not even highly disengaged employees! 76% of Indians surveyed reported satisfaction with their jobs and 75% with their organizations.  

Average Voluntary attrition (2016-17) stats show the highest attrition was reported by the retail sector in India, with e-commerce being on the higher side with the average voluntary annual attrition of 20.4%, followed by media and advertising (18.5%) and banking and financial services (17.4%).  According to KPMG Annual Compensation Trends Survey India 2017, top 3 reasons reported for attrition are: 1) Better Pay Elsewhere (28.1%), 2) Better Career Opportunity (23.4%), 3) Personal Reasons (19.6%).

However, a report published on 26th of June 2019 at Livemint quoted Deloitte Global Millennial Survey 2019, both these cohorts (Millennials and gen Z) admit that freelance work appeals to them more than full-time jobs! Eighty-four per cent of millennials and 81% of Gen Z’ers surveyed said they would consider joining the gig economy. However, for India, this figure is higher as 94% millennials and Gen Z say they would consider joining the gig economy. Overall, the gig economy appeals to four in five millennials and Gen Z’ers, the report said. Only 6% of the millennials said they have chosen to be part of the gig economy instead of working full time but 50% said they would consider it, and 61% would take gig assignments to supplement existing employment. Those who said they would consider joining the gig economy enumerate several reasons for doing so—a chance to earn more money (58%), flexible work hours (41%), or a better work-life balance (37%). However, those who said they won’t join the gig economy counted unpredictable income and hours as the reasons (39% and 30%, respectively). According to the survey, almost half the millennials believe gig workers can earn as much as those in full-time jobs, and the same number think gig workers have a better work-life balance. But 51% said the unpredictability would be stressful. To cater to millennials, more firms are now offering flexible working arrangements and other features designed to mimic what appeals to those considering a gig existence. Though, in India, young men are taking more leverage of gig economy than the young female. As per a Flexing It survey, 70% of freelancers were from core management functions. It added that the supporting eco-system is flourishing with growth of freelance platforms, new regulations for freelancers and adoption across organizations. The white paper said that the gig economy in India has the potential to grow up to $ 20-30 billion by 2025.

According to the Deloitte survey, of the millennials it surveyed, 49% said that if they had a choice, they would quit their job in two years. This is higher than the 38% in Deloitte’s 2017 report.

Gig economy (also known as "flex economy" or "mobile economy”) reflects the cultural change brought by a new generation of workers, especially millennials. Though there is no accurate estimate of their numbers, it is projected that gig workers will comprise half the workforce by 2020, and as much as 80 percent by 2030. Gig economy is a temporary work system based on a short-term relationship between workers and companies. Workers perform “gigs,” in which they are employed for a specific task or time. This is done to achieve advantage of cost, quality, and flexibility. Once the task is complete, the worker is free to move on. A McKinsey report says, 20-30 percent of the developed countries’ workforce is today engaged in independent work. 

As India becomes younger further, the “gig” workers as freelancers (with their ever decreasing loyalty towards a company and attention span) will increase in multi-fold and basic HR rules with their measuring “attrition rates” will work no more. Rather, the company must think of developing a micro-recruitment plan and break the large job sets into smaller deliverables. The responsibilities should be given to the youth on the basis of “capacity to deliver” rather than trying to keep them bound to the company.

WHAT is a daughter? : an article by a millennial Indian

No, I’m not about to define a daughter. That’s not where I’m going. My objective is to drive your focus to the choice of interrogative pronoun that I just used. “What” rather than “Who”. And most of our Indian people would go on to answering that question, never realizing that the “what” just reduced a female from a person to an object. But why does this objectification of women run so deep in our culture? Right now, I’m not talking about the objectification of women in cinema and advertisements. That is a separate topic of debate. But right now, I’m talking about the objectification of women that is deep rooted in our religious texts. Majority of our population may not have read these texts themselves, and may not be as strictly religious, and may not follow all day-to-day religious practices, but still follow some customs under the guidance of the religious pastor on some special occasions like mundan (customary shaving of a baby’s head), sanskaar (funeral rites) and different kinds of havan (this one could form a separate list). Not going into the essential meanings and reasons of these rites, let’s move onto the one that binds two people, and subsequently their families, into a LIFE-LONG BOND – Marriage.

