Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses... and I'll give them Burberry

Personally, I don’t care much more for articles breathlessly reporting this great divide between how the rich (and the aspiring rich) and the poor live in the “new India”, the India of “sprawling gated communities, young BPO execs out to make a quick buck and where people are as comfortable eating sushi as they are saag.” Every instance now that I see foreign newspapers awestruck at the shockingly upwardly mobile aspirations of these nouveau riche Indians, I roll my eyes. Unless you’re telling me something new and constructive about poverty in the developing world, and maybe how things can or are being changed, don’t bother. I know that bleeding heart liberals are going to inadvertently spill their lattes in their indignation at the callousness of these rotten middle class people, who dare reach out for luxury goods and flaunt them to show off their wealth, and it makes for shocking reading and everything – all I’m saying is that I’m tired of these let’s-compare-how-people-live-in-the-new-India stories. They’re boring. They’ve reached the end of their ability to provoke or make one think, and as far as human interest stories go, they’re, well, not interesting any more. So please, get some new angles and don’t give the same old lazy spins any more. It might surprise the world, but once people have money, they are going to buy luxury goods and live in gated communities where they can be assured of electricity and go on holidays and spend money on their kids. Because, that’s what they work for. And yes, other people are poor, lots of them, and they don’t get to enjoy all of those benefits. Seriously, instead of being known for beggars and cows, we are now going to be known for beggars and shopping malls. No wait, make that beggars standing hungrily outside shopping malls.

Anyway, Vogue India’s August issue apparently features a photo spread of “supple handbags, bejeweled clutches and status-symbol umbrellas, modeled not by runway stars or the wealthiest fraction of Indian society who can actually afford these accessories, but by average Indian people.” Average here means poor people, the kinds who can’t afford two meals a day. This photo shoot has them modeling Hermés bags and Burberry umbrellas and what not outside shacks and on overcrowded scooters and generally doing the poor people thing. And of course, people are foaming at the mouth and calling this distasteful, and Vogue defends it by saying that they are saying through this shoot that “fashion is no longer a rich man’s privilege…You have to remember with fashion, you can’t take it that seriously.”

I personally have zero problems with luxury goods being sold in India, whether it be in fancy shopping malls or on streets where the poor huddle outside on the pavement (why is this such an issue everywhere? The poor are huddling on the pavement outside whether you’re selling handbags or combs, man.) Do I think this photo shoot is in poor taste? Absolutely. It may be aesthetically brilliant for all I know, and since I haven’t seen the photographs I can’t comment. But using the poor to suggest that they apparently aspire to these goods is downright disregarding reality. They aspire towards meals and housing and education for their kids, not Burberry. I know people in India want luxury, and by all means they should get it if they can afford it. But saying fashion is no longer a rich man’s privilege, and then getting dirt poor people to model $10,000 handbags means you’ve clearly got a missing link – in your head. And that’s not even the best part – apparently, the “models” have not been named in the shoot, because who wants to read something like “Jagan Pande Bhopali feebly clutches a Burberry umbrella. In select stores only. Price on request (the umbrella, not Jagan – he’s available for Rs. 20 a day)”.

Oh, and are the very rich people of India really going to be tempted by stuff they see the very poor modeling? If they have a sick sense of humor, yes. Otherwise, dah-ling, who wants to buy Hermès any more? I mean, I absolutely saw someone’s maid carrying one the other day, you know.