Transit Advertising, “An analysis of its perception among customers and its efficiency among advertisers”

Varun B. Kumar

One of the old forms of advertising, evolution started as early as in 1830s when salespersons used to paint advertisements on their sales wagons and since then it has evolved to huge banners being put up covering whole of bus exteriors. Though it used to prove effective earlier but now it is losing its sheen and here I give a primer WHY? Here I’ll be discussing a few questions.

To what can this lack of performance be attributed? Is the image of transit advertising tarnished? Are the unique benefits of transit advertising unclear? Is the product offering not compelling? Are sales efforts falling short?

The purpose of my study was to 1) Understand advertising decision makers’ perceptions of transit advertising 2) Understand the direct impact of the concerned form on consumers 3) Come up with suggestions to improve the image. To achieve this, a quantitative study of common man (the consumer), was conducted as well as interviews with marketing representatives of transit agencies and sales contractors was conducted. What follows is a summary of findings, conclusions and recommendations.

Where do you advertise when you want to reach everybody? Transit advertising - placement of print ads on buses and other vehicles and in bus shelters and train stations--is an important medium for reaching an audience of all ages, backgrounds and incomes. You are not just addressing riders with these "moving billboards." You are reaching families and professionals in their vehicles, students shopping or right on campus, and tourists finding their way around town.

Why use transit advertising?

· You can't zap it.

· You can't ignore it.

· It can't be turned off like television.

· It reaches drivers and passengers no matter what radio stations they're listening to.

· The large, colorful, innovative designs demand attention.

· You have exclusivity in your space.

· It delivers a varied audience.

· It offers flexibility of ad size and location.

Transit is all set to grow, but still it lacks credibility and distinctiveness in today’s advertising market place

Market conditions and the marketers suggest that transit is all set to grow. The organizations outlook is shifting from spending millions of dollars on traditional advertising methods to using more customer sensitive and non-traditional advertising methods. In one of the interviews it came out that out-of-home media advertising is set to grow the most. And the reason for the form to grow is that the benefits offered by transit totally align with the needs of advertisers, at top being “up close and personal” with the consumer.

However to be fully competitive with the already existing billboards, newspapers, the Internet and other being developed forms transit has a long way to go. The quantitative study of 200 randomly picked consumers and 23 personally conducted interviews indicated to the following obstacles to transit advertising:

1) Transit agencies find it hard to grow and sometimes even sustain in the hard competition

2) It does not generate enough interest and enthusiasm either among advertisers or consumers

3) The overall level of satisfaction with transit media is low

4) The benefits its target audience perceives is neither highly motivating nor distinct from billboards

Key Finding: Transit advertising’s greatest strength is reaching captive audiences; however, it is perceived weaker in most objectives when compared to billboards

Key Finding: Attitude and habits concerning transit media are very indifferent among the media representatives

Next I give the most important aspect of the survey, “The image perceptions of transit advertising.” (Among consumers and representatives both combined)

Another reason for loss of shine is that a majority believed that transit does not deliver reliably, target well or even offer a good value. A misconception as far as I believe but I’m not the market and what they say has to be believed and taken as right. Only half of the ones surveyed believed that transit can be used to target specific areas or demographic groups. Even though a majority believed that it can’t be avoided, but then only 1/5^th of the total respondents believed that transit delivered ROI. Another interesting thing that came to my notice was that although the advertisers were very comfortable in referring or recommending transit to their customers but the perceptions that they had about transit media were not positive.

Now when it comes to the consumers the story was almost similar here as well. Again the same trend followed:

· Though the consumers noticed such ads, majority in trains and buses, but they said that it does not have any major impact on their decisions of whether to or not to buy.

· Only 64 of 200 believed that transit has an impact.

· The fact stated by the representatives about sales rep and ROI was proved right when a mind boggling 72% of the respondents said that they never purchased anything and don’t even plan to buy as an impact of these adverts.

· The ROI which was generated somehow ended up low because the worth of purchases made due to transit were majorly below a thousand rupees, not keeping up to the investment made by the company.

· According to consumers as well the effectiveness of these adverts lagged in various areas

Developing new forms and working on innovative ideas for advertising is one thing but seeing an age old form of advertising losing its sheen and shine for just a misconception is different, practically speaking “unfair.” So following are a list of suggestions I feel can help in reviving the image of transit advertising

Recommendation #1: Reposition transit advertising to differentiate it from billboards, elevate its importance, and update its image.

