Dial 'S'ilence for death!

The Kannadiga consumer has been stuck in strange circumstances in a market, which in reality exists only because of him. While the consumer's language and hence the consumer himself are being neglected in business, a language alien to them is receiving red-carpet welcome as the medium for all business activities. This has led to a situation that is inconvenient and insulting to the Kannadiga consumer. There is an urgent necessity for awareness among Kannadiga consumers. The consumer needs to be educated of his stance in the market, and the finer details of the market's economics. This awareness will help turn the situation in the consumer's favour and get them the very much deserved reverence in the market.

Unfavourable environment around consumer
There are several occasions in the market around Kannadiga consumers wherein products and services in business are either offered in a limited fashion or not offered at all in the consumer's language, while its importance in any business activity is commonplace among businessmen. Let us dive a little deeper and find out some such occasions where the Kannadiga consumer is being belittled:

1. Certain products which are of critical value to consumer's health like medicines have none of the important information in Kannada, thereby making English learning compulsory for activities which could be performed in Kannada more conveniently.
   
2. Products on sale in commercial establishments have name tags in one or two languages, but not in Kannada - the language consumers of this land speak. This has projected a false image of Kannada as a language incapable of helping consumers in making their choice.
   
3. Information about medical examinations that are an important first step for a doctor's decisions are all found provided in English but not in Kannada. Owing to such setup patients unaware of English have to run the risks posed by some investigative tests. Safety of these consumers is being compromised as an outcome of linguistic neglect.
   

If these are just a few examples of market situations where a consumer's priorities are being sidelined because of neglect displayed towards his language, there are other cases where the consumer's identity in the market is being injured because of forced domination of other languages in the market.

Consumer's rights and responsibilities in the market
In the wake of such incidents in the market that are subjecting the consumer to unfair treatment, the consumer needs to become aware of his rights and responsibilities in the market scenario:

1. Expecting the market to provide products and services in a way that he likes is not wrong on the part of the consumer. In fact not meeting these expectations is a mistake on the businessman's side.
2. The market will simply cease to exist without the consumer, and the existence of the market is hinged around the consumer himself.
3. The Kannadiga consumer has to expect to be served in Kannada, and this is not at all a crime. It is definitely not a matter of insult to expect local language presence in one's market.
4. The denial of products or services in Kannada to a Kannadiga consumer is but denial of service, and is a violation of consumer's basic rights in a business.
5. As a duty on the Kannadiga consumer's side, one needs to encourage and congratulate efforts in making products and services available in Kannada. This way the market will consequently allot more space to Kannada in the market, and hence encourage more Kannada presence around us.

The inclination of any developing market to adopt foreign languages that have already found widespread use in business, is an automatic development. This needs to be opposed for sustainable development to take place in our market too. Achieving market goals without involving our language in it is a short-lived experience, and the consequences of such growth can be disastrous to the cultural richness that Kannadiga consumers currently possess.

Consumer "how-to"s
Quite often nowadays a Kannadiga is subject to neglect in the market, and gradually Kannada is being subdued by the dominance of other languages as medium of business conduct. While this is a widespread experience, it calls for planned opposition and demand for correction in business practices. Approaching this problem according to its magnitude opens the following avenues to oppose this linguistic oppression in the market, and demand deserving respect to Kannada and Kannadiga in business:

1. Firstly, every consumer should press for service to be rendered in Kannada, and no other language in the Karnataka market. Presence of any other language in Kannada's absence is an insult no Kannadiga consumer should withstand.
   
• Nearly 60% of such cases of Kannada neglect will bend to these demands itself.
2. In cases where this simplest form of protest doesn't fetch desirable results, seek to complain to the dealer's higher-ups and authorities monitoring the business at a higher level.
• While in some cases (10%) a mention of higher authorities may yield results, in some other cases (20%), with continued pressure, the higher authorities in business will be forced to put efforts to resolve our problems, eventually.
3. The rest 10% of cases are where the consumer is really being troubled and denied service in a way he desires. This being a violation of the rights bestowed upon a consumer, can be contested in a consumer court of powers.
• The consumer court is aware of the linguistic angle of consumer's rights and will be the right platform to provide justice.

