Crossroads policy is divisive

I remember the time Ensemble opened in Mumbai. For weeks before the opening there was talk about the new upmarket store launching in the city, the high prices, the designers and the swishy opening.

If the hype wasn't enough to scare off prospective window shoppers then the funereal ambience of the store combined with sub zero hospitality would have done the trick. Whatever the method used it was the first time that I remember a clear and overt message of exclusivity being sent out by a place as public as a store.

In fact it was the time when exclusivity was a new but hot selling item among a social segment that was still in the process of being born of people, many newly arrived into money, and certainly deriving their identity from it. In the old days they could have announced their arrival by obtaining membership at a local club, dressing a certain way and perhaps doing deeds of charity.

The clubs were and continued to be bastions of exclusivity. But they were after all, entities that were built on membership lists and the idea of networking among people of like status.

But in the mid to late eighties the demand for symbols and places of exclusivity had grown. Perhaps the person who understood this need well was Nelson Wang the proprietor of China Garden who started a Ladies Club and made it eminently desirable by restricting entry, at least in the first phase to a select list of invitees who were asked to buy memberships.

One of the stories in Vikram Chandra's book, Love and Longing In Bombay is infact a satirical account of socialites vying to get into an `exclusive' ladies club in the city. Against this backdrop we have the phenomenon of Crossroads, our first (with apologies to Shoppers' Stop) multi-storeyed all-purpose mall coming out with a policy to restrict entry to its premises.

According to the policy owners of cell phones and credit cards (or at least any one who is carrying either) are entitled to free entry while others have to shell out an entry fee of Rs60.

The policy has received mixed reactions ranging from acceptance to outrage.Some have argued that any business establishment has the right to restrict entry to its premises. It is a point of view. But consider the policy itself and what it is based on.

First of all it assumes that possession of a cell phone and a credit card are indicators of shop-worthiness, and second it indicates that the mall is meant only for people who intend to buy and anybody who comes for any other purpose must pay for entry.

oth seem odd assumptions given that cell phones and credit cards are items of convenience the world over rather than status and that window shopping (along with entertainment) is an integral part of the mall experience.

But the aim is not to argue whether an establishment can do or not do certain things but to look at the implications. Every exclusion says something about the person excluding and the society that sustains such exclusion.

When M. F. Hussain was barred from a club for his bare feet for instance or when two women were disallowed entry into a nightclub for wearing saris and so on we were establishing the superiority of one way of dressing over another. What the new Crossroads policy seem to do is to create a division based on the possession of certain specified items.

And given that it had range of surefire crowd pulling activities under its roof, the new policy of charging for entry seems to make it clear who it wants in and who it doesn't. It may or may not have the right to decide but perhaps it is time we began to think about what the kind of city we want to live in - one based on exclusion or one based on inclusion.

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