Now perception plays an important role in transforming the image. If the transit positioned among its audience as something that surrounds consumers and not the product it will become a critical part of daily exposure experience. Such a positioning will differentiate, elevate and update transit on the whole.

Recommendation #2: Promote transit media both among the advertisers and the consumers

The need to do this on both ends arises because:

· Advertisers don’t see transit as a beneficial option,

And,

· Customers don’t believe in what the advertisers show through transit

Recommendation #3: Develop a credible measurement system for the transit in particular

Now, this one was suggested to me by a journalism student. What he told was, that the advertisers don’t believe in using transit as a media for advertising their product because they have no idea about its effectiveness, its reliability, its efficiency, and its value for money. So all these concerns will be addressed if and only once when transit becomes measurable.

Recommendation #4: Address image and product deficiencies of transit media

Now this has to be seen from two perspectives

1. Advertisers’ perception

a. Transit media are not clean

b. Have high production cost

2. Customers’ perception

a. Don’t grab attention like billboards and are not attractive

b. Don’t really portray the reality about the product

Now, these might not be able to provide transit media advertising a whole new outlook for both advertisers and customer but it’ll surely help to provide a much needed revamp.

international day for climate action

i have organised an event on 24 october in sonepat at town park. the details you can find on this link http://www.350.org/map#/map/29.046565622728846/78.33251953125/7

the location and other related information you 'll find there itself

the event is about climate change and is done in collaboration with international day for climate change.

Dinosaurs illfated

India Asteroid Killed Dinosaurs, Made Largest Crater?

Ker Than
for National Geographic News

October 16, 2009

The dinosaurs' demise may have been due to an asteroid double-whammy—two giant space rocks that struck near Mexico and India a few hundred thousand years apart, scientists say.

For decades one of the more popular theories for what killed the dinosaurs has focused on a single asteroid impact 65 million years ago.

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• "Dinosaur Killer" Asteroid Was Half the Size Predicted?
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• Far-Flung Crash May Have Created Dinosaur-Killer Asteroid

A six-mile-wide (ten-kilometer-wide) asteroid is thought to have carved out the Chicxulub crater off Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula, triggering worldwide climate changes that led to the mass extinction.

But the controversial new theory says the dinosaurs were actually finished off by another 25-mile-wide (40-kilometer-wide) asteroid. That space rock slammed into the planet off the western coast of India about 300,000 years after Chicxulub, experts say.

"The dinosaurs were really unlucky," said study co-author Sankar Chatterjee, a paleontologist at Texas Tech University in Lubbock.

Chatterjee thinks this second asteroid impact created a 300-mile-wide (500-kilometer-wide) depression on the Indian Ocean seafloor, which his team began exploring in 1996.

His team has dubbed this depression the Shiva crater, after the Hindu god of destruction and renewal.

"If we are correct," Chatterjee said, "this is the largest crater known on Earth."

Dinosaur-Killer Asteroid Boosted Volcanoes?

The Shiva asteroid impact was powerful enough to vaporize Earth's crust where it struck, allowing the much hotter mantle to well up and create the crater's tall, jagged rim, Chatterjee estimates.

What's more, his team thinks the impact caused a piece of the Indian subcontinent to break off and drift toward Africa, creating what are now the Seychelles islands (see map).

The Shiva impact may also have enhanced volcanic eruptions that were already occurring in what is now western India, Chatterjee added.

Some scientists have speculated that the noxious gases released by the Indian volcanoes, called the Deccan Traps, were crucial factors in the dinosaurs' extinction.

(Related: "'Dinosaur Killer' Asteroid Only One Part of New Quadruple-Whammy Theory.")

"It's very tempting to think that the impact actually triggered the volcanism," Chatterjee said.

"But that may not be true. It looks like the volcanism was already happening, and the [Shiva] impact just made it worse."

Arctic ice melt

This past spring scientists had taken measurements along a 280-mile (450-kilometer) route across the northern part of the Beaufort Sea (map). Most of the ice, they found, was young and thin.

"With a larger part of the region now first-year ice, it is clearly more vulnerable," expedition leader and sea-ice expert Peter Wadhams, og the University of Cambridge in England, said in a statement.

(Also see "Stormier Arctic Predicted as Ice Melts.")

Young Arctic Ice Vulnerable

The Arctic Ocean ice cover last spring was 6 feet (1.8 meters) thick, on average, indicating that it was only about a year old, the explorers said. More durable, multi-year ice, by contrast, is about nine feet (three meters) thick, according to NASA.

This relative thinness is an indication of the Arctic sea ice's poor health, said Mark Serreze, an Arctic-ice expert at the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado, in an interview with National Geographic News.

