Nightmares Of A Dating Platform Co-Founder

A picture from the first event of the Pop Culture Panchayat Series we hosted in New Delhi. Connecting people, does Nokia still hold a copyright to that tagline? Picture Credit: MYOLO

India is growing and it is growing fast. At least that’s the narrative the Indian government wants you to swear by. While I see some of that economic growth happening, I also think the we should look at the growth digits with a pinch of salt. But it’s some non-economic activities and events that tend to throw me back to a Thursday that I’ve never lived.

The Bollywood movie ‘Udta Punjab’ and the drama around its clearance and censor board chief’s medieval whims is one such socio-cultural piece in the larger painting, which to me was open-sourced earlier, but now appears to be more restricted. There are many such examples, people will tell you. Some will also tell you most of these are futile. So it depends who you choose to believe.

Without getting into the argument of why art demands, deserves and needs freedom and why the state is better focusing on poverty alleviation, I want to declare that I write this article as an Indian co-founder at a startup called MYOLO where we are building an online/offline socialising and dating platform.

It’s a platform we are building for the urban Indian man who is as much of a feminist as he is a lover of Virat Kohli’s straight drive. It’s for the young woman who is as much aware about Raghuram Rajan and his refusal of extending his term, as she is aware of the latest maroon lipstick shade from Mac. It’s as much for the queer person who marched at JNU for the Orlando massacre victims as it is for the transgender who practiced yoga who practiced yoga on the International Day of Yoga in Mumbai. It’s for everyone who fits some of these super stereotypes and for everyone who doesn’t. Essentially, it’s for the young independent thinker on the move, for the intelligent Indian.

Dating Platforms and Urban India

See, to us and our startup, the openness of the young Indian mind matters as much as the accommodativeness of society. By accommodative I don’t mean to give society an upper hand, it’s only to indicate the evolutionary nature of it all, among others, the nature of relationships, the mediums of realising it and of course the idea of marriage. And to be honest, while we believe we’ve got our target audience sorted, I think that audience is only growing by the day, especially with exposure to education, information on the Internet and the works of artists, authors and the likes from around the world.

Education is playing a key role. So is economic growth. No, not the forcing of Rana Pratap in Rajasthan history textbooks kind of education, but the kind of liberal education that is coaxing people to question that move. For instance, I think, (while both are welcome) today an article from the Spoilt Modern Indian Woman contributes more to advancing the cause of feminism than a lecture at a school function. Not only that, and you don’t need a genius to know this, with increased economic growth, there’s increased exposure and access to private education, the Internet and books and what not, and that in itself feeds into that cycle of more liberal students coming out as well. See, it’s not because joint families are breaking, but it’s because more families are getting educated too. So while we target higher economic growth, we shouldn’t try to paint and then chain our values. No, the time of Asian values is gone.

While societies are progressing (yes, we can argue about how we define progress), there are social elements that are going primitive too. Just so complex is India; actually the entire world. So many divides. For every stereotype-breaking campaign by a dating app (yes, I think the new Truly Madly AIB video song is great), there are thousands of Bhai fans who cannot see why his “raped woman” comment was wrong. And that’s just the unfortunate disparity of thought in the urban space. The rural has even more shades.

Online dating is perhaps in a need for correction, correction to nudge it back towards keeping things real. Why just stay stuck on messengers when technology can also lead you interesting events? Picture credit: BBC 

Okay, so let’s get to what prompted this post. It was this – this report claiming that the ninth edition of the travellers' guide and scholars' manual released by the Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR) says that Indian women are still conservative, that they don’t really date. This one apparently even goes on to say, “The modern Indian woman is traditional in some ways. She may refuse politely if a man asks her out for a film or an outing. Dating is not common in India.” So what’s the deal? No, I’m not an Indian woman, but I’ve dated one for seven years. And I know now you are judging her and me, but the sourness in that analysis may lower if I tell you we got married after that dating period too.

