The Engineered Narrative: A War That Never Belonged to Men or Women

The cultural war of the last thirty years was never between men and women. It was a war engineered by institutions that profit when society fractures. The destruction of family structures did not begin in homes. It began in political rooms, corporate strategies, media studios, and NGO board meetings. These were the places where the new ideology was crafted: a version of empowerment not rooted in balance or partnership, but in individualism so extreme that it eventually tore the social fabric apart. Families collapsed, marriages declined, psychological stability eroded — and yet the institutions that created these outcomes remained untouched, comfortably feeding off the chaos they helped design.

The sad irony is that women were told they were being liberated. Yet what many received was a script that disconnected them from long-term stability while connecting them to systems that benefit from emotional instability, from impulsive choices, from transient attachments, and from dependence on external structures. This wasn’t emancipation. It was redirection.

The Cultural Circus: Manufactured Outrage, Selective Silence

One of the clearest proofs of institutional manipulation is the way outrage is manufactured or suppressed depending on the narrative it serves. When the Indian Supreme Court passed a judgement urging the removal of dangerous stray dogs from public spaces, something astonishing happened. International media exploded. NGOs flooded the streets overnight. Suddenly, hundreds of organisations appeared to “protect animal rights.” But no such mobilisation ever appears for the one lakh men who die by suicide due to systemic cruelty, biased laws, and institutional humiliation. The machinery wakes up only when the outrage aligns with the agenda.

A single dowry-related death — where the facts may not even be clear — becomes prime-time media for weeks. The story fuels the narrative, so it is magnified. But the routine deaths of men, broken by courts, false accusations, marital exploitation, or systemic bias, are erased as if those lives are disposable. The question is not whether women suffer — of course they do. The question is: Why does the system only amplify certain stories and bury others? And the answer is always the same: Because outrage is profitable only when it fits the script.

Recently, a public figure like Jaya Bachchan casually declared that “marriage is outdated.” Yet she enjoys the full benefits of a long marriage — children, grandchildren, legacy, stability, emotional continuity. If marriage is outdated, why hold on to its fruits? And more importantly, why tell young people to abandon the very institution that gave her life meaning? These contradictions reveal the hollowness of the ideology being sold: a kind of social advice that its own advocates would never apply to themselves.

In Varanasi, nearly fifteen young men were jailed on a false rape case. Their names, faces, and futures were destroyed before truth even surfaced. But when the case was proven fake, nobody marched in the streets. No media house apologised. No NGO demanded accountability. Because accountability was never the point. The narrative was.

These examples are not isolated. They are symptoms of a system that rewards selective outrage and forbids inconvenient questions. And the saddest part is that the modern generation has been trained to never ask: Why is silence so loud in some places and noise so strategic in others?

The Young and the Lost: A Generation Sold Chaos as Freedom

The grand social experiment becomes clearest when you observe young women from lower-middle-class families who move to cities for education. They step into environments their parents never prepared them for — environments saturated with novelty, attention, stimulation, and the illusion of endless options. Newfound freedom feels intoxicating. College life, clubs, parties, dating apps, validation cycles, Insta-driven self-worth — everything seems to promise a colourful escape from the constraints of their upbringing.

But beneath the glitter lies a quiet psychological erosion. With no emotional preparation, many dive into short-term flings, rapid relationship cycles, and constant overstimulation. By twenty-five, they have seen more emotional turbulence than previous generations saw in decades. The culture that embraced them never taught them the cost of overstimulation: the inability to build long-term stability, the fear of emotional responsibility, the addiction to novelty, and the shrinking capacity to commit. Stability feels boring. Accountability feels oppressive. Long-term partnership feels like a burden.

On the other side are young men who participated in this new culture because it rewarded shallowness and performance rather than responsibility. They enjoyed the attention, the play, the ease of fleeting intimacy. But when commitment appears, when accountability shows up, when consistency is required, they collapse. A generation raised on instant gratification cannot suddenly switch to long-term thinking. Both sides enter their late twenties emotionally tired, spiritually underdeveloped, and psychologically unprepared for partnership.

This was not an accident. It was design.

The Institutional Jackpot: Why Broken Families Are the Perfect Business Model

Institutions benefit when families collapse. Corporations prefer isolated individuals who work longer hours, consume more, and seek emotional refuge in products, entertainment, and lifestyle expenditures. Governments prefer fragmented citizens who depend on the state for welfare, safety, validation, and identity. Political parties prefer voters distracted by gender conflicts rather than accountability. Media prefers a society where people hate each other across gender lines because division fuels engagement. NGOs prefer perpetual victims over resolved problems because funding never flows to solutions — only to sustained crises. Digital platforms prefer loneliness, because lonely people scroll endlessly.

A stable family resists manipulation.
A broken family is economically exploitable.
A divided society is politically quiet.
A lonely individual is the perfect consumer.

Pseudo-feminism — the distorted version, not the original movement — became the perfect tool for this systemic architecture. Not because it empowered women, but because it disconnected them from the foundational structures that protect emotional, psychological, and generational stability.

This is why marriage is being mocked, motherhood is being questioned, commitment is being devalued, and emotional maturity is being replaced with individualistic slogans that sound empowering but lead nowhere. The future being created is not a future of freedom — it is a future of dependence, distraction, and emotional disorientation.

The Forbidden Questions: Why You Are Not Allowed to Challenge the Script

Every time someone tries to question the institutional machinery, the response is immediate: silence, ridicule, censorship, or diversion. You are not allowed to ask why NGOs staged massive protests for stray dogs but never for the suicide crisis among men. You are not allowed to ask why false accusations destroy lives while the accusers walk free. You are not allowed to ask why powerful figures who benefited from marriage now call it outdated for the younger generation. You are not allowed to ask why media amplifies only one side of suffering. You are not allowed to ask why gender conflict is encouraged while reconciliation is ignored.

These questions are forbidden not because they are wrong, but because they are dangerous to the narrative. They expose the machinery. They expose profits. They expose the design.

And institutional design is always protected — even at the cost of human happiness.

by: Rajan Veda