Very recently, I attended my cousin’s marriage ceremony – an overnight affair of mantra and phere that none of the witnesses can understand, and who are just sitting there to witness the couple performing some actions on the pandit’s command. And that’s when my contempt for a custom was sparked anew as I heard the mention of “kanya daan”. For anyone who does not know, it’s direct translation means “girl donation”. Done by a girl’s father or the next elder male member of the family (along with his wife), it is regarded as the donation of the highest order – the one that would earn the donor the most punya (credit of doing good deeds). The religious texts of Hinduism – which I haven’t read myself, nor anybody in my extended family as far as I know, but whose teachings we hear all around us, translated by those who claim to have read them – declare a female as a property, an object of ownership. How? Because you can only donate what you own.

And talk about the vachan (vows) of marriage exchanged by the bride and groom, which are probably the only part of the whole ceremony that we can understand as the pandit translates them into the commonly spoken language for the benefit of the couple (because you can’t really make a vow without knowing the terms of that vow which were mentioned by a different person in a language that you don’t understand, right?), these vows sound like the terms of a 50-Shades-of-Grey style of BDSM contract for LIFETIME! (which still wouldn’t be as sick if the terms were enunciated by the couple themselves and mutually agreed upon after negotiation). BDSM is actually sane and gives the highest regard to consent. But these vows? They roughly translate into telling the woman that she will no longer be her own person. Seriously!! One of the vows that the bride is supposed to make states that she is not supposed to go to a park or garden or lakeside without the “permission” of her husband or his family. And the rest of the vows are also along the same lines. They bind a woman to “taking permission”, which is different from “informing your folks of your whereabouts”. These vows are basically telling a woman that she is not supposed to make her own decisions. Just consider having to depend on your husband’s or in-laws’ permission to go to the mall. How stupid does that sound? Or controlling. This leads me to realize how the Hindu marriage system is actually a Power-exchange dynamic that all the people sign up for at the time of their marriage without even realizing it. And we don’t see our modern wives taking on the submissive role in the relationship, nor the husbands being the dominant ones. The modern youth believes in equal status and responsibilities of both man and woman within a relationship which leads me to believe that most of them just go with the flow of the mantras and agree to such vows just to complete the formalities of the marriage ceremony. “How many of your marriage vows did you actually believe in and still practice?” I ask you, my readers, who have been married. If we aren’t exactly practicing what we vowed to do, then where’s our integrity? What’s the value of our words?

Coming back to what the religion preaches, despite all that is preached about respecting women as mothers, we can all agree that it regards the females as second-class citizens – always a male’s “amaanat” (possession, property), passed on from one male (the father) to another (the husband) as a donation, and always subject to the male’s permission for her life’s smallest of decisions. But as the modern youth who no longer believe in such patriarchal norms, isn’t it our duty to bid them away even from the customs and formalities? Why not make our own vows that we mutually consent to abide by as a couple, or revamp the old customary vows according to our modern beliefs, rather than nodding to whatever the pastor says when we don’t really agree with them? Why lose the integrity of our vows?

As for those who might be worried about losing out on the punya of the most sacred donation, no need to fret. Let me introduce you to the highest order of donation in the modern world – Organ Donation. Yes, the highest, because your one pledge can save 8 different lives and improve another 50. And this is a true form of donation, NOT controlling a woman’s life in the name of some rusty norms.  A daughter is not your property. So, go to one of the organ donation websites and pledge to donate your organs. And while you are at it, also pledge to do away with sick customs like girl-donation aka kanya-daan.

Author Lipika Aggrawal is a millennial Indian who has expressed her views on modern Indian society and gender disparity

The Plight of a Young Girl who is Looking to Buy her First Vibrator

Are you a girl? Great! Born in India? Even greater! Well, are you a sexual being? Uh, that doesn’t make a good combination. Duh, this is India, girl. Here, you are not supposed to have an ounce of sexuality, not before marriage. And well if you do, guess what new status you attain in the minds of your conservative-minded parents?

Congratulations! You are ready to be tied in the bonds of marriage with a guy of their choosing.

Well, most of the females in our country do not even discover their sexuality (at least till the time they are faced with the man who is going to be their prospective sex partner for life), to explore it is further off the gird. And I doubt what becomes of it after marriage is anything more than fulfilling their duties to their pati parmeshwar (husband raised to the status of God).

If you are one of the luckier ones who discovered her sexuality during her adolescence, be ready to be stupefied by the numerous “should-not”s that the taboo-stricken Indian society has to offer you.

Dating is unthinkable
Having a relationship is unacceptable

Having a live-in relationship? Only happens in the lives of “celebrities”

Talking about sex is bad

Talking about periods to a guy or guys? What? Who does that!?

Going out to party is wrong

Masturbation is unnatural

Wanting to buy a sex toy? Well, from where do such thoughts even come into your head!!!