"Simply viewed, if we start out the melt season in spring with ice that is thin, it simply doesn't take as much solar energy to melt it out than if it was thicker," he said.

(See "Shrinking Arctic Sea Ice Thinner, More Vulnerable.")

Also, wind and ocean currents can more easily break up thinner ice, which exposes even more ice to warmer water. And once ice is free floating, winds and currents can push the ice south into warmer waters outside the Arctic Circle, Serreze added.

Dueling Dates for Arctic Ice Melt

The new data, presented by the Catlin Arctic Survey and the international conservation group WWF, support the view that the Arctic will be ice free in the summer within about 20 years.

Most of the ice melt is expected to happen within the next ten years, Wadhams said in his statement.

Serreze's group in Boulder, though, is on record saying the Arctic's summer sea ice will fully melt around 2030. Other groups have put the ice-free date as late as 2100.

(Related: "Arctic Ice to Last Decades Longer Than Thought?")

Why such seemingly wild guesses?

"When we lose the ice really depends on the natural variability in the system," Serreze said.

A good example of this is the record low year of 2007. That summer saw a perfect storm of climatic conditions: warm temperatures plus wind patterns that broke apart and pushed large chunks of ice out of the Arctic. (See "Warming Oceans Contributed to Record Arctic Melt" [2007].)

The summers of 2008 and 2009 have seen some recovery of Arctic ice, though the long-term trend is still for shrinking ice, Serreze said.

Will the slow, steady trend be the norm? Or will another year like 2007 come along and wipe out the Arctic ice?

"These are the unknowns," Serreze said. "We simply don't know."

The climate Project

The Climate Project is making a difference September 23, 2009 : 11:02 AM

So far The Climate Project has trained more than 3,000 people to deliver my slide show. A study conducted by Milepost consulting found that the presentations these dedicated volunteers are giving have made a huge impact.

For example, the report found “that those who previously did not identify as ‘environmentalists’ underwent the greatest mental shift, becoming more likely to support emissions reduction and to reduce their carbon footprint.”

I want to congratulate all of The Climate Project’s presenters. You are really making a difference.

If you want to see these incredible volunteers in action, schedule a TCP presentation in your community by clicking here. [Link]

Link

new fuel mileage standards

New Mileage Standards September 25, 2009 : 11:22 AM

Last week the Obama administration proposed new rules that would increase the average fuel efficiency of cars and light trucks by 40%. I absolutely agree with the Alliance for Climate Protections’ CEO Maggie Fox, who stated:

"The historic proposed fuel standards announced today by the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Transportation will bring us leaps and bounds closer to repowering America and ending our dependence on foreign oil. The Obama Administration’s plans will mean cleaner, more efficient vehicles that emit less pollution, get American families savings at the pump, and promote even greater breakthroughs in clean transportation technology."

Link

maldives

Underwater Cabinet Meeting October 16, 2009 : 11:41 AM

The Maldives lie just seven feet above sea level in the Indian Ocean. Climate change and rising sea levels could cause this tiny country to disappear. This week the country's President Mohammed Nasheed plans to hold a cabinet meeting underwater to highlight the challenge his nation is facing. “At the meeting, the Cabinet plans to sign a document calling on all countries to cut down their carbon emissions ahead of the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen in December, where the countries will negotiate a successor to the Kyoto Protocol.”

President Nasheed has been a unique voice on the issue of climate change. He has promised to make his nation the first carbon neutral country within the next ten years and has even launched a fund to buy a new homeland if the seas rise and the Islands are submerged.

Link

global warming

Leading by example October 17, 2009 : 2:29 PM

With little notice, President Obama has unveiled a new executive order that will reduce the carbon footprint of the federal government. According to the White House:

“The Executive Order requires Federal agencies to set a 2020 greenhouse gas emissions reduction target within 90 days; increase energy efficiency; reduce fleet petroleum consumption; conserve water; reduce waste; support sustainable communities; and leverage Federal purchasing power to promote environmentally-responsible products and technologies.”

"As the largest consumer of energy in the U.S. economy, the Federal government can and should lead by example when it comes to creating innovative ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, increase energy efficiency, conserve water, reduce waste, and use environmentally-responsible products and technologies," said President Obama. "This Executive Order builds on the momentum of the Recovery Act to help create a clean energy economy and demonstrates the Federal government's commitment, over and above what is already being done, to reducing emissions and saving money."

