koDri aNNa Road Tax!

It was a Friday and I was on my way back home from college. It was the end of another hot week at Bangalore as there was absolutely no rain during the week. Unfortunately, I encountered a red signal at the signal near the old Family mart (Junction connecting Kanakpura road with the ring road). It was for me to sight a few eunuchs on the other side of the road. It in fact is a very normal sight for Bangaloreans off late to find them at signals across the city. So, I was not surprised to see one. The fact which took me by awe was the person mentioning the word “Road Tax”! The person near the vehicle and uttered “koDri aNNa Road Tax!” (Give me the Road Tax brother…). Now this was something new!

I was easily able to relate the person’s words with the way we deal with the market. Since I have been involved with the marketing world since more than an year now, it made a lot of sense to me. The way authentic words are abused in the management world is exactly what I was referring to. ‘Strategy’, ‘Synergy’, ‘Depends’, ‘Let’s see’ and many more are used just in the same way. Well, at the end of the day the person was trying to market an intangible value through which a perceived value from the prospective customers could be bought.

Putting myself in a marketer’s shoe let me see the other side of the coin. Well it is really important as a marketer for one to use well knitted gloves in this heavy weight competition! When there are thousand people around exploiting the economic situation to get some bucks in their pocket, it makes sense to get atleast the left out; in which case a company will be forced to knit its offerings very well by exploiting the words which are there at the offerings to get used up!

Looking at the incident from the perspective of a social being, I was sad and at the same time angry with the situation. Frankly speaking, the community of eunuchs started agitations long back when there was not much equality displayed in the society. They were treated as untouchables and were dying to find a decent life (the case is not much different these days either)! This is where this collection of ‘chanda’ started by the eunuch community in order to exists with the ever increasing costs of the economy. But another community of opportunists took advantage of the situation. Most of the so called eunuchs today are from the community of opportunists and it’s very sad to see the state of people utilizing their gender to earn bucks for a living! Hope the people who are responsible for the steady arousal of the community realize the importance to work on the turn-around! Hope to see a day when I don’t have to encounter anybody requesting “koDri ANNa Road Tax!”