Are you one of the lucky ones who have been able to debate yourself into reaching the conclusion that masturbation is natural, healthy and the safest form of sexual pleasure, and that indulging yourself for sexual satisfaction is not a crime? Congrats! A pat on your back!

Now that you have grown up a bit and learnt to accept your sexuality, explored all you could with your hands and your mind reading erotica and watching porn, you want to go for something more than your own fingers; a vibrating sensation that is more satisfying than your mobile phone’s. But where do you go?

There are no physical shops, not that I am aware of, where you could go browsing and purchasing adult toys. Google for buying vibrators in India and you get several links to e-commerce sites, both adult ones as well as the popular ones like Amazon, Snapdeal and Flipkart. But your friendly neighborhood e-retailers cannot sell sex toys by the name of sex toys, not in INDIA. So, all the vibrators that turn up in the list of available products on Amazon, for instance, are named as “vibrator massagers” for your back, neck, head, even face and eye-bags, yes! And mind you, these are the vibrators that turn up even when you clearly mention that you are looking for “sexual vibrators”. And you are left wondering if that lipstick-lookalike vibrator will actually work the way you intend to use it.

Well, I know what you would be thinking by now. Why don’t you go a proper adult-toy site, girl? Go to one of the websites that explicitly call themselves a dealer in adult products, and you would either find a little word to the left of the site’s URL that says that this site is “Not Secure” (which is less occurring since I conducted a search few months back), or you find secure sites that would list out highly expensive products. Not planning to invest in a good expensive vibrator as your first one, you look for the cheapest options, but even they seem out of your expected budget. You wonder where is that below-a-thousand-bucks lipstick-lookalike vibrator that you have heard some people mention to you before. Oh yes, there it is under the mini vibrator section, and it costs… 900 bucks (discounted from its original price of 1200 bucks). But wait…. Isn’t this the same “eye massager” from Amazon that cost just 150 bucks (discounted from its original price of 500 bucks)? Yep, it is! EXACTLY THE SAME!!! But with such a disparity of cost! Not a disparity of just the discounted price, but that of the original price as well! Do these people have any standards to set prices of sex toys? What if they’re just fooling us with listing whatever price they desire, even for the other products? How do I know the real price of a product? There’s no trustworthy source! The trustworthy ones like Amazon and Flipkart don’t give you so many options under their “modified” names of vibrators. Even the sexual wellness site Durex lists only three products which cater to only males’ or couples’ needs.

Revolving among the top-listed adult toy websites that explicitly call themselves so, now we know that a good quality vibrator is not going to be within your existing budget of a thousand bucks, not even the double of it, unless you are satisfied with paying over a thousand bucks for a lipstick-lookalike one. And we still do not know the authenticity of these prices. But we’ve got no choice than to succumb to their demands.

Next step? Save Up! Now this can be a little easy or difficult depending on your pocket money and your expenses. Oh wait, who are we kidding? We all have our pocket money designed to fit our expenses. I don’t know how much of your expenses you could cut out to save for a vibrator in case you’re one of those who get a bigger amount of pocket money than most 20 years old kids (well, kids in the sense that we’re non-earning), but a couple hundred saved every month from my meagre pocket money is not gonna help me at least. Oh, and did I say it was a problem only for the non-earning community? Nope. In my case, even my own earned paycheck (as a fresher) goes into my bank account which… is taken care of by my mother. So, we’re back to square one. You can’t withdraw your money just the way you can’t ask them money for a vibrator.

Next option? Gotta figure out something else, as expensive as your toy, for which you could ask them for money, but which you wouldn’t have to show them as an evidence that you bought it. That’s tough to do for something priced around 4-5 thousand rupees. But if you have an idea, do share.

The next hurdle you face is that of the delivery address. Although the retail sites say that the package would be discreet with no mention of the product inside, you just can’t receive a package without your family members finding out about it. You’re lucky if you are living out alone in a PG or a rented flat, but if you’re someone like me - living with your parents, one of whom is always home - it’s time to think of all your friends and come up with at least one who could be your trusty and receive the product for you and let you collect it without asking too many questions or judging you for what’s inside. Sounds easy? Or hard? Well, if you ask me, I can’t think of any of my friends who I could ask for such a favor. I’m too conscious of revealing that I am sexual enough to want a vibrator.

And all this hassle because this is INDIA – “the land of culture”.

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This article was written by Ingene's millennial author Lily. 

