3 Things That Serve No Practical Purpose In India
Products made without local conditions in mind have only cosmetic value.
Introduction
I walked home late one evening from a vegan flea market in the rain holding an umbrella over my head. A few weeks ago the organizer had posted that they would be having a monsoon version of the usual flea market, and I thought what better way to make the best of my lazy weekend. I didn’t even have a trek scheduled for this one. So off I went. However, as I was returning home from the flea market, something out of the ordinary caught my eye. During my walk I noticed not on just one, but multiple people carrying those jumbo umbrellas with J-shaped handles. They were struggling to manoeuvre themselves through the street with their jumbo umbrellas along haphazardly laid footpaths, trees, low hanging branches on the road, electic utilities that protruded onto the footpath, and the cyclists and pedestrians sharing the same space with them.
That’s when it struck me: The sheer number of products we purchase not for their utility value but the admiration and attention they command from others who don’t use or cannot afford them.
It would do us a great amount of good in developing products that are suitable to local living conditions which seamlessly blend into our environment instead of purchasing products that originated in developed countries with first world operating conditions in mind.
“It would do us a great amount of good in developing products that are suitable to local living conditions which seamlessly blend into our environment instead of purchasing products that originated in developed countries with first world operating conditions in mind.”
Those things aren’t really made for this country, isn’t it?
Here are 3 such products which are more about status than utility:
Jumbo Umbrellas
As I continued my walk home in the drizzle, I felt perfectly fine with my compact pocket umbrella which was made for local conditions, and all I had to do was slide it a bit to the side or raise it higher whenever a pedestrian or motorcyclist passed by. Meanwhile, the jumbo umbrella users struggled to manouver themselves around all things Indian; slushy streets, non-existent and broken footpaths, wet sandy marshes, long lines of cables and plumbing lying on the footpath, hanging electrical and telecommunication cables, construction debris, potholes, garbage, low hanging tree branches, open drains, hordes of people walking about on narrow footpaths, transformers and other power utilities. They had to get across all these obstacles while dodging traffic and ensuring they don’t hurt anyone with the umbrella at the same time.
I saw one almost poke the eye of a passing cyclist. Ouch!
It was quite a herculean task and it looked like a bigger struggle not hurting anyone with the umbrella than protecting themselves from the rain. Most Indian roads don’t even have footpaths to begin with. So we’re walking on the roads most of the time, and the last thing we need is something protruding from our bodies ready to get entangled with a motorcyclist, human, or vehicle on the road. It’s bad enough navigating these streets using compact umbrellas. To even think about using something bigger would be illogical and foolish. This is probably one of the best examples of why bigger is not better.
People have really forgotten practicality and ease of use in their rush to own the “bigger, better, and best” of things.
Retractable dog leashes
Another product that just isn’t designed with Indian street conditions in mind is the retractable dog leash.
Hear what canine training expert Sanjana Madappa has to say about this:
A retractable leash allows you the flexibility of controlling the distance you’d like to maintain between you and your pooch while out on a walk.
The purpose of a retractable leash, as I understand it, is to allow your pet to have the maximum amount of freedom while allowing you to have a resonable amount of control over it at the same time. However, this plan will surely backfire in a place like India. Invariably, your lead is bound to get tangled up with some kind of obstacle or hindrance on the street due to the crowded and congested nature of Indian cities.
Like Sanjana said, in the case of untrained and poorly trained dogs, this could spell disaster in cramped Indian cities where there’s barely any space to move around and manoeuvre a retractable leash.
She emphasises on the fact that this concept itself comes from countries “where there are vast open spaces, where people actually follow traffic rules and where their population is a fraction of ours. They are also strict about training their dogs to behave”. If I were you, I’d take it that she was mainly referring to developed countries which are remarkably well planned and have a lot of open space for pedestrians to freely move about. We just don’t have that kind of space in our neighbourhoods. Our streets are narrow, cramped, filthy, and contain all kinds of hazards, natural and manmade. I already mentioned most of them in the first point. A retractable leash could get tangled in an infinite number of things.
When it comes to retractable leashes, the number of hazards are just too high to justify the additional flexibility the owner would gain in controlling their pet.
Sports Utility Vehicles
Those monstrous contraptions with the power of 10,000 racehorses definitely look glamorous on the vast open roads of Dubai where you’re free to gallop as fast as you want. But here in India, they’re a huge pain in the neck. Our country wasn’t built to accomodate such huge vehicles to begin with. Much of our country’s infrastructure, like roads and railways, were developed during the British Era and are built for Ambassador cars, cycles, motorcycles, cycle rickshaws, and horse carriages.
Even today, our streets are extremely narrow, badly maintained, filled with potholes, garbage, and broken drains. Our roads have slow moving traffic, no footpaths (which means there’s pedestrians walking on them), improper signage, and carry all classes of vehicles. The discrepancy between the rate of acceleration between the slowest vehicles; such as motorcycles, scooters, autorickshaws, cyclerickshaws, and mini goods vehicles, and the fastest; such as SUVs and luxury sedans, means there’s a disaster waiting to happen.
An increasing number of accidents involving SUV’s and pedestrians, sedans, two wheelers, and cyclists, are testament to this fact.
The painful fact of the matter is that, barring the highways of our country along with the few expressways which dot the periphery of cities, one really doesn’t get to gallop with the might of 10,000 horses in their Toyota or Land Rover SUV. For the most part, the people who own these vehicles are stuck in the same mindnumbing traffic jams along with the rest of us. The only difference is that they’re burning much more fuel than we are. A Fortuner or Endeavour could easily be burning the same amount of diesel as the 2 or 3 motorbikes next to it while waiting at a red light.
An SUV really doesn’t serve any practical purpose in India.
Think about it. You can’t go fast because our roads are narrow and filled with traffic. You can’t turn properly on small inner lanes without almost colliding into vehicles approaching from the opposite side, there’s nowhere to go off-roading unless you live near the Himalayas, the Western Ghats, the Thar desert, or around any of the mountainous regions of the country. These vehicles are agonizingly hard to park anywhere in the city due to the huge real estate they command. You can’t reach any place on time as you take up way more space on the road and increase the wait time cumulatively for everyone along with yourself. And lastly, you end up spending a significant portion of your income on fuel, servicing, and maintenance of these gas guzzlers that they just end up being not worth it.
Even if we considered the enhanced safety aspect, there’s no need for such a high level of safety due to low speeds and narrow roads within the city. The only reason I might even consider getting an SUV in India is if I have the time and money to take it to the mountains or on interstate highways every month. The people who have that kind of money are busy making money, not going dune bashing, overlanding, or camping every fortnight.
At the end of the day, an SUV is just a status symbol for the rich and an object of desire the rest of us can ogle at and hope to finally purchase one fine day. Even then most of us won’t, as there are much better ways to spend your money in this country with better ROI.
Conclusion
All things considered, we must factor in practicality, ease of use, and logic when it comes to purchasing products that weren’t made with local conditions in mind.
As Indians, we have to be mindful about our purchases and ensure we don’t purchase something just for its cosmetic features over its practical uses. We need to keep local conditions in mind before blindly buying fancy equipment or high end gadgets that look cool in developed countries, but may have absolutely no practical use in ours.
If you know of any other such objects that have no business being in India, please let us know in the comments bar to the side.
