“‘In my parents’ generation, they ended up buying a house in their forties and a car even later,’ Mr. Kadepurkar said. ‘When we were in college, I don’t think anyone dreamed we would be doing it so early in life.’ His salary rose to a princely $20,000 a year, then $40,000, and he marveled as those who joined (his employer) Infosys just a few years after him exuberantly cashed in their first paychecks to buy the latest cell phones. ‘They are unhesitatingly buying things like cars and motorbikes, and taking out loans to do it,’ he said. ‘They’ve not seen a lean period’ (Meredith 117-8).”

Much like Americans, Indians are choosing to spend their ever-growing paychecks on modern consumer goods. Indians like Mr. Stawan Kadepurkar are experiencing this new consumer culture firsthand.

But how did this desire to purchase the latest cell phones, shiny new cars, and bigger houses come about? People feel a biological need to differentiate themselves from one another, to create a pecking order. Modern people in egalitarian societies choose to differentiate themselves by purchasing luxury items to appear wealthier. This is by no means a modern phenomenon.

Like India, the origins of consumerism in the United States can be seen near its founding. Centuries ago, Europeans, and by extension Americans, distinguished themselves by social class. Those in the lowest classes could not rise up to become aristocracy; one was either born into nobility or not. But by breaking off from Great Britain and the king, the United States became an egalitarian society without social classes.

Consequently, as John Adams a founding father of the United States once described, Americans needed something to fill the void:

‘Hence arose, said Adams, an inevitable social division between the few and the many, between gentlemen and commoners, between ‘the rich and the poor, the laborious and idle, the learned and the ignorant,’ between those who had attained superiority and those who aspired to it. Grounded as it was in the irrational passions of people, this division could be neither stable nor secure. The struggle for superiority existed everywhere, even in egalitarian, republican America. Indeed, argued Adams, almost a half century before (Alexis de) Tocqueville made the same penetrating observation, Americans were more driven by passion for distinction, by the desire to set themselves from one another, than other peoples. In a republican society devoted to equality’there can be no subordination.’ A man would see his neighbor ‘whom he holds his equal’ with a better coach, house, or course. ‘He cannot bear it; he must and will be on a level with him.’ America, Adams concluded, had thus become ‘more Avaricious than any other Nation’ (Wood pg.214).”

The British-American people thus turned to consumerism. Not just the gentry, but the growing “middle-class” as well. They purchased cloth, ceramics, tea, and cutlery on credit provided by Scottish and English merchants. These early Americans were not “the self-sufficient yeomen of Jeffersonian mythology (Breen pg.454).”

They purchased imported goods for social status:

“One English traveler discovered to her surprise that in rural North Carolina, women seldom bothered to produce soap. It was not a question of the availability of raw materials. Good ashes could be had at no expense. But these rural women were consumers, and they prefer to purchase Irish soap ‘at the store at a monstrous price’ (Breen pg.455).”

In India, the same cultural move towards consumerism is beginning to take place. As barriers between the various Indian castes fall, Indians purchase consumer goods to differentiate themselves. Car sales, for example, jumped in India “69 percent over the past four years to reach 1.1 million (Meredith pg.163).”

What do you think? From what you have seen and read, are Indians falling into the same consumerist trap as Americans? Will this process positively or negatively affect the Indian people? If consumerism is bad, can is there a way to stop or reverse it?

- Alex Thornton

Cited Works

1. Breen, T. H. “Consumption, Anglicization, and the Formation of American Identity.” Major Problems in American Colonial History. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2000.

2. Meredith, Robyn. The Elephant and the Dragon.  New York: W.W. Norton & Co., Inc., 2007.

3. Wood, Gordon. Empire of Liberty. New York: Oxford University Press, Inc., 2009