Lily, in her early twenties, is a free-spirited modern Indian girl who believes that talking about sex, not only in terms of sexual health but also in terms of sexual pleasure, should not be taboo.
To read about her own journey of embracing her sexuality, you can visit https://bdsmadventuresofavirgin.wordpress.com 

caste and youth in India: an article

In my last post, I was insisting that the surveying agencies must consider pyschographic/ mind-set segments of youth rather than age group before they analyze any data to avoid stereotyping the youth. The below article published in buzzfeed emphasizes that 'progressive' millennial (a mind-set again) avoids discussion on caste where as my last post shows that caste is an important issue to consider!

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Progressive Millennial Indians, Let's Talk About Why We Never Talk About Caste

A meme recently appeared on my Facebook timeline: a child plays as her mother asks, “Are your dolls having a tea party?” The little girl answers, “No mom, they’re protesting against patriarchy.”
The clever cartoon is accompanied by a proclamation: “omg, Priya this is so you”.
There are several likes and cheeky comments. Priya responds with faux-embarrassment – “LOL stop it!” – though everyone knows there’s pride in being outed as a feminist.
Variations of this exchange light up my timeline. I watch, smirk, and judge till I get tagged myself. And then I respond like Priya, secretly thrilled to have been validated as progressive.
This is the grammar of the metropolitan, well-off, English-speaking, millennial internet. We curate online identities, knowing that social justice knowhow is their hippest ingredient.
We’re young folks of privilege, negotiating professional and urban struggles one weekend at a time. We live in India, but haven’t given up on “Bharat”.
We’re interested in the vagaries of our national discourses on gender, nationalism, social conservatism, and more. We perceive injustices around us and raise hell about them. We outrage quickly and happily.
(For evidence, see the popularity of millennial-darling comedians and YouTube stars All India Bakchod, whose popularity is owed significantly to their satirising of issues as varied as homophobia, victim-blaming in rape culture, and policy debate around net neutrality.)
In some ways, this is an ideal scenario – caring about a better world has become coveted cultural currency among people of privilege.
But, while we tweet ourselves hoarse about feminism and colourism and veganism and ally-ism, there’s an omnipresent injustice which doesn’t enjoy the halo of our Facebook moralising.
The big, confusing C-word.

Nagraj Manjule, fresh on the success of “Sairat”, was asked in an interview why he makes films only on caste. He responded that it required a special talent to avoid the topic, and that he wasn’t a particularly talented person. Witty, and also extraordinarily true.

At the Jaipur Literature Festival, that famed annual gathering of progressives, Kajol declared that people had become over-sensitive these days and that there was no intolerance in Bollywood, no dividing lines of caste or creed.

It takes “special talent” to stomach her mann ki baat considering that only a week earlier, a young man in Hyderabad hung from a fan because his value as a person was reduced to his caste.

Kajol’s statement is not in isolation. A study by The Hindu in 2015 showed that only 6 out of 300 Bollywood films made in the previous two years had featured lower caste protagonists.

Too often, “poor” is the blanket identity of characters who would most likely hail from lower caste backgrounds (think Arjun and Ranveer’s irascible Bikram and Bala from Gundey, or Nawazuddin’s delightful Shaikh from The Lunchbox). Too often, Bollywood cinema has invisibilized caste under the more simplified construct of class.

The word “jaat” has today almost disappeared from Bollywood vocabulary, surfacing only occasional references to criminal tropes.

And television is no different. A quick glance at the top TRP-rated shows on air currently reveals that none of them features a dalit protagonist.

Luckily, online entertainers have an opportunity to reject some regressive conventions ingrained in Bollywood and TV. But nonetheless, when it comes to caste, there’s a strange diffidence, a disquieting silence, even from model millennial progressives All India Bakchod.

On their Hot Star news-comedy show On Air with AIB, the group raised bold issues week after week, still managing to never touch the C-word. They even did an entire segment on police brutality without mentioning caste.

Dalit activists have been arguing for years that there’s a casteist bias in India’s judicial and law-enforcement apparatus, as evidenced by the NCRB report which found that almost 33% of inmates in Indian prisons are SC/STs.

It must have taken special talent to avoid that.

