lasercave » Alex Cref

Tamil Hip Hop

Alex Cref — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 06:46:00 +0000

Today I listened to a podcast on Tamil hip hop that was pretty boring. But this song, ‘Gangster (Laadam)’ by Emcee Jesz and Dr Burn, has a pseudo-Latin vibe and sort of rules and reminds me a lot of Bone Thugz or Cypress Hill.

More to follow on Tamil hip hop? Probably not.

Airtel et al, Pt.5

Alex Cref — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 04:57:38 +0000

A serendipitous thing has happened. In the last few days at the KGFS office here in Thanjavur, I’ve been marvelling at a 8.5×11 that’s posted on the bulletin board. Philanthropic in nature, this sheet outlines the ill health effects that are consonant with drinking cold water — especially after a meal of greasy or oily food. I’ve encountered the ‘no cold water’ ethic before — in the form of a couple friends here in India, to wit — and while I like to imagine myself as someone open to various conceptions of health, wellness, and the like, I’ve realized I don’t have much patience for it.

I Snoped the assertion. Then, on the momentum of my current morning-mango habit, Snoped a related one.

(One of the fascinating things for me of late has been the procedural considerations that enter into the eating of a meal, and the appropriate order in which certain foods — as in a thali, for instance — should be consumed.)

I started blabbing to whoever would listen about how I’m into this sort of thing, then a second later, my phone buzzed. AirTel, my only loyal friend, had SMSed me again.

Health pack!!
Get 3 health tips
daily just for
Rs.10/10 days.
Dial *646*941#
& get the alerts.
Sender:
AT-Promo

On the wistful encouragement of one of Tamil Nadu’s former residents, I accepted the offer.

Health is
wealth!! Now
activate
Health pack to
keep yourself
fit and
fine.Enjoy 3
alerts/ day.
Subscription
charges Rs10
for 10 days.
Reply with 1.

[I replied with '1'.]

Stay tuned for Health tips.

Airtel et al, Pt.3

Alex Cref — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 06:16:00 +0000

After a month or more of fairly insipid (and, I hate to say it, increasingly unwelcome) SMS advertisements from Airtel and whoever else has somehow gotten my mobile number, this thought-provoking tidbit came to me this morning:

“SAUNA” Tummy

reducing belt

worth

RS.1500/.NOW

Just RS 600 only

with 1 YEAR

GUARANTEE for 3

days only FOR

FREE DOOR

DELEVERY

CALL:984108367

0\9841698111

Microfinance Immersion, Pt.1

Alex Cref — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 10:30:00 +0000

Putting all fraught images (however problematic or trite) of the ‘relief worker’, the ‘aid worker’, or the ‘humanitarian’ to the side, it is a very stirring experience to sit with Indian villagers and discuss with them their day-to-day trials, and for them to be so open to the possibility of your helping them. At least, that’s how I feel today.

During the peak daylight hours I journeyed with Kannan Arthanari, one of CMF’s liaisons here, to a KGFS branch in the thankfully-breezy village of Alakudi, a thirteen minute train ride outside of Thanjavur proper.

From what I understand, experience in ‘development’ is practically consonant with jadedness. Development work (still not really sure what this is) might be in large part a meditation on limits — at first increasingly rigorous, then increasingly frustrated, finally, increasingly facile. These limits demarcate what can be accomplished or changed in a human environment, what people can or should be asked to change, and what results, if any (and if anticipated), can be expected in a given time frame. The more experience one has in this industry, the more clearly one can see the limits of what is possible. Burn-out, or at least chronic, low-level, emotional smoldering, seems an abundant phenomenon.

Putting that aside, and bringing into the open my personal suspicion that in no time at all this entry will read like the most naive, worthless rambling put to pixel in this young blog’s life, I am going to write about my first field-week in microfinance.

Here are the basics: CMF (or, the Centre for Micro Finance) is setting up a randomized impact evaluation of a new financial product that KGFS (or, Kshetriya Grameen Financial Services), an Indian MFI (or, Indian microfinance institution), is making available to its clients in the Thanjavur area in the weeks and months ahead.

