Social media, its relevance, the “flattening of social space” and assumption of “otherness”

India, being numerous countries inside one country and further divisions of regional, religious, cast and sub sect makes a indefinite complex social pyramid structured social positioning which is tough to avoid for brands that seeks consumer attention, visual impact and indigenous usability. The visual representation of one’s social position is very important in this subcontinent which gets reflected right from the clothing, architecture, political posters to the grass root day-to-day customs. The so called “big fat Indian marriage” is nothing but one’s exhibition of social class and positioning. The belonging to certain spiritual, religious and political parties are also a display of one’s class and “otherness” from the mass.

Certain brands or products fail to understand this situation and enacts in a way that India is a “utopian” super-flat democratic society where everybody is visually equal and has the urge to speak/ exhibit of what they are / wants to be or with whom they wants to belong to. The problem broadly exists with those brands who unfortunately doesn’t understand that their products are actually an asset in stead of consumption. The western brands once imported in India with high import duty and currency conversion, certainly lifts to the higher market segment but fails to understand its high impact on how the brand should be portrayed in India.

For example, the vision of Nano car was to replace the two wheelers which it failed to address due to the social pyramid of consumption and perception of product value. A car is considered as an assent among mass India and they will not compromise with the “look” of the product because an asset is supposed to be “exhibited” to enrich the status quo of the owner (first generation riches, mostly). Nano failed here due to its fragile non-classy “dumb” look. It would have been great if Nano appeared as “cool car” among the youth in India where the cast / class doesn’t matter but “desi coolness” is counted (say, Nano offers cool colors, funky decos, add on accessories and appears as a “consume and dispose” car rather than “own” a car concept!).

Interestingly, Social media is an active tool / social platform where class doesn’t exist but one’s intelligence to interact, instant humor, story telling capacity and PR matters. The Facebook is an excellent example on how this social media is literally diminishing the regional, religious and cast barrier in India (at least virtually) which, I believe will have a long lasting influence in offline social division to restructure our society in a new frame.

Facebook provides equal space for everybody to display his/ her photos / works etc. and share the thought in Wall. The discussion is open and anybody from the friend’s list can comment on any topic (no social / political king pins dominating the discussion). Anybody can like the photos but, it has no dislike option!

But, mobile is not as socially flat as social media! This product has become the symbol of class division from the very beginning of its introduction in this subcontinent. There are the brands for “haves” and “have-nots”…for example, today Nokia is the brand for “have-nots” where as “Blackberry and iPhone” are for haves…unfortunately Nokia does not understand this and trying to become the brand for the other class. This “other class” represents not more than the one third of this population! Hence Nokia actually has a better segment to cater, which they are not focusing!

Social media is also a place which is not having gender barrier or age barrier.

Though it will take decades to bring this ‘flat society” concept in India unless the perceived division between the haves and have-nots exist and both of them are very conscious of this existence to showoff their “otherness”!

macro trend directions : youth in India 2012

Indian youth macro trends by kaustav sengupta 2012

View more presentations from Kaustav Sengupta

Kaustav spoke at TEDxYouth

http://tedxyouthchennai.com/speakers.php

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http://know.burrp.com/my-city/chennai-my-city/chennai-recommended/29319

Cops and political leaders are the least respected individuals among the youth in India

A survey by INgene among the youth (16years to 26years) in 4 metro cities reveal that Cops and Political leaders are the least preferred individuals with whom youth in India ever wants to interact! they are neither inspired to opt for these professions nor has any respect for them!

the blow report of utter injustice proves why they youth disguises these individuals:

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How Cops can "fix" you in India:

Super’ SHO spins a web of charges to frame innocent BPO executive. THE INSTANCES of police haughtiness may still be an inescapable part of life in the boondocks, but such an incident bang in the middle of the nation’s Capital belittles people’s faith both in law and the lawenforcers.

