As much as there is an elevated perception of India within the country, it is undeniable that there is a significant amount of derogatory narrative, if not outright hatred against India. This isn’t to say that it has been better and has gone down in the recent times. If anything it has only improved over the ages since independent India. There is a larger proportion of informed people now than before, who believe that India is on the rise. But the popular notion of India is predominantly negative. As a selfish person, by instinct I tend to care very little about public perception in general, because it pertains to them and their experience. Why should I care about their experience of me? But as a selfish individual, I must care about others’ perception because it pertains to how others treat me. This goes beyond individual identity. Group identity, regardless of whether you identify with the group or not, matters a lot in terms of how you as an individual get treated. Regardless of whether you’re a patriot, a proud member of an ethnicity or not, it benefits you to have your group identity’s value elevated.

In popular culture, the current status of the group identity of being Indian is pretty much shit. India is a smelly, dirty, poor country filled with rapists and backward minded individuals who engage in rampant corruption, child trafficking, their men desperately beg harrass women for sexual favors, assault female tourists, a majority of their people just shit on the streets, they eat fatally unhygenic food on the streets on the regular (remember the guy that made pakoras in his armpit?), engage in weird rituals where they play with feces as a community, are mostly pot-bellied and overweight people with very little emphasis on aesthetics, health or fitness, they have very little consideration for human rights, their employers overwork and underpay their employees at a shockingly massive scale, their kids grow up depressed and are driven to suicide as they are forced to be engage in menial mental labor in the name of education. I could go on. Not all of these perceptions are exclusive to India. I’m sure you could find other places on the planet that could share some of these stereotypes. But predominantly these are the news bits about India that penetrate the borders of many parts of the world. It is not just that these things about India are true to varying degrees, but this is what India is known for in many parts of the world.

It is sometimes painful to watch people here point at prettier things in the country in consolation. They’re missing the point. The fact that the uglier things exist and exist at the scale that they do defines us. Outside of this country it is what we are known for. It is what grabs the attention of people far away from here. Their experience of India is different from how we experience it on a daily basis.

There are two sides to this. On the one hand, it is unfortunate that the better things about India get drowned out by these things. But it is also a fortunate thing in the sense that it keeps people from rushing here as a way to seek a better life. Given the number of people who are desperate to leave this country to go live abroad, it barely strikes people that this is a concern that we must be wary of. Given the geopolitical situation in the surrounding region, it is actually an attractive yet accessible destination for a fair number of people. There is not a lot of overlap between the people who hold those negative stereotypes about India and the people who find India to be an attractive destination, but these two factors are not mutually exclusive. An improved global perception of India would most definitely attract more people choosing India as a destination as a refugee.

What we’re seeing across Europe and the West in general today in terms of immigration crisis is something India is immune to because of its perception of being a third world shithole. Ironically it is the very thing that the West is suffering the consequences of. In my honest perception the image of India is unfavorably skewed towards negative bias and the image of Europe in the minds of both Europeans and the rest of the world is overly inflated towards positive bias. For Indians, this is a boon given that no one is rushing in droves to settle in this country. And for Europeans this is a bane in that there is a threat of demographic shift looming large.

Inevitably, I believe that things will tip to India’s favor as it gradually progresses to be more developed, cleaner, culturally more mature, technologically more self-reliant and tactful from a geopolitical and internal security standpoint as we advance through the next few decades. And it will do India good to ensure that we learn from the mistakes of the West and fortify ourselves against crises like what we see in Europe and the West today.

The way forward in terms of global perception is inevitably upwards for India, considering it can’t get much worse given the actual state of reality.