Increasingly in the last decade, microfinance has assumed vogue status in the world of development, which seems, from where I stand right now, to be a very trendy place. Since its beginnings in Bangladesh with Muhammad Yunus and Grameen Bank (no relation) in the 1970s, microfinance has been noted for its apparent (and apparently remarkable) sustainability and its potential for ‘breaking the cycle of poverty’ — to such a degree that, today, it’s regarded by the lay observer as a panacea of sorts for the problems that people (particularly women) face in the developing world. In an example of this somewhat hazy, generalized praise and admiration, Obama’s speech in Cairo the other day, which laid out a whole bunch of the vaguest proposals of collaboration, included a quick reference to the ‘power’ of microfinance, as though its acknowledged potency constitutes of a kind of trump card in the game of development:

the United States will partner with any Muslim-majority country to

support expanded literacy for girls, and to help young women pursue

employment through micro-financing that helps people live their dreams.

The logic underlying microfinance goes something like this: poverty is bad and self-perpetuating; if poor people have access to financial services, maybe they can break out of the ‘poverty trap’; but, it’s risky to give credit to the poor because they can’t supply collateral so a client’s defaulting leaves a bank in the lurch; still, there’s huge demand for financial services among the poor everywhere that they know about the possibility of financial services, and this could be a really big new market; if we charge high interest rates and take other precautions, maybe we can bank these people in a sustainable way; maybe we can even help them get out of poverty.

In India, as elsewhere, much microfinance has involved the provision of credit through loans. In the most-traded, stereotypical diegesis of microfinance-in-action, a poor villager wants to start a business, but — in the course of his (or, more likely, her) day-to-day trials — can’t put together the start-up capital. If this villager could just have a small nest-egg at his (her) disposal, he (she) could start a lively business that brought greater financial welfare to his (her) household, enabled him (her) to pay back the loan, and basically made everything peachy.

As you might imagine, it doesn’t exactly work that way. Current research suggests that (while borrowers are generally able to pay back loans, and default is rare,) the impact of microfinancing is not always discernible.

For their part, the women in the JLG (joint liability group; a group of people that takes a loan together and guarantees one another) we spoke to in Alakudi, while they have never defaulted and have always paid back their principle and interest (usually around 12%) on schedule, have had outstanding loans since the day they first took a loan, and they imagine that they will have loans for the foreseeable future. They are not starting entrepreneurial ventures that ‘break the cycle of poverty’; rather, they are trying to regulate their financial situation in order to brace against the stresses and insecurities of poor, rural life. Loans, in this sense, are being used by borrowers to mitigate the effects of financial shocks — deaths, droughts, other bad things that put unforeseen (though hardly unfamiliar) strain on a poor household. As you can see, credit might not the best way to accomplish this complex task, though for these women, borrowing has become something of a habit — maybe even an addiction.

This is where microinsurance and microsavings might come in. Microinsurance shemes with incredibly small premiums can theoretically help people deal with unfortunate events like crop failure or a family member falling sick. (I don’t really know enough about microinsurance schemes to say anything about how they measure up; more on this will follow I hope.) Meanwhile, savings products (like, most basically, a savings account; in our case, a mutual fund) could in theory ably fulfill the twin function of buttressing the household against shocks and building capital for a business venture of some sort down the road. Instead of having to pay interest on their loans, poor households could accrue interest on their savings. (The potential need for microsavings is made more urgent by the fact that in plenty of places, poor people who want to keep their money safe must pay interest to do so, ’saving down’ instead of ’saving up’; this is common with a money lender, for example; see Nicholas Kristof’s blog entry from last week, which discusses the need for savings products in microfinance in the teensiest detail and further hints at what a fad all this is.) Moreover, by offering savings products, MFIs — which are usually non-profits — could raise some capital from clients instead of having to find all capital elsewhere.

Sounds promising, right? Of course, there are a ton of considerations that affect the viability of savings products. But this much is clear: the women we spoke with in Alakudi have heard about the nascent savings product through talks with the WMs (Wealth Managers) at the KGFS branch in the village. And they want it.

