#escapethesystem

[everythingkashmir]

Escaping the Matrix

The reality is an illusion

By Faisul Yaseen

‘Khan News Agency’ just outside the Lambert Lane on the Residency Road in Srinagar, the summer capital of Jammu and Kashmir, used to employ seven persons. Today, Hilal Ahmad is the only one running the show.

“The customer flow used to be such that none of us could take a breather during the day,” Ahmad says. “Today, I sit idle, waiting all day for the customers to turn up.”

His business of selling newspapers, magazines, and other periodicals, has been hit with the growth of e-commerce in Kashmir.

“e-commerce is doing much more damage to small-time shopkeepers than the violence of three decades in Kashmir,” he says.

As the e-commerce industry is growing in Kashmir, it is eating away the business of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME) like local departmental stores, bookshops, clothing and footwear stores, small traders, retailers, and hawkers while wholesale profit margins are getting squeezed.

In this new world order, how will the small businesses survive?

*****

Andrew Tate, a kickboxer-turned-online influencer was recently in the news when while being arrested he said, “The Matrix has attacked me.”

When Tate mentioned ‘The Matrix’, was he making a reference to the science fiction film franchise or was he talking about the new world order?

In one of his viral videos while referring to ‘The Matrix’, he says, “They want to control us. This is what people who are in charge ever wanted from the beginning, control. They want people to comply. And you have to put systems in place to ensure people comply.”

Are those systems the new business models? And are we the people complying with those systems?

Kashmir Chamber of Commerce and Industry (KCCI) President Javid Tenga says, “There is a need to support people who are losing their livelihood due to e-commerce.”

Tenga, who had shot a letter to the Union Civil Aviation Ministry and Director General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) to stop websites of various airlines from unilaterally raising airfares on Jammu and Kashmir route, says that the government needs to place restrictions on e-commerce of certain items to protect the interests of small traders.

Rescuing small businesses in a place like J&K assumes importance considering that at least 1.82 lakh youth who do not have any jobs are registered with the government.

*****

Chairman of PHD Chamber of Commerce and Industry (PHDCCI), Kashmir, Vicky Shaw says, “The dimensions of business are changing.”

He suggests small businesses to get associated with big companies and become their suppliers.

Shaw also recommends small traders to register their businesses on the Government of India’s Open Network Digital Commerce (ONDC) app for easy marketing of their products.

“People have to move on,” Shaw says.

Coordinator Directorate of Internal Quality Assurance (DIQA) of the University of Kashmir (KU), Aijaz Akbar Mir concurs with Shaw.

According to Mir, who specialises in Management and Organisational Behaviour, Human Resource Management, Human Resource Development and Industrial Relations, the small traders need to come up with “innovations” and “redesign” or “perish”.

“Change is important. What is relevant today may not be relevant tomorrow,” Mir says. “Small traders need to add more products and go for home delivery.”

Coordinator MBA Financial Management at KU’s School of Business Studies, Irshad Ahmad Malik questions whether small businesses were offering what customers want.

“They are not shifting to the alternate mechanism,” he says. “They also need to lure customers with discounts and go for hybrid mode of sales – both online and in store.”

*****

In a time of gloom at the shop fronts, is the government doing anything for helping the small businesses?

Director Industries and Commerce, Kashmir, Mahmood Ahmad Shah says, “There is nothing in the industrial policy. This comes under rehabilitation.”

However, Shah, who is also Director Handicrafts and Handloom, says that the government is incentivising e-commerce in the handicrafts sector.

When merchants, who usually fight with each other, feel an existential threat at the hands of the “common enemy” e-commerce, the role of the government and the quasi-government institutions like J&K Bank, which has for long been the lifeline of the local economy, becomes all the more important.

Editor of the J&K Bank and its Head of Internal Communication and Knowledge Management (IC&KM) Department, Sajjad Bazaz says, “It is all up to the business plan of the shopkeepers.”

He says that the loan limit given by the bank depends on the working capital.

“Many small traders have already started e-commerce but it only accounts for around 40 percent of the sales while 60 percent customers still visit the stores for a personal experience,” Bazaz says.

*****

In the 1999 Hollywood movie, ‘The Matrix’ that Tate makes references to, Morpheus, a rebel leader played by Laurence Fishburne tells the protagonist Neo, who is played by Keanu Reeves, “The Matrix is a system, Neo. That system is our enemy. But when you're inside, you look around, what do you see? Businessmen, teachers, lawyers, carpenters. The very minds of the people we are trying to save. But until we do, these people are still a part of that system and that makes them our enemy. You have to understand, most of these people are not ready to be unplugged. And many of them are so inured, so hopelessly dependent on the system, that they will fight to protect it.”

Are we those hopelessly dependent people who are fighting to protect this world order?

In ‘The Matrix’ Morpheus gives Neo two options, “This is your last chance. After this, there is no turning back. You take the blue pill - the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill - you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes.”

Do we have options like Neo and what are those options?