In the latest such incident, the Mayapuri police recently slapped cooked-up charges on BPO executive Rajat (name changed) and threw him behind bars for a crime he didn’t commit. The high point of the injustice: Rajat was accused of disturbing public peace at the very moment he was sitting inside the Mayapuri police station in front of SHO Rajender Singh Pathania and his staff to defend himself.

After the matter went to court and the police’s vigilance inquiry nailed the tainted cops, the ‘super’ SHO was removed from his post along with two colleagues for allegedly forging papers to illegally detain the west Delhi resident. Pathania was shifted to south district and given an ‘ inconsequential’ posting pending a departmental inquiry, which was scheduled to begin on Thursday.

The victim’s father, Deepak Verma, said no one turned up for the departmental inquiry on Thursday. “I reached the DCP (south) office at exactly 11 am but neither the additional DCP nor the Mayapuri SHO and the other policemen were present. I have been asked to come again on November 21. I hope this is not a delaying tactic,” he added. Incidentally, Pathania is a ‘super’ SHO who has worked at many high- profile police stations, including Karol Bagh (considered the most lucrative).

In Delhi Police parlance, a ‘super’ SHO is one who continues to head a ‘sensitive’ police station beyond the six year tenure. Pathania had even been served a contempt notice for allegedly daring a lower court judge by yelling at him that he was “not touched” despite even the high court initiating action against him.

The current case against Pathania took place on September 27, 2009, when Rajat and his cousin — on their way to the local market in Mayapuri — noticed that a bhandara (a religious function where free meals are distributed) had resulted in a traffic snarl. When Rajat enquired from the organisers if they had the requisite permissions, a scuffle ensued between the parties.

Deepak said: “The organisers called up the PCR but reached a private hospital instead of waiting for the police. We got to know on September 29 about the police case. It was a case of causing simple hurt (which is a non- cognisable offence) but they soon added Section 341 (wrongful restraint) to the FIR to make it a much more serious offence. The fraudulent addition has since been deleted by the court and noted by the vigilance department in its report.

“When my son was arrested on October 3, we went to the police station to bail him out but the police refused to let him out. Shockingly, the police said my son had again disrupted the peace in the area when he was caught fighting on October 3 too. How is that possible when he was at the police station throughout the day?” the anxious father asked.

While the SHO and his subordinates have been taken to task for implicating and wrongly arresting the complainant under CrPC Sections 107/ 151, west district’s former DCP Sharad Agarwal — at whose instance the first case was registered — has been let off by the police brass. “My son lost his job after the police jailed him in the false case. Besides, there was no police or MCD permission for the bhandara ,” Deepak said.

Andaman DIG Sharad Agarwal, who was then the DCP (west), said he did not remember the case. “I don’t remember the case or the complainant. A lot of complainants come to meet a district DCP. I do not know either the complainant or the other party involved in the case,” he said. Pathania and his staff also lied in the court that Rajat was disrupting public peace. The cops prepared a false arrest memo six days after the incident.

VIGILANCE NAILS SHO’S LIE
Probing Deepak’s complaint, the vigilance department found several discrepancies in the police report. In the doctored arrest memo of October 3, Deepak’s signature at the police station confirmed that Rajat was rearrested at 7.30 pm. “… The complainant marked the time as 7.30 pm while the medical examination at the DDU Hospital was conducted at 7.40 pm… which is not possible in this short duration,” the vigilance report, signed by Jt CP (Vigilance) N. Dilip Kumar, states.

It also negates the memo regarding the October 3 “street fight” and the presence of “eyewitnesses”, besides stating that there was no PCR call as claimed by the police. It also nails the police lie by stating that the daily diary (DD) entry for October 3 showed that Rajat was arrested at 8.50 pm while the medical examination took place at 7.40 pm.

ALLEGATIONS against DCP Sharad Agarwal: He recommended to the SHO that a case be registered against Rajat and his cousin for the Sept 27 scuffle. Stringent provisions of law were wrongly added to the non-cognisable case. This addition has been deleted by the court and noted by the vigilance department, but still no action has been taken against Agarwal.

