Every 90 days or so, I see a kaleidoscope of impermanence in Churchgate, South Mumbai. Commercial entities appear and disappear as part of what I call ‘Technonomic Re-distribution’ – re-distribution of wealth through new technology- driven changes in the economy. Minor and major upheavals result, as with the demise of Thomas Cook (The Sunday Statesman, Sept 29). How to cope with such change? We live in a unique phase of human history, with unprecedented rapidity of change.
The first factory in the Industrial Revolution was started in 1769, 250 years ago. The Information Revolution started with widespread Internet use barely 20 years ago. This astonishing speed of change poses challenges, with solutions based on courage and compassion. Sufficient attention is not given to anticipating and coping with change. The suffering from tumultuous change – such as jobs suddenly lost – can be minimized with better governmental, organisational and individual responsibility. Governments have to level the playing field in areas of rapid change.
Take measures such as equitable taxation. Ensure highly dubious overseas hedge funds do not deviously disrupt markets. Otherwise major entities employing thousands will vanish like Thomas Cook on September 23. Employers must implement fair pay scales and lengthier termination notices to avoid workers becoming income-less overnight. Nobody wants families having homes repossessed and children taken out of schools. Individuals need the courage to forget about job “security”. Remember change is the only certainty. The rapidity of 21st century changes demands living within one’s means.
Avoid debts and loans to fund lavish lifestyles (to impress others) that become unsustainable with sudden loss of income. Ask yourself: what would I do if I lose my high paying job tomorrow? The answers and preparation will help deal with shock of sudden change. As the saying goes, “hope for the best, prepare for the worst”. Responsibility to cushion changes becomes starkly evident in the retail industry employing over 40 million people in India. Ongoing changes worldwide are so drastic that the term ‘Retail Apocalypse’ runs amuck, with multinational online entities replacing street shops, chain stores and mega malls.
Millions of traditional retail jobs have been lost or threatened worldwide due to online commerce. India’s temporary economic slowdown is part of that causality, with the media reporting very little of it. I have seen little evidence of governmental plans to facilitate smoother shift from jobs lost in the traditional retail sector – a backbone of India’s economy – to jobs gained in new forms of technologybased commerce. Worsening the havoc, unregulated cheap products imported recklessly from China are tearing apart India’s consumer goods manufacturing industries. The resultant impact can be seen everywhere, as with Churchgate in South Bombay.
Opposite Churchgate railway station stood a multipurpose store called ‘Suryodaya’, next to the veteran ‘Café Bharat’. Suryodaya usually had queues at its four billing counters, with the department store selling daily consumer goods and imported groceries. A few years ago the queues disappeared; next some of the staff disappeared. Then Suryodaya itself disappeared. It became the first major neighborhood causality to online shopping. Near the shuttered Survoyada, across the main road connecting Marine Drive with Flora Fountain, is the much bigger and better known ‘Asiatic Stores’.
Brightly lit and bustling during these festive season times, Asiatic Stores wears a forlorn empty look. Often its employees and dark suited managers outnumber shoppers. This local landmark is sliding gloomily to its grave. Opposite Asiatic Stores, another longstanding landmark Eros Theatre is already dead. The cinema hall with its towering exterior-shaped like a wedding cake has downed its final curtain, surrendering to online entertainment dominating lives. Changes usually bring both positives with negatives. More people working, shopping online cause byproducts like lesser vehicular traffic in an overcrowded mega polis.
Very little escapes change. 50 years ago, Mumbai was famous for cotton mills. Mills in prime localities like Lower Parel gave way to mega malls 50 years later. Malls in turn are vanishing, opening up cheaper office and residential real estate. By year 2050, a shopping mall might become as extinct as the cotton mill. Changes can be cyclic. Online retailers earning billions cannot escape scythes of time.
“The future of online retail is offline” said a two-year old article in the Atlantic magazine explaining how American consumers already want the old shopping comfort of directly seeing and touching what they buy – with more online shoppers probably fed up with getting a towel after they ordered a trouser. The human mind has natural ability to adapt – as with people quickly becoming adept at using smart phones. Changes cannot disturb if we remember changes are inevitable. The journey of life cannot be static, needs movement. Careful wisdom enables that changes move in the right direction, with minimal suffering and maximum benefits.
(The writer is a senior, Mumbai-based journalist)