More to come.

LPR

Alex Cref — Sat, 23 May 2009 06:05:00 +0000

Advertisements that run during IPL can get pretty redundant, which is wearying most of the time. But in a few instances, as with the ads for Lovely Professional University, a university in the Punjab, every opportunity to re-examine the ad is a joy. Even more so than in the US, commercials broadcast during sporting events in India are ruthlessly hacked up and disembodied on subsequent airings: just now, while hunting around for the purposes of the blog, I encountered the full thirty seconds of this ad for the first time.

Another ad which is always welcome is this one for Chevrolet.

Going to Bangalore for the weekend! Bangalore and Chennai play tonight in the IPL2 Semifinals! Peaces!

Chaiyya Chaiyya

Alex Cref — Fri, 22 May 2009 12:08:00 +0000

Good grief watch all six and a half minutes of this music video:

“Chaiyya Chaiyya” from Mani Atman’s 1998 Bollywood film Dil Se, composed by AR Rahman, acted by Shah Rukh Khan and Malaika Arora Khan (no relation), sung by Sukhwinder Singh and Sapna Awasthi, and filmed on the Nilgiri Mountain Railway near Ooty, in southwestern Tamil Nadu.

In testament to Bollywood fandom’s unrivaled demographic weight, Chaiyya Chaiyya was voted the 9th greatest song of all time in a BBC poll which registered six of the top ten songs as coming from the subcontinent.

Take special note of ‘King Khan’ Shah Rukh slo-mo headbanging his late 90s mop-top at 0:56 and 5:42.

Pond’s White Beauty

Alex Cref — Wed, 20 May 2009 15:51:00 +0000

One of the hardest things to know how to feel about as a Westerner in India is the persistent advertisement (and presumed use, by women) of complexion-lightening cosmetic products. As a more symbolically-laden correlate to the use of fake tanners by some white people, it’s yet another example of how values and appearances get reflected, refracted, and transmuted in the disparate shards of globalized culture.

Pond’s White Beauty is one such product, manufactured and distributed by Unilever, an Anglo-Dutch multinational and one of the biggest companies in the world. Check out this randomly captivating (if seriously problematic) series of ads for White Beauty that went sometime last year, preserved for posterity thanks to YouTube and starring Bollywood big-shots Priyanka Chopra, Neha Dhupia and Saif Ali Khan:

I’m fairly certain most of my (white, Western) readers would agree that, ironically enough, Priyanka looks better at the beginning of the seven days. This sentiment is evident, among others, within the astounding cacophony of YouTube user comments on these videos. To pick just one example:

rotaka (5 months ago)

“Priyanka should never change her skin color. That is one of the things that make her so beautiful.”

One of the great things about YouTube comment boards is that they condense and showcase how truly divergent cultural perspectives can be, even as they converge on this one highly specific spot in cyberspace. Alongside each other, in mind-blowingly incoherent juxtaposition, one can read countless points of view, each with a different sense for the ad’s context:

randomlimon2324 (2 months ago)

wow this can be a movie
now, going on to see part 5!

cambrasmacho (2 months ago)

racists bastards!

fortheloveofalia (4 months ago)

i love saif ali khan
and obiously love ponds

A few more examples, less juxtaposed but no less dissonant, or poignant:

malletdiva02 (9 months ago)

“I am so glad at the comments that the people are making on the board that are against this rubbish. Beauty comes in all shades”

…

Diamond5Girl (4 months ago)

“did this creme help for anyone who are using it?”

…

ranj22288 (3 months ago)

“Can’t even understand why he’s with Neha if she’s this bossy!”

…

Hemps (4 months ago)

“whoooooa wtf, creepy. lol.”

…

SDCABSEE (6 months ago)

“WHITE BEUATY!

I am not against this product , but they also should have another version BLACK BEAUTY that would make your skin become darker and darker, because I beleive there´s people that want to get darker if there is people who wants get a lighter skin in this world.”

