Jyoti Sidana
The consumerist culture and the expansion of the market have made the consumption of greed and pretentiousness more important than necessities. Therefore, the market forces also see the crisis situations faced by the children as a business opportunity. They don’t care that children are growing up prematurely.
In today’s consumerist society everything has been made for sale. It is said that there is only one rule of the market that the market has no rules of its own. So everything, even feelings and relationships have become objects of consumption. Whatever you want, it can be sold and bought at a price. The world is changing rapidly, so family, education, politics and economy are also taking turns with the times.
There is no doubt that this rapidly changing era has affected every stage of human life. If we talk about childhood, then childhood has been lost or say that in today’s era there is nothing like childhood. Children are beginning to step straight into adolescence or puberty. Now children do not play with toys, but with mobiles and computers, so they are not able to become a part of the real world and society.
Virtual society has taken its place. This world of computer games has completely changed his personality. Adolescent population has become entangled in computer games, gadgets, social media etc. All this is the result of increasing influence of marketism and consumerism on the family and society.
The sole goal of the market is to make maximum profit. For this he does business of human feelings, relationships, sorrows and happiness. According to a recent news, a Japanese billionaire has invested in a company that makes robots that understand human emotions and remove their loneliness.
The name of this product is Lovot which is a combination of Love and Robot. They claim that this robot is capable of understanding every emotion of a human being and keeping them happy and healthy. They argue that such robots played a positive role in the lives of sick people during the Corona period. It is also true that when the role of man in society starts to be questioned or he stops playing his role, then displacing humans by machines seems to be a compulsion somewhere.
Not only this, the profit market is getting wider day by day. Now even those private moments of the individual have become part of the market, which were once confined to his family. Films and serials played no less big role in bringing this private life to the market. Now most of the weddings are preceded by wearing expensive clothes, even pre-wedding movies of the bride and groom are made in expensive places and thus they are taken to visit a virtual world that has nothing to do with the real world. And this journey does not end only here, then the management companies that organize the wedding ceremony become active, which leave no stone unturned to make the wedding a fairy-tale story.
Similarly, nowadays, the trend of ‘maternity photoshoot’ has also started fast to save the memories during motherhood. It is not known when the market of emotions started taking shape while selling goods and services. For this momentary pleasure a man is ready to put everything at stake, even if he has to take a loan. Because in a consumerist society, one’s reputation is determined by all these appearances.
The consumerist culture and the expansion of the market have made the consumption of greed and pretentiousness more important than necessities. Therefore, the market forces also see the crisis situations faced by the children as a business opportunity. They don’t care that children are growing up prematurely. Perhaps this is the reason why many such incidents come to the fore every day in which children are seen standing in the category of criminals.
The involvement of children and adolescents in criminal activities has increased rapidly over the years due to social media and computer games. According to the National Crime Records Bureau data, crimes committed by minors in the last one year include eight hundred forty two murders, seven hundred and twenty five kidnappings, more than six thousand thefts, robberies and dacoities.
The perpetration of such heinous crimes by children and adolescents in the age of playing and reading is also a matter of concern and also a great challenge to the society. It has become a common crime to extort money from family members by making up a story of kidnapping, or even killing them for money after losing a large amount of money in mobile games. The state and society seem to be freed from their obligations towards the children and are watching the spectacle standing far away.
The sad thing is that education is also not playing any important role in this direction. Families and schools have also become silent spectators. The aim of education is to make the children self-reliant, aware of their rights and duties, capable of taking independent decisions and to build a dedicated and strong personality for the upliftment of the country and society. But today’s education is only making him a part of the competition, because winning this competition is the hallmark of his existence.
To win in these competitions, they must take admission in various educational industries, or else their defeat is certain. These teaching and coaching industries only look at the spending capacity of the parents and not the interest or ability of the children. And this is one of the major reasons why children who fall behind in these competitions or are pushed into these competitions without will, they start giving up on life. Because education did not teach them that life is not limited to one competition, nor is life a name of competition with others, but life is to conquer oneself and win with oneself.
Families are also no less responsible for such social crisis. Some social scientists believe that there are some elements in the concept of family which make the family anti-social. According to him, the family is anti-social because it establishes the legitimacy of exploitation of women and it eliminates any possibility of a woman’s life outside the family environment.
Presenting women as objects of beauty in various advertisements and media expands the profit market and not women empowerment. The character of the market is not welfare, but individualistic, so it has no objective other than making profit.
Market forces work only for profit, so nothing can be expected of them. But the turning away of such issues by a democratic and welfare state, family and teacher community indicates the dangers that may arise in the society. If the present is like this, then there is no need to say how frightening the future will be. The market should satisfy the human needs, even so, but if the needs are directed and controlled, then it becomes a threat to the society and the nation.