New Delhi, Oct. 4 -- "The things you own
end up owning you."
- Chuck Palahniuk
Something rather fundamental has changed in our lives. More often than not, people don't necessarily want to own the thing. They want to use the thing. Why buy a car that spends most of its life parked when a cab can arrive at the gate within minutes? Why buy pen drives or CDs when millions of songs are available for a subscription with a simple click? Why purchase a movie when a streaming service can provide an entire library?
Software has made this shift overtly obvious. We once bought a program, installed it and expected it to hold our hand. Today, the software we use is rented by the month or year. That logic is spreading. Furniture can be rented. Designer clothes can be rented. Office space can be shared. Cars can be leased. Holiday homes can be booked, not owned.
The proposition is simple. Why carry the cost of possession when you can pay for access, to be used when needed? This has an economic angle too. Ownership comes with maintenance, depreciation, storage, insurance, repairs and, sometimes, the sheer irritation of having to look after something. Access comes with a password.
The Car Has Changed
The car may be the earthiest example. For generations, the first car had been a rite of passage. It represented independence, achievement and adulthood. Parents saved for it. Children dreamed of it. The family washed it on Sunday mornings. Today, a young professional living in a city asks a different question: Why buy a car? There is a cab app. There is the metro. There is a rental for the weekend. In fact, there is a delivery service for everything. Almost.
Owning a car still makes sense for lakhs, particularly families and people living outside urban transport networks. But ownership is no longer the automatic answer to mobility. The change is not that people have stopped wanting cars. It is that ownership of the car is no longer the preferred objective. The same thing is happening with homes, although the shift is slower.
Houses Still Matter
For Indians, a house is different. Emotionally. A rented house can be perfectly comfortable, but owning one still carries a powerful sense of permanence. It is something you can point to and say "this is mine". But younger Indians are far more willing today to move for jobs, change cities, pursue opportunities and postpone buying a home. A 25-year commitment to one location does not sit as comfortably anymore with a workforce that changes employers, cities and careers quicker than ever.
The house, thus, has acquired a competitor: flexibility. This is not the death of home ownership. Far from it. It means the old equation-success equals ownership-is no longer as robotic as it once was.
We Still Want Things
There is an irony here too. We may be moving away from ownership just as consumer choice has exploded. But people still buy expensive phones, watches, cars, shoes and furniture. They still want nice homes. They still collect things.
But a new question is being asked: Do I really need to own this? That is very different from the question previous generations asked. Our parents accumulated things because outright ownership provided security. Things were expensive, sometimes difficult to replace and often unavailable. If you had something useful, you kept it.
Today's young consumer has grown up in a world of abundance and immediate availability. Why keep a cupboard full of DVDs when the movie is available in seconds? Why keep spares of everything when a new one can be delivered in minutes? Why buy a dress for one occasion when it can be rented and returned? This is not about frugality. It is a different, distanced relationship with material things.
New Status Symbol
The biggest change is psychological. For much of the 20th century, prosperity was visible in what was owned. The bigger the house, the newer the car, the larger the television. all of these were convincing evidence that you had done well, arrived in life.
Today, prosperity is being measured by what you do not have to worry about. You do not have to maintain the car. You do not have to store hundreds of films. You do not have to buy an expensive piece of equipment for something you will use twice. You do not even have to remain in the same city.
Convenience has become the new wealth. And time may be the most valuable thing being purchased. Perhaps that is where the ownership revolution really leads to. We have not stopped wanting things. We have simply become less convinced that possessing something is the only way to enjoy it.
Our parents wanted cupboards full of things because things represented security. We may be heading towards a generation that wants fewer cupboards, if any at all. Which is probably bad news for the people who have been storing those mysterious screws. Just in case.
Views expressed are personal. The writer is a journalist & communications specialist
Published by HT Digital Content Services with permission from Millennium Post.