Tuesday, May 24, 2005
Why Indians don't use cameras?
I promised earlier to write about "Why Indians tourists don't have cameras..." and I'll attempt to offer some theories, with the disclaimer I've only travelled in the south. Zoo Stataion readers can perhaps provide some insight.
I noticed when visiting places around Mysore and Bangalore, that many tourist attractions did not allow for cameras at all. This included Hindu temples, which understandably folks want to keep sacred. However, the same restrictions were at the modern Mysore Palace. This was probably meant to drive sales of their own printed products like postcards and souvenir books. These were very poor, hardly doing justice to the grandeur of the site. At sites like a bird sanctuary or a zoo, cameras were allowed to be brought in, but with hefty "per camera" charges. It was 20 rupees for a still camera, and over 150 rupees for a video camera. Now to me, 20 rupees (US 50 cents) was nothing, so I paid it even if I only snapped a few photos. For locals, it's enough to leave home without it. And forget about 150 rupees. That's dinner for the family.
So when I did look around me, there were very few cameras. About 90% of the tourists at these locations were domestic tourists, and very few, I'd say 1 out of 10 families, had a camera.
I wondered - were there other reasons for this lack of cameras? Certainly the standard of living is a big factor - cameras are rather luxurious items in terms of the cost of consumables. But it still seemed like more middle class tourists should have had them.
When visiting MSN in Bangalore, the head of Marketing and Strategic Business Initiatives said they actually did study the issue of photography market in India. According to Rajnish, for the longest time, the film developing costs were high because it was highly centralized. Most of the film shops simply collected the film where it was sent to a single large developing facility and redistributed out later. This was pretty much the model in the U.S. in the 1970s. However, unlike the US, the advent of 1 hour photo automation and in-house developer machines never really took off, so the costs were quite high for the longest time. With PC ownership low in India, the prospects for digital photography are not great either.
So it is interesting that China also doesn't have a very high standard of living either, but it does have a domestic electronics industry that churns out cheap cameras and digital ones too. Also, they see rich neighbors like the Taiwanese and Japanese with their cameras which drives an aspirational consumer culture for the local Chinese. Indeed, with the slump in the Japanese economy, the Japanese tourist with the camera around his neck has been widely replaced by loud chattering clumps of Chinese tourists with matching baseball caps, snapping photos left and right.
I think there are cultural explanations too. India, despite being under British rule and a conflict with Pakistan, has maintained a rich cultural continuity. China has been engaged in a devastating war on its own soil, has seen families abruptly ripped apart in the aftermath and experienced a Cultural Revolution in the 1970s that destroyed much of its own heritage. It might be that this has motivated Chinese to gather a personal history they can keep and control for themselves. In India, there is much more continuity with history - they are living it, living within an historical continuum. Sometimes it seems there is not much urgency to record it because there is so much confidence that it will be around tomorrow.
I noticed when visiting places around Mysore and Bangalore, that many tourist attractions did not allow for cameras at all. This included Hindu temples, which understandably folks want to keep sacred. However, the same restrictions were at the modern Mysore Palace. This was probably meant to drive sales of their own printed products like postcards and souvenir books. These were very poor, hardly doing justice to the grandeur of the site. At sites like a bird sanctuary or a zoo, cameras were allowed to be brought in, but with hefty "per camera" charges. It was 20 rupees for a still camera, and over 150 rupees for a video camera. Now to me, 20 rupees (US 50 cents) was nothing, so I paid it even if I only snapped a few photos. For locals, it's enough to leave home without it. And forget about 150 rupees. That's dinner for the family.
So when I did look around me, there were very few cameras. About 90% of the tourists at these locations were domestic tourists, and very few, I'd say 1 out of 10 families, had a camera.
I wondered - were there other reasons for this lack of cameras? Certainly the standard of living is a big factor - cameras are rather luxurious items in terms of the cost of consumables. But it still seemed like more middle class tourists should have had them.
When visiting MSN in Bangalore, the head of Marketing and Strategic Business Initiatives said they actually did study the issue of photography market in India. According to Rajnish, for the longest time, the film developing costs were high because it was highly centralized. Most of the film shops simply collected the film where it was sent to a single large developing facility and redistributed out later. This was pretty much the model in the U.S. in the 1970s. However, unlike the US, the advent of 1 hour photo automation and in-house developer machines never really took off, so the costs were quite high for the longest time. With PC ownership low in India, the prospects for digital photography are not great either.
So it is interesting that China also doesn't have a very high standard of living either, but it does have a domestic electronics industry that churns out cheap cameras and digital ones too. Also, they see rich neighbors like the Taiwanese and Japanese with their cameras which drives an aspirational consumer culture for the local Chinese. Indeed, with the slump in the Japanese economy, the Japanese tourist with the camera around his neck has been widely replaced by loud chattering clumps of Chinese tourists with matching baseball caps, snapping photos left and right.
I think there are cultural explanations too. India, despite being under British rule and a conflict with Pakistan, has maintained a rich cultural continuity. China has been engaged in a devastating war on its own soil, has seen families abruptly ripped apart in the aftermath and experienced a Cultural Revolution in the 1970s that destroyed much of its own heritage. It might be that this has motivated Chinese to gather a personal history they can keep and control for themselves. In India, there is much more continuity with history - they are living it, living within an historical continuum. Sometimes it seems there is not much urgency to record it because there is so much confidence that it will be around tomorrow.
