And the Yuppie shall inherit the earth

“Historically and politically, the petit-bourgeois is the key to the century. The bourgeois and proletariat classes have become abstractions: the petite-bourgeoisie, in contrast, is everywhere, you can see it everywhere, even in the areas of the bourgeois and the proletariat, what’s left of them.” -Baudrillard

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Maybe its Umberto Eco or Debraj Mookherji, But I found myself reading a little too much into the political underpinnings of commercial advertisements.
Or may the advertisements are actually getting political.

Sample this.

Jaago Re campaign is stale news. The Tata Tea ad is our yuppie mans idea of political utopia. Average voter here is a twenty something ,Urban, Sophisticated and reasonably well to do corporate employee. The male politician (definitely north indian) surrounded by safari suits ,on the other hand is uncouth, most possibly rural, lower middle class in demeanor. Stuff that constitutes the average yuppies image of a politician. And his understanding too. The desired selection procedure is an interview. Corporate style with qualification and work experience thrown in. The ad ends with the flabbergasted politico being offered a tea and rejected by the young man. Implicit here is a view of political leadership as a managerial position rather than a seat of representation. Implicit are the caste and class prejudices. Explicit is the annoyingly simplistic perception of the present set of parliamentary politicians with their supposed lack of formal education or professional experience being projected as the source of their apparent ineptitude . Let alone any serious understanding of parliamentary politics. Ratan Tata for Prime Minister.

All would have been fine if it stopped with the Ad . But then what started off as a promotional campaign for a Tea company ended up as nationwide(north east aint India, mind you.) campaign to get the youth to vote.Youth in everyday media parlance is now a synedoche for strictly upper middle class, urban educated youth. Like all good corporate campaigns, the television ad here is the mainstay of their campaign. The ad (again) involves a twenty something addressing urban, upper middle class et al( now draped in fab india to lend an intellectual appeal) issuing a wake up call to a bunch of yuppies in a movie hall on an election day. Waking up is not used in the sense of recognizing the grim eco-political situation of the nation, but to their own political rights which would enable them to address their petit bourgeois political concerns better. If we ignore the subliminal ad for Tea, Implicit here is a view that reduces political participation to the mere act of voting. Implicit also is the view that yuppie participation in the electoral process is the panacea of all evils in the democratic system. Its the middle class clamouring for its own political space.Even though sound political judgement and numbers hinted otherwise. While it seemed perfectly harmless,naive and ideologically callous to begin with, the Mumbai attacks legitimized the campaign in way and made it a rather channel to vent the Urban middle class frustration. And all its ends up achieving is a platform for the yuppie desire for the tough state whose mechanism resembles the internal fascism of corporations.

As the assembly polls results suggest, thankfully enough the people who electorally matter don’t care much about the terrorists. Nor do they need to consume Tata Tea to feel political. Meanwhile you can scream your apolitical goobledygook like Enough is Enough, more vital issues like legalisation of slums concern the voterkind.

While the new Idea ad does in no way call for dismantling capitalism and its politics remains that of reforming capitalism, It definitely signals an acceptance of the collapse of India Shining narrative by India Inc. Which in more ways than one marks a paradigm shift in India advertising , especially since the days when development was capitalist development complete with tall buildings and patriotic techies . The ad involves a local women politician who conducts a referendum on constructing a mall on agricultural land at the advice for her secretary(played by Abhishek Bachchan).The public unanimously rejects the mall. Politically it calls for a direct democracy combined allied with technology(Idea cell phones here) creating a regulatory framework for the capitalist mode of development. While working as a means of product promotion within the same system. Implicitly it heralds the neo liberal economic model which made cell phone cheap enough for upper crust of the low income groups to posses, it acknowledges the vitality of a regulatory framework to prevent the excesses of capitalism.

To quote Jeffrey Keedy,

” Resistance is a very successful advertising strategy. The advertising world co-opted our desire for resistance and has been refining it in pop culture since the 60s.“