Link

global warming

The Warmest Seas on Record August 4, 2009 : 2:37 PM

According to the Sydney Morning Herald: [Link]

"For as long as people have taken the temperature of the seas they have never been so warm."

"Global ocean surface temperatures for June were the highest since records began, in 1880, breaking the record set in 2005, the National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration of the United States says."

"The average sea surface temperature for June, measured by satellites and buoys, was 0.59 degrees above the 20th-century average of 16.4 degrees."

nice article by alan mitchell "Mad Sheep Rage"

Reinventing Marketing: Alan Mitchell uses 'mad sheep rage' to unravel the mysteries behind marketing effectiveness

Mad Sheep Rage. There - what a satisfying way to introduce a new column. No, I'm not nuts. Mad Sheep Rage is an acronym you might find useful. But first, let's get some perspective from another world where an important debate is raging.

Once upon a time, doctors thought they knew that leukaemia was a single disease identified by these symptoms and tackled with those treatments. Over the years, however, we have discovered that leukaemia is actually 51 different types of cancer, all of which happen to present themselves via the same symptoms. To treat 'leukaemia' effectively, then, you first have to find out which cancer it is. Then you know what you are up against.

Doctors' old approach to treating leukaemia is now being dubbed 'symptomatic' medicine. The patient presents themself to the doctor, who asks questions, looks for symptoms and makes a diagnosis. It is a qualitative approach driven by the skill, experience and judgement of the doctor.

This creates a cult of authority and mystery: doctors are a bit like clairvoyants, able to divine what mere mortals cannot, and they can reach this exalted state only after years of hard training and experience.

The alternative of 'evidence-based' medicine takes a different approach. It is driven by scientific knowledge of cause and effect, which results in highly specific diagnostic tests. Confronted with the symptoms, the doctor conducts tests that identify which type of leukaemia it is and, therefore, which actions to take.

OK. Let's return to Mad Sheep Rage.

Marketing (especially advertising) is still practised largely as a symptomatic art. That is why so many companies want better measurement and accountability. The trouble is, the campaign for measurability and accountability has led us into a dead end. Why? Surely better measurement is always good? Are we not in the process of finding the evidence we need to make marketing a truly scientific profession with strong, predictable returns?

This might be true if we were measuring the right things, but are we? Say we do a campaign that drives a 5% uplift in sales and profits. What does that tell us about what we did right and what we did wrong? Looking at our analysis, do we know what to do more of and what to do less of? In other words, does it teach us enough to help us enter a virtuous spiral of learning and continuous improvement?

Enter Mad Sheep Rage. It is based on the leukaemia insight: beneath the same surface appearance, there may be multiple causes and effects; each one its own mini-mystery. The acronym Mad Sheep Rage lists these mini-mysteries - the many different ways in which marketing and advertising can affect target audiences.

Bearing in mind there is no logic to the order of the M, A, D etc (except its role in creating a memorable acronym) let us look at some of its components.

M stands for manipulation, where marketers play with consumers' emotions under the radar of conscious thought. One modern variant is the theory of 'somatic markers' - which focuses on how emotions guide decision-making - and low-attention processing.

Read Alan Mitchell's blog on 'Mad Sheep Rage'

A stands for awareness. Human brains are 'always on' and perception is an irreversible process - you cannot decide to become unaware of something that you have been made aware of. Equally, of course, you cannot consider buying a product or service you are not aware of, so simply making somebody aware of a product or offer can generate dramatic results.

However, awareness is not the same as persuasion. Making somebody aware of something does not guarantee that they will go out and buy it. And once they are aware of it, more awareness may generate diminishing returns.

D stands for deception. This is when marketers are economical with the truth, exaggerating some facts, omitting to inform consumers of others, deliberately creating confusion, and so on. Manipulation and deception are different: manipulation is about unconscious decision-making processes, while deception is about creating and profiting from information asymmetries.

S stands for stimulation. This is where consumers seek out the advertising because it presents new ideas and possibilities. People buy Vogue as much for the fashion tips in the ads as for the editorial, for example.

H stands for heuristics. These are rules of thumb that many consumers adopt when going to market. They vary greatly, including: buy the cheapest (money-saving), buy at the biggest discount (bargain-hunting, perceived value), buy the most expensive (status, quality), buy what my friends recommend or have bought (risk-reduction, fashion), buy what I did last time (risk-reduction, save time thinking about it), buy what is easiest to buy (convenience) and so on.

A lot of marketing has evolved in response to these go-to-market heuristics, which creates a moot point when it comes to measurement. When the consumer is heuristically driven and responds to a marketing initiative, has the marketing initiative been 'effective' in 'changing' the consumer's behaviour, or was it consumers' heuristic behaviours channelling the marketer into that marketing activity?