Writer and speaker, Sofo Archon in ‘Escaping the Matrix: 8 Ways to Deprogram Yourself’ writes, “Think of the way most people live: They force themselves to wake up early in the morning, dress up, drive straight to some workplace, spend 8 hours or so doing work they hate, drive back home, surf the Internet or watch TV, and then go to sleep, only to repeat the same routine the next day for almost the rest of their lives.”

For escaping ‘The Matrix’, he suggests breaking the shackles of dogmas, stopping giving your power away to external authority, questioning the dominant economic system, detaching yourself from consumerism, being aware of the media, choosing food carefully, reading eye-opening books, and developing mindfulness.

Archon writes that habits, tradition, and dogmas have turned us into mindless automatons that follow a predetermined path that was forced upon us.

*****

Chairman J&K Hoteliers Club Mushtaq Chaya says that there is a need to change these habits and old traditions.

“Shopkeepers have to become smart,” he says. “The people who are making a fortune out of e-commerce are smart people who used to run small businesses like these shopkeepers.”

However, Chaya calls for extending all possible help to these small traders who are finding it difficult to jump the bandwagon of e-commerce.

Like Chaya, President of Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Kashmir (CCIK), Tariq Rashid Ghani also suggests extending a helping hand to the small businesses keeping in mind the past three decades of turmoil in J&K.

“The traditional shop-keeping has come to an end,” he says. “The government needs to promote local items.”

*****

Nikki Baird in her write up ‘Retail in the 2020s: The Death of Consumerism’ for the ‘Forbes’ writes that the consumers should become sensitive to environment footprints; repair and maintenance sector would grow; businesses should deliver experiences; and traders should rethink how their businesses are organised, rework brand strategies, and remodel stores.

On April 17 last year at the unveiling of a 108-foot tall statue of Hanuman in Morbi, Gujarat, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said: “At our homes, we should only use things made by our people. Imagine the number of people who will get employment due to this. We may like foreign-made goods but these things don’t have the feel of the hard work of our people. In the next 25 years, if we just use local products, there won’t be unemployment for our people.”

In times of brand junkies, in times when duds backed by rich parents go on to become entrepreneurs, extending an olive branch to the small traders would be a revolutionary act.

*****

Greek philosopher Plato in the ‘Allegory of the Cave’ in his work ‘Republic’ describes a group of people who have lived all their lives in a cave. Chained to pillars, they can only see shadows cast on the back wall by a fire burned behind them. These shadows are mere illusions. When one of these men breaks out, he discovers a new world. On returning to the cave, he tells the other men about the reality but they reject it and resent him because reality is an illusion for them and illusion a reality.

However, Friedrich Nietzsche in his book Twilight of the Idols argues that if this ‘reality’ was completely unknowable and beyond grasp, what use could it possibly be.

Sheikh Aijaz, who runs Gulshan Books store at the Residency Road in Srinagar, says that a new reality has already dawned as fewer people were turning up to purchase books at stores.

“Most people now order books from e-commerce sites,” says Aijaz who compensates for the loss of business at the store with ‘Gulshan Books Publishing House’, a vertical the family started years back.

The 17th century French philosopher Rene Descartes in his ‘Meditations on First Philosophy’ suggests that the entire human world is but a world of shadows orchestrated by a deceitful “evil genius”.

Not wanting to chase the shadows, millennials across the world may not be buying diamonds, ‘vocal for local’ may be the in thing in India, but are we ready for putting in an effort to make the change.

Do you want to take the blue pill, or do you want to take the red pill?

The choice is yours.

[saramackenzie1982]

#AuthorsVoice #VoicesInMyHead #WritingItOut #BooksAreBorn #InsaneAsylum #MentalHealth #LegalWays #EscapeTheSystem #IndieAuthor #DontDelay #BookDrought #NewBritain https://www.instagram.com/p/Cn_6C9iuklk/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[share2seed]

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[platform58]

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[artofmtb]

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[trovarsiofficial]

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[spanky606]

@Regrann from @dp4k.m - REBEL WITH A CAUSE The lone calf that dared to defy the odds. He tried to escape the system but was caught. Even though he failed in his attempt we will never forget his courage! That's the stuff legends are made of. Video by Animal Equality #rebelwithacause #escapethesystem #alllivesmatter #Regrann

[platform58]

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[platform58]

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[artofmtb]

“Gravity Meditation” expresses the compressed experience of presence in the moment during intense mtb driving. This and other merch applied artwork at artofmtb.redbubble.com (clickable link in bio) #mtbapparel #tshirtdesigner #mtbtshirt #mtbtshirts #freeridemtb #mountainbiker #enduromtb #EnduroLove #enduro #dhmtb #downhillmtb #EnduroLife #mtballday #mtbfullnes #parallellworld #escapethesystem #escapethematrix #endorphins #fullbodyworkout #bodycontroltraining #bodycoordination #Goals #GoHardOrGoHome #YouCanDoIt #Cycling #GetFit #FitnessMotivation #FitnessMotivation #personaldevelopment #LifeQuality (at Whistler Mountain Bike Park) https://www.instagram.com/p/CFtp9Wxo9BM/?igshid=16aggjye8rltn

[platform58]

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[platform58]

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[platform58]

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[platform58]

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[platform58]

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[platform58]

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