ALLEGATIONS against SHO Rajender Singh Pathania and others: When Rajat was arrested on October 3 for the September 27 incident, Pathania and his men denied him bail. Instead, they cooked up a story about him being involved in another brawl on October 3, at the time when he was inside the police station, so he could be arrested on the charge of disrupting peace. Police prepared false papers, reports and witnesses to frame him. A departmental inquiry has been ordered against the SHO and his subordinate staff.

Source: http://in.news.yahoo.com/how-cops-can-fix-you-.html

India: The next university superpower?

India has ambitious plans to increase graduate numbers in a way which would give it the size and status of an education superpower.
The figures are staggering. India's government speaks of increasing the proportion of young people going to university from 12% at present to 30% by 2025 - approaching the levels of many Western countries.

It wants to expand its university system to meet the aspirations of a growing middle class, to widen access, and become a "knowledge powerhouse".

It will mean increasing the country's student population from 12 million to over 30 million, and will put it on course to becoming one of the world's largest education systems.

"We will very likely be number two if not number one in terms of numbers," says Pawan Agarwal, a former civil servant and author of Indian Higher Education: Envisioning the Future.

With US enrolment stagnating and the UK cutting back on university places, "Indian graduates will become more visible globally, particularly in technical and engineering fields", Mr Agarwal predicts.

'Great leap forward'

KN Panikkar, vice chairman of the Kerala State Higher Education Council, describes India's higher education spending as undergoing a "great leap forward".

The amount of money in the central budget for higher education in the current five year plan (2010-2015) is nine times the amount of the previous five years.

But there is a steep hill to climb. India's National Knowledge Commission estimated the country needs 1,500 universities compared to around 370 now.

Hundreds of new institutions are being set up, including large new public universities in each state. The number of prestigious Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) and Management (IIMs) are being expanded from seven to 15.

India's private university sector is also growing rapidly, particularly in professional education in information technology, engineering, medicine and management where there is huge demand from the burgeoning middle classes.

But that will not be enough. To bridge the gap the government last year tabled legislation to invite foreign universities to set up branch campuses. The Foreign Providers Bill is currently making its way through parliament.

'Fever pitch'

Last year there were reports of up to 50 foreign universities being interested in setting up in India. The hype reached fever pitch in November during the visit of US President Barack Obama and a large group of US university presidents.

UK Higher Education minister David Willetts and the largest-ever Canadian delegation were also in the country, enthusiastically talking of university partnerships.

Some foreign universities are already in place. The UK's Leeds Metropolitan University provides management degrees on a 36-acre campus in Bhopal in central India.

Lancaster University runs courses at the GD Goenka World Institute - a 69-acre site near Delhi. Both institutions opened in 2009 as joint ventures with Indian non-profit partners under existing laws.

Some bring faculty and staff from their home institutions, but even the most prestigious public institutions, including the IITs, are struggling to fill top faculty positions and teacher student ratios are deteriorating.

Foreign institutions able to lure staff with higher salaries will make the situation worse, detractors of the Foreign Providers Bill point out.

Mr Panikkar says foreign and private institutions are not the answer. "If only 1% of the population can afford the fees, then it will be very serious for the country in terms of equity."

Fair access

Access is an important issue for the government which came to power because the benefits of India's rapid economic growth were seen to have bypassed the country's poor.

Students in the chemistry department at the private Amity University in Noida While more than 95% of children now attend primary school, just 40% attend secondary school, according to the World Bank. That in itself will limit growth in university enrolment.

The World Bank has said India's economic success cannot be sustained without major investment in education, including higher education, with public spending on the sector still lagging behind countries like China and Brazil.

But the gold-rush mentality has dissipated. The Foreign Providers Bill is stuck in a parliament that has done little business since a telecommunications corruption scandal erupted last year.

"There has been some toning down of expectations of foreign universities," said Rahul Choudaha, associate director, World Education Services in New York and a close observer of the sector.