Comments like this last one, which seek to compare darkening products like fake tanners to lightening products like White Beauty — and thereby rationalize the use of the latter under a kind of ‘grass is greener’ folk ontology — are fairly common. Expressed effectively by hansel22, it’s a position worth meditating on…

hansel22 (5 months ago)

and whites want to be tanned. whats the problem?

…though in the end it seems to lack a full sense for what’s at stake here.

Some comments, most probably authored by Westerners or diasporic Indians, condemn the company and the actors for propounding some sort of racism, but tend to ignore the situational considerations (not to mention the systematic biases) that would lead someone, whether in India or abroad, to use White Beauty. Troublingly enough, these comments seem to perpetuate the exact racialized power dynamic that Indian women (and maybe men?), in purchasing and using products like White Beauty, are trying to work around. (This is to gloss over entirely the ad’s commentary — echoed to a degree in the comments — regarding the treatment of women as objects, and focus instead on the race-related discourses operating within.) Check these:

brokeNCDYEluverxD (1 month ago)

“I’m Indian, and I dont get why indians want to be white?!? seriously this is stupid. It just makes me hate my culture even more.”

…

AltaicSupremacy (2 weeks ago)

“Oh wow, a product for whitening skin, oh boy. I can’t wait to replace my beautiful tanned, melanin filled skin for pasty, albino-lite skin, whoopee! I laugh at the people who buy this, only people from an inferior culture/race would buy these products”

…

Moriysz (9 months ago)

“Everyone wants to be like the whiteman. Stupid people. Thats why his ass is going into captivity.” (?!)

…

nevers6 (1 month ago)

“isn’t it part of Indian cultural history that the lighter-skinned Indians are in the higher caste?
pretty fucking disgusting. and the worst thing is that Hinduism suggests that people are where they DESERVE to be because of past lives, so the poorer, darker ones EARNED their lower place, and if anyone tries to marry up, they can be killed for it. Real peaceful, tolerant religion there…”

…

madmaxrj (3 months ago)

Freake Indians…. Rubish People !!!!!!!!!!!

User comments of a delightfully distinct vein, presumably authored by Indians or other Bollywood enthusiasts, aptly demonstrate how completely different meanings can be constructed from the same cultural artifact. The comments I have in mind center mostly on the desire to see Priyanka and Saif together in a movie, and soon:

bollywoodfan23 (10 months ago)

“do u know when the next one [ad in the series] is cuming out”

…

nooriuk786 (4 months ago)

“omg i luv it i want dem in a film togeatha”

…

randomlimon2324 (2 months ago)

“wooow this should really be made into a movie
i want a necklace like that
oooohhhh and its magnetic!” (ironic?)

…

kashaami (3 months ago)

“priyanka and saif should do a movie together:)”

There is an East Asian analogue to this series which can be found here but is somehow less compelling (sound editing?). In this sister ad’s regime of meaning, Pond’s Flawless White — a presumably related product — is cast, even more explicitly and whackly, as “love’s helping hand.”

Airtel et al, Pt.4

Alex Cref — Wed, 20 May 2009 14:22:00 +0000

The way in which telecom companies advertise in India is striking. Visual motifs, catchy slogans, and young icons are effectively combined in such a way as to build a progressive-sounding, forward-looking and apparently self-evident exhortation toward the consumption of the latest, greatest technologies of communication. Like many phenomena in contemporary India, these ads afford a good picture of ‘traditional’ and ‘modern’ value systems at work/odds/play, etc.

Airtel, my own mobile service provider, currently advances a campaign for its mobile 2.0 products in the person of India’s cricket captain, Mahendra Singh Dhoni. [See previous post, IPL2, Pt.1]. “It’s time to move on,” Airtel, as Dhoni, tells consumers, recalling the way a mother would chastise a child who clings to inappropriate forms of behavior out of a failure to ‘grow up’. By the rhetorical shape of the request, those viewers who aren’t prepared to acquire a Blackberry or comparable device are cast as either immature, reactionary, or (far more blasphemously, perhaps) just plain uncool and thoroughly out-of-step with today’s India.

