Alyque Padamsee

Alyque Padamsee was a celebrity, an important member of the South Bombay elite that rules India through an intricate network of connections controlling all spheres of human activity by rigid social hierarchies. This is old money that understands the power differential in the Indian society and wields power efficiently and imperceptibly.

Padamsee was able to rise about his social privileges and transform himself into a man of the masses. He was a legend in his lifetime; at one time called God by admirers and acolytes who were by and large agnostic, atheist or not particularly religious. While his contributions to the world of advertising are stuff of Indian advertising folklore, his contribution to the idea of India and India’s secular ethos are what I find endearing and substantive.

I didn’t know Alyque Padamsee personally. But I met him once in April 1998 for an interview for the Satellites over South Asia, project. It was an Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex, project that explored the broadcasting revolution in South Asia. I was involved with unraveling the economic and commercial aspects of this revolution (my research paper was called The New Media Market) and talking to Padamsee was critical to understand how advertising industry influenced television content.

William Crawley, the co-coordinator of the project accompanied me to the interview, conducted at the Sea Lounge restaurant of the Taj Mahal Palace hotel (the original Taj). Both William and David Page, the other coordinator, were former BBC journalists.

One of the main aspects of our project was to understand the impact of advertising on television, and whether commercialization would also help sustain socially relevant broadcasting that reflected the Indian reality. A great example before us was Govind Nihalani’s tele serial Tamas, which was critically acclaimed and popular with the masses. 

William and I (and for that matter the entire team that worked on the project) were skeptical whether advertising would support good television rather than take the easy route of chasing popular programming.

Padamsee, of course, didn’t share our concern, and on several occasions, the conversation became heated. I reproduce below a brief extract of the interview just to give an idea of the testy exchange.

 Crawley: One percent of Indian population is a huge number in global terms, but it does not mean that their lifestyle as shown on television commercials is the lifestyle of common Indians.

Padamsee: No, I don’t mean this. The advertisement on television shows you variety. The farmer’s lifestyle, for instance. The tractor commercial, the fertilizer commercial. I have made tractor commercials for Escorts which show the changes taking place in the lifestyle and working methods of the farmers.

Crawley: It’s not a glamorized imagery?

Padamsee: It’s always glamorized when you are selling products. Glamourized yet but not untrue. The farmer’s field is better kept, the village is somewhat cleaner, doesn’t have so much cow dung lying around everywhere. In that sense it is glamorized. But his aspirations, more or less his lifestyle are reflected.

Crawley: The question is: has the advent of satellite television changes the way in which people watch television and the way in which it impacts the society and the way in which advertisers watch television?

Padamsee: I would say the biggest thing about television is the way in which it has changed people’s perception of what they can be. I have found that where ever TV is frequently watched, not only people’s lifestyles, but needs begin to change. You might say, ‘Aah, but that’s terrible, they are being urbanized’. But the whole world is being urbanized…it is marvelous that everything is getting urbanized. I am sure there are several bad points about urbanization, there is pollution and all sorts of things.

But in India, pollution is as much a village phenomenon as it is an urban phenomenon. You can smell it half a mile outside of any village. There is just no system. An Indian village, I am sorry to say, is one enormous slum. There are no latrines. People defecate in gutters. There is no drainage system. There is nothing, You just go to one of the 600,000 villages in India to know that.

Bhatt: This is precisely what I want to understand from you. Advertising has defined television as it is today. And yet, it doesn’t show anything that you are talking about.

Padamsee: What am I talking about?

Bhatt: A village in India is nothing but a glorified slum.

Padamsee: Obviously you can’t show that, advertising is there to sell goods.

Bhatt (interrupting): You are also known for social consciousness advertising. And that is something that one doesn’t see on television in the post-satellite revolution.

Padamsee: It’s there in the news reels. Advertising’s business is not to show ugly reality, it is to show beautiful dreams. That is the purpose of advertising throughout the world. People in Nike shoes commercials are always beautifully muscled. They are not shown as scrawny and straggly, which most people are.

Bhatt: But shouldn’t advertising be directed towards particular kind of programming also?

Padamsee: No, no.

Bhatt: It was possible for Govinf Nihalani to make a serial like Tamas before the satellite revolution began. Would it be possible for him or someone else to make a similar kind of serial today and show it on one of the major channels?