Price promotions can generate massive sales spikes - the numbers apparently demonstrate incontrovert-ible proof of effectiveness. Yet, if the consumer is acting on the heuristic 'always buy the cheapest', then, from the consumer's point of view, they haven't changed their behaviour one iota. It just so happens that this time this brand (as opposed to that brand) is most aligned with this behaviour. Tomorrow will probably be different.

Underlying influences

By now you are probably getting the picture, so let us do just one more.

E stands for education. This is particularly important when it comes to new technologies, where the benefits of the product need to be explained to consumers; where misunderstandings need to be corrected; or where perhaps there is a compelling argument for a change in behaviour (such as public and social advertising).

Half-way through our journey into Mad Sheep Rage, we can already see that all manner of things may be going on behind that 5% sales uplift. In some cases, the effects of marketing are palpable (awareness). In others, they are questionable and perhaps even illusory (heuristics). Each 'component' has its own limits and sphere of applicability (compare the jump from non-awareness to awareness with shifting incrementally from 'aware' to 'even more aware'). Each component probably has its own natural life span. The danger with deception, for example, is that it can work wonderfully for a time, before generating a backlash.

Perhaps more important, each component speaks volumes about the relationship between marketer and consumer. Manipulation and deception are basically adversarial. Heuristics and awareness could be regarded as neutral. Stimulation and education are win-win.

Lastly, every marketing and advertising campaign is likely to generate many different effects at the same time. Do they come together to create genuine synergy? Awareness and stimulation could fit perfectly, for example. Or are they at war with each other, creating a sum that is less than its parts - education with elements of deception, for example?

With just 12 components in Mad Sheep Rage, if each has its own weight from one to 12, you have nearly 5m permutations and combinations, so it is important to be clear which components you are trying to deploy.

Lessons to learn

So what's the take-out? First, any attempt to measure marketing 'effectiveness' without first disentangling its multiple, qualitatively different consumer impacts is a recipe for confusion from which we can never learn. Was your 5% uplift driven by devious manipulation and outrageous deception? Was it generated by creative stimulation and clear, compelling education? Was it simple awareness-creation? Or was it actually illusory, a mere artefact of consumers following their own heuristics regardless of what you do? Perhaps it was a combination of all of them. If so, which component contributed how much?

Collecting ever-more data on what happened without knowing why is not scientific - it is just pretending. Measuring 'change' as evidence of 'effectiveness' is meaningless without knowing why that change happened (or, indeed, if it is a change at all).

Second, having identified and under-stood the different possible impacts (a significant exercise in its own right), organisations need to conduct Mad Sheep audits of their marketing activities, to understand better how their marketing is actually working.

Third, they need to experiment with different mixes. My hunch (yet to be proved) is that success comes from creating internal consistency between elements (awareness plus stimulation, for example), which includes replacing adversarial practices with win-win ones. This is how coherent, stable marketing strategies build brand momentum, in contrast to campaigns that simply come and go.

Symptomatic marketing is better than nothing. People smelted metal and achieved fantastic results before they understood metallurgy. Nevertheless, it can take us only so far. To build a real body of evidence, we need to know what evidence we are looking for. Mad Sheep Rage is just beginning.

