was introduced to Orkut a few months back. Actually it was more than a year ago and I should have written this piece ages ago when it would have seemed relevant. So let assume for the sake of argument that I have just been introduced to Orkut. For the uninitiated, its an online networking site where you can meet friends, join communities and leave public messages on people’s scrapbook. I chanced upon an ex-community from my school and suddenly I found a lot of people I had lost contact with. The inevitable round of “hi…remember me?”’s followed. It got me all nostalgic and misty-eyed. It had been six years since I had last seen or talked to any of them. The ensuing conversation was invariably along these lines—“ ya of course I rem u..im gud..im doin thisthis course in this this place.what abt u???”. “I’m doing this this course in this this place”. Then the message boards go silent. What do you say to a guy with whom your only shared memory is the chalk fights you used to have between periods(oops!! between lectures.used to call them periods in school). Or how he used to pick on you or vice-versa.( in which case you might still hate him or vice-versa) And suddenly the euphoria ebbs. The “ its so great to meet everyone after sooo long” is replaced by “ Glad to know you are alive. Hope to hear from you again after another six years..if not longer.” Which makes sense. I have kept in touch with school friends with whom I had a deeper relationship than a common loathing for Maths and the Maths teacher. Of course I had a rollicking time with all those people back in school. But I guess friendship needs fuel— common interests, common values some common ground. What works best is common destiny. Destiny often brings people together and we sail along thinking about how merry our company is, how well we get along. And when destiny separates us we are left with the remains of a withered friendship. But it withers so gracefully, so unspectacularly that we barely feel the pain.
People change, so how can friendships be expected not to. The interesting thing about friendship is that its end need not be acknowledged. Infact friendships are not known to end except as a result of a feud or falling out between friends. “We shall always be friends”. We are going our separate ways. Chances are I’m never going to talk to you or think about you. But we shall always be friends. If we ever run into each other in the local we shall make casual conversation. The hand of friendship is easily extended and need not be withdrawn.
Continuing on the topic of ephemeral friendships, I have been on a dozen Himalayan treks almost each with a different set of people. I got along like a house on fire with most of them. But I’m not in touch with a single person. We have never even tried to keep in touch. Friendships that spring up in the confines of a group in the lap of nature, among people determined to have a good time cannot withstand the vagaries of everyday life. These friendships come with an expiry date.
On the other end of the spectrum are my childhood friends — my colony buddies. We are at widely dispersed locations our interests are even more disparate. But whenever we meet up there is never a lull in the conversation. I wonder why? Nothing in common here,right. Maybe because whatever we are today, to each other we are still kids. We remember each other as kids and still see each other as kids. There is the consequent lack of pretence. Common childhood experiences count for something.
My brush with my school friends rekindled some memories, lightened my heart as I thought about those happy days. But it did only that. Some living people cease to be except in our memories.

I just finished reading a book called ‘When corporations rule the world’ by David Korten. It talks about the pernicious influence of corporations on economic, political and social fronts. How corporations play an active role in shaping a nation’s economic, foreign and fiscal policy which is a heavily covered issue in liberal circles. And how competing corporations can make common cause and pool their resources to together to serve mutual interests.

What I found particularly interesting was his analysis of the marketing function of corporations. How the goal is not just to sell products and promote a consumer culture but to create a political culture that equates the corporate interest with the human interest in the public mind. TV with its ability to implant identical images in the minds of millions of people can homogenize knowledge, tastes, desires and most importantly perspectives. If you achieve a certain measure of success in controlling how people think, not just what they think about that’s half the battle. How the natural evolution of a populist culture based on people’s aspirations and their interactions within and without their community has been thwarted and replaced by a global homogenized consumer culture based on a warped sense of reality.

And all the while the people are lead to believe that the ultimate power—that of choice, rests with them. Consumers can always use their dollar-votes to wield influence on the corporations is the argument of most neo-classical economists. The idea that consumer decides and the market responds is a fanciful notion which projects an exceedingly benign image of corporations. Widely dispersed consumers who make their choices independent of each other, are no match for the highly organized giant corporations united in their quest to squeeze consumers dry.

Korten is a vociferous critic of the corporate libertarian school of thought which believes in free markets, open trade and a globalized economy. He is however an avid fan of Adam Smith of the famous Invisible Hand Theory which is seen to be the cornerstone of the capitalist school of thought. Korten seeks to salvage his idol’s reputation from the machinations of neo-classical economists. He says that firstly that the Invisible Hand Theory only holds true under ideal conditions of perfect competition and absence of monopolies, externalities etc. He also takes pains to illustrate that Adam Smith was vigorously against corporations and all twelve mentions of them in The Wealth Of Nations have been unfavourable.

Korten describes himself as neither a fan of big government nor of big business . He believes in the power of the market and imagines a scenario in which almost producers are small and consume a major portion of their produce themselves and no one producer is big enough to influence the price. Something akin to rural American life in the nineteenth century before the food giants moved in. However the pastoral setting he so fondly describes seems far-fetched. And there is no reason not to believe that the present day corporation is the natural progression of the small private enterprises he vouches for.

His analysis of the problem was incisive and thought-provoking. However I found his solutions less engaging, which is why I gave the book up midway.