I can, therefore, Ikea

Ikea, one of the world's largest retail chains, known for its innovative designs of products with quirky names, is preparing to enter the Indian market in a big way, which will expose customers to several new concepts. For those who have never heard of Ikea, or had the opportunity to enter one of its stores worldwide, there is plenty of information available online to whet your appetite. For the record, I have no vested interest in promoting Ikea, other than the fact that I have bought a lot of products there, most of which were functionally and aesthetically pleasing.

The first new concept is the Ikea store itself, which is essentially like walking through a showroom where you can get to see, touch and test literally every product that they have on display. If you want to buy a sofa, lounge around on a dozen different models to your heart's content before picking the one that works best for you. Thinking of a new bed? Again, a dozen bed frames are laid out, with mattresses and sheets - many a shopper (myself included) has taken a quick nap here. Lamps, bookshelves, kitchen appliances, cutlery, paintings, plants - there is almost nothing for the home that they do not sell here! Shoppers should prepare themselves for a half day outing because once you enter, it is unlikely that you will walk out of there empty handed - something or the other will catch your fancy.

A big reason for this is the brilliant design of products, which the Scandanavians are known for worldwide. They are almost all very simple, while at the same time being wonderfully functional. Some buyers might find the products somewhat dull, but when you are faced with making purchases for an entire house, you want items that do the job innocuously. But you will never find anything that was developed without some artistic thought in mind.

The second new concept is that, having gone through the entire store, you can then pick up your products in the giant warehouse and take them home. In some rare cases, you might have to get the order shipped to your house, but if it is something small enough that fits in your vehicle, then go right ahead. While you are in the warehouse, you might spy something else that eluded you and add that to your list. A very practical labeling system allows you to track down every single item even though there are literally thousands of them on the shelves. The days of going to a shopkeeper at the corner store and asking "bhaiyya, xyz kahan milega?" are over. You have the power to obtain what you want and exit quickly.

Now comes the fun part, the third new concept - most of what you buy at Ikea, other than some obvious things like spoons and plates, is not in its final form. It has to be assembled by you, using basic tools such as a screwdriver or allen wrench (look that up online as well - it is a most annoying tool, but once you make friends with it, you will yearn to use one!). Personally, I am somewhat skeptical of whether urban Indians will want to take the time to put things together by themselves - after all, we love pursuits of the mind, and doing manual labor is meant for a lower class of persons, isn't it? I'm sure a number of entrepreneurs will setup a service to come to your house and assemble the stuff for you for a fee but please heed my advice - if you really want an amazing sense of fulfillment, you have to do at least one item yourself. Preferably something that has numerous pieces and fasteners and that you can proudly display to you family and friends as your own creation. Yes, Ikea is to adults what Lego (another Scandanavian product) is to kids!

Let's say you decide to buy a bookshelf - you pick up the box and bring it home. Opening the box reveals several pieces of wood neatly arranged, with cardboard packaging to prevent them from being damaged in transit, and a little bag filled with screws, dowels and other fasteners designed to hold everything together. The most valuable item, however, is the little instruction booklet that tells you how to do it without making a mistake. A word to all men - do not think, even for a second, that you can throw away the directions and figure it out yourself. You will likely end up with an abstract sculpture worthy of an Anish Kapoor. Women - ensure that your menfolk follow the instructions or, better still, do it yourself.

Remember that Ikea does business in dozens of countries around the world - so you would assume that their instruction booklet has to be printed in numerous languages, and is about the size of an encyclopedia. Welcome to new concept number four - the instruction booklet without a single word! That's right - all the instructions are pictorial, with parts clearly labelled, and three dimensional views that show how they all fit together. The user is guided through the exact sequence of steps, and you have to follow that sequence to make life easy. Don't jump ahead to step six without doing the first five just because you think it will speed things up. In the fable of the hare and the tortoise, Ikea would have clearly sponsored the slow guy.

