Looking Glass

But I am quibbling. I am certain the Net is going to make a huge impact onour lives and the world as we know it. It’s just not going to happen thisafternoon. And yet all the attention focused on the Net and the computerindustry has had an impact, a completely incidental impact, that might havemore immediate ramifications on our society.

To explain I need to go back a couple of decades. Recently I fished out theIndia Today special issue on the `80s. `A Momentous Decade’ as the magazinecalled it was said to have heralded a new era of economic dynamism. Thestock markets were booming, industrial growth was up and even infrastructurewas in robust shape. New entrepreneurs had emerged, the middle class wasgrowing and the image that symbolised the times was of an urban landscapecrawling with Maruti cars.

Ashok (Ash) and Babita (Babs) with one child, a TV set, car, cook n grillrange and stereo system were a representative `80s middle class couple`living for today even if it was on credit.’ Television had gone colour andviewers had been treated both to a measure of freedom (Janvani, Newsline,election specials) and entertainment (Hum Log, Tamas, Ramayana).

In the film world Amitabh Bachchan had been replaced by not one but manyangry young men. But check out the images selected by the same magazine justten years later and they have undergone a sea change. AIDS, the plague,mobile phones, a range of cars and consumer durables, go karting, amusementparks, discotheques, crime, designer drugs, teenage sex… Infrastructurehas gone from `bad to worse’, the environment is `on the brink’, trains andairplanes have collided and defence expenditure has more than trebled.

Individualism is on the rise, the emergence of satellite television hascreated a breed of couch potatoes. And the overwhelming social preoccupationof the last decade is shown to be glamour — beauty queens and beautytreatments. It is not as if the `80s did not have their problems. They did:it was the decade of separatism and the Delhi anti-Sikh riots. It was not asif the materialistic trends of the `80s did not evoke criticism: RajivGandhi with his Dior sunglasses and Lacoste T shirts was perceived as theacme of conspicuous consumption.

And yet comparing the two decades the `90s emerges as one of crass excessand misplaced priorities. And falling values. Take the big scandals of thetwo decades, for instance. Bofors involving kickbacks of Rs. 64 croreresulted in electoral defeat for the Congress. The stock market scam of the`90s involved an amount of Rs. 5000 crore and Harshad Mehta still retainedthe admiration of many of his fans. It is tempting always to believe thingshave gotten worse but there is no getting away from the fact that the lastfew years indulgence has been glorified as never before.

How does the Net obsession fit into all this? I read a perceptive commentrecently on how the Web/infotech czars were society’s new icons. And howdifferent they are from the industrialist/cricketer/film star/fashiondesigner/beauty queen that has been propped up by the media in recent times!They have glamour alright – enterprise, brains and lots of dosh. But as pinup boys these earnest men with their laptops are more reminiscent of thebright boy in the middle class neighbourhood of the `70s who workedassiduously for years and got ahead, the kind that bar an occasional RahulDravid one doesn’t get to see any more. They appear to be more interested inwork than in a flashy lifestyle, don’t display extravagance (Azim Premji’shabit of travelling economy has been much commented on). They put money intodevelopment (Nandan Nilekani of Infosys and R.V. Jagdeesh made contributionsrecently towards the development of Bangalore) and talk about issues such aseducation. As role models these are very different from the pretty boys andgirls we’ve had over the last few years. And their presence might, evenbefore the Web revolution occurs, lead to a re-endorsement of some of theold values we seemed to have shed in the last decade.