🪓India Lusts being a Global Lab Rat.

India has a very weird habit.

Habit of Lust. Not the passionate desire, but something more filthy.

The filth has now creeped into every household. This weird habit has become addiction. And that’s why its ‘stink’ is stronger than ever.

Plato wrote on the cycle of regimes: “Democracy passes into despotism.”

He argued that unchecked democratic excesses inevitably lead to tyranny as natural consequence of people’s own indulgences. India is living this cycle in accelerated form. We have democratic structure without democratic consciousness. We have market economy without market discipline. We have consumer rights without consumer awareness.

This creates vacuum where Risk-fakers thrive and genuine builders are crushed.

I am fed up and want to understand one thing: WHY...Why is it that Indian life of consumers are equivalent to that of a Lab Rat, Globally?

India has always been given leftovers. Always the breadcrumbs. In everything. Post-independence, we got Soviet-era technology when West had moved beyond it. In liberalization, we got outsourced call centers while innovation stayed in Silicon Valley. In digital age, we get products designed elsewhere, tested on us, refined for markets that matter. We are eternal beta testers. Perpetual second-class consumers. Is this by accident? F*ck no. This is a precise psychological design.

Everyone in world knows Indian diaspora is pot of gold. It has everything. 1.4 billion consumers. Young demographic. Growing middle class. Digital adoption. Talent pool. Market potential. Yet we are treated like third-class citizens by big corporations. Why? Because we accept it. Because we have been trained through generations to accept whatever is offered and feel grateful for it.

Why is Indian life of consumer equivalent to lab rat? Look around you.

Facebook’s emotional manipulation experiments tested on Indian users without consent. WhatsApp’s payment feature rolled out in India first to test regulatory capture strategies. Amazon’s algorithm experiments that would be illegal in Europe deployed in India freely. We are testing ground because regulations are weak, enforcement is weaker, and population is desperate enough for access that they accept any terms.

Why does India get only sub-par products? The answer corporations give is “price sensitivity.” Indian market is price-sensitive, so we must compromise quality. This is lie. Indian market has been trained to accept low quality, so corporations maximize profit by delivering minimum viable product. Coca-Cola outside India tastes like Coca-Cola. In India, it tastes like sugared water with coloring. Gatorade outside is sports drink with electrolyte balance. In India, it is flavored sugar solution. Same brand. Different standards. Why?

Because they can.
Because we accept.
Because alternatives are equally bad.
Because regulatory bodies that should protect consumers are captured by same corporations they regulate. Because corruption is so normalized that nobody even pretends standards matter. So corporations deliver garbage and Indians consume it while corporations laugh all the way to bank.

Cars are perfect example. Volkswagen known globally for build quality and safety enters Indian market and immediately compromises both. Why? “Price-sensitive market.” But real reason is Indians have been conditioned to accept lower standards. So VW delivers thinner metal, cheaper parts, reduced safety features, calls it “India-specific engineering,” and Indians buy it because alternatives are identically compromised.

The narrative of India being land of opportunities is boon for corporations, curse for Indians. Opportunity for them means opportunity to extract maximum value while delivering minimum quality.

It’s funny that they see 1.4 billion consumers and calculate: if we can get each to pay even small amount for inferior product, margins are massive. And you call this is not entrepreneurship?

We are being treated as garbage collectors of all consumer products. Domestic and international. Look around. Every sector. Every industry. Indians get dumbed-down versions, region-locked content, restricted features, higher prices for lower quality. Tech products launch in India six months late with removed features. Streaming services have fraction of content compared to US. Pharmaceuticals sell drugs banned elsewhere. Food companies sell products with ingredients illegal in their home countries.

MDH and Everest Masala are banned in foreign countries because they contain cancerous products. Then sold in India like hot cakes. Regulatory bodies are captured, corrupted and corroded. At the cost every fellow Indian’s life. Because testing is minimal. Because even when violations are found, penalties are trivial. Because consumer awareness is low and alternatives are equally compromised. So Indians consume slow poison daily while corporations profit and regulators look away. This conformity is what I hate.

Are Indians collateral damage for the world?

Yes. Unambiguously f*ck yes. We are testing ground for products too risky for markets that matter. We are dumping ground for inventory too expired or low-quality for regulated markets. We are laboratory where corporations experiment with how far they can degrade quality before consumers rebel. And since we never rebel, they keep degrading.

Did we bring this upon ourselves? Partially. Colonial rule taught Indians to accept whatever is given and feel grateful. Independence did not break this psychology. We transferred our submission from British to corporations. We learned to accept low quality as price for access. This mindset is what corporations exploit. They know we will accept anything as long as it is marketed correctly.

But we were also selectively exposed to systems designed to keep us dependent. Green Revolution tied us to chemical fertilizers. Liberalization tied us to foreign capital. Digitalization tied us to platforms we do not control. Each step presented as progress while actually creating new dependencies that extract wealth and autonomy. You might call this paranoia. But this is documented pattern across sectors.

Funny enough, India becomes B2C test ground of world.

