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  • The Sovereign of the Pitch: How India Turned Cricket into its Most Powerful Foreign Policy Tool

    In the days counting down to the much-anticipated 2026 Men’s T20 World Cup, apart from the buzz about the upcoming games, there was another topic that dominated the discourse — Will Bangladesh, a nation that had featured in every single T20 World Cup since the competition’s 2007 inception, play in the 2026 games? Will Pakistan also boycott the games?

    On January 24, 2026, a press release from the International Cricket Council’s Dubai headquarters arrived, disguised as a sports-page diplomatic cable. Bangladesh had been removed from the fixtures of the tournament taking place in India and Sri Lanka, and replaced by Scotland. After much back and forth, the Bangladesh Cricket Team was disqualified by the ICC for refusing to send its players to India, citing security concerns, given the tense India-Bangladesh relations. The ICC found those concerns unverifiable. And so, without ceremony, a team of 160 million people was shown the door.

    To anyone following South Asian geopolitics over the previous eighteen months, this was not a sports story. It was politics, dressed in whites and carrying a bat. It is not an anomaly either — cricket as a soft power has played a regular role in diplomacy.

    To understand how a cricket schedule became a geopolitical flashpoint, we have to start, as with so many things on the subcontinent, with the British Empire. Cricket did not arrive in India as a sport. It arrived as an ideology.

    Cricket constituted a “situational diplomatic tool” for Britain’s bid to retain close ties with its former colonies after independence. The game was designed to instil hierarchy, discipline — the social grammar of colonial rule. What the British did not anticipate was that the colonised would take that grammar and use it to write their own sentences.

    Cricket diplomacy emerged from these colonial strategies of the British Empire, but the modern iteration of using cricket to manage international conflict crystallised in the post-colonial era, particularly after the 1947 Partition of India and Pakistan. Early tours in the 1950s were intended, or at least advertised, as gestures of healing between two nations born of the same bloody rupture. In 1955, when the Indian team toured Pakistan, the Wagah border crossing was left open, and 10,000 Indian fans travelled to watch the Lahore Test match. Those moments, in which ordinary people crossed a border that would later be electrified with mutual hostility, represent cricket diplomacy at its most genuinely romantic: not strategy, but sentiment. But sentiment has a short shelf life in South Asian geopolitics.

    The moment cricket became a conscious instrument of statecraft instead of a shared passion is generally considered to be February 1987, in a stadium in Jaipur, when Pakistan’s then-President General Zia-ul-Haq famously flew to India to watch a match, a move that arguably averted a war.

    The context was grim. India had launched Operation Brasstacks, a combined military exercise in the deserts of Rajasthan, described by global security experts as “bigger than any NATO exercise — and the biggest since World War II.” Pakistan quickly responded by mobilising its forces. Troops were massed on both sides of the border, shared by two nuclear giants. Zia, however, boarded a plane, apparently to watch cricket. During the match, Zia apparently quietly told Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi that Pakistan had a nuclear bomb. The cricket ground had become an arms control back-channel.

    This set the template. From Pervez Musharraf’s 2005 visit to India, where his trip became more of a summit as both sides urged to seize a historic chance to end their dispute over Kashmir, to Manmohan Singh’s invitation to Pakistan’s Yousuf Raza Gilani to watch the 2011 World Cup semi-final at Mohali, the pattern was consistent. When formal diplomatic channels failed, the cricket ground became the only room left where two nuclear-armed neighbours could sit together without it looking like surrender. The pitch was viewed as a “demilitarised zone,” a rare space where India and Pakistan could engage without the immediate threat of escalation. It was a fragile arrangement, but it worked, until it didn’t.

    As we move ahead into the world of contemporary cricket, the metrics of measuring power in the world of cricket have changed considerably. Money, revenue, and viewership are now considered to be the defining measures of power in the politics of the sport. India fares well in all of these dimensions.

    India dominates cricket’s financial ecosystