Cities lose thier Frugality-mindset

Losing My Frugality


By Harish Bijoor


Decades ago all of us were very frugal in everything we did. If not us, at least our parents were.

Decades ago there was a method to every spend. There was a calculation that went behind every replacement of a pressure cooker in the kitchen and the good old 'tawa' to fry the puris in. There was a calculation at play even when it came to replace bed-sheets in the bedroom and towels in the bathroom. Decades ago, there was an entire attitude of frugality that was the big sentiment at play.

And then the decades rolled by. We now enter a brand new one in the series of years that will follow 2010. I now wonder, where has frugality as a sentiment gone? Where did it go? How did it go? When did it all happen?

Look into our city lives today. Is frugality a sentiment we associate a bit too closely to that one big vice called stinginess? Has it somehow got lost and has it altogether vanished form our lives?
Forty years ago, when I was al of 5 I grew up with a shortage of sugar. While holidaying with my grandparents in Mumbai one felt he pinch of shortages al the time. Delhi was no better. The sugar shortage was so acute that Udupi restaurants in Mumbai had stopped keeping sugar in eh small little bowls on the table for use with your cup of coffee or tea. Restaurant guests wee in the habit of swiping the sugar with eh bowl in tow. The shortage had bitten everyone hard.

This was one thing that spurred on the sentiment of frugality all around I guess. Everyone used everything frugally. With care. The more expensive the item, the more the care that was shown to it.

And then things changed. As India moved on from a supply-short economy to a supply-excess mode, advertising helped changed peoples mindsets on what to use and how much to use.

In a nation where even toothpaste it eh bathroom was used frugally, in came mass media advertising that encouraged consumers to fill the entire space of their tooth-brushes with sensuous looking tooth-paste (at least in the ads made during the day). India changed. Gradually though.

I still remember catching the sight of a ‘chimta’ in several bathrooms in North India and South India alike. These 'chimtas' were used to squeeze out the last bits of paste from the metal tubes of toothpastes the day. And we did it with pride.
That’s how frugal we were.

In the mid eighties and right upto the last years of the series 1900, India remained reasonably frugal, despite what mass media advertising has always wanted us to do. Sped more. Use more. Waste more even.

Mass media advertising wants us to have three television sets in the home. One in the drawing room as the family TV set. One in the bedroom for private viewing. And one in the kitchen for the moment, for Shantha-bai to watch while she cooks.

Mass media advertising has also wanted us to have more than one car in the home, use a lot more of snack-food and maybe even have three hair-dryers in the home.

India somehow remained rigidly and resolutely frugal. For a long number of years. An older generation of people who had seen wars ands shortages and strife, helped rein in sentiment.

India somehow continued to be rooted to the method of using what we must use, saving what we must save and not throwing what we must not throw.

We continued to be a nation that still has homes selling old newspapers to a “raddi-wallah” at the end of every month. In many of our homes we still save up empty plastic sachets that bring milk in them to our homes. At the end of the month we sell them to the 'raddiwalla' as well.

We buy a new car and keep the polythene seat covers on them on for a year and more. Never mind how sweaty and uncomfortable it gets. D never mind how yucky it looks. It at least prolonged the life of the seat cover.

As we enter the years of the 2010 series, I am afraid things are morphing. Frugality has somehow slowly found it sway out. Our city lives are filled with attitudes that fight frugality instead of perpetuating the sentiment.

We buy more than we must. We eat more than we must. We waste more than we should as well. We buy things we don’t really-really need. We buy things on impulse. We buy things led by emotive appeal rather than functional need and want.

I think advertising has succeeded at last. If you really peek at every product and service we buy and use, every one of them has two dimensions to them.

One is the “need and want” dimension. The other is a “desire and aspiration” dimension.

Let me explain. Coffee has a “need and want” dimension. When you need and want it, you go buy it. It is simply to satisfy this need and cravingn that is reasonably functional.

Coffee does also have a “desire and aspiration” dimension. When you want to try an exotic Colombian blend that costs twenty times the price of your local blend from Sunticoppa, in comes the dimension of “desire and aspiration”/ This is mostly cosmetic. This is mostly led by the allure and drama of branding and advertising at play. It is also spurred on by the influence of the Joneses, or the neighbors and peers who do the same.

Frugality as a sentiment has gotten lost from our city lives slowly but surely. Some of us are still frugal. But the rest may not allow us to be. For long. So watch out.
Must we then re-invent frugality in outr lives once again? Just to stay in touch with who we are rather than who or what we want to be?
Touche!
The author is a brand-strategy specialist & CEO, Harish Bijoor Consults Inc.
Email: ceo@harishbijoorconsults.com