Advertising & Economy - XI

 Thus, the developing countries have forced by history to try to telescope in a few decades a process that has taken the advanced industrial countries a few centuries to master. This is inevitable. Otherwise the transition from a dependent to an independent economy can never take place. At the same time we must recognize the reality that this transition does not depend  merely on the acquisition of technology, but more on the human element, the people who use the technology. They cannot be treated as mere objects of history and social transformation. They have to be converted into subjects of social transformation. They have to be converted into subjects of social transformation; the decision - maker and the levers of change. Without bringing about such a change consciously in the element, simultaneously with technological and economic structural change, the process of development will reach a plateau and even decline. The basic development strategy must necessarily ensure the utilization of the country's economic and human resources to strike a balance between consumption today and investment for higher level of consumption tomorrow, through the process of self sustaining and self accelerating growth. This would mean striking a balance between global integration and equal interdependence and self reliance.

  Apart from what is usually considered when discussing development, such as production, import, export, technology, industry, agriculture, social welfare and human resources, investments, foreign aid and foreign exchange and resources, we have to think of certain specific areas. Among these could be the need for increased domestic, especially household, saving rates, for conversion into productive capital instead of unbridle consumption. In such a situation the classical role of advertising in educating, motivating and persuading the people to want more and want badly is not fully relevant. The role is a more complex one. In this context one might also ask the question: Is it possible to market goods and services without at the sane time marketing a concept, even a way of life? In the advertising profession one talks of lifestyle advertising. it is really advertising a concept , way of life. Take pressure cookers, fertilizers and high - yielding seeds, bottled gas for cooking, wall to wall carpet, life insurance as a provision for the future at critical periods of one's life, and so on.

to be continued...

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