Death of Salwar

MissMalini.com is the ultimate fashion extravaganza of what is happening latest in the fashion industry and where the future trend of fashion will be blown by our Bollywood Actresses. After all, Bollywood brings all the fashion capital to the nation. With the personal stylists hired and working full time, even for budding actresses can show the trend. I mean if Kareena Kapoor Khan (Dont know why she left Ali and Pataudi and only took Khan from Saif’s name) steps out in a simple Tee without makeup, that also has to be designer Tee. Something which was never worn by anybody, must carry some symbol or emblem, cut or fabric, not visible on the Indian social scene. Now KKK (aka Bebo) is sporting designer wear with her baby hump or another trend has started in the market. 

Back in early 2000s, when the satellite television were starting operations by every day and 24 hours news was just catching the people’s infancy, there was a discussion on a news channel and a question was asked by a viewer to Aditi Govitrikar, Do you wear the clothes in normal that you showcase on ramp? Today that day is here, when the actresses and even the normal neighborhood girls are wearing the ensembles (not clothes) showcased in the fashion shows. I mean there are ensembles and silhouettes way over the top, which may never find their place in market, but then a fashion designer is showcasing his talent to think differently and act differently and the more important is the details of the cut of the dress, the fabric and how it has been draped, the reason Fashion Shows exist.

Two years back, we were skimming through my cousin’s shopping for wedding. Of course, western dresses (majorly jeans and tops) were part of the package along with the traditional dresses, whether you wear them or not, but somehow it is felt that traditional dresses make you look sanskari (cultured) in the eyes of in-laws. Kurtis and suits with various styles were there but the sheer absence of salwar is something I questioned. Not that bottom wear is gone. But the traditional salwar is replaced by the pants, leggings, churidars, harem pants, palazzos and skirts. There were so many options besides the salwar. I questioned the absence of salwar from her ensemble, she replied, I have never worn in it in my life. 

This year another cousin is getting married, I was involved neck deep for helping her in shopping. She has also never worn salwar in her life. She wears Indian suits on almost daily basis. It was not that she had absolutely rejected the idea of salwar but none were found in the market. To get it stitched, her tailor also denied that I have new boys working and they have never stitched a salwar. Invariably palazzos or something other was provided readymade with the kameez (top), which is stitched to every girl/women own measurements. 

Dupatta still exists over the larger Indian audience and with majority of the dresses, it is provided, whether girls choose to wear it or not, is individual’s choice. But dupatta is also used as an accessory or some other way rather than hanged front to back but it is sliding on one side or role as a kafiyah or at times, girls do role around their heads. 

Public transport is a huge learning curve. Somehow I am forcibly contributing to the planet by not owning a car but Metro traveling in Delhi is fun with their powerful Air-Conditioner and the amazing time one has while watching people and the variety of people we get to see everyday. Ladies Coach is a truly boone for women commuters. But it has come at huge cost of people like me who appreciate Indian beauty. But then there are few girls/women who enter other coaches with their male friends or for the lure of a ladies seat. I witnessed one can find may be one in a hundred girl in salwar. Of course, aunties wear it, but when the aunties are decked up a little, they ditch their salwar and shift to pajami or palazzos or sharara (skirt).

All the girls born in late 80’s and post that period have worn salwar never or few occasions in their life. Older generation belonging to aunts post 45 are also shifting to other versions for their bottom wear than salwar. At times I wonder what are the rightists or the nationalists have to say about it. Although they sport knicker but still for the girls to shift at large to a knicker or a short skirt is like a decade away. Is there going to be a dharna (protest) for the death of salwar.

30 years back, it was the death of sari at a mass level especially North India wherein it became a formal wear dress and for normal wear, majority of the women have ditched it. 2010 is the year when it be called the year, Salwar died. But then with the new century and new generation, more variations and options of Western dresses are available to the girls. 

With the death of salwar, lehnga-choli has given small space of Indian version (lehnga material) to gowns, kaftans from Arabic world, tunics without bottom (earlier mothers forced their girls to wear bottom with tunics). With the death of salwar, a more bold and fierce version of women are easily sporting navel but wearing crop tops and pants hanging at the waist.

Old world makes way for the new. Bollywood Stars children are ahead of their parents with their instagram photos featuring their cleavages before they are developed or bikini bodies under development. In fact, ditching the salwar has brought the girls out of the closet, Tinder tells us how, with girls/women sporting bikini for their profile pictures and taking pictures as if they wish to enter contests on the CHIVE. 

Salwar is not dying, it is dead. It is demise is not sad but exciting with offering women more freedom in terms of expressing their body and their identity to the world. On a personal note, the more revealing dresses or tighter dresses women wear, the more empowered they feel. But then India, media makes an issue out of Deepika’s boobs or cleavage, she gets paid for revealing her body. I don't know, how society will come to terms with it or I guess they will, like the salwar died slow death without a ceremony.