Things are no different on the cricket field. Until very recently, cricket was the preserve of upper-caste city elites. Today, even the most die-hard Indian cricket fans will only be able to name one dalit cricketer – Vinod Kambli.
Few know of Palwankar Baloo, the pre-independence left-arm spinner who was made to use separate dining and lodging facilities on tours, and denied captaincy owing to his caste.
The most commonly peddled dismissal of the cricket-and-caste conversation is that sport is about technical excellence and that the best team should be selected, irrespective of caste or religion. But sport is not beyond social justice.
South Africa has experimented with affirmative action to change the composition of its teams and dismantle deep-rooted and invisible racist structures of discrimination. Is their system working well? No. But at the very least, there is acknowledgement of the problem, and experimentation with the intent of solving it.
Here, even in the most educated circles, the moment I attempt to trace casteism into anything beyond the designated cauldrons of caste oppression – honor killings, khap panchayats, dalit rapes – I’m quickly dismissed as a fanatic.
“Jootha is not a caste thing, yaar, it’s scientifically proven to be more hygienic.”
“But do you even know what the SC and ST cut-off for IIM is?”
“I don’t care how much soap he uses. The bathroom guy can’t cook the food. Basic hai.”
There is a suspicion towards reading casteism into the everyday structures that we’re used to, even if they normalize caste-based oppression. In this orbit, caste has almost become a “bad” word, considered the domain of the subaltern, small-town political class who use it for their nefarious mobilisation. Lower caste assertionism in form of political blocs, caste-alliances or even Ambedkarite social politics is often dismissed with a shake of the head.
In other words: for those Indians who truly, genuinely believe that “there’s no such thing as casteism in 2016,” trying to talk about dalit rights feels divisive, not progressive or productive or urgent, as it is.
What’s perplexing is how this coexists in a completely non-ironic way with #BlackLivesMatter, pro-Bernie Sanders memes, and the Tumblr-ised notion of “checking your privilege”.

Perhaps the answer lies in the idiom of oppression. The thinking, sensitive millennial is a product of privilege, a fact that is made amply clear to him or her over and over again.

This upper caste urban sliver is the first Indian middle class to have never known mass-scale unemployment. They’ve been told they’re spoilt, that they have it easy, and that they should be thankful.

But they don’t actually feel thankful. They've learned that great inequalities exist warranting outrage.

In the office, he witnesses gender disparities, so he becomes a spokesperson for workplace feminism. On the streets, she sees men beating a dog with sticks, so she’s now an advocate for animal rights. We see public spaces as our own, so we stand up for the Kiss of Love event. We witness Western victories for LGBTQ rights, and we outrage because things are just as bad (in fact, much worse) for queer Indians.

We know very well how to spot an obvious injustice, point at it, and say “no, in fact, this is not how things should be.”

To question caste however, is to question one’s own feudal privilege, inherited from our own parents, family, teachers, and social peers.

There isn’t any far-removed injustice to point at and detachedly deem problematic.

It’s your own world view, your own accidental advantage, the comfort of your own home.

Casteism is not something “out there”, and hence it falls outside the gaze.

You are the insider. Very often, you are the inadvertent oppressor. And it is these deeply ingrained privileges which preclude us from questioning the gravest injustices.

Why can’t the domestic help use the toilet in the house? Why can’t the cook eat at the same table with you at lunch? They made the food and they will clean the dishes, after all.

Why does he or she sit on the floor to watch TV, while two sofas stay unoccupied?

On a more broad level, whose cuisine is marketed in restaurants and chains in all manners of streets and lanes, and whose food is found illegal? Whose gods and goddesses are being invoked and televised into serials, and whose are ignored?

Whose customs are normalised as axiomatic, and whose social customs are seen as primitive, even uncultured?

Delving into these discussions, an astute mind can quickly observe entire races of enslaved Indians and suppressed cultures around us.

Nigerian novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie once made a speech about the dangers of a single story, how it blinds us to the possibilities of other alternate narrative imaginations.

In India, we have been peddling the same single story across films, television, advertising, newspapers, cricket fields, restaurants, and living rooms.

In fact, this single story is so powerful and all-pervasive that a lot of urban millennial professionals feel caste is something that no longer exists. It does take a special talent to invisibilize the deaths of sewage workers who die inside drains everyday.
It does take a special talent to tediously raise the “I know this one rich SC guy who got a college seat basis quota” argument at every opportunity, even as campus suicides by dalit students has been widely written about and been the subject of documentary productions.
There are no dalits among the upper management of most corporations, the most powerful editors and journalists, higher judiciary, chiefs of armed services, and even the organisational elites of most political parties.
If every major social institution of nation-building is not representative of the oppressed castes, then is it representative at all? And if “belonging” in a democracy is determined by representation, then do dalits “belong” in India at all?
And then there’s us: the well-read, well-meaning, and “woke”.
If we refuse to engage with and question our most insidious privileges, and our complicity in perpetuating non-inclusive social structures, then are we really the liberals that our memes and hashtags paint us as?