| In June this year, Business Week magazine came out with a very interesting cover story titled "Power of Us". |
| Essentially, it presented a very exciting vision of our world of tomorrow wherein, for the first time in the history of humanity, "mass cooperation across time and space is suddenly feasible and economical". |
| The rationale utilised is the emergence of connectivity of a billion or more individuals across all continents through the Internet, thereby creating potentially a very powerful ecosystem which can share knowledge, social and business contacts, trends, and opinions that can have the momentum to cause massive disruption to the way we do our businesses today, and indeed, perhaps the way we live our lives today. |
| In this week in August, as we celebrate the 58th year of our independence, I was stuck by a very interesting statement in one of the editorials in the Indian media wherein it alluded to this particular anniversary of our independent nation as a year in which, usually, "retirement" takes place. |
| Is there a retirement age looming for our "1947" generation of leadership, ideologies, and social behaviour? If so, what can trigger this change of generation and induction of a younger generation in the process of thought leadership? |
| I believe, very excitedly, that Indian society is also on the cusp of truly empowering""perhaps for the first time in its very old history""its now 1.1 billion citizens. Our independence on August 15, 1947, came with a similar promise. |
| Unfortunately, as things have seemingly turned out, the citizen power could at best be seen only once in five years or so when the nation went to the polls. |
| A substantial mass of our people have never really enjoyed freedom""from poverty; from prejudices based on religion, caste, and community; from dogma; from constraints in freely expressing their opinions and be counted for the same! |
| In fact, in recent decades, our political system has actually splintered and regressed to an extent that governance is invariably (mis)guided by petty considerations of each of the splinter groups rather than of the nation as a single entity. |
| We are, in my view, in search of another independence where the collective voice of the 1.1 billion can be heard and acted upon. |
| The promising news, in my view, is that such a "new independence" may be just around the corner, and that collectively, the Indians can utilise the "power of us" in a myriad ways. |
| There are a few simple enablers to this empowerment. The most potent one is the "mobile handset" itself. India already has about 55 million mobile connections, and this is expected to touch or exceed 100 million in three years. |
| The second, an equally potent one, is going to be the Internet (powered by broadband in the future). There may just be about 25 million (or less) users of the Internet in India today, but I believe that this could exponentially grow to hundreds of millions in 3-5 years, with a majority of the population having access to the net through cyber cafes and other shared/accessible facilities, e.g. at work, at schools and colleges, etc. |
| Each mobile handset owner/Internet account holder can potentially communicate with tens or even hundreds of millions of other Indians, and share ideas, opinions, frustrations, and desires through SMS, e-mails, and weblogs (blogs). |
| No longer would an average citizen be restrained in expressing her views by any government edict or rely only through "letters to the editors" and other similar channels. |
| Likewise, if this consumer is not happy about any product or service, she will no longer be constrained with a limited access to the provider of that product or service through a letter or a phone call. |
| If there is no immediate or satisfactory redress of the grievance, she can vent her frustration through blogs on the net or start a chain of messages through the ubiquitous cell phone. |
| What will be the implication of this profound change? The most visible one will be an increasingly more visible shift in the balance of power in favour of the average citizen. |
| Governments, politicians, companies, and other businesses that do not take cognizance of this shift may meet with some unpleasant surprises. |
| Hence, they need to tune up their systems (if existing, else they will have to start by putting such systems in place) for getting feedback from their constituents/consumers and responding to the same as quickly as feasible. |
| The role of the mass media in disseminating information and shaping opinions will also undergo some shifts, with a need for a more targeted (sometimes even one-to-one) communication. |
| Decisions on purchases of specific products and services will increasingly be pre-made even before the customer steps out of her home and towards the shopping destination. |
| Hence, marketers and retailers would need to catch the attention (and the favour) of the consumer in a totally different environment and through this new medium. When would we see some live examples of the impact of this newly acquired power? |
| The next general election in 2009 could well provide us with some interesting outcomes!
arvind@ksa-technopak.com |
Disclaimer: These are personal views of the writer. They do not necessarily reflect the opinion of www.business-standard.com or the Business Standard newspaper