"The public university system in many countries is in crisis, facing serious budget cuts. They are not ready to invest money in partnerships."

Some "gold diggers" were dissuaded as the government made it clear for-profit companies would not be allowed to exploit India's thirst for higher education.

Unlike Singapore and China, the Indian government does not want to appear to favour foreign institutions by providing public money or large land grants.

Duke University, based in North Carolina in the US, has been interested in India for some time.

"We want to develop Duke as a globally-networked university. The best researchers are those connected globally," says Gregory Jones, Duke's vice president and vice provost for global strategy.

'Eastward shift'

But its Shanghai campus will be in operation first. "They [Shanghai] were willing to donate and build the first phase at their expense so it was a financially-viable proposition for us," said Mr Jones.

"It is not yet clear how we will develop our presence in India. It is a complicated reform bill."

An eastward shift in the geography of science and technology is a major draw as international companies set up research and development sites in India and China.

"We are tapping into the research potential of these Asian countries," says Professor Pradeep Khosla, dean of Carnegie Mellon University's College of Engineering.

The prestigious US institution has teamed up with India's Shiv Nadar Foundation to open an engineering college in the southern state of Tamil Nadu.

But these joint ventures are not fully-fledged overseas campuses. "Only a handful of overseas universities are thinking about that seriously," said Mr Agarwal. "But even if they go ahead it will not be enough. They will only increase capacity for hundreds of Indian students, not millions."

That means huge public spending on colleges outside the cities, says Mr Panikkar who has written extensively on social justice in higher education. He believes the enrolment targets are too ambitious given limited public resources and bottlenecks in staffing and infrastructure.

"What is achievable is adding perhaps 10 million students to existing capacity in the next five to seven years," he says.

That would still be a major achievement, but some way from making India an education superpower.

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-12597815

Mobile apps in India- a survey

Are people living in mumbai more interested in finance than those living in other cities? Are south Indians more fond of mobile gaming? Or are people in the North-East more inclined towards education? Their usage of mobile phone apps certainly seem to suggest so.
According to a survey conducted by Nokia, 16% of those surveyed in west download finance apps (the highest of any region), 23% south Indians mostly use gaming apps (again, higher than any other region) and 29% of people from the North-East download educational apps. Nearly 30% of south Indians surveyed use the apps on their smartphone during commutes, while 32% use them at home. Over 40% of those surveyed in the North download music apps-more than in any other Indian region. Around 25% of people in the North-East use almost all the apps they download on their smartphone, while their neighbours in the east, are the highest users of social networking apps (39%). The survey was conducted on 501 Indians last November.
"The mobile apps market in India can be pegged at $2 billion. Of the 70 crore mobile phone users in India, smartphone users account for around 1 crore," says Prashant Singhal, partner at Ernst and Young. A recent study by Informate Mobile intelligence, a telecom research company, says that 70% smartphone users visit a Value Added Services (VAS) portal and Operator VAS portals are most popular among their subscribers. "Value Added Services (VAS) contributes to around 10% of revenues of telecom companies and currently, apps seem focused on games, music and social networking," says Hemant Joshi, partner at Deloitte Haskins and Sells. "To make apps profitable, companies must introduce utility apps like banking and healthcare, for which users wouldn't mind paying Re 1 a day."
Gartner released a list of the most important mobile applications in 2012 on Tuesday that focus on high-end devices with an average selling price of over $300 (around Rs 15,000). Location-based services, social networking, search, commerce, payment, content-aware service, object recognition, instant messaging, e-mail and video will the top apps for 2012.
"VAS in India include SMS, caller ringtones and general web browsing, so mobile apps is still a small market, though it is growing quickly," says Jaideep Ghosh, executive director at KPMG India."Utility apps haven't been able to become very popular in India on the mobile platform due to lack of awareness for these apps among the target groups." Globally, mobile application store revenue is projected to surpass $15.1 billion in 2011, both from sales and advertising revenue. This is a 190% increase from 2010 revenue of $5.2 billion.