The parts are also designed in such a way that they are deliberately asymmetric - so certain parts only fit others when aligned in a particular direction. If you find yourself in a situation where two parts are not fitting, go back and check what you did - you have invariably made a mistake, as I have learnt on many an occasion. This is the brilliance of the design - if you follow the instructions, you simply cannot go wrong. Foolproof technology if there was ever such a thing!

Remember the little bag of parts? Sometimes there are over a hundred objects in there of varying size and shape, and all of them are required to be used. In over twenty years of shopping at Ikea, I have yet to come across a single instance where even one part was missing (I did have a case where an extra part was provided). And I don't think my experience is unique. The attention to detail and the quality checks are phenomenal.

So shop away to your heart's content - you will not be disappointed, and your home will be worthy of gracing the covers of an international magazine!

Fool Economy

The news that Mitsubishi motors in Japan has admitted to falsifying fuel economy data for several of its car models is the latest blow to the global auto industry, coming on the heels of the Volkswagen "Diesel gate" affair from last year. In that expose, VW admitted to installing a "defeat" device - essentially some lines of code in the vehicle software - that could detect when it was being subject to a controlled emissions test versus being on the road. In some scenarios, the difference in emissions was over 40 times the legally allowable limit. This was all thanks to some clever detective work done by a non-profit think tank and some university students. 

The details are still emerging for Mitsubishi, but prima facie this appears to be a case of simple "fudging", something that many a school student has done in a physics practical experiment - recording a number that is more in line with expectations, rather than the actual number that is shown by the test. For example, if you know that the speed of sound is 330 m/s, you will "tweak" the reading for water level in the resonance tube to ensure that your calculations deliver a perfect round number. The teacher will be happy, as that is what the text book says you should get, and no one will be any the wiser (high school students may be able to confirm this is still happening!)

The problem is that in the real world, these differences do matter. In this day and age, with the growing threat of air pollution and climate change, the need to ensure full compliance with regulations designed to preserve the environment for future generations is paramount. It is simply unacceptable to lie your way into a false sense of security as the consequences can be severe. It also results in an erosion of consumer confidence, as the sticker provided in the car window is virtually meaningless.

Fuel economy tests are, in the base case, highly subjective, as there are numerous protocols used by testing agencies across the world, each varying in the duration, number of starts/stops, vehicle loading etc. The same car will provide different results depending on the test to which it is subjected - and it is recognized that the actual mileage on the road will almost certainly differ from that in the lab. You know this from the little asterisk shown against the mileage rating in an advertisement - the fine print will place all kinds of disclaimers so that the manufacturer cannot be held liable for underperformance of the vehicle. 

Correlations to adjust mileage for different driving conditions either do not exist or are not shared openly with the driving public - in any case, many factors may work in conjunction, so the actual effect will be multiplied. For a country like India, where the phrase "kitna deti hai" was used to indicate the laser focus of our drivers on saving precious fuel, the reality is that most cars will get only a fraction of their true mileage as they are perpetually idling in traffic jams. And as compared with a few decades ago, when people used to switch off their engine when stopped at a red light, you now see cars with a/c blasting parked by the side of the road as the driver checks their text messages or updates Facebook ("stuck in traffic jam, man it's hot!")

The auto industry - or any industry, for that matter - has rarely been on the right side of regulations, whether directed at safety, emissions or efficiency. The reason cited is almost always cost or customer preference - too much money chasing too little a reward, or arbitrary statements that the purchasing public does not want these features, and instead desires CD changers, bluetooth connectiivity or navigation. Fuel economy matters only when oil prices are high and the otherwise dormant driver wakes up to realize how much money is leaving his or her pocket every month. This unfortunate situation in 2007 led to the bankruptcy of General Motors, which had focused on making Hummers and other boat sized vehicles, and were confronted with an angry public and politicians who simply could not understand why there was no focus on better fuel economy. A decade later, the oil price has oscillated twice and is back at a low point, and the public has switched back to buying SUVs. Maybe they deserve to be fooled by fictitious data.

