A highway of Real India’s aspiration and expression – What Tik Toc had done for India

Economy works in a funny way. Economists were surprised by the number of four wheelers Indian were buying in 1920s and 1930s. India was very poor country with not many rich people who can afford this luxury. Number of imports were far higher than what Britishers and wealthy Indian were buying. What was revealed later that many local entrepreneurs had started ferrying services to rural areas from cities and that was fuelling this import. It has kick started local transportation service Industry totally controlled by Indians using imported piece of machinery. It also gave rural economy a much-required productivity gain.

I can not ignore the similarity of this piece of economic history of India to Tik Toc. I am in no way underestimating the security nightmare Tik Tok can create, given all the data are stored in Chinese servers & are freely accessible to communist party machinery in China. But the transformation it has bought to India can not be ignored. Indian imaginations till date has been ruled by people who are no where close to what most of India is. Tik Tok has created an infrastructure where traffic is controlled by real Indians. It was bringing aspiration and expression of real Indians to Indian consumers. It was a space where celebrities had to jostle for space against ordinary people turned tik tok star. It hadn’t put any significant money in hand of people to make any significant contribution in Economy. But what it has done is throwing up stories of few rags to riches who became tik tok influencers. These stories are immensely powerful medium to give people aspirations that they can also break out from poverty or lack of access to opportunities that they are stuck with. I hope banning Tik Toc does not create a Vacuum. Let us not real Indian go back to oblivion.