I noticed this strange thing too... especially in upscale shops posters (ads) almost always depicted white people. "Fair skin" is highly coveted in India, but not that but rather logistics may be the reason for the white people: these products are mostly Western and the ads were probably imported directly from Western ad material.
> The growing lust for cars also reflects India finally having roads
> decent enough to drive them on.
Ha! I wish this were true. While highways connecting cities and towns are improving, roads in many of the cities and towns, under the onslaught of all this vehicle explosion, have deteriorated to the point where a trip in Bangalore, where two extremities could be traversed in less than 1/2 hour in comfort, can consume the same half an hour for inching from one traffic light to the next. The reasons are not just the volume of traffic, but the condition of the roads themselves.
> In a historical blink, capitalism, which postcolonial analysis once
> labeled poverty's cause, is now seen as its solution. Debt, once
> anathema for the middle class, is now an acceptable means to an end.
This is the aspect that surprised me the most. My family in India used to be more financially conservative than me, reflecting the larger attitude of society. Today, my family and similar middle-class (and upper middle class) ones spend at rates that would make me compare unfavourably to Silar Marner. A thousand rupees was parted with, it seemed to me, with much greater ease than I would feel spending USD20 (roughly the same amount). Some of this attitude in the middle class is fuelled by the need to keep up with the high-flying IT folks, whom they studied, worked and lived with, but whose earnings now could be 5-10 times as much as theirs.
--ravi
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