Is commodification the default setting of those who live in a consumer society?
HALF a century in between, the visit that day to the cola factory brings out the fizz and the bubble of chattering schoolgirls shepherded to Lahore’s Gulberg industrial area in a bus monitored by Mother Andrews.
The ‘magic’ drink had newly arrived in the city. Even our tuck shop at the convent overflowed with wooden crates of the ‘must have’ cola. So to see with the naked eye how the secret formula — still under wraps — was mixed with aerated water, was an experience unseen by young minds.
Why must I recall its launch? Well, you don’t have to be a Harvard Business School graduate to figure this one out. It’s simple. The sell was so sophisticated and so excellently executed that there are lessons here to unpick, if Pakistan badly wants American business sprouting once more.
At first, the launch was soft to test the market. The affluent of Lahore were targeted. Schools and colleges exclusively for the moneyed were singled out, as were the posh residential and commercial localities in Gulberg and the Mall. There was an open-house kind of atmosphere for the privileged to come taste the drink.
Local bureaucrats, the weighty types, were neatly ensnared into the sale and marketing strategies. They were given freebies in the shape of crates turning up at their homes in big cute white trucks, the logo seen shining from afar.
Soon, kith and kin of these people got badly hooked on the habit and wanted more and more each week. Their wishes got delivered. The owners fixed a quota system for them where initially they got crates delivered at their doorsteps gratis. Once the promotion time was over, the families could pick up the phone and order factory direct at nominal rates.
See, what I mean? Lahore’s “commodification” was complete. The addiction to the soda spread all over the city, sending its poor country cousins, the various desi colas, biting the dust. Behind Pakistani partners hid the face of fierce American marketeers, pushing aggressively for their brand. The US had stooped to conquer.
Novelist Toni Morrison, Nobel laureate and Princeton professor, says ‘commodification’ is the “default setting of those who live in a consumer society” that turns into an addiction and oils the wheels of the economy. (You have just to see the Christmas and New Year billion-dollar-extravaganza to get a feel for ‘commodification’ in America’s shopping malls these days.)
Don’t we all know that in America’s capitalist economy all is fair in love and war? Pakistan has been at the receiving end since decades. America has always had a bipolar relationship with us, putting on the screws to the point of suffocation when angry (the Pressler amendment) and opening up its dollar taps when delighted (jihad against the USSR and netting the Taliban).
You guessed it. Nowadays, Pakistan has the most favoured nation status with the US. Not exactly the ‘Most Favoured Nation’ (MFN) but what America calls ‘Normal Trade Relations’ (NTR) status. In any case the MFN word has been given the obsolete status because like us many others around the globe were mislead into believing that they alone were the chosen business partners with the richest country in the world. So America conveniently deleted it from its memory.
As a special kind of ‘favour’, the BIT has instead been floated: US-Pakistan Bilateral Investment Treaty.
Well, the total US investment in Pakistan is about a billion dollars. For season’s greetings, Santa may bring more money bags from the US treasury as part of a $3 billion pledge by President Bush, ranking us third — after Egypt and Israel — as the largest recipient of US bilateral assistance. The BIT meanwhile is meant to polish our pathetic Foreign Direct Investment (FDI). By upping investor confidence in Pakistan through “offering means of enforcing litigious claims against the Pakistan government in event of breach of its terms.”
Will the BIT work in practice? We may get the answer several years down the road, given the bureaucratic gobbledygook, political turnarounds and frequent change of guards in Islamabad or change of heart in Washington DC. Anything is likely in today’s volatile global climate, so why second-guess and try to figure out abstractions?
Let’s instead look to what is already on the ground. Esperanza Gomez is an example in flesh and blood. Assuming the stewardship of the two-year-old US-Pakistan Business Council, she has already whipped up “a critical mass of 16 council members, among them Boeing, Citigroup, Coca-Cola, Motorola, Pepsi Co etc.”
Tasked with promoting Pakistan to American businesses, the council involves its members in policy discussions with ministers and secretaries of the government of Pakistan; with key business organizations including the Federation of Pakistan Chambers of Commerce and Industry and the Board of Investment.
Gomez tells me that Pakistan is a “tough sell” with an “image problem”. Who better than Gomez to change that perception? She has worked for seven years for none other than Charlie Wilson, the legendary congressman from Texas, whose fascinating story: Charlie Wilson’s War: The Extraordinary Story of the Largest Covert Operation in History, should have been made a compulsory read by our rulers in Islamabad.
Handsome, lanky and likable, Wilson is a true friend of Pakistan and continues to be one till today as our lobbyist on Capitol Hill. “Oh, I am very much in touch with the congressman,” says Gomez who, like her former boss, carries the best credentials one can ask for to showcase Pakistan.
“I represented the embassy of Pakistan on various legislative initiatives with a focus on sanctions relief and foreign assistance issues, providing strategic advice on legislative matters to several domestic and international companies on defence appropriations and homeland security issues”.
Today, more than before, Gomez’s bid to plug for Pakistan from her base at Washington DC is a challenge to her bravura talents, one that she will win. Working under the aegis of the US Chambers of Commerce, Gomez has already under her belt leading Pakistani-American success stories like Adeel Shah, CEO, Telnia Corporation; A. Salman Amin, senior vice-president, PepsiCo; Najeeb Ghauri, chairman, NetSol Technologies; Shoaib Kothawala, president, Hometex Corporation; Pervaiz Lodhie, president, Ledtronics, and Farooq Vakil, executive VP, Lights of America. “They are actively involved in helping the council get American businessmen interested to invest in their homeland.”
To Gomez, “talking to the right person” is the key to getting at the centre of the issue. She has in just one year, as the executive director, shored up support for Pakistan by facilitating meetings between Pakistanis and Americans. Calibrating her next step, she says, “I now want to reach out to the Pakistani community living in California. Los Angeles and Houston are on my stops too.”
The American media’s portrayal of Pakistan must be countered by Pakistani-Americans living here: “We need to spread the word that Pakistan is ready for business and that terrorism and other negative aspects of the country as shown by the media are not the real picture of Pakistan.”
She wants to tell everyone here that the US-Pakistan Business Council is uniquely poised to help American investors from start to finish: “We will be there for them and work along with them.” In March 2005, once again, Gomez will accompany a delegation of American investors to Pakistan. Let’s cross our fingers and pray that Pakistan succeeds in clinching lucrative deals and converts Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz’s airy dream of becoming an “Asian tiger” into part-reality.
The state department’s travel advisory on Pakistan is always telling Americans not to visit the country. But friends of Pakistan like Dr Herbert Davis, managing director for South Asia Affairs, US Chamber of Commerce, and Gomez while expressing “concern” about the department’s cautionary warning on Pakistan, continue to take Americans businessmen there. Bravo Espie Gomez and Dr Davis!
Is commodification the default setting of those who live in a consumer society? 
