Reader’s Digest
52 august 2019
they’re not around you any more—
the neighbourhood dog-feeder, the
water-sharing neighbour, the people
who appear out of nowhere to offer
help and shelter when emergencies
appear. We are a people who are
taught fairly early in life that you’ll
have to build your own support
systems, because no external
benevolent authority is going to look
after you—so whether we evolve or
not, we learn how to survive.
We often celebrate Indian
improvisations and innovations as
‘jugaad’, voluntarily overlooking the
fact that they become necessary
because people get desperate,
because systems don’t work. But,
strangely, our acceptance of non-
working systems has prepared us
for the interesting times the world is
heading towards. What can anything
throw towards Indians that we haven’t
dealt with since childhood?
Are you concerned about privacy
breaches and data theft? Most
Indians have never known what
privacy is—and what is data theft in
a country where perfect strangers,
meeting you for the first time, feel
free to ask you how much rent you
pay, how much you earn at work,
how much you weigh, and when on
earth you’re planning to get married,
or if you’re already married, when
you’re planning to have a child, or the
next one. Human interaction in our
country is already an endless episode
of Kaun Banega Crorepati where thewhole audience is the quizmaster.
Climate change? We face
weather disasters every year, which
governments have no intention of
helping with. Surveillance? The
Americans need to invest billions ofWE DON’T NEED TO
BUILD LOCATION-
BASED APPS TO FIND
ROMANCE—LOCATION-
BASED AUNTIES WILL
FIND YOU PARTNERS,
EVEN IF YOU RESIST.