green economy

Building A Green Economy The emergence of a Congress Party-led coalition government with a comfortable majority could not have been better timed. A government with a strong mandate is well placed to define India’s long-term strategy towards climate change, and to call for the steps that the nation and the world need to take at the Copenhagen climate summit scheduled for December. These climate negotiations are easily the most complex collaborative effort the world has undertaken, and India, like all nations, is being asked to sign on to the deal being worked out at Copenhagen. India is likely to be among the most affected by coming climate shifts -- in prediction maps, the subcontinent shows up as dark red, threatened by melting ice caps, shifting rainfall patterns and rising sea levels. The Indian government rightly points out that the burden of cutting carbon emissions should lie with the developed nations responsible for the accumulated levels of Greenhouse Gases (GHGs) in the atmosphere. The opening sessions to the Copenhagen negotiations have indicated that developed nations that were early holdouts from Kyoto -- including Australia and the US -- may eventually sign the climate deal. But as the deadline for an agreement nears, developed country targets and planned carbon-reducing strategies are falling victim to local politics. In Europe, the largesse in carbon trading permits to industries has allowed them to pollute at rock-bottom prices. The developing world’s unwillingness to take on caps has also become a defence for groups opposed to emission cuts. In the US, the Waxman-Markey carbon bill is facing opposition from those who argue that without India and China’s participation, US curbs will have no overall impact. The big question for India here is how it can reconcile its own goals with the aim of building an effective global climate deal. One way to move forward is for India to reiterate a commitment that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh pledged at the G8 Heiligendamm summit in June 2007: that India will not exceed, between now and 2050, the per capita emissions of developed nations. This pledge to keep its per capita emissions below the industrialized world is a significant one: with 60-80% emission cuts planned by 2050, developed nations would bring down their emissions from the current range of 10-20 tonnes per head to less than four tonnes per capita. This means that India, despite rapid growth and a predicted sixteen-fold rise in per capita income will have to limit emissions to no more than twice its current level of two tonnes per capita. India has in essence, committed to growth as a low carbon economy. India cannot be expected to take on binding emission cuts over and above this commitment. It is only fair that Western nations take responsibility for the accumulation of GHGs over the last century. Independent assessments support this view that India should stay away from mandatory cuts. They’ve shown that even with rapid growth, it will still remain among the least carbon intensive countries in the next few decades. Besides, much of India’s future emission growth, the World Bank points out, will come from providing essential energy services to its population. Another aspect of fairness that the country should focus on during negotiations is ensuring financial flows and technology transfers from developed nations to the developing world, for climate mitigation and adaptation. This is literally a hundred billion dollar issue -- the estimated costs of mitigation for India. But this has long been a sore point for Indian negotiators. The proposals of assistance from developed nations have fallen far short of what India needs, and one Indian diplomat recently compared these to offering to 'push a broken down car, but with two fingers'. Besides financing, India must insist on programs tailored to its economic needs, which include support for carbon reducing technologies and microfinance schemes, as well as expertise in sustainable urban and industry growth. An emphasis on fairness also means that developed countries refrain from imposing carbon tariffs on exports from India. While taking a firm stand in international negotiations, India has to take a closer look at its domestic approach to climate change. The growing concern among Indian environmental activists is that the government’s stance globally is colouring its local environmental efforts. "The defence of our emissions internationally has been long used to justify apathy towards controlling pollution in India," the Indian environmentalist Sharad Lele told me. This attitude ignores the increasing negative impact of pollution on India’s agriculture, urbanization and economic growth. It is becoming clear that the traditional, carbon-intensive model of growth will not work here for long -- we have to embrace a low-carbon approach. In 2008, India’s Congress Party-led government put in place a National Action Plan on Climate Change, which emphasized renewable energy, adaptation and greater energy efficiency. Now returned to power, the government has the chance to intensify these efforts. This includes low-pain measures such as zero tariffs on low emission products, and tax exemptions for clean energy investments. More ambitious policy could include a smart grid through which people can both buy and sell excess energy, and efficiency and pollution standards that nudge industry towards greener choices. The new government has already tabled plans to account for the depletion of natural resources while calculating India’s GDP. However, India has been reticent when it comes to ambitious attempts at controlling pollution and emissions, on the concern that it will hurt its economy. In doing so, the country may have overlooked the opportunities that come with a pro-environmental policy. The burden of pollution has fallen disproportionately on the poor. Over 80% of India’s rural poor depend on the country’s degraded common lands and water, and on its declining forests. For India’s legislators, whose emphasis in recent years has been on ‘pro-poor’ policy and addressing income inequalities, a low-carbon approach ought to then be an overriding interest. Such a low-carbon approach doesn’t have to be anti-development, as it is often perceived; it can

US-Russian Relations

'US-Russian Relations Were at a 25-Year-Low'

The Russia US President Barack Obama is visiting this week has been hard hit by the global economic contraction. Politicians in Moscow know the United States caused the current crisis, but also that Washington is the only party that can pull the world out of it.

REUTERS

U.S. President Barack Obama takes part in a wreath laying ceremony at the Russian Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Moscow.

Trenin: Russia is so severely affected by the crisis because its recent "fat years" were fueled by energy exports and people clearly saw a change when prices plummeted from $150 a barrel to just $40 or $50 a barrel. Also, there had been a lot of easy borrowing and cheap money; many Russian companies -- private and state-owned -- borrowed excessively from foreign countries. They had been warned about the dangers of this, but ignored the warnings, and the result was a severe debt and credit crunch. Perhaps the most critical upshot of the economic crisis is that it sent a strong message to Russia that it is a part of the global economy. Putin and Medvedev are right in claiming that its origin is outside of Russia. Yet the crisis hit a country with grave economic flaws and vulnerabilities, and it has exacerbated these problems.