Jio ya Maro (Live or Die) but Consume DATA

I was visiting my sister in States in 2012. Unlike other travelers I have more on ground experience of American living than the tourists who travel and stay in hotels. She would pay $30 to her cellphone carrier and in return she got unlimited free calls and text messages and unlimited data. Dollar exchange around that time was Rs. 50, so for Rs. 1500, you can make unlimited calls and use unlimited data anywhere in United States of India. I do not remember my phone bills of the time, since my Company took care of it, without much usage of data, it costed more than 1000 bucks. One could get cheaper plans in USA if they opted for the mobile phone bundled with the service. But since the latest high end phones are not clubbed with it and also the Apple functioning has deeply hurt the pocket of the consumers.

Coming back to 2016, Airtel launched a plan in the month of August with unlimited voice calling – local, STD and national roaming with few SMS which are redundant in today’s age of WhatsApp messaging but only 1GB of data access for the month all at the cost of Rs. 1,199 plus the obscenely high rate of service taxes on the same. Did Sunil Mittal and his executives push their heads into their asses before designing such a plan?

Sunil Mittal is the person who revolutionized telecom industry and particularly the cell phone service in the industry. But every time, it’s the Mukesh Ambani who shows mirror to every user in India as to what he deserves and what he can expect, not the leftover that he is fed. The writing has been on the wall with the emergence of the Unicorns in the App area of the world and with the rise and domination of Flipkart, Amazon, Ola, Uber and yet Airtel and its peers (Vodafone and Idea) wanted us to live in stone age era. At times, I feel 2G scam must have been triggered by them, had it not been the case, with the competition that we would have seen in the Indian market with major global telecom players operating in the Indian market, Indian players would have blown out of the water. 

Not to mention the call drops and the stingy cellular service by Airtel and still it is the best amongst the others. So we can imagine the operations of others. Clubbed to the fact, they are operating 2G, 3G and 4G operations in various circles, which must be confusing to their networking and service engineers to find wire and service. For once, their management had taken the decision to export the entire network to new technology and get rid of the old technology like 2G, which is expensive to build up and maintain, they would not be reaching for the ER to get bandaged as quickly as possible. 

Back in 2001, when Reliance Telecom, second baby from Mukesh Ambani after unleashing his mammoth petrochemicals complex in Jamnagar, he had announced free incoming calls, which were paid at the time, receiving a call was taken on the purpose or the urgency of the matter. Airtel charged for CLI (apparently abbreviation for Caller ID). In terms of regulation, Mukesh Ambani took a backdoor entry by promoting his services as Wireless Local Loop (WLL) or some technical mumbo-jumbo to launch mobile phones as fixed line phones with 25 kilometres operational limit which was spread gradually to the city and then State and then Country and later paid the license fee which was closed for other bidders as fine to the regulator.

Now this time, when Airtel, Vodafone and Idea were busy arranging Bank Guarantees as they were coughing millions and millions of dollars for 3G licenses and then for 4G licenses and yet it was taken cautiously according to the region and launched also strategically. Mukesh Ambani came from behind and grabbed 4G license for a pittance after his non-compete clause with his brother had expired.

But all the back room and back channel maneuvering and counter measures works to the benefit of the consumers. Earlier it was Roti, Kapda aur Mobile, now it is referred to as “Datagiri” (Denouncing him with the title of Don for Data on Mobile). But nobody realized that the rural uneducated are also using WhatsApp for enquiring prices of the produce in various Mandis or majority of the farmers move out on the fields after checking the weather report on Accuweather. What about those who cannot afford Smart Phone? Smartphones are available at drop dead prices even today. But no brand is so big to offer lakhs of mobiles at Rs. 2,999/-

The new boy is always bullied in the class, what the rest of the class does not realize is the height of the new guy in the class? Similar is the case with Reliance Jio, and it was unfair at their end to offer free service without their consumers understanding the prices of their service. For once, the incumbents were right. But come September 1, Mukesh Ambani again made Reliance the most anticipated AGM in the country. With all eyes, cast on his Jio plans with unlimited voice calling and only the charge for the data usage, which is again at 50% of the rates offered by its incumbents. We know, Mr Mittal must be shitting in his pants; Aditya Birla is already looking on the other side of the aisle to sell his Company, and it licenses and operations. 

Not to mention, no buffering service (checked on Youtube, the parameter of the service quality) on Reliance Jio, as the winner takes all compared to Airtel, which is available on north end of 100 sq ft room but limited or no signal on the south end of the room. 

Though the issues of voice quality are heard amongst one and all. But the quote from Rajan Anandan, Google Head of Indian and South Asia, tweeted, getting used to 20MBs on Indian mobile internet, thanks to Reliance Jio is the endorsement of the fact that how Reliance Jio is going to catapult our poor nation to a rich data nation.