Source: http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2011-02-25/india-business/28633905_1_mobile-apps-smartphone-users-mobile-gaming

Several Kanpur girls silently bear sexual abuse: Survey

Nearly 40 per cent of girls in the city are victims of some form of sexual abuse, revealed a study conducted by the home science department of Chandra Shekher Azad (CSA) University of Agriculture and Technology. It includes girls who are in the age group of 9-12 years and have been molested either at schools or homes. Many girls have faced physical and emotional neglect and social abuse as well.

Out of 249 girls surveyed, 123 reported of instances where their private parts were touched. While 41.2 per cent were forced to expose their genitals or subjected to other forms of sexual abuse. Whereas many girls reported of sexual act where the abuser forced the girl to touch his genitals.

Source: http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2011-02-21/kanpur/28618805_1_sexual-abuse-neglect-sexual-exploitation

India "most improved" in bribery index

Chinese and Russian firms are the most likely to pay bribes while operating abroad, and the most corrupt sectors are public works contracts and construction, according to Transparency International's latest "Bribe Payers' index".

China and Russia rank bottom, in 27th and 28th place respectively, in the 2011 index released on Wednesday, while the Dutch, Swiss, Belgians, Germans and Japanese get the top scores. Britain and the United States rank eighth and ninth.

But the Berlin-based anti-corruption campaigners said not one of the 28 countries surveyed -- which include all of the G20 -- was perceived as "wholly clean of bribery" and few had made a major improvement since the last bribery index in 2008.
"India's score improved the most, with an increase of 0.7, but it still remains near the bottom of the table. Canada and the United Kingdom saw the most significant deterioration in their scores with a drop of -0.3," read the report.

The group asked 3,016 business executives in 30 countries -- selected by the value of their foreign direct investments and exports, plus their regional significance -- how often companies based in countries in the survey engaged in bribery.
Transparency urged countries to ratify conventions against bribery under the auspices of the United Nations, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development and the European Union.
"In their meeting in Cannes this week, G20 governments must tackle foreign bribery as a matter of urgency," said Huguette Labelle of Transparency International in a statement.
"It is of particular concern that China and Russia are at the bottom of the index," it said, citing their increasing global presence, especially in oil and gas in Russia's case and China's investments in infrastructure and mining, in particular in Africa.

China's decision this year to expand anti-corruption laws to Chinese firms operating overseas and foreign companies in China was an important step, but there was still a risk of "bottlenecks", said Ran Jianmin of Transparency in China.

New Russian laws outlawing foreign bribery gave rise to hope, Transparency's Russian research head Elena Panfilova said, although she added that there were as yet "no islands of integrity in Russian public and business life".

Russia came joint 154th of 178 nations in Transparency's 2010 index of public-sector corruption and China ranked 78th.

Breaking down the bribery index into 19 business sectors, public works contracts and construction were the most prone to bribery and agriculture and light engineering were the least, but no single sector scored above 7.1 on a 10-point scale.
Mining, oil and gas, real estate, and legal and business services were also very prone to bribery, it said, adding that they were "all characterised by high-value investment and significant government interaction and regulation, both of which provide opportunities and incentives for corruption".

Transparency said it was surprised that the likelihood of bribes being paid from one private firm to another "is almost as high as bribery of public officials across all sectors".

"Bribery can also be disguised through offering clients gifts and corporate hospitality that are inappropriate in value," said the report.

New British legislation this year making bribery between firms an offence, including any company incorporated overseas or carrying out business in the United Kingdom, "sets a new global standard" that should be widely imitated, it said.

It said corruption in public works contracts and construction often compromised safety in public buildings, "which, as witnessed by the many deaths from earthquakes in highly corrupt countries, has a very real impact on human lives".

(Reporting by Stephen Brown; editing by Andrew Roche)

more information: http://www.transparency.org/