Happy Valentine's day

Sample these (TOI) –
The V-Day market in India is a whopping Rs.1200 crore. And by all estimates it’s growing at 20-25% rate YOY. It’s a serious cash cow for marketers who’re looking at fresh positioning planks to milk the occasion.
From Nokia to Airtel, from LG to HP to Microsoft, from Taj Jiva spa to financial services all are lining up to sell keeping in mind the unique choice of customers.
Luxury brands are growing at 8% rate, fashion apparels are using this occasion to bring out new outlooks and there is probably not a single line of business which could afford to miss the bus.
Also, there is a serious psychological threat to those who remain out of this lucrative pie. People with no or broken relationships face tremendous peer pressure, and psychologists or sociologists argue that it won’t be long before love becomes a necessary evil commodity in the economic market.

For a person like me who has a keen interest in how economics and society shape up individual’s life (and even to the extent of antagonizing a few, I believe those are more powerful than religion) – I just became a shade more curious to follow such articles. And hola!! I was not far from the truth.

There have been questions galore about the cultural misfit, about the consumerism, about the hollowness of the celebration on this particular day – and about how it demeans our very own Indian cultural heritage. But somewhere all these arguments miss the central theme of such celebrations – the ecstasy of the mind.
Its not that I celebrate V-Day (by choice or lack of it) as most of the younger India do but, as one of the articles in a vernacular says – at times often cliché things need to be expressed and celebrated.
But, my idea was not to debate about the vilification of V-day, instead the intriguing battle between human emotions and economics. In an increasingly globalized world where barriers are breaking down, yet distance between human minds are rapidly increasing, the business proposition of expression of love is too good to resist. Think of a conservative Muslim girl, or for that matter – a teenager from a low middle class family standing in front of such huge public display of love and thinking about the dream prospects. Now, to compound, if (s)he is in love then think of the appeal this makes. All around people are busy to express something as pure as love, yet this person feels out of that colorful world! And that is precisely how the appeal of this business is growing – breaking barriers of all economical and religious taboos.
To state the obvious, the more such intangibles the better for the marketers. As MBA teaches us, you couldn't value intangibles.

Now, there was a thought that whether as a marketer one would want your beloved to be changed every year. Considering love is non perishable and post marriage the expressive nature diminishes, by all means to survive, the market size should increase. For that to happen there are only 2 possibilities – either influx of newer lovebirds or break up and reorganization of existing loving pairs. Since, the first is by no means capable of being influenced (even though recent studies suggest that people are trying to fall in love due to increased peer pressure), the second is the only solution. So, is being immoral in trying to push for break up helps in economical terms? Nobody could answer. Hence, the advertisers need to have this subtle approach – without gift love is not as great as it sounds and forget your past by concentrating on present or future.

This serves both up selling as well as market penetration.

For once, a so called intellectual (antel, in Bengali) like me thought dead against of commoditization something as pure and emotional as love. But, probably there is something which we are ignoring which we are yet to realize. Everyday we are becoming a more rootless society, that every incremental power of independence is taking us away from being dependent, that being illogical is not equivalent to be in love and that by definition “sacrifice” never asks for return. Our mental bankruptcy is driving our materialistic hunger and at times even prostitution seems more moral than “being happy”.
However, there is hope till we die – as without hope we are left only with depths of loneliness. As economics triumph over all human emotions, as each and every moment of our lives become a commodity, as east and west fight over moral supremacy – my sincere wish is that we all come back and realize the starting point – that love should enrich us even in selfless sacrifice and materialistic expressions just remain a carrier of the internal message ------
“Amar o poran o jaha chaai, tumi taai tumi taai go;
Toma chaara e jogote mor keho naai, keho naai go..”
(You are what my heart wants, and there is nobody else without you in this world for me)