Photo by bandarji of McDonald's in Lower Parel, Mubai in 2009.
McDonald's is opening up vegetarian-only restaurants in India. Some libertarians in my Facebook feed are yelping because they see this as hated political-correctness finding its way into corporate decisions.
But it's an interesting rebuttal to all those neuralgic nabobs who have complained about globalization and hegemony of American culture over the years, especially in Europe. Now it seems that two can play at globalization. Oh, it's not a trend yet, but it's interesting and could grow as a trend.
Everybody knows that despite their rigid and fanatic attention to uniformity, McDonald's stores differ from country to country. I've always been mystified as to why the fries are so salty at the McDonald's in Paris. Is that France's way of sabotaging the fry named for their country but which doesn't really resemble anything in French cuisine? They're over-salted in Vienna, too. In Belarus, where potatoes are one thing that poor oppressed country does supply in abundance, they're pretty good. In Moscow, they're soggy and awful. More sabotage or russkaya khalatnost'? The "milk cocktails," which are the milkshakes, are better, possibly because they put more real milk in them? Yes, I'm a crass American who tries McDonald's in foreign countries, and I'm kicking myself for not going to the one in Seoul, which I passed by, and which seemed to overrepresent fish.
And that's just it -- McDonald's, as American and hegemonic as it may wish to be, has to keep opening restaurants and sell "billions" of burgers in order to survive. And that means that just like Twitter is willing to censor itself in India over blasphemy and criticism of the government, McDonald's has to get rid of its sacred cows off the menu. And so it does. And that's why we're getting entrees like McAloo Tikki burgers made from potatoe patties and Pizza McPuffs near pilgrimate sites for Sikhs and Hindus, the Economist reports.
My question is when we're going to see the McAloo Tikki burger on our menu here in New York, perhaps starting with neighbourhoods where there are lots of Indian immigrants? Wouldn't that be interesting? Will Glocalization lead to that?
The socialist Guardian snorts at all this as merely realism due to falling profits in India (so wait...they sold *some* hamburgers even such as to have profits that then fell?!).
McDonald's could also spark a religious war, according to the Guardian, quoting a nationalist Hindu:
The Hindu nationalist group Swadeshi Jagran Manch, a branch of the influential Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, told the Daily Telegraph it would oppose McDonald's plans. "It's an attempt not only to make money but also to deliberately humiliate Hindus," said its national co-convener S Gurumurthy. "It is an organisation associated with cow slaughter. If we make an announcement that they're slaughtering cows, people won't eat there. We are definitely going to fight it."
That's interesting, because again, it means McDonald's came to India and started selling burgers successfully and these kinds of protests weren't made so loudly until now. Does this tell us something more about Hindu nationalism than American capitalist burgers?
McDonald's faces competition from Yum brands, which owns KFC, Taco Bell, and Pizza Hut, says the Wall Street Journal, as it has far less stores than they do in India. The growing middle class is supposed to feed the growth of these fast-food empires.
Of course, McDonald's shouldn't forget its social mission according to Tom Friedman, who famously wrote once that no two countries that had opened McDonald's stores could go to war with each other. That idea fell apart in the Russian-Georgian war I think (although someone should check to see if Tbilisi had a McDonald's by then). As I know from an old photo I took of a Ronald McDonald statue in Minsk with police standing nearby as demonstrations were broken up, a country with a McDonald's can still be at war with itself.