Sometime after liberalization when corporations realized Indian market has perfect combination: large population, weak regulations, captured bureaucracy, low consumer awareness, and desperate desire for Western brands regardless of quality. This combination makes India ideal for testing how far quality can be degraded while maintaining sales. Answer: very far. Further than corporations imagined.

This is what “building in India for world” actually means. Not building great products in India to export. Building barely functional products in India to test before refining for real markets. India is prototype phase. Beta testing ground. Once they figure out minimum viable product that Indians accept, they upgrade it for markets where consumers have standards and sell premium version there.

All this happens in front of us. And what are we doing? Nothing. We accept. We consume. We complain privately but buy anyway. We are letting these masked “risk-takers” who are actually risk-fakers show us candy dreams while poisoning us. Because who cares? They know we will not question integrity of anything. Our freebie culture mindset can be enslaved so easily. Give us subsidized rice and we will tolerate everything else. This is what politicians learned. This is what corporations exploit. Keep population barely satisfied with basics and they will not resist systemic exploitation.

No revolution or resistance can be born in our blood because we are too busy surviving average lifestyle. This is intentional. System is designed to keep majority slightly above poverty line so they are too exhausted to resist but not desperate enough to revolt. This is equilibrium that keeps everything stable while extraction continues. Indian middle class is buffer preventing revolution while enabling exploitation.

We have been romanticizing being middle-class poor civilization for way too long that corporations and poser risk-fakers of India have normalized it. “Simple living, high thinking” became excuse for accepting low quality. “Jugaad” became celebration of working around broken systems instead of fixing them. This cultural programming benefits corporations immensely. Population that takes pride in making do with less is population that will not demand better.

Bhagavad Gita asks: “When does one act from desire, and when from duty?” Modern India acts entirely from desire. Desire for status. Desire for Western brands. Desire for easy answers. No concept of duty. No understanding that consuming responsibly, demanding quality, holding corporations accountable is civic duty. We think duty is voting once every five years. Duty is daily. Every purchase. Every compromise. Every time we accept inferior product, we signal to corporations that Indians deserve nothing better.

vivan.@VivanVatsa

2342 years ago, India was living in its Golden Age. This golden era under the Gupta Empire gave birth to India's legendary ancient art, literature, architecture, science and philosophy. The era where India discovered the geniuses of Kalidasa, Aryabhata and Bhagawad Gita…

10:04 AM · Nov 4, 2023 · 23.1K Views

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Nietzsche’s slave morality is Indian consumer psychology. The slave accepts his position and judges success by how well he navigates system designed to exploit him. Indian consumers celebrate getting slightly less exploited as victory. “I got discount!” Yes, on product that is inferior to what same company sells elsewhere for less actual cost. But discount feels like win. This is slave morality. Celebrating smaller exploitation instead of demanding non-exploitation.

Plato’s cycle is completing.

Democracy passed into despotism not of single tyrant but of corporate tyranny. Corporations rule without accountability. They set standards. They capture regulators. They shape culture. They determine what Indians consume, how they consume, at what quality, at what price. This is despotism. Just distributed across boardrooms instead of concentrated in palace.

The Arthashastra warned about this: Chanakya understood that kingdom which cannot protect its citizens from exploitation invites conquest. Modern conquest is not military. It is economic. It is cultural. It is psychological. Foreign corporations conquering Indian market not through force but through exploiting our weakened consumer consciousness, captured regulations, and cultural tendency to worship anything foreign regardless of quality.

This is new India. But it does not have to be.

We are not obligated to remain graveyards for world’s shitty products.

We can demand better. We can build domestic alternatives. We can enforce actual standards. We can hold corporations accountable. We can stop worshiping risk-fakers and start building genuine risk-taking culture. We can refuse to accept that being price-sensitive means accepting poison.

India will continue getting leftovers until Indians refuse to eat leftovers. We will continue being treated as third-class consumers until we demand first-class standards. We will continue worshiping risk-fakers until we learn to recognize them and build systems that reward genuine risk-taking instead. This is not fatalism. This is clarity. Our acceptance. Our compromise. Our willingness to consume poison as long as it is marketed correctly.

The cycle Plato described can be broken. But breaking it requires revolution not of government but of consciousness. Revolution that says: we will not accept inferior products. We will not worship risk-fakers. We will not trade dignity for access. We will not remain laboratory rats for corporations that view us as less than human. We will build alternatives. We will enforce standards. We will reclaim the self-respect that colonialism stole and that we never fully recovered.

Until India learns to love its risk-takers. Until it builds systems that reward substance over performance. Until it develops consumer consciousness that demands quality over brand names. Until then, we remain garbage collectors. Consuming world’s leftovers. Accepting exploitation. Calling it opportunity.

This is what we are.

But should we accept the conditioning of our modern society? Question is what we will become. Decentralisation of power always acts as rat poison for the conformists. They will do anything in their power to oppress the growth of any nation.

And India, always remember: Rewarding the Rat for winning the wrong race won’t make you immune to plague.