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Do you actually need to eat pizza to be called an urban citizen?

 Today, while travelling I saw a new shop that was selling Dabeli(an Indian snack). That got me thinking about does that shop needs to be there? Does the world need more Dabeli? Maybe that area. But who cares! Those who need it will get it. And the business will thrive. More oil will be purchased, more white flour will be consumed, more fats, more gym memberships, more machines, more iron and eventually more money. That looks like a pretty good cycle. But do we need to have everything that they sell? 

    This point has already been made by a lot of people and in a lot of ways. I saw this point about 'consumer culture' for the first time in an essay called Upabhoktavaad ki Sanskruti by Shyaamcharan Dubey in our Hindi textbook Standard 9. Then it came again in several ways for instance in Fight Club (1999) movie. So it has now become the need to be in the trend. One needs to eat pizza to be an urban citizen, and one needs to have a car to show success even though a motorcycle or a bus would be more convenient and so many other things. There are companies making big brands and associating products and values with it and going on to dictate a direct or an indirect change globally. There are hierarchies in brands too. Many of them do not want a different brand imposed on them. There was a need for consistency in quality that was met by brand and brands became a vogue and a need in the marketing sector. We could sort out a whole strata of the Indian population who probably wants an iPhone which would be way more than the population of the United Kingdom. There is a big salute from our side to the marketing personnel and also to the whole team who ensure the developing, creating, manufacturing and basically every -ing of the product. Not to just one product but a plethora of them.

    Now it is not being implied, via this blog, that there is a conspiracy theory but the pattern is so big that one can't escape it basically. We just can't.

       

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