What is outrageous to me is that, that bib is priced at $100 and someone would buy it for $100 because it says (I am guessing here) Fendi on a little flap on the inside or that umbrella costs $200 for a label on the inside that says Burberry (I have never heard that name before)! What is more outrageous to me is how ordinary everyday use products are converted into ‘chic’, ‘trendy’ and ‘aspirational’ stuff with a lot of money spent on building the name-brand!! What is even more outrageous to me is that people (albeit with some money and perhaps a little insecure in their skin) would fall for this propaganda and actually pay these outrageous amounts for these products, especially of all places in India!!!

What is interesting to me is that by using those products as props in pictures of traditional middle class Rajasthanis, how do they expect to brainwash the ‘aspirational’ Indian money class to buy these products?

The most outrageous thing for me was the fake outrageous and indignant tone adopted by this NYT article and ‘wtf moments’ from comments like,

The idea of being able to afford something but not buying it because you do not want to flaunt your money reflects a “very Western attitude,” he said.

worst journalistic cliches possible with no real analysis…its easy to say whats wrong but not to explain why. I reread the article and I’m not sure what you are talking about – maybe I’m just missing something. I saw the article showed the different points of view – one person saying “no we are not discriminating by caste” to “caste is discriminating the aid effort” – I can see how the title is misleading b/c it doesn’t show these different points of view though and I didn’t like the last line but overall I thought it was a good article. Are you saying that the article doesn’t explore other structures that lead to discrimination like feudalism? I’m sensitive to s.asians in this blog giving huge generalizations about our character w/o qualifications that lead to sterotypes. I understand your concern. Did you find the post article totally inaccurate? ……

Thanks for your revert PS. Not totally inaccurate (to the extent that what happens on the ground was captured in a roughly accurate manner), but if the correspondent had managed to dig a bit more, he/she would have found several levels of complexity (eg. rise of Dalit politics/identity, logistical problems per se) that are hard to ignore while doing a story like this.

I’m just saying that what Vogue India did to stoke desire for such frippery was heartless in my humble opinion, not edgy.

Anna, if you remember many, many, many years ago Tibetans used to come down to Delhi to sell their yak wool sweaters on the pavements.

Today, they have disappeared. They have been replaced by cheap sweaters mostly made in Prema/Vyasa/Valmiki’s home land.

Don’t you wish there had been a Vogue photographer who had draped a Tibetan sweater on an anorexic model and made it “chic”.

Just another way at looking at the same situation.

Still think your heart is in the right place though.

Short version: you need to look at productivity growth, not GDP growth; additionally, if you acknowledge it’s imperialistic, then ask yourself why imperialist institutions would ever support policies that would help undermine their base of power.

The long version:

This is along the lines of what my economics professor would say:

Efficiency can operate in many ways – but the neoclassical idea of efficient allocation of resources says very little about industrialization, particularly in a situation where the formal market is not just imperfect, but not yet really built–there is still a lot of primitive accumulation happening. There are two economic things that industrialization requires: long term investment in infant industries so you can become globally competitive through productivity increases; and disciplining of the firms so that they actually do engage in that. What is less pertinent than ideology (neoliberalism or socialism or anything else) is whether these are pragmatically pursued to the extent possible given political, social, and other limits (again, strictly from an economic vantage point in promoting industrialization). The IMF prescriptions actually debilitated the countries affected from being able to do this, and instead pushed them into industrial policies on the basis of a static understanding of comparative advantage theory that involve reliance on low-growth, low-productivity growth labor intensive industries (like extraction, garment production, etc.). The countries that have fared the best (like China and India) are the ones that were able to resist this theory for as long as possible. Where they haven’t (like India’s pharma industry since it signed the global IP agreement) particular industries have actually gone backwards. The trick is to give lip service to the global ideologies that will get you money while you do what you need to do internally (again, strictly from an economic vantage point – industrialization is a very violent process and the question of whether you should endorse it is not a simple one).

Corruption is a red herring, given the lack of any empirical evidence that corruption is correlated to long-term convergence of growth rates/GDP, though, yes, it has certain transaction costs. But, rents as a whole amount to a very very small percentage of GDP. What is more relevant is how the corruption is used – for examplle, South Korea had a lot of corruption, but it didn’t interfere with extremely high productivity growth in the 1960s. Additionally, there is “corruption” in wealthy countries too through legalized means like earmarks or pet projects – political rent seeking exists everywhere. So the real question is, if a corrupt bureaucrat demands money or a police officer takes a bribe, what do they do with the money? Does it impede any of the two basic strategies laid out above?

Question though…does anyone know if the models (such as the grandmother) received a copy of the magazine where they were featured?

Also, does this strike anyone as making the brand seem “ordinary” as in no longer a luxury brand?