Mona Lisa, Adam Smith & The Success Equation

Here's an experiment. There's Rafiki holding Simba up above his shoulders. Do you think you'd define success the same way as Rafiki did in the Lion King? Picture credit: The Lion King

“College di gate de is taraf hum life ko nachate hai… te duji taraf life humko nachati hai,” said Aamir Khan’s character DJ in the movie Rang De Basanti with his unkempt hair. While it’s a complex web that forms the amorphous dance floor of life that forms the stage for DJ’s dialogue, this essay really just focuses on how capitalism interweaves a major part of that dance floor and affects how ‘successful’ and happy one is.

The Backstory

A friend at work prompted this subject when she was writing about ‘decoding success’. It made me think too - in our capitalistic world, how do we define success? What is success and is it the same everywhere and every time? Let’s say everything about us – professionally and personally – remains constant. Now, would you be happier if you were in free-market heaven US? And what about tightly controlled North Korea? Would the same professional achievements lead to the same idea of success? Would the ideological drive override the thirst for material success?

Or would you be happier if you’d achieved it all in the blooming 1960s than now? Try this with a few more questions and you’ll probably agree that what we call success could be so different in these different times and circumstances. So it’s so much a product of a varying set of factors that include material success, professional achievement, ideological drives and more. Perhaps Maslow’s hierarchy of needs would have so much to add here.

Anyway, let’s get back to capitalism for now. There’s little denying, that today, capitalism is the force that influences our personal lives, professional decisions and more importantly our political and economic systems. While there’s opposition to it, it mostly does find a way to call the shots, in part or as a whole. The fact that success is more often than not defined, or at least described, in terms of material success and wealth generated is testimony to hoe much capitalism affects our lives.

The Mona Lisa, perhaps the most
famous painting in the world, was painted
by Leonardo da Vinci in the 1500s. But
do we call Leonardo a gifted,
master artist or a successful artist?  

Think about it. We talk about great artists who paint or have painted masterpieces, gifted musicians who make restless souls come alive and beautiful minds of scientists who make astounding discoveries among other things, but we hardly ever call use the word successful when talking about them. The usual words reserved for them are gifted, great, beautiful, unconventional and legendary et al. Successful is, however, mostly reserved for those who excel in terms of creating businesses, achieving professional heights and accumulating wealth. Isn’t that capitalism playing on our minds?

So capitalism shapes the world around us in such a manner that it influences so many of our decisions, including about our work. Jeff Hammerbacher, the man who’s credited with coining the word data science, also had another important set of words to say. In this ‘post-truth’ era though, I really cannot guarantee if he said it, even after some research. Anyway, what he supposedly said was, “The best minds of our generation are thinking about how to make people click on ads.”

While not all great minds may be preoccupied with creating click-baits, that one-liner is really quite telling. Doesn’t that tell you how much capitalism influences our ideas and our professional choices? And clearly, what affects our professional decisions is bound to affect our happiness quotients as well. Quotient! Look it me trying to quantify happiness, another gift of capitalism maybe.

Adam Smith was the first to spot
the invisible hand. Aren't invisible
things difficult to regulate? 

So where does capitalism derive that power to affect our happiness then? Well what’s inherent to capitalism is laissez-faire – the idea of a free market where private ownership is the boss, where things are left free to take their own course. Here, it’s the invisible hand, as Adam Smith wrote centuries ago, that runs the show.

And as this invisible hand pushes people to maximise profits, it provokes competition. So while it implies that the quality of products and the costs of production are constantly worked upon and innovation thrives, it also sparks a fear of missing out (FOMO in our lingo today) and often kills the idea of taking things slow. (There are other issues with capitalism too, but this essay doesn’t contend with those.)

An Individual’s Conundrum

So while it is good for economic prosperity and should ideally be self-moderating, capitalism has other by-products in terms of how it affects individuals professionally, personally and emotionally. Of course, one may also argue the other way, that it also has its rewards. Individuals reap the benefits of professional success too then and amass wealth. But that’s just capitalism’s nature; the price payers always outnumber the beneficiaries.