Forget that though, why that statement? Why should we want to distance ourselves from dating? Even if it were foreign concept, it’s a concept we love and have embraced. It’s empowering to choose your partner. It’s fulfilling to love them. It’s more. Doesn’t even have to be eternal love, it could be a summer fling too where neither party was hurt or cheated. So it’s also nothing we are ashamed of. Meanwhile we should also remember that India is also now home to it’s own take on love hotels with Stay Uncle coming to the rescue of “couples that need a room, not judgment”. A much needed venture. And so, while the ICCR statement isn’t true of urban India, let’s say if it were true. Let’s say most Indian women didn’t date, but then the men do. Nothing saying there that they don’t. So are we saying that most Indian men are gay? Well, yes, I want a government body to acknowledge and embrace homosexuality in India, but don’t do that like a hypocrite now? I want you the state to embrace heterosexuality as much too. In fact, embrace the entire sexual revolution that we are so shy to admit and never talk about.

An Entrepreneur’s Nightmares

While this just squeezes my Indian soul, it also scares me as an entrepreneur. See, dating is core to the platform we are building, and the ICCR says most Indian women don’t date. A government body saying that is always scary. Now let’s connect some dots. Maybe there are none, but that’s how a scared entrepreneur’s mind works. Look at this video and listen to Google’s Eric Schmidt where he says one of the most important things for a company is to know what does the next five years look like. And you don’t even need Schmidt to tell you that, we are always thinking about the sustainability of the business anyway. And to me it all looked promising. More economic activity and more education mean more busy, young professionals looking for friends, love and experiences to share. And that’s a business opportunity.

But then I read that ICCR report. It scared me. Why, well because only a couple of days before reading it I’d read this – the government had just come out with an advisory for matrimonial websites asking them to take identity proofs from all users and to ensure they are not used for dating, but only for marriages. Yes, I’d welcomed that move of ID proofs and tracking the ISP because there’ve been reports of frauds being committed using these sites, that people were duped and cheated via the medium. So, I was happy. Good move. But no dating? Why say they can’t date and they must only be there if they want to marry. A declaration is a little too much now, isn’t it? Is courtship not a thing? Is the government paying for the accounts?

Anyway, so this advisory along with the ICCR report that followed got together to scare me. How do I begin to answer that five-year question then if I fear random government advisories and manuals? Yes, online dating is still a new space and it needs some corrections, perhaps guidance too. Yes, we know safety and privacy are paramount which is why we are working on profile verification and already had an ID upload feature even before the advisory was issued to matrimonial websites, but how do I know the right-slanting government of the Republic of India will not ban dating? What’s even scary is that how do I know that the single-majority government of India will protect entrepreneurs and individuals like me when there’s a violent backlash against dating by fringe elements? We remember the “Shiv Sena terrorising couples in Mumbai”, don’t we? So will the government maintain silence or will it be progressive enough to engage with the community and work on policies, a little like it did with the Startup India plan?

Security in Young Indians

Either way, it’s not in the government that I find a sense of security for now, but in the many individuals we are building this platform for. We don’t know how many people there are, but we know there are many. It’s that young Mumbai thinker that gives me confidence as much as the ziddi party-going Delhi lad who takes the cab back home to avoid drunk driving. Again, to go beyond the stereotyping, essentially every young Indian gives us the courage to keep doing what we’ve started and to take pride in what we are building. That intelligent Indian motivates us! And while they scare away my business nightmares, I sometimes worry about the nightmares of so many others. May be the monsoon will shoo some away and the state others. Meanwhile, thank you Young India.

Whose seat is it anyway and how do we get it?

Can India, without expressing opinion on major global issues, hope to assimilate support to push for reforms at the UNSC?   Photo credit: UNGA

India has long had aspirations to get a permanent seat at the United Nations Security Council. Many other states have had to. But who is to get this seat? Who is to give it? Can there be just one more such seat and not a bigger set of reforms? And how is this complex yet institutionalised power relationship panning out? These are just a few questions that come to mind whenever the subject is stirred. It again came up a few days ago as the United Nations marked its 70^th anniversary.