IP: You say the crisis "came from abroad." Has this triggered anti-Americanism?

Trenin: Actually, the crisis stopped a very dangerous deterioration of U.S.-Russian relations, which were at a 25 year low. A military collision between Russia and the United States was certainly possible last year in the wider Black Sea region. The financial crisis prevented this. Also, the Russian leadership realized how dependent it is on the United States. Although the United States brought Moscow and the rest of the world into the crisis, it is the United States that will pull everyone out of it. The Russian economy may be sitting in car number 8, 9, or 10, but the locomotive is festooned with American flags.

IP: Has the crisis halted Russia's ascent as one of the world's rising powers?

ABOUT DMITRI TRENIN

Dmitri Trenin is director of the Carnegie Moscow Center. He was senior fellow at the NATO Defense College and at the Institute of Europe in Moscow.

Trenin: Depending on how the Russian leadership handles it, how the economy handles it, and how the people take it, I think the crisis could lead to a deterioration across the board from domestic politics to foreign policy to the economy to social relations. But Russia now has the chance to rebuild the economy, to correct the imbalances, to have a social structure that is a bit healthier, and to take a look at the distribution of wealth. There were a lot of very expensive, and often quite senseless, projects during the period of oil wealth. In the days of surging oil prices, you didn't have to think very much because there was no incentive to do so. The crisis could change this.

IP: Has the government's response to the crisis been adequate?

Trenin: The government spent $200 billion in defense of the ruble. An overnight devaluation of the ruble would have sent very serious shocks through the country. Russia is ruled by the people who own it, and the government's spending clearly favored its friends. A lot of this was non-transparent, arbitrary, and tied to vested interests. Russians tend to take all this for granted. As a Russian, I'm more concerned that the government's actions avert a political collapse or breakdown, which they did. We swallow the injustice.

IP: While the Russian government cut its 2009 budget in response to the economic crisis, military spending increased by 26 percent.

Trenin: This has changed some since early 2009, but yes the government has continued to modernize the military, a program that was formally agreed to just after the war against Georgia in August 2008, though it was in planning for some time.

The military that Russia has today is a downsized and badly frayed replica of the Soviet army. It is a military that is very weak, in many ways dysfunctional, and in some ways dangerous to itself. The Russian leadership waited almost two decades before taking some interest in the way the military was functioning. It has begun a project to build modern planes and tanks, and to modernize communication equipment. During the Georgian War, Russian officers communicated with each other using normal cell phones because the military lacked a serious, modern communication system. They decided to spend money on the military as a national project. It's not a sign of Russia's aggressiveness or preparation for war. It had to be done at some point and they decided to do it when oil prices were around $100/barrel. They did the right thing by deciding to raise military salaries. The commanding officer of the Kursk submarine that sank in the beginning of the Putin presidency in 2000 had a salary equivalent to $200 a month. You cannot seriously run a military like this.

IP: What do Obama's first 200 days look like from a Russian perspective?

Trenin: The Russians were slow to embrace Obama. For one, there is a natural preference among the Russian leadership for conservative politicians. They fashion themselves as conservatives, even arch conservatives. They disdain socialists and leftists in their own country and beyond because they are seen as anti-state. The leadership also fears that Obama will bring back the Clinton people, who evoke memories of the 1990s: the promotion of democracy, telling Russia what to do, and criticizing Russia's leadership.

President Medvedev did not seize the opportunity to congratulate Obama during an address just hours after his election victory in November 2008. Instead, he subjected American policies to harsher criticism than even Putin had. But within a few weeks he changed course dramatically. They decided that they could do business with Obama; that he was in fact not an ideologue but a pragmatist; the people he brought in from the Clinton administration were also pragmatists. Moscow noted that Obama had a very different foreign policy agenda. That agenda did not include pushing for NATO enlargement in the Ukraine and Georgia or treating Georgia as some kind of torch-bearer of democracy and a privileged friend of the United States in the former Soviet Union. They also noted Obama's interest in arms control. But they don't know whether the United States has a strategy toward Russia, and they certainly don't have much of a strategy themselves toward the United States.

They are looking forward to the first substantial visit by an American president in Moscow in many years, and are hoping for an arms control agreement by the end of the year. They hope that this will lead to the unfreezing of the so-called 123 Agreement, a civilian nuclear agreement between Washington and Moscow, which was concluded last year in an effort to promote nuclear energy cooperation between the United States and Russia but was then frozen in the wake of the Georgia war.

