Volume 5 · The Great Indian Bazaar · Essay 235

Social Innovation Hypothesis

Social Innovation Hypothesis begins with humility: it says, perhaps it is like this. Then it invites you to check.

Whether the hypothesis is finally true matters less than what it teaches you to notice. Good hypotheses are like good questions — they rearrange the furniture of the mind even when they are wrong.

Strip it to the floor and you find an old instruction: look carefully, judge slowly, act decently. The new name exists because the old instruction keeps being forgotten.

Stand at a tea stall during a big cricket match and you will see a hundred strangers become one family in an evening. The same crowd, given a different match, can split over a surname.

Society is a long conversation; the only question is whether you are listening or merely waiting to speak. If this page made you think of one specific person, do not send it to them. Apply it to yourself first; that is how these things work.