Reflecting upon success stories such as Radio Mirchi, Petrol bunks in Bengaluru, ICICI ATMs across Karnataka help reveal the real power of collective consumer demands and protests against unfavourable practices.

As a final note, the Kannadiga consumer needs to wake up to these three potential damages owing to Kannada's absence in businesses around him:

• Difficulty he is subject to because of Kannada missing from businesses around him
• Insult to his language, and projection of an inferior image that Kannada is incapable of being a good business language, which is untrue.
• The consequent economic degradation Kannadigas will notice in them, and an eventual shortage of jobs for Kannadigas with declining usage of Kannada and thereby Kannadigas in businesses.

It is time the Kannadiga consumer woke up to all this and raised his voice to protect his own interests in the market.

Serve and 'Wah'li in Kannada!

"Customer is king!" Such is the claim of all businessmen that have come to realize that the key to their victory in today's competitive market rests in the hands of the customer. And today's customer is not so easy to please, what with there being a multitude of parameters that matter when this customer makes a choice from among the competing candidates! To be effective in their courtship, each such business needs to run keeping such key parameters of its customers in mind, primary of which happens to be the language this king speaks!

Business - way to go!
Talking of business and its ways to find success in a market like ours, it is but affirmative for the businessmen to understand and keep high the spirit of this market - its cultural footprint. The strong interleaving of language with the culture of a society in general leads to this understanding that success of a business in a market is all about how well the business understands and aligns to the cultural and linguistic vein of the market. Failing on these counts could be detrimental to any kind of business, apart from leaving a trace of violation of the rights that rest with the customer.

Kannada in Karnataka means business
Business with a Kannadiga, especially when inside Karnataka, cannot happen without the involvement of Kannada language in every part of its activity - be it on the customer interaction front involving talking and liaisoning with customers, or marketing of products, or in the packaging and delivery of goods to the customer's end. The usage of any language other than Kannada in business with a Kannadiga is not only an unfair practice by the businessman, because by doing so the businessman has kept the customer in darkness about important product related information, but also a display of lack of business acumen.

Any kind of interaction with a customer is proved to be most effective (in a broad sense) when it happens in the language of the land - that is Kannada on Karnataka soil. The emergence of Radio Mirchi in Bengalooru at the top (leaving Radio City behind) after they resorted to 100% Kannada music is an apt benchmark for this.

Looking around

One casual look around the world at markets rife with local language activity shows that technology is never a limitation to exploring new avenues to use local language effectively in bringing out the best results in a business. Countries such as China and Japan have explored all avenues of technology to reach their goals of bringing their rather complicated scripts onto every medium that is involved in businesses - be it print or multimedia. The point here is that these people have figured out ways in which their language yields well into a form favorable for business. This motivation to effectively use such facets of local language and constantly upgrade it to meet market expectations to be successful in a business is what is required in our businessmen too. The key ability to tailor one's language to obtain that cutting edge in business is quintessential for successful business, and that is required in our businessmen too.
An urge to think out of the box, retain the common sense and conduct business in Kannada is all that is required to shine and make hay in business on Karnataka soil.

Bengaluru should learn from Beijing

ANNE FU of CCTV reports from Beijing how the new Beijing International Airport flaunts the Chinese culture and language in everything:

At 29,000m long, terminal 3 looks like a Chinese Dragon lying at the northeastern corner of Beijing. The ball that the dragon is playing with is the parking lot and the subway terminal. The dragon's head, body and tail are the main buildings of the terminal.

[...]

The interior decorations feature traditional Chinese characters.

[...]

Passengers here can take leisurely strolls through Chinese gardens.