Immediately Airtel, Vodafone and Idea are rushing to the door and announcing, that they have also doubled their speeds. It means that they had the product and the technology and yet offered us substandard products or perhaps it’s a marketing gimmick. Like in my office, we had continuous issues with Airtel 8MBs connection and their service enginner/technician would be visiting our office every alternate day. 

Everyday anger was wrathed on the poor technicians as our work suffered day after day. One technician got candid as we offer him biscuits after the tea and explained there is no 8 MBps facility or wire in your whole complex, switch to 4MBps as that is the capability available in your whole office complex and hence we switched from 8 MBps to 4MBps. 

Airtel, Vodafone should rise from their hallucinations and stop working on all networks from 2G to 4G and work with the Govt. to allow them to shift to single network. All of them have single product to offer, putting feeder lines on the AirWaves and yet their structure so many plans and schemes which are no good for anybody. Roaming Charges is an archaic term in the mobile world especially in the league in which India appears itself to stand or wishes to stand.

Purely and purely on mobile technology and plans world, India must be ranking at the bottom with the underdeveloped nations of Africa. Why Africa because Airtel is market leader there? All across the world, there is one number for the nation, no regional barriers or roaming charges and data is fed from the fountain rather than taps which come with cautionary warning in India, water is available from 9 to 12.

Reliance Jio are sold at Reliance Digital outlets, where queues are visible all across the nation as if it’s Rajnikant’s movie released in Tamil Nadu. No consumer product in the free world and free economy, wherein people are lining up to buy the product. But such is the frenzy or service of Reliance.

Having sung the praise not because they will be best but they have unleashed the industry from its own bondage as the incumbents are earning more than 70% of the revenue from voice. It is all cliche to say that the India has the cheapest call rate in the world. It may be but still the mobile coverage and expenditure is the highest in the world. YouTube offered the Offline service only for the Indian market as the data plans were prohibitively expensive for the Indian consumers. Post the Reliance Jio, there was a joke circulating on WhatsApp, next Reliance should come up with Reliance Bars, where the drinks are free and only the chakhna (snacks) will be charged.

After the praise comes the criticism, I am deeply skeptical about the whole JIO brouhaha. Reliance is the Group which is opaque in this world of information and technology and yet they talk about transparency. Reliance Telecom did not live to its hype or may be Anil Ambani didn't have the passion as his elder brother.

Not to mention their first advertisement of full front page on every newspaper featured Narendra Modi and realize his vision as Reliance knows there is no bigger brand in this country than Narendra Modi. Which gave the Opposition works for another 48 hours and but it died down?

But then I don't know why and how such big companies make such huge blunders on their launch. Like Mukesh Ambani announced at the AGM that Reliance Jio will offer data plans @ Rs. 50/GB, which in reality does not translate for any of the schemes launched by the Company. For 4,999, you get 75GBs of data, such data consumption is required for a cell phone is something, which had boggled everybody and on top of it, it translates into Rs. 67 per GB and no other plan is cheaper than this one in terms of per GB rate. But still Rs. 50 is the price said by its Chairman.

There was joke circulating on WhatsApp:

Mukesh Ambani announced breakfast at Rs 2/- per plate

The Large hall was thonged by many..

..as they finished there was a second announcement

Lunch @ Re1/-

wow...the hall soon went houseful with the villagers.

..as they finished there was yet another announcement

Dinner @ 50 paise..

Fantastic...ppl stayed back and many other came..

Special Dessert @ discounted price 0.25/- 

People turned really mad and as they chomped, gulped and went overboard with their indulgence Mukesh humbly bid bye to them and asked them not to hurry and enjoy the food thoroughly as the serving counters were to remain open.

Later the final announcement. Use of Toilet   Rs 1250/-

We know the obscure working of the RIL Group. Like even when the oil prices slipped from $150 to $40 sub levels, there was a marginal dip in their turnover and their profitability was always shoring high inspite of the fact that the Company said that they had marginal less profitability on oil refining margins.

Mukesh Ambani says that he has invested Rs. 1,50,000 Crores in Reliance Jio, which is subsidiary of Reliance Industries Ltd. (RIL) but RIL has total assets of Rs. 91477 Crores and on which book have they booked the investment and all the other financial mumbo-jumbo attached to the same.

Reliance murky working may or may not have impact on the customers in the long run. It’s a debatable point but the bigger question is, whether Reliance will be able to keep up its promises. And the best part, he was able to launch his kids on the Indian business stage.

BSNL is the only service provider which is visible post Jio launch and say they can match the prices and the quality and the speed. It actually sums the whole telecom industry post Jio or data as benchmark for telecom usage and sustenance of the telecom players.