Marketing, in the pristine sense of the term, is all about how to ‘create a customer’.  It seems that there is everything but a mass customer base for solar cookers, for potter’s wheels with ball bearings, for pneumatic tyres or FRP load  beds in bullock carts and, I dare say, for smokeless chulhas or whatever else is the current flavour of the month in the appropriate technology market.

So far all the market strategies seem to have forgotten the beast called the end user.  If anyone really worries about the end user, it’s obvious that the specific anxieties, concerns, needs and beliefs of the end  user, it’s obvious that the specific anxieties, concerns, needs and beliefs of the end user will be agonised over, before costly decisions are taken on what to do.  There is no indication  that this is even on the agenda.

The end user, to begin with, is a ‘beneficiary’.  There is also a glib assumptions that she is a clueless   moron, in desperate need of ‘Information’ and ‘Education’.  The user is offered stuff that would make any self-respecting clueless moron throw up; their know-all saviours discover, for instance, that housewives prefer to cook in the evenings....only after handing them a solar cooker (reported in Gujarat).  Of course, they then go on to blame her for using the box with a shiny mirror as a make-up cabinet.  It’s clear who needs information and education.

This example, I think, elegantly sums up the nescience of the ignorance-proud, living-in-the-ivory-tower salesmen of Allegedly Appropriate Technology (AAT).  The irony is that it can be solved without any special skills or special equipment.  It does, however, call for a particular attitude and I grant that it is indeed difficult to change a closed mind.

Enough of ranting, let us look at an example.  If you and I buy a computer, we gather a lot of information.  We check out users, experts and the vendors, we would look at computer magazines, get quotations and so on.  Further, we understand its benefits.  We want to own one.  and we find ways to assimilate these gadgets into our belief system (praying to a computer on Vishwakrma day for instance).  We are able to do this because of education in general, because the product reflect our needs, and vendors fall over themselves trying to sell it to us.

Even further, we live with, but curse, the fact that it needs an air conditioner.  We bemoan the fact that the god of technological emancipation demands that we take our shoes off in the Sanctum computer Room.  Adopting the technology calls for adjustments, but we make them because the technology, despite its problems, is seen to be worth it in light of our needs.  ‘Needs’ here includes everything.  Your need to show  off might outweigh the felt need to save the ozone layer.

Is the end user of AAT’s offered products or technologies that have ‘factored in’ all her needs?  Does she have an analogous arsenal of information?  Is any comparable chance given to determine her own assessment and choice?  How many of these technologies were developed with user participation in the design and development, let alone testing at beta sites?

If a coconut falls on, or a monkey jumps on a solar panel, will it break?  Forget the solar panel, will the tiles of the TARA roof-maker withstand these impacts?  So the end user is left to his/her own devices to find the answers to the following questions:

Will it work as promised?  Will it do all that we want it to do, in the way that we want it to?

What is the guarantee offered?  If any maintenance is needed, can we get it?  Will it end up lying idle for want of spares or service?

What is the guarantee offered?  If any maintenance is needed, can we get it?  Will it end up lying idle for want of spares or service?

How easy is to buy, fetch and install?  Is it widely available?  How easy is the access to any of the subsidies provided?  At the end of all the greasing and running about, will I realise any net subsidy?

What do the current users, or those whose expertise I trust, recommend?

Will it bring emergent problems in its wake?  (Good neighbour’s coconut falls on solar panel.  Bad neighbour).

So it boils down to whether the risk is worth the sum total of a variety of factors: the money o be paid, the change needed in the way one thinks or lives life, the worry about what others will think, and how vulnerable you are if at the end of it all it doesn’t work out.  And, oodles of subsidies betray what the risk is truly like.

In our computer example, it is analogous to ’will the boss sack me if I blow it (fail)’.  Ultimately it’s that, isn’t it?  The joke about how no one ever got sacked for buying an IBM computer tells it better than any marketing text.  If it’s your backside that’s on the line, you must cover it very well.  It’s easier to say ‘no’ because opportunity loss is never visible.  A wrong ‘yes’ is there for all to see.  An you stand to lose your job.

One thing that IBM does very well is to hold the customer’s hand.  The difference, of course, is that it is the customer who leads IBM by the hand in their R&D, then drags them by the hand and a couple of other parts at the first hint of trouble.

Put simply, AT needs but one market strategy: Let user needs drive technology development and marketing.  And by user needs, I do not mean our perception of what the user ‘ought to need, if only he will mend his ways’.  We have enough of that, and enough of the resultant offerings in the so-called demonstration phase!

Nor do ‘needs’ mean just the primary need fulfilled by the technology or product.  The user has a spectrum of needs over and above that, which occur before, during and after the purchase.  Any offering that is below the threshold of expectations on any of these is bound to fail.  And needs may not be tangible, nor require a physical entity for fulfilment.

This holds for the eventual outputs of the technology as well.  Till ‘dona patta’ plates meet their user’s needs, where is the market for them?  Where is the ‘income’ in an income-generation project on dona pattas?  Till the products sell, why should even a ‘proven’ technology be adopted?

What does ‘proven’ mean anyway?  That a technology works?  That it makes products that the AT vendor thinks are great?  Or is it one which completely fits in just so well with the potential adopter, and enables her to realise the benefits in an effective and sustainable way?

The ATs in the demonstration phase rather clearly demonstrate one truth:  Saying ‘NO’ is the only intelligent choice left to an end user.

What about T.A.R.A. itself, may I ask?  If TARA really cares about its customers, then, like IBM, there has to be hand-holding in the genuine sense, before the need arises to hold the customer’s hands..... to fend off the punch.