An even more evocative ad is that which peddles Airtel’s broadband services. While the slogan “Impatience is the new life” might seem a bit juvenile or incoherent to readers of this blog, it nonetheless speaks eloquently to the vernacular (if sometimes garbled) aspirations of young, Western-oriented India.

The latest fashion, technology, and pop culture have almost unassailable appeal to young Indians of almost any class or caste, and as best I can tell the rhetorical accessories attached to them are of secondary importance, if not inconsequential. (In certain cases, the same could be argued for the aesthetics of the commodities’ themselves — one sometimes wonders if what they signify doesn’t trump what they are.)

Regardless of these slogans’ actual efficacy, it seems clear that they are deliberately cultivated to sound slangy, poppy, and just plain new. In another example, a Samsung Mobile ad campaign centers on the agog-though-intrigued sentiment captured in the phrase “Next is what?” It’s another expression that catches native speakers of American English a little off-guard – do they mean ‘What’s next?’ — though it seems to effectively capture the edge-of-the-seat alertness that these advertisements seek to instill in their audiences. More than that, however, the slogan advances a bourgeois eagerness to snap up the latest innovation. It bears a distinct whiff (even by the standards of this blog post) of a concern for ’staying up with the Joneses’, or ‘Mukherjees’ or ‘Singhs’, as the case may be.

An equally trenchant Vodafone ad campaign, “Make the most of now”, challenges consumers to embrace the moment and its conventions in order to live as fully as possible, or something. (Was ‘Make the most of the moment’ taken? How about ‘Make the most of today’? ‘…the present’ maybe?) Simultaneously, the ‘Open up to…’ rhetoric casts disinclined viewers as closed-off, entrenched and anti-progressive. For some reason I can’t imagine technological products and services being advertised in the US with the same level of ‘get with it’ attitude. Issues of ‘backwardness’ seldom crowd the practical focus of US ads, at least in my recollection. (Readers are encouraged to submit examples of advertisements that challenge this interpretation.)

Another tight example can be found in an SMS I received from Airtel yesterday. I see the same focus on notions of social flux, and the same lionization of that agile individual who stays abreast of the latest developments in technology and society, promptly consumes them, and fully embodies them:

If you don’t like
something,
change it; if you
can’t change it,
change the way
you think about
it. Life is all
about change.
Forward it to
your friends
Sender:
AT-Promo

Five minutes of googling suggests that the part preceding the sentence which I’ve emphasized is attributed to children’s book author Mary Engelbreit, though it has a Rilke-like sound to it, and there are a sufficient number of variations to make it seem like it could have come from anywhere. In any case, this apparently cute, tidy truism cum message of affirmation, in hinting at the rapidly changing, incomparably edgy nature (and overwhelming momentum) of late modern technologized existence, might also also comment obliquely on the ‘arbitrary’ make-up of ‘unchanging’ tradition — and its consequently diminished importance in the dynamic world of 2009.

If all these advertisements share a set of common goals, it might be (1) to cast technology-fired development as inevitable for India, and the consonant social effects as irreversible and unfathomably deep, (2) to portray the less-than-frenzied personal uptake of technology as naive and probably reactionary, (3) to uproot ‘traditional’, community-centered notions of property ownership and material life, and (4) to depict the ascendancy of the schedule-optimizing, profit-maximizing individual as wholly irresistible. In their attempt to bring those Indians who aren’t yet yuppy technophiles into the ambit of post-industrial capitalist materialism — and operating, as they are, in an era of crumbling ancestral values and amnesiac meaning-making — these ads link the pursuit of self-actualization with the consumption and embodiment of technology.