Padamsee: Oh yes, I think so. If you have got your sponsors right. Some companies have a certain outlook. Say the Tatas, for instance. Or I would even say people like BPL, who are quite serious about their image and would bring classical music to television or bring a heart surgery to India or would sponsor a medical conference. There are lots of advertisers who have what you might call a philanthropic outlook. But you can’t expect people who are in the business of selling goods to show farmers in ugly light.

Bhatt: Which is the ‘real’ light.

Padamsee: But still ugly. The farmer does not like it. I have made films for Hindustan Level before the advent of television. These were very realistic film but were rejected by the larger audience they were meant for. The criticism about advertising does not take into account what advertising is all about. Advertising is not documentation. Yes, we need documentary film makers and excellent ones as that, like perhaps Govind Nihalani.

Padamsee was aware of his celebrity status and took it rather seriously. It was mid-morning and the restaurant had a few regulars coming and going, all of them duly nodding at Padamsee in acknowledgement and on occasion briefly stopping by at our table to indulge in light banter.

Not once did Padamsee lose patience, and not once did he waver from his conviction that the purpose of advertising was to sell. It was a cracker of an interview, and although it was meant for the project, I couldn’t resist the temptation of getting it published. My friend Sambit Bal, at that time the editor of Gentlemen magazine published it in its entirety.

Image: https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/magazines/panache/remembering-alyque-padamsee-indias-genius-ad-man-and-storyteller-who-truly-lived-till-he-died/articleshow/66670012.cms

Satellite Over South Asia

We live in a world where the here and now preoccupy our consciousness. We tend to move forward, forgetting – or trying to forget – our past. There never is any particular reason for this attitude or behaviour.

Mostly, it stems from the instinct to survive and adapt to a new reality that emerges in our lives. Then, after a while, we sit back and reflect. We remember a particular phase of our lives and feel both happy and sad. Happy to have lived through that phase and sad because it’s over.

To reconnect with old friends is always a pleasure. Doing so with William was no exception. Many, many years ago, when I was young, I worked on an interesting South Asia-wide project led by Dr. David Page and Dr. William Crawley, former BBC journalists-turned-academics.

This Ford Foundation project – called Media South Asia – brought together journalists, academics, filmmakers, writers, activists and other professionals from South Asian countries – Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka – to study the impact of satellite television across the Indian subcontinent. The Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex, Britain, was one of the sponsors of the project.

Satellite television broadcasts that started with Gulf War I in 1991 had by the end of the 1990’s revolutionised South Asian societies. David Page and William Crawley put together an interesting team that researched the impact – social, economic, political and cultural – of satellite television revolution in that region.

I was involved with researching the impact of advertising on broadcasting in general and on programming in particular. The research involved interviewing advertisers (company officials who take decisions on where to put advertising resources), advertising professionals; market research professionals; ratings company professionals; broadcasters. During that period, I met the who’s who of India’s television and advertising world.

The final presentations by the researchers were in Kathmandu and the book launch was held in New Delhi. The first phase of their research resulted in a book – Satellites over South Asia. Their research continues, more than a decade after they started the project. My work forms the basis of the chapter The Lure of the Indian Markets in the book.

For me, the associations made during that research have lasted a long time; not just with the two coordinators David and William, but also with co-researchers such as litterateur Nilu Damle and filmmaker Deepa Bhatia.

With Nilu I also worked on another project – Grassroots Anti-corruption Initiatives and the Right to Information Movement in India – for the IDS. Robert Jenkins and Anne Marie Goetz coordinated this project.

Deepa did a brilliant interview with filmmaker Govind Nihalani for The Quarterly Journal of Opinion – an online magazine that I started with the help of a few then close friends. She also convinced her awesomely talented husband Amol Gupte who is an actor, writer, TV host to sketch for the online quarterly.

In Toronto, I accidentally met Afsan Chowdhury who worked on analysing the impact of satellite television on Bangladesh.

I exchanged email messages with William Crawley recently. He told me the Media South Asia project is now working on broadcasting regulations in Sri Lanka.

I wish David and William the very best.

Image: http://www.mediasouthasia.org/publication_1.asp