Rural marketing, and the Beginnings of the End

#GoneNuts

There is something called a shampoo bar doing the rounds on social media. Some factory produced soap bar that is shown as the saviour from plastic packageing. Likes and Shares galore.

I have only used shikai or ritha. Our daughter also. Everyone in my village also (till these ubiquitious 1/- satchets came in. A brainchild of the devil to drag the poor into the net of consumerism.).

The only path is the path back to shikai and ritha. Locally got and used. #Swadeshi. #Swaraj

Not from one consumer item to another. Where the imagination exists only within the industrial world and its products.

10 Comments

• Kannan T

  What you call as a brainchild of the devil - we were taught was a stroke of genius and a gamechanger 

Today when i saw a post celebrating the 80s breakthoughs of  corporates into rural marketing/ Soaps, shampoos, toothpastes. It felt like a slap.

Those 'successes' were what undermined the simple self sufficiencies of villages, their sustainable patterns where the local producer served the local consumer. Where people did not use scare money on unnecessary products.

And then I realized again the infinite wisdom of that old man. Who reminds again and again that each action needs to be measured on what it gives, or does not give, to the last man.

Aparna Krishnan shared a post.

19 June at 17:46 · 

#TheBeginning #Of #TheEnd

The beginnings of moving village people away from their simple sustainable options to becoming dependent consumers.

And today there is no way i am able to move my village children back to chigaraaku, shikai or rita, locally available washing options. As the slick marketing has beguiled their hearts into seeking soap and shampoo satchets.

Even as they stay poor and malnourished.

Raj Jha

19 June at 16:08

ng fading properties of color in mind . Today it is a leaf from history of rural advt. Pic taken on 19 june 2018 on samastipur lehariasarai road.