Keeping that in mind, here’s a final ad for you to marvel at, by Nokia and starring that Bollywood diva that can do no wrong by me, Priyanka Chopra (of Pond’s White Beauty fame): “…it’s who we are.“

IPL2, Pt.1

Alex Cref — Sat, 16 May 2009 09:37:00 +0000

Though the monsoon is still five months off, it rained last night, powerfully and beautifully, and for the first time I actually needed a sheet while sleeping. This morning it’s cool, which is pretty much unconscionable for Chennai, and most welcome to this good-natured-though-climatically-troubled white guy who had three people comment the other day on his prodigious sweat output. This morning also begins the counting of the final round of voting in the much-celebrated general election, and kids are throwing fire-crackers all over the street. This may be because we live down the street from Tamil Nadu’s Chief Minister, octogenarian Karunanidhi (’cru-n-n-dy’), who is expected to retain power, but it also may be because fire-crackers are thrown into the street under pretty much any pretext in India.

In an hour I’ll tune in for the latest match of the Indian Premier League, or IPL, which is a limited over (short form) cricket tournament taking place from April to June. Ironically, the IPL’s current and second season (IPL2) is taking place in South Africa amidst security concerns related to the general elections here in India, the recent attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team in Pakistan, and the attacks in Mumbai last November (known within India as 26/11).

The Chennai Super Kings, followed loyally by every resident of Tamil Nadu (myself included), are based currently out of Durban, though this fact is barely google-able, which hints at how inconsequential it is in fans’ eyes. Lion-like, the Super Kings are captained by Mahendra Singh Dhoni, wicket-keeper, current skipper of India’s national teams and endorsement-wallah of every product known to India. As you might imagine, he’s pretty much the man. Also on the Super Kings’ roster is Lakshmipathy Balaji, a home-grown Tamilian bowler who had attracted Jesse’s and my adoration the last time around, during the matches against Pakistan in 2004, due to his unique last name which seems appropriate for the right kind of professional athlete, though not necessarily a cricketer. Ballah G has been injured on and off for the last few years, and in IPL2 is struggling to lower his ‘Economy’, which is analogous to baseball’s ERA.

The IPL, which features both Indian and international players, follows the latest, greatest format of cricket, Twenty20, in which a match is accomplished in roughly three hours. Omitting the nitty-gritty of the rules, which are fairly incomprehensible to Americans, I’ll say simply that the structure of the game essentially encourages batsmen to swing away, resulting in more home-run-like ‘boundary shots’ worth four and six runs, and more action, generally speaking. Watching the season’s first match from Delhi, I thought I caught sight of a few (white) fans in the stands wearing plastic turban-shaped hats which held nachos and other concessions. [See a previous post, Bhangra Lassi, for a discussion of this readily-exportable symbol of Indian identity in relation to the sardar.]

Falling neatly in line with this charged-up, perhaps-ironic aesthetic, each IPL team has a squad of cheerleaders. Through a combination of gestures on their part, and lascivious camera shots on the network’s part, these women manage to achieve an aura of whack sluttiness that makes the NFL version totally prude by comparison. It seems clear that the loose image imputed these cheerleaders is very deliberately cultivated by the powers-that-be: the Bangalore Royal Challengers cheerleading squad, for one, is known officially as the ‘Mischief Gals’.

It’s impossible to discern cheerleaders’ nationalities by watching a match, as the content (and accent) of their cheers is inevitably subdued by the voice-over commentary. For all I know they could be from South Africa or anywhere in the West: they are most often white and blonde but sometimes of black African or (maybe, potentially) partial Indian ancestry. (Recall that many Indians were transplanted to South Africa, northern South America, and other locations in the British Empire during the colonial period.) In any case, cheerleaders are never clearly, recognizably Indian, (nor were they last year, when the IPL was held in India) since to have Indian women behaving in such a way would be totally unacceptable, I guess. In spite of a bit of backlash against the presence or conduct of cheerleaders last year and the Delhi High Court’s recent decision to limit the distribution of relevant footage (though this latter move could be more about network rights than moral outrage), it seems they’ve become a fairly well-enshrined component of the league.

Indian Print Media, Pt.1a

Alex Cref — Tue, 12 May 2009 11:33:00 +0000

An addendum to that post a couple days back:

Kotalipara Development Society is a microfinance bank based in West Bengal.