Prasad Sanyal

Captain Overage Activist This week, our journey into faux sociological terms continues. So far, yours truly has enamoured and enraged readers with three theories: the Higgins-Macaulay Complex, the Toaster Lover Syndrome and the Rang De Basanti Syndrome. For those who don’t ardently follow the Vine (shame on you), here’s a short recap: The Higgins-Macaulay Complex – named after Lord Macaulay, who wanted to create an English-speaking Indian second class, and Professor Henry Higgins, who was convinced the greatest thoughts flow only in Shakespeare’s tongue – is the misplaced belief that fluency in a colonial tongue, coupled with a sharp accent and arcane vocabulary, makes one superior in every way. The Toaster Lover Theory is the phenomenon created by the internet where people with absurd convictions find enough like-minded individuals to share their absurdity and start believing that the desire to perform coitus on an electrical appliance is normal behaviour and anyone who disagrees is a raging oppressive bigot. The Rang De Basanti Syndrome, named after the Dhurandar of the Left, is the anarcho-pacifist fantasy wrapped in the fig leaf of patriotism with the leitmotif of Rahman’s music that convinced folks that dreaming of revolution while protesting against the establishment automatically makes one morally superior, irrespective of whether one knows what one is protesting or has the slightest idea of what will happen after said revolution. Individually, anyone possessing any of these symptoms might be a danger to society, but put all three together and you get a full-blown version of an ailment that even Dr House cannot cure, because when all three intersect, we get the final boss archetype: Captain Overage Activist. timesofindia.indiatimes.com/…

One hell of CXO Connect with Prasad Sanyal is on its way featuring Netcore's legendary entrepreneur Rajesh Jain. @netcore_ai @PrasadScribe

One recently came across a heading that asked: “Is This the Beginning of the End of Indian Democracy?” There’s nothing new about biased media coverage from Anglosphere outlets, but what is it that lets so many ostensibly smart people, blessed to speak the language of Shakespeare, get the world’s largest democracy so wrong? The answer, as usual, lies in a strange modern-day iteration of the Orwellian concept of groupthink: The Toaster Lover Theory. TOI Link: timesofindia.indiatimes.com/… LinkedIn Link: linkedin.com/pulse/weekly-vi…

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