The first thing that strikes one about the ad is the fakeness of the smiles. It’s like they haven’t even made an attempt to make them look realistic. And why should they? The ad is in an English newspaper, read by educated people, mostly in cities. It is assumed, that this is how we want our villagers. Swacch images for a Swacch India.
We are almost unable to view the consequences of our actions, so we want our images cleaned of them. These people can be transposed as such into a Colgate ad and they would fit perfectly well there too. They are the representative, village family, either still in the village or having migrated to the cities and living in poverty. Stereotypically, just dark enough, and wearing plain clothes that cannot possibly be mistaken for the more urban middle classes. The wife is replete with a saree, bangles, mangalsutra, and a bindi.
Ads for urban India, have moved on to more modern images, while images of our villagers remain the embodiment of our traditions. This erasure of their actual life is also visible in the fact that they have no background. Where do these people belong? Nowhere but in our imaginaries. Where do they come from? Nowhere but fabricated by our ad companies. Why are they here? To serve, as an alibi for a new product.
The next thing that catches the eye is, ‘Support Ganesh. Support Digital Equality.’ So the previous impression of simple village folk is again reinforced by the name of the man. And as free basics is being sold as an economic necessity more than anything else, it is targeted at ‘Ganesh’, the man, who is assumed to be the breadwinner of the family and the primary user of free basics. Link the patriarch, link the family. One does begin to wonder though, what is it that Ganesh has to do with digital equality and how do we support him by supporting digital equality? Should we support Ganesh to support digital
equality or should we support digital equality to support Ganesh? For instance, are there other ways in which we can support Ganesh which might be more helpful?
It becomes clear that our primary task is to support digital equality and the benefit that Ganesh accrues is part of the benevolent charitable deed we are doing for him. Here we reach the crux of the ad, which is that free basics is being promoted as charity. Here it would be prudent to point out that charity is the Trojan horse, all our progressive products come packaged in.
We notice that the family (nuclear, without old people who are already outside the internet’s purview) is staring straight at us; their gaze is imploring us, the existing internet users to spread the happiness that we get from the internet. It’s not even that we should be kind enough to grant them free basics, but only we shouldn’t stand in the way of Facebook from providing it to them. Because, we don’t have to do anything, Facebook is doing everything, we merely have to just get out of their way and make sure our elected representatives follow suit. And just look at their happiness, does the ad not want us to be secretly grateful to the internet? To appreciate it more, and to be happier about it? And how can we stop something that makes people so happy, just because of a few ideological qualms, from we the privileged?
‘Just look at the family’, the ad is saying, ‘how can you be so cruel as to stop even free basics from reaching them?’ The boy and the girl can get educated even without a proper school. The woman can be connected to her friends from other households, without having to leave her home. Without having to soil the honor of the family or shirk her household duties. And so the ad speaks to us. “Through a trial of free basics by Facebook, Ganesh learned new farming techniques that doubled his crop yield.” The myth being perpetuated by this ad becomes clear at this point; the idea of the poor unconnected (instead of uneducated) Indian who is suffering because of his lack of access to the latest information. Our farmers, in this story, are committing suicide because they don’t have the Internet. Multiple equalities are being invoked here.
First, free basics equals access to internet. Access to internet equals the capability to make use of it. The capability to make use of the internet equals the acquisition of the latest scientific knowledge from the internet (which is presumed to be accessible and useful for the local conditions of the user.) Which equals the application of said knowledge resulting in unbeknownst improvement in productive capabilities, which in turn, means more money and a better life for the user.
All these equalities are questionable. For instance, we can’t be sure Ganesh is capable of using the internet without the required language and technical skills. With the proliferation of spin and fake news on the internet, it is becoming difficult for even the ‘digital natives’ to find the right information. Then we aren’t sure whether information that is useful to him is even available there. Information on the internet is only available when someone puts it there. The internet is a repository, not a generator of information on farming techniques. The only information the internet generates is of its own use, all the other types of information have to be made available through other institutions. So, if we presume that information that is beneficial to Ganesh exists, we have to ask why it is not reaching him in the first place.
Here the role of the government is called into question. What are the myriad agricultural universities all over India doing? The government should be taking care of its farmers, it should be making sure that they are told about the latest advancements in farming techniques. To even get to a stage, where free basics can help a farmer, we have to assume that the government is failing at this job. But even then, how bad was the farmer doing before this? That some information gleaned over the internet doubled his crop yield. Even the actual introduction of new technology directly affecting farming, rarely, if ever, leads to such a drastic improvement. Our farmers must be doing a really horrible job if the internet can bring such a massive change. This also means that their poverty and the food shortages that they chronically face are their own fault. Even though they have been farming for hundreds if not thousands of years, they have been unable to master it. But lo and behold. Facebook can help them, the internet can help them, let reason and science in, let them be the saviors, let them stop farmer suicides, let them save the natives from their own ignorance.
Free Basics, thus becomes a tool for enlightenment and empowerment against an apathetic government, and a basic condition for farmers to reach their full potential.
Finally we get to the ‘patriotic’ imperative to help our country progress into the future. “Show
your support for free basics now and help move India forward”. It is a well-documented fact that
the Indian middle class, the audience for this ad, is obsessed with progress and catching up with the West. That insecurity is used in this ad to its full effect. The ad tells us that India is not moving forward because it lacks the internet. Moving forward or what is called progress is here equated to the
availability of the internet.
The farmers have always been an important part of discourse in India. The agricultural sector still employs the majority of our population and yet we never seem to have enough food. The ad tells us that it is not because of a structural deficiency that people have to go hungry every year, but because of a lack of information. Individual responsibility is invoked here in two ways. First, we are responsible for enlightening the farmer by letting Facebook provide him with Free Basics. Next, the farmer is now responsible for himself because we have done our part and allowed him access to information. Now the farmer cannot complain about our apathy.
Where is the government? It has receded, because this is now a matter of the market.
The farmer was suffering in the market because of an information deficiency and now that the market has corrected this failure, the farmer as an independent producer should be able to produce and sell his wares to eke out a proper living; obviously only if he is willing to work hard and educate himself. The ad is another artefact of our ongoing neo-liberalization and should be read as such. Increase the responsibility of the individual for himself, reduce government responsibilities and let the private and corporate sphere provide commodities and services to pick up government’s old duties and help us be responsible for ourselves.
(Akshat Jain, Student of Media and Cultural Studies, TISS, Mumbai)
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