Ingenious India

Today, I happen to notice what keeps my cigarettewala busy all day. The bloke is an ingenious dude. He has acquired a cheap smartphone with a large screen which he has hooked up to a cheap car stereo. Surprisingly, the car stereo which has in built speakers have a great output, both in terms of sound quality and volume. For 10 bucks a pop, our dude gets a movie loaded on to his phone which he watches in between serving his customers. On days there is a cricket match being telecasted live, he streams it online thanks to the dropping data prices. There is no dearth of ingenious men and women in India. 

Just read an article on how e-commerce / logistics companies are changing the destinies of many girls by hiring them to deliver products at consumers' door steps. Previously a male bastion, today, girls in their 20's see this as an opportunity to break away from the societal shackles and set themselves on a road to freedom and economic independence. 

Reminds me of early 2000's, when the skies opened up to provide opportunities to people from small towns to kiss the sky. The budget airlines spread their wings - offering everyone an opportunity to fly - not only to their temporal destinations but also to the destinations of their dreams. Thousands of air hostess academies sprung up around the country giving girls from small towns and lower middle class families an opportunity to strike out in a bold new direction. Though a slight detour on the preordained road to marriage, families looked upon these institutes as finishing schools which would eventually help get their daughters a better groom while the girls saw this as their only chance to a little bit of freedom before they 'settled down'. But unfortunately, it was not an equal opportunity programme. The conventionally prettier girls (read: fair) got a chance to flirt with this new found freedom easily while their darker cousins got left behind. A fairness cream leveraged this opportunity to sell their wares to the less fortunate, 'the dark skinned girls', by telling them that even they could get a shot at freedom by using the their product. Watch the ad here.

Times have changed. The future belongs to the bold and not to the beautiful. Hopefully the day has arrived when the shallowness of fair skin is giving way to a confident gait. Girls today are no longer looking at career opportunities to land a better groom. They are marching into male dominated professions by their sheer grit and determination to make a better life not only for themselves but for their families. These are jobs that will ensure no little girl is married away to an unsuitable boy at a tender age. Jobs that will help send her children to better schools. Jobs that will ensure her children get a shot at their unlimited dreams.