 "Rajiv Lall")
Seldom has the announcement of a new bank elicited so much comment. This week, when Infrastructure Development Finance Company's Rajiv Lall spoke to the media about the brave new bank on India's horizon, projected to grow 10 to 15 per cent in a year after its launch, the numbers attracted as much comment as the manner in which he chose to make them known.
Lall, the erudite Oxbridge educated executive vice-chairman and managing director, had eschewed the banker's plain vanilla uniform of suit, boot and tie to address the gathering in a nifty pair of cargoes, an open-collared shirt and what looked like a Fabindia bandhi. "He calls it the 'unbank'. This bank is comfortable in its skin, culture and Indianness and providing world class service. It's zara hatke," said a spokesperson.
In the same week, an announcement that Chiki Sarkar, former publisher and editor-in-chief of Penguin Random House India, is launching Juggernaut, a mobile-first publishing firm that counts Infosys co-founder Nandan Nilekani and Fabindia promoter William Bissell as its main investors, has attracted attention. Bissell and Nilekani are, after all, the faces of a progressive, business ethic.
The launch of these two ventures might not suffice to indicate a trend, but what I am seeing is a definite movement to consolidate a growing backlash to the happy, shiny "Incredible Make in India", vaguely offensive and right-wing political narrative of the day.
For want of a better phrase I call it the "rise of the rugged".
Born of a reaction against the parochial dandiya stick waving, Narendra Modi-induced craze of foreign direct investment and American business worship that is predicated for a good measure on the Bharatiya Janata Party's win in the last national elections, the rise of the rugged is being fuelled mainly by people like us who appreciate texture, nuance, genuine nationalism and yes, secular, progressive values.
Perhaps with the global distrust of big banks, big businesses and global warming, the rise of the rugged on our shores can be linked to a more international trend that seeks texture, be it in its choice of daily bread (from white to multi-grain) to its choice of lifestyle and ideology.
As always, advertisers who are the most reliable diviners of people's thoughts and lives have cottoned on to this movement.
Heard the recent advertisement for Kindle for instance? In a faux Tom Waits/ Leonard Cohen gravelly voice, a man recites a tired angst-ridden elegy to our modern lives. He is urging us to buy an expensive new device, which we really do not need, but he does so not by alluding to happy, shiny people, but to more complex ones.
Anand Mahindra's carefully curated jingles for his latest SUV strikes the same tone of moody somberness. Rather than the old Kingfisher "good times" quality of the days gone by, featuring prancing young teenyboppers on a beach, these depict rugged travails through the Indian jungle, where every detail has been meticulously weathered to convey a rugged textured reality.
The HCL advertisement is much of the same: a paean to thoughtful individual choices of living in mild disdain of big business, big banks and the discourse of a rampant right wing credo.
So what do we christen this merging new trend of post NaMo hipsters? Men and women who quietly and determinedly refuse to fall in line or get with the programme?
Until we coin a catchy nomenclature like "hippies" or "yuppies" or "foodies", I am content to call the phenomena the "Rise of the Ruggeds".
And their arrival, at least for me, has been not a moment too soon!
Malavika Sangghvi is a Mumbai-based writer malavikasmumbai@gmail.com