IP: Has the Obama administration halted NATO enlargement?

Trenin: I'm not sure that there is a NATO policy at all in Washington. Washington probably doesn't see NATO as a very useful instrument apart from the operation in Afghanistan: NATO means more European troops for the Afghan operation, and more action for the troops that are there. NATO is a useful ally for various extra-European situations.

The United States certainly doesn't need NATO to ensure peace and stability in Europe. It no longer sees NATO as a force to protect Europe from Russia. The spring NATO summit declaration only has one sentence regarding Russia. The Russians know that they can't expect a formal decision to freeze NATO enlargement, but they want the process to stop in its tracks. When and if the next decision on enlargement to the ex-Soviet states comes, relations between Russia and the West will be greatly exacerbated.

Today's Russia is not in a position to think strategically. It is mired in old mythology that sees NATO as a bogeyman, and enlargement as a threat to its interests. As far as I'm concerned, Moscow clearly overplays the significance of NATO enlargement. It is a very reactive, parochial way of thinking, yet it will take some time before more serious 21st century thinking emerges in Russia, if it ever emerges at all.

IP: Is there really peace today in Chechnya?

Trenin: In Chechnya we have peace at a heavy price. The price is that Putin struck a personal union with one family, the Kadyrovs, which rules Chechnya in a feudal way. Moscow has subcontracted Chechnya to one local clan, which has been able to manage it in a brutal yet effective way. People who travel to Chechnya are genuinely impressed with the scale of construction, the relative affluence, and the general stability in Grozny, if not everywhere else in Chechnya. It is clear that someone is in control, which is not something that can be said of some of the neighboring republics in the northern Caucasus, such as Dagestan. Chechnya today is de facto a self-governing territory, and most of the things that the early separatists were fighting for have been realized under Kadyrov rule. Putin may overrule him, but no federal agency can overrule the Chechen authority. The Chechens may only have one master today, but he's Chechen, and that matters.

IP: Can Russia be of any aid to the Obama administration in dealing with Iran?

Trenin: Russia has a vested interest in not complicating its relations with Iran, a strong neighbor and emerging power in the Middle East. Iran is also an important trading partner, as well as a fellow major energy producer. It has also been a fairly reasonable geopolitical partner in regional situations such as in Tajikistan, where Moscow and Tehran jointly stopped a civil war in June 1997, or in the northern Caucasus, where the Iranians backed Russian policy on Chechnya. But on the other hand, the Russians clearly don't want Iran to completely reverse its relationships and become an ally of the United States and a gas exporter to the European Union. Russia certainly cannot deliver Iran to the West. Russia is no China and Iran is no North Korea. But Russia is a very important partner for any diplomatic solution to the Iranian nuclear issue. The United States can make a breakthrough on its own, like Nixon did with China, but a comprehensive diplomatic solution needs to include Russia.

IP: When Medvedev came to power last year, there was a lot of speculation about his relationship with Putin.

Trenin: Russia is a country that doesn't have stable functioning political institutions, and Putin deserves much of the blame for this. Thus every time the Russian leadership changes, it's faced with a crisis. The country does not operate according to its constitution: It appears to, but it doesn't. The heart of the matter is in very special, non-transparent, highly personalized relationships.

Putin was wise enough to recognize that had he run for a third term, he would have undermined the regime's legitimacy: Russia is an autocracy with the consent of the governed. Thus, he decided to install a president of his choosing who was duly elected by the people of Russia.

Medvedev will not become a full-fledged president immediately. He will need some time to understand the various relationships that form Russia's unwritten constitution. He will have to show the qualities that are necessary to lead Russia in a formal and an informal way. It may be that he has those qualities, but he needs to prove himself.

The assumption that Putin was only leaving for a short period of time is incorrect. He will probably give Medvedev a full four-year term and then assess whether he qualifies as president or whether it's time for a new (i.e. old) president. Medvedev is part of the decision-making process. He cannot overrule Putin, but neither can Putin fully ignore Medvedev. Medvedev is essentially loyal to Putin and I think that Putin sees Medvedev as his political son. There is no rivalry. I think that if Medvedev gets a second term, it will be his own, assuming there are no upheavals or revolutions and the election goes forward as planned in 2012.

Remember, in Putin's first four years he was very much beholden to the Yeltsin family, even though Yeltsin was not interfering with the way the country was run. Putin observed the unspoken and unwritten arrangements with the family. He became his own man in his second term. Medvedev may follow that trajectory and become a full-fledged president and not owe Putin anything directly. But we still have three years and anything can happen.