Global consumer society and trend of consumption in India

Abstract

For sociologists and social scientists, contemporary global society has entered into the phase that is labelled as advanced capitalism, advanced industrialism, information era and post-modernity. Consumer society is a kind of characteristic feature of this phase and an ideological force underlies the global development trends. This paper has discussed the development of consumer society and its implication for social well-being. Social well-being is symbolically measured in consumer society; people’s manifested well-being is determined by consumption of industrial commodities or objects. Social well-being is again linked to the notion of ‘need’ and different standards of life define ‘need’ differently. Marcuse (1964) differentiated between true needs and false needs; false need causes variation of standard of life and objective well-being. Consumer society shows greater interest in mass production and freedom of consumption. Technological advancement particularly Web.20 (Advancement of WWW) during the beginning of 21st Century reshaped the service sectors of the world. India has become a part of global consumer society that is not a desired gain for its large weaker sections. Socio-historical inequalities like caste and class still remind us of the reality of social ill-being though affluent sections were able to attain objective well-being. Launching of Reliance Jio (Offering unlimited internet data plan at cheaper price) in 2007 marked the beginning of new digital life and mass consumption among Indian people, as it created a new service industry in the fields of food, cloth, aestheticism, entertainment and many more. But social well-being is not yet ensured; still there are large sections of the population striving for basic needs like quality education and quality healthcare. Until capability equality is achieved, social well-being in Indian society will be a utopia.