While desks today look cleaner with the advent of
computers, the work load has perhaps only risen.
Or is your desk still as messy?
Picture credit: Carrotstown

Professionally, it pushes people relentlessly and can lead to individuals burning out – physically or mentally – as they are being driven by their immediate needs, the invisible hand and the social contexts around them. And like the click-bait example shows, it literally can make people opt for peculiar yet paying jobs that may not make one happy. Now tell me, how many times have you sidelined something you loved to do for a job that paid more?

Personally, it just takes away so much of your time. It makes you work more. Perhaps one the top economists of all time, and a ‘successful’ one too given his stock market adventures, JM Keynes had predicted almost a century ago that as our economies develop, our future generations will have to work less and less and will have more time for leisure. Well, wonder what happened. Most of us have really just been working more. 

Sacrificing those Saturday night plans with friends for
the work meeting to crack a deal for the company.
How tough is that choice? 

Working more is great when passion and interest are combined, but most people aren’t that fortunate. And even for the ones who are, work really knows ways to get the better off them. Haven’t you been forced to call off Saturday night plans with friends for work? It’s easy to see now where DJ was coming from with that Rang De dialogue.

And well, we all know how all of that can play on us emotionally. While some thrive of professional challenges and entrepreneurial adventures, for many professional burdens can hurt our state of mind, and our relationships. Professional ups and downs really affect us, and the feeling of being in a perpetual maze or race can leave us distraught and isolated. And while we all have our coping mechanisms, don’t we need a little more than those?

The Success Equation

It’s a cost then, which is attached to the prize. In our individual quests for professional success, we are often told hard work is the only option. Even so much of the content we consume suggests the same – let's look at Suits where the Harvey and Mike are always shown working till late in suits while their personal relationships are underplayed – or the exact opposite in form of an escape from it all – for instance Two And A Half Men where work was hardly ever featured.

And while hard work is not something to shy away from, it’s important to prioritise amidst our individual and combined struggles to achieve economic prosperity and emotional happiness, because aren’t those, in their subjective proportions, crucial conditions of being 'successful' in life, as we know it today?

Will I sleep better if I complete that presentation for office in time or will I be happier if I play with my unperturbed beagles in the mud for a little while? Such tradeoffs, it’s almost criminal. And while capitalism will always prioritise profits, shouldn’t we prioritise happiness as well? And the twain shall only meet in a fine balance, if at all. While they derive so much from one another, they can also turn on each other.

We are all born different. So while we can have common
measures to contextualise success, can we really have a
universal set to define it? And more importantly, should we?
Picture credit: Maya Eye Photography

So how one defines success may always be a function of our achievements, our emotional wellbeing (those are so subjective too), the tradeoffs, our ideological inclinations and our backgrounds. There can be so much too. While to some the achievements may outweigh the tradeoffs, to others the tradeoffs may be heart wrenching. To many ideological drives may define their route to success, to others material wealth may be paramount. 

And while I’ll let you work on your own equation of success, let’s look at success as a combination of elements and in the context of the times and ideas that shape our world. Only then perhaps, will we really be able to answer, how 'successful' we are. And however far or close one may find oneself to that 'success' and its contributors, do keep working, but perhaps in a different way, and maybe even on a different thing, because work still will always remain one of the keys to whatever we call success in the end.

PS: The essay title itself may have been click-bait here. Couldn't resist. Also, the use of the words cost, equation and quotient among others in this essay are by themselves also indications of how our minds (at least mine) have been attuned to evaluate things in life – in form of (two-way) transactions, even when we have Mastercard ads on loop, reminding us that some moments in life are ‘priceless’.

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.