One asks how much of Kannada culture our Bengaluru International Aiport will be displaying. Being what we are, we shouldn't be surprised if it is built after the Taj Mahal, that hackneyed monument which 99% Kannadigas have never seen or been to, and whose patron King (together with his dynasty and race) hadn't even heard of the Kannada language, and who at best would have looked at Kannadigas with the eyes of a predatory bird, if at all.

According to CNN Beijing, Chinese engineers want the new terminal to be world class, but with recognizably Chinese features.



CHEN GUOXING of the Beijing Capital International Airport Co. Ltd. proudly declares:

I want every passenger to be able to tell once they arrive that they are in Beijing, even without seeing a sign that reads Beijing.

Ah! now to our own Bengaluru International Airport. This will perhaps be world class too, but what about the "recognizably ___________ features" ? What will fill the blank? Do you think it's gonna be Kannada? Do you think it should be Kannada? We've already argued how what shall be is gonna be divorced from what ought to be, didn't we? Passengers to our Bengaluru International Airport will be able to tell once they arrive that they are in New Delhi!

Yeah, you bet our airport it's gonna be full of English and Hindi, with Kannada not even featuring inside the toilets! We had reported in ENGURU how a union minister visited the airport site a few months ago and pulled the curtains down on plans of making the interiors reflect Kannada culture. His point was that that takes away the international sheen. Takes away the sheen my foot! All it would have taken away is the ignorance of that minister and servile fools who still can't get over the feeling that Kannada and Kannada culture is non-International. All it would have taken away is the illogical, ill-begotten, ill-conceived, undemocratic Hindification of India at the cost of Kannada language and culture.

When will we grow up? When will we stop feeling small? There is no external trigger necessary or sufficient. It has to come from inside. We need to start feeling from inside that we Kannadigas have got balls too. Yeah, international balls.

Airport: what ought to be and what shall be

Let's take a peek into a couple of International airports before coming to the point. Here's a typical advertisement hoarding from the Beijing Capital International Airport which hasn't found it either embarrassing or non-International to display Chinese characters (and yeah, it's Arnold Schwarzenegger endorsing a Chinese product):


And here are typical signs inside the Munich Airport which hasn't found it embarrassing to use the local language - German - on anything printed:


The question now is - what ought to be the status of Kannada in the Bengaluru International Airport? No points for answering this one: "Similar". But what shall be is a totally different ballgame.

What ought to be

BIAL should adopt measures to make all such services available in Kannada as it would like to offer its customers. Be it parking tickets, or flight boarding passes, media inside the airport - printed or visual, entertainment at the airport, and even inside the flights, or announcements made in the airport premises - each one of these should predominantly be offered first in Kannada. Every service in the airport should be available in Kannada. The airport's webpage should also be completely in Kannada.

Obviously, we don't mean English should be nowhere. English should be the only other second language used inside the airport. No other language (e.g. Zulu, Hindi, Sinhalese, Afrikaans, Punjabi, Tamil) can have a place in the Bengaluru International Airport which is not enjoyed by, for e.g., French in the Munich Airport.

Any guesses on what shall be?

Remember, we live in a special country where French (Hindi) has constitutional and extra-constitutional rights to take the place of German (Kannada) in the Munich (Bengaluru) Airport. In our special country, French (Hindi) is not only declared as the official language but is taught as the National Language of Germany (Karnataka). It is only in India that people shall land into the Munich (Bengaluru) Airport thinking the Eiffel Tower (Taj Mahal) is a minute's walk and that the Oktoberfest (Hampi Utsava) is breathing its last in another country whose people are becoming evolutionarily extinct. It is only in India that airports can completely warp the past, present and future of the people and language of the very soil on which they are hosted and make it seem like a desert of under-achievement. It is only in India that the language of the land can be openly treated like the language of an inferior tribe. It is only in India that a whole linguistic people can be deemed constitutionally inadequate for not speaking a language foreign to their tongue.

Ah! What shall be is anybody's guess. Do we have any of those true men left who stand by what ought to be and stop not until what threatens to shall be shall not be?