Mind the Crap

Picture yourself walking into your favorite shop. It could be the local corner dukaan, with its shelves crammed with everything from toothpaste to biscuits to washing powder, or the big retail store at the mall, with the fancy lighting and mannequins and big price tags. You walk around in a (mostly) pleasant atmosphere, while helpful assistants bring you a bag to carry your items, ring your purchases up at the cash register, and even carry your bags out to your car. Hundreds of millions of us do this every day through the year, and pay little attention to the process. And now, thanks to Flipkart and Amazon, you can avoid the inconvenience of traffic and other shoppers to have your desires delivered to your doorstep!

Now picture the back end to this process, once you have enjoyed the fruits of your consumption. The toothpaste tube is squeezed dry, the washing powder sachet is empty and the biscuit packet has just a few crumbs left in it. What do we do with these? That's right. We toss everything into one bag, along with the soiled diapers, old CDs, light bulbs, toys, packaging - literally anything we don't find a use for anymore. The bigger the bag, the more likely we are to find things to throw away. Because once we throw things away, what can we do? You guessed it - we can start buying all over again! 

India is a land of variety - religions, languages, skin tones, food choices - but in one sphere of life we are all coming together very nicely, and that is the fact that we are firmly on the path towards becoming mass consumers. Some of us are already there, while the rest are waiting their turn, like the proverbial kid in a candy store who cannot wait to taste the goodies on the other side of the glass. In that respect, we are not unlike our counterparts in developed countries, who embraced consumerism several decades ago. So why deny us the pleasure, you say? The answer to that is - our blind focus on the manufacture and purchase of products has come at the expense of paying scant attention to the disposal of these products. And with our (still) growing population, the potential catastrophic outcomes of this lapse are starting to emerge.

Take the recent case of landfill fires in Deonar, that sent acrid fumes and smoke across the surrounding area and even drifted into central Mumbai. Or the tons of assorted debris that were washed up in residential areas after the Chennai floods and, in fact, contributed to the damage by choking drains. While Hindu nationalists go around fanatically protecting cows from slaughter, thousands of them are likely to die anyway by ingesting plastic bags and other non-cow friendly materials that they happen to graze on at the roadside corner. Your roadside corner, in fact. You pass it every day and don't notice. 

The government has finally stepped in and emphasized the importance of moving to a circular economy model, one where even waste products have some utility, and therefore some value. The desired outcome is for action to take place at the community, city and state level, with the focus on providing economic incentives to not dump waste. The free market has to be the most efficient way to solve these problems, right?

The waste management experts will tell you that India has a very long history of prudent resource utilization - that we are masters at repurposing a glass container into a pot for growing plants, or shoe boxes into CD storage. Even today, kabadi-wallahs exist for a whole range of products from newspapers to metal to old clothes. But they are unlikely to keep pace with the sheer volume of stuff that we are now unable to resist owning and discarding. Ask anyone who has grown up in post liberalization India if they are focused on conserving and reusing household goods, and whether they know the timing for the kabadi-wallah's next round.

While economic incentives may kick start the process, they cannot sustain it indefinitely. Just as we have all become consumers overnight, it is time that we also accepted the responsibility of being good "disposers" as well. It is about taking responsibility for not just what's inside your four walls, but the spaces that you share with your fellow citizens. Deep down, we have an instinctual aversion to unpleasant smells and sights, which has to manifest itself in action. A model society in this respect is Japan - a country that churns out thousands of products, but has no space to put the waste. Visit a coffee shop in Japan and you will see a half dozen waste disposal options, so much so that you have to really think about where to throw your cup, lid, stirrer and everything else that you paid for. 

Yes, managing waste is really all about being smart - something where we Indians again excel. The government's plan for smart cities across the nation will need more than just new infrastructure - it will require a smart citizenry. We can start by picking up that biscuit packet that just blew across our path.