The following essay is an extract from my dissertation that I wrote last year and it argues for the establishment of a globally active state-backed Indian media house and states that such an establishment will only aide India’s bid for that permanent UNSC seat. After all, it’s all about communication, right? And that’s what the media does. It informs, it communicates. But it is essential for such state-backed media to have pluralistic and constructive values.

While over the course of the past few months, I continue to abide by this argument. However, what has changed is that the establishment of a new government in India in 2014 and its rightward tilt has made it primitive to talk about this state-backed media as a voice of the state, and not the government that is in power. Institutionalising such a media outlet and recognising the distinction between the state and the government have never appeared as paramount as they do now.

Where’s the global Indian voice?

India, as an economy and a regional power and potentially a global one, has been registering significant growth and has shown visible desire for inclusion as a permanent member of the council, but neither this growth or this desire has been reflected in the global media space by Indian actors. Nor has any Indian state media channel informed the world or even its neighbours about its opinion on major world issues, let alone spreading Indian norms and values through delivery of world news. And it is when speaking of norms that the distinction between state and government becomes even more critical because both, as entities, may favour a partially overlapping, yet separate set of ideas and norms.

I must here underline that to adjudge the sanctity and the pertinence of this ambition of acquiring a permanent UNSC seat is not the aim of this argument. The argument is premised around the factors that influence such an argument, especially the global activeness of Indian state-backed media.

“If any country has a right to be on the Security Council, India does,'' AP Venkateswaran, a former foreign secretary of the country had noted once (Monitor, 2007). The former foreign secretary, along with others who make the case for India permanently being on the UNSC, has lots of parameters to base their argument on – from India being the largest democracy in the world to being among the top ten states with the highest spending on defence. The only element that seems evasive in that equation is India’s representation in the global media space and the absence of an Indian perspective on global issues. How then, does India, without expressing opinion on major international or regional issues, hope to assimilate support to push for reforms at the UNSC? Maybe economic and military might may get India there eventually, but wouldn’t the soft power of media hasten the process? Ever since taking charge in 2014, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his numerous foreign trips have created a certain global buzz about India, but should he be just the only public spokesperson for India? And can that buzz really last?

What further makes these questions demand urgent answers and subsequent actions is the certitude that all of the five permanent members of the UNSC, contemporarily, have strong presence in the global media space. This may not have been a necessary condition for such an inclusion in the council or reformation in its structure when China became a part of the permanent set up in 1971 or France in 1958, as these states were not represented as actively in the global media space then, as they are now. But in the contemporary scenario of world politics, a lot has changed and the soft power that state media may internationally accumulate may well be the missing ingredient to seal the argument for a permanent seat for India at the council. China’s CCTV and France’s France 24 have been vehemently active globally over the past few years; so has Russia’s RT; UK’s BBC has always been a sort of benchmark for global media actors and US’ Voice of America and CNN among other actors have never allowed America to be under represented in global media. With so many disparate voices in the global media, an Indian state-backed voice may face competition, but it will also only furnish the ground-work in terms of global and regional public opinion that needs to be urgently addressed in order for India to strongly pitch for a UNSC seat, if it is really desired/ aimed to be sought.

Of course, the establishment of such a voice must not be understood to be an easy route to that seat, but a factor that could multiply those chances. And who knows, over time this voice may grow into a regional voice given that the global system is moving towards a multi-polar structure that’s likely to be influenced more by regionalisms than individual states. And perhaps, India’s immediate neighbours could pitch in as well and could this collaborative media in a sense then, lead to constructive pathways across the most militarised border in the world too? Well, economic lobbying among all other channels of diplomacy is needed to try and get that moving, but, one can always hope. Meanwhile, it appears that the path ahead is certain to be guided in many ways by the construction of communication and the communication of construction.