SANTOSH DESAI President, McCann Erickson India

Small town India is finally beginning to wake up from its long and deep slumber. You see signs of this everywhere. Small towns are beginning to make their mark on the economic life of this country. Be it corporations, cinema, the media or beauty pageants, people from small town India seem to be everywhere. Small towns themselves are undergoing a tremendous transformation. Are we on the threshold of radical change?

The desire for radical change is certainly visible in the advertising of educational products that dominates the landscape everywhere of small town India. Kiosks, shop signs, hoardings, and hand-painted banners, all contrive to create a noisy babble, promoting all kinds of educational possibilities: from the most-favoured computer coaching classes to beautician-courses to English-speaking tutorials to tuitions classes and countless others. Housed in awkward cramped rooms with peeling walls, these are the laboratories of ambition where the Indian small town is looking for a chance to grasp an opportunity that it most values-to escape from its dreary black and white part.

Escape to the Great Beyond-the city has always been seen representing untold opportunity. With examples that abound of the success achieved by people from all kinds of backgrounds, the need to get some access to the possibilities that reside in Metro India is a very strong one.

In some ways, this has always been the case. Historically, the adjective sleepy seems to effortlessly precede the notion of a small town. Cities represented movement and change; people who wished to transform their lives in their own lifetime were drawn to the larger cities and the opportunities that they represented. The city was the glittering capital of our dream-state, a site where the past could be overlooked and a new future ushered in.

The small town represented the idea of uneventful stability. The small town was usually organised around a principal feature: either it was a market town or it was a centre for a particular skill or it inherited a geographical feature that contributed to its importance. There was no catalyst available for dramatic change. Some people drifted out and others drifted in; gradual growth did take place, but of a very stable kind.

All that may be changing now. Among the most significant change to have happened in the last two decades or so has been the mushrooming of co-operative housing societies across most small towns. The 'societies' represented the 'new' town, as opposed to the closed communities of the past. As families became nuclear, these societies thrived by virtue of allowing the younger generation more room. It also allowed them to take charge of their lives instead of being permanently embedded in the traditional family structure.

Significant as this change may be, it still hasn't materially altered the worldview of the Indian small town. The idea of social or economic mobility is still an unfamiliar one. In the past, life was a condition to be undergone more than an arena for achievement. The idea of change was thus an uneasy one, fraught much more with threat than with hope. The desire was, in fact, for the much coveted 'home-town posting'; lifestyle stability was clearly more important than career advancement. The implicit understanding of the world was that since no real change was possible, living comfortably in familiar surroundings was the best way to be.

The Window Of Opportunity

The primary change we are beginning to see is in this fundamental mindset. At one level, there is a sense that opportunities have multiplied. More importantly, there is a growing belief that these opportunities can be accessed by anybody. The idea of mobility within one's lifetime has emerged a powerful driver.

This sense of awaiting opportunities has been driven strongly by media. Television has helped further urbanise our social discourse. Today's cinema too presents the big city as the theatre of all action. From the media, it seems clear that there is an India teeming with opportunities and that it is clearly centred around the city. The nature of opportunities, too, has become more seductive: the idea of success is increasingly seen to be synonymous with that of visible recognition. The coveted professions of the day combine fame with material well-being and these are largely media-driven.

The rise of the services sector has further fuelled the journey city-wards. The last few years have seen many more jobs being created in cities with the relevant infrastructure to support the services sector.

The desire to develop the ability to access this enticing world has been a strong motivator for change. The proliferation of educational products is a pointer to this powerful urge to not be denied a shot at real success. The fact that with the increasing privatisation of education, new kinds of options have emerged also, makes the opportunity seem within grasp. New professions have thrown up new options, and professional institutes have helped negate the discriminatory biases of geography. The professional institute has no real geography; it caters to ability, not location.

This has unleashed a new energy that seeks success with both ambition and perseverance. The young in small towns are willing to do what it takes to summon up this critical escape velocity. This need is particularly salient among younger women where education is potentially a passport to a completely new kind of life. There is a strong desire to be 'allowed' to follow their own dreams by their parents and to get 'understanding' in-laws who do the same after marriage.

Interestingly, while there is great anxiety about whether access to opportunities will be available, there is not as much fear of failure. In a study that we conducted last year on small towns, the self-confidence of the youth there was noticeable. At the most, there was a fear of being left behind in spite of being capable enough. You only have look at the staggeringly large number of contestants from small town India in all kinds of shows to understand the intensity of this feeling. There is a large constituency of the Denied Hopefuls, people oscillating between ambitious self-belief and an anticipation of looming despair.

There is a difference worth noting when we talk about the new energy of mofussil India. The commonly cited examples of successful people from the Indian small towns are, in fact, not really representative ones. Many of these people come from backgrounds such as the armed forces or the government or public sector. While they may have been physically located in small towns, these were, in fact, self-contained cocoons that had little to do with the towns they were situated in. If anything, these communities offered an unconstrained habitat, allowing people to discover their natural inclinations without the overbearing presence of their traditional communities. No wonder then that so many successful young women of today are from an army or public sector background. What makes this surge of confidence and energy more significant is that it belongs to people steeped in the small-town culture.

There Are Subliminal Changes As Well

The small town is changing in other ways too, again influenced by its larger counterparts. If the first wave of change occurred at the margins with the proliferation of housing societies, today we are seeing changes even within the main town. The shops are becoming more modern, new kinds of restaurants with wider cuisine are emerging, new movie theatres are beginning to be seen in more and more places, petrol pumps are getting expansive; in many ways, there is a gradual shedding of old skin that is going on. The change is uneven, and there is a schizophrenic quality to it. The old co-exists clumsily with the new, but the process is definitely underway. The change is significant in towns with a population in excess of five lakh and is nascent as we travel down town classes, but you can see signs of it everywhere.

The second generation plays a key role in this change. The younger generation that is left behind turns its attention to fostering change within. We are seeing a gradual modernising of trade, carrying the stamp of the second generation. This is aided considerably by the NRI (Non-Resident Indian) factor, in those towns where it is significant. Second-generation NRIs return to their roots armed with the gift of worldly knowledge and try and transform the place where they came from.

In crucial ways, therefore, the character of the Indian small town is on its way to change. From being an outgrowth of the village, its ambition today is to become a miniaturised version of the city. There has been a significant shift in the reference points used by small town India, and this shift has introduced disequilibrium in its hitherto stable character. Today, it measures itself much more against the larger cities and the lifestyle they contain. This change may not be visible across the board; it will probably be a while before it becomes more manifest. But the change in mindset has already happened and if restless dissatisfaction is the first sign of radical change, then the writing on the wall is clear.