Temples in India to the ‘Joy’ of success: Comparing paths to feminism

In the movie Joy, Jennifer Lawrence plays a single mother whose struggles are fueled by the non-recognition of creativity at home and the absence of economic opportunity outside, all subject to the undercurrents of neoliberal individualism that influence her decisions and help her define her road to success. Photo credit: Joy, the movie

There are numerous objectives or quests in life, from individual and societal to national and global, and correspondingly and arguably there are numerous ways of achieving them. With that in mind, this essay focuses on understanding the definition of feminism and the various approaches towards advancing or enforcing it.

The first month of the year highlighted two approaches to the cause of feminism. While one long unfolding incident in the Indian state of Maharashtra saw a group of women frame their argument around the “right to pray” (a socio-political rights approach) in their quest for practicing feminism, the other was a break from tradition in Hollywood to depict lone women in their fight for justice with the release of Joy, a film inspired by the life of Joy Mangano and her struggles as a single mother as she built her own business empire (an economic rights approach).

While it is imperative to underline that individual beliefs, life experiences, immediate needs and larger political social and economic environments prevalent and dominant in the surroundings have a lot to contribute towards their actions, it would be a mistake not to see how both these disparate approaches that sought to achieve different goals fall under the wider umbrella of realising feminism and advancing the cause of gender equality.

While as individuals, one may be subject to limitations in terms of what goal(s) among these (social, political or economic rights) we are able to focus on and correspondingly what road we take in our struggles to achieve them, as societies and larger communities it is essential for us to work towards protecting and ensuring an all-inclusive enforcement of feministic ideals and to perpetually interrogate and adjust the road we take to achieve those goals. Because to realise feminism in all it’s earnest, equality needs to be protected and ensured across all realms (social, political and economic among others). And what road we take to do that may well define how we look at feminism it self.

But who or what defines feminism?

For all further references, it is imperative to define the meaning of feminism as understood and studied by me. Feminism, as its name suggests, was born as the idea of advocacy of women’s rights. But it has grown into a bigger idea today. Today it stands for equal rights for all, across all realms. It’s an all-inclusive understanding and approach towards advocating equality.

However, as the definition of feminism has itself evolved and enlarged to encompass more than women’s rights, it will only be wise to recognise that this definition may further evolve over time. And what will affect this definition or the realisation of these values are not just other socio-political or economic factors, but also the approach we take towards practicing feminism. For the architecture we design, also designs our perspectives. Since the journey is part of the destination, it holds enough power to influence the ride and throw up its own set of challenges. In the words of Professor Nancy Fraser, our critique of sexism may “supply the justification for new forms of inequality and exploitation”.

This temple at Shani Shingnapur, Maharashtra, was the subject of a debate around the equality of rights for women when it comes to praying there. About 1,000 women had together to storm this temple to enforce their rights. Photo credit: The Indian Express

The two approaches

So in the two cases described above, while the parent idea is that of feminism, the goals and approaches to them are part of the subsets of socio-political and economic rights and opportunity respectively.

Social solidarity - The Shani Shingnapur temple issue: In brief, this one’s about a 1,000 women led by Trupti Desai gearing up to storm a temple in Shani Shingnapur, a village in western Maharashtra. At this temple, women were not allowed to set foot on the open platform where the idol is installed. Men, however, could do so, for a fee. Here’s the full story. Though this doesn’t directly concern the subject of this essay, here’s also a take on if we should even care about temple entry, and that even when we do, putting it all under the umbrella of the ‘right to pray’ is not the best thing to do.

So this quest for demanding equal rights stemmed from the discrimination at a place of worship and it took a socio-political approach to enforcing it. Social solidarity, something that has long been a characteristic of the feminism struggle, is what Desai sought in this path to tackle gender discrimination. The recent appointment of women qazis in Jaipur and their resolve to bring in a feminine perspective when it comes to pronouncing judgments is another example of social solidarity being the go to approach to advance feminism.

Neoliberal individualism – Joy, the movie: This one’s a story inspired by the life of Joy Mangano, a single mother entrepreneur whose home-made mop made her a fortune. Here’s more about the movie. So in this case, Joy’s story draws from her fight for freedom and opportunity while struggling with the disappointments of a life curtailed by her modest surroundings, and complicated by the responsibilities of being a single mother of three, a supporting child to her divorced parents and a lone bread-earner.

But this story chalks closer to the path of entrepreneurism, a spirit that’s fostered by the invisible hand, as Joy earnestly grabs or even creates economic opportunities that help her build a huge business and rewrite her circumstances. Her quest for feminism is fueled by the want and need of a better quality of life, and she sees economic equality and opportunity as the road to it and she fights for it. This story also goes a long way to show how the quest for feminism and the path we take to it is also a product of the times we live in. Joy, in the US, is subject to the undercurrents of neoliberal individualism that influence her decisions and actions, and while hers is a story of success, it must also be seen as a success story of capitalism feeding off the ambivalence of feminism.

What road to take: Solidarity or individualism?

On the onset it may not seem to matter, but while in the short-term capitalism demands equality in all respects so as to ensure that the invisible hand thrives, in the long-term unattended (read: unregulated) capitalism also does have a huge tendency to fall prey to corruption and thus advancing itself while reshaping what it feeds off, thereby, in this case perhaps, creating a form of neoliberal feminism.

And while social solidarity may have been the go to approach for feminists, in contemporary times, the lure of this form of solidarity has been dominated by the overarching attraction of individual success stories. It has also been diluted by ideas that exist at the very peripheries of capitalism and feminism and stand for gender equality but can be maneuvered to feed capitalism while advancing feminism in the short-term, and hurting the overall quest for it in the long-term. The “feminist critique of the family wage” and it’s implications is an example where this complexity can be further observed.

So while in Maharashtra socio-political rights and social solidary defined their path for gender equality, in the US that quest was defined by neoliberal individualism for Joy, with each quest being subject to its context.

Perhaps, another characteristic of feminism then, is that while it advocates equality, it recognises that there may not be a particular approach to enforce it and that the quest and the approach may themselves be defined by the times and the context. And while this definition evolves, it may not be in a strict solidarity or in naively taking neoliberal individualism as the approach that feminism may find its best friend, but perhaps in a new form of balance that may reside between these and perhaps others.

Talking tolerance

A sand sculpture in Odisha talks about the #AwardWapsi campaign and the debate around 'intolerance'.

A new Indian government was sworn-in last summer. It had a mammoth mandate. It promised reforms and began revitalising brand India across the world. While for some it has reimposed India’s position as a global player, to others it has only played on perceptions without adequately strengthening the pillars of the economy and society. Some laws have been passed, other major economic reforms are still stuck in logjam. While on a grade scale where green would stand for excellent and yellow for disastrous, the government’s performance is more like a lime green. Some of it’s said work shows, some doesn’t.

But evaluating the government’s first 18 months in office is not the aim of this essay. An 18-month evaluation could also be as misleading in hindsight in a few years as it may be detailed right now, if attempted. The use of the words tolerance and intolerance and actions that have invoked them is what this essay is about. It was also provoked by the notion of perceptions and how they affect states.

Tolerating tolerance

Tolerance by definition means “the ability or willingness to tolerate the existence of opinions or behaviour that one dislike or disagrees with,” according to the Oxford dictionary. It goes on to say that it originates as late middle English word to denote the, “action of bearing hardship, or the ability to bear pain and hardship.” Tolerate is defined as, “Allowing the existence, occurrence, or practice of something one disagrees with without interference,” by the Oxford dictionary. While the word has now become part of common parlance, such an origin and current usage of the word should be questioned, especially when it is used in lines such as, “India is a tolerant society,” “India culture is all about tolerance,” among many such one-liners.

When used in such a way, the word by itself, tends to establish or promote a certain power relationship. Viewing the statements mentioned above, is India tolerant because it is more powerful and can allow it? Or is India tolerant because it is less powerful and does not have an option to argue against it? Does that ability or willingness to tolerate not draw from a power relationship again then? And should this act of accepting or rejecting other views be excused on the grounds that the other (again a form of a power relationship) is able to or willing to tolerate or not tolerate the opinions or actions? How does the ubiquitous usage of such a word then impact the freedom of expression or the freedom of choice then? Is it seen as something that is allowed (once again a word that establishes a power relationship) or as something that cannot be allowed or rejected, but just exists? Does it not just change the fundamental meaning of a fundamental right? How is it a right if there’s a power equations involved? The word intolerance uses the same premise, making a call for tolerance seem like a request at times, more than an appeal.

Here, India’s tolerance levels were subject of the questions and thereby the playing field would be international relations. Now, wouldn’t the usage of tolerance propagate a realist ontological view then and impact policy decisions? Change that subject to say the government’s actions or a religious body’s remarks, and they would again re-emphasis on a certain power relationship, where someone is understood to have taken the high horse. 

Where’s the room for a constructive approach then? Well, that’s where the constructivism’s inherent optimism comes out. It means that even while using the word tolerance, we can actually move towards a society, a region, religious factions or even states that are more tolerant, and may be while we are attempting to get there, we can think of a newer word, or an older one to describe this attribute as a given and not just something that presupposes the existence of a power relationship.

Now let’s get to the ongoing national discussion. Rising levels of intolerance as decried by some or bogus calls as argued by others. We’ve all got sides and arguments. Choosing a side is not the objective of this essay as that may put the other content of it under a certain bias again. While such discussions strengthen or theoretically should strengthen democracy, acts of ‘intolerance’ harm it, and with it the global flow of capital (or capitalism) which has come to be very closely associated or guided with the values of democracy, political and economic stability and infrastructure among others. That’s where perceptions come in, especially global perceptions about states, their politics and economics. And these influence business.

Playing on perceptions

Perception. It’s a strong word that can make or break relationships, of any kind - from emotional to commercial. It’s also a word that impacts the sway of democracy, capitalism and  corresponding debates. The Oxford English Dictionary defines the word as “the way in which something is regarded, understood, or interpreted” and as “intuitive understanding and insight”. So, essentially, a perception is how a certain object, action or phenomenon is recognised, irrespective of the actuality of that object, action or phenomenon. 

A perception could therefore be correct, incorrect or in between the two at varying shades. What contributes to this possible change in the actual nature of the object, action or phenomenon and the perception of it could be a stubborn pre-established bias or ontological view, the complexities it exists in and an inability to sieve through them, an apparent attempt to paint it over for whatever reason, or a combination of both. And since a perception impacts the understanding and recognition of the object, action or phenomenon directly, it therefore also directly impacts any discussion on the object, action or phenomenon and the peripheries along which such a discussion is held. Thereafter, impacting any other discussion that it leads to or is invoked in.

In global politics today, perception holds great value, especially amid the changing nature of the perceived nature and discourse around capitalism, socialism and the likes. The way how a country is perceived, when it comes to political stability affects the inflow of investments, the perception about economic safety affects businesses too, and the perception about societal security affects tourism, among others. We all know the salience of brand value. It is also a great source and indicator of soft power.

In that respect, and in the current context on tolerance and intolerance, it is the perception about it that may finally seal the deal when it comes to how it affects the image or perception of India, globally, at varied levels - in academia and in regular conversations, in business and in schools as well. While the Indian Prime Minister with his numerous foreign trips is trying to build on positive perceptions of and about India, actions such as #AwardWapsi or a celebrity being vocal about insecurity about living in the country may have mixed impressions on it for different audiences. This is not to say that the former should be supported and the latter disgraced. Both have different objections and are not part of the same debate too. More importantly, both may only affect short-term perceptions, thereby having economic and cultural impact, only in the short-run. In the long run, those perceptions will only be shaped by the supporting policy measures or their absence that the government takes or does not take and the positive or negative discussions on measures like #AwardWapsi and the impacts of those discussions.

Meanwhile, let’s try and find a power-neutral word for intolerance and tolerance. Illiberality and liberality came to mind first, but  I suggest open and closed for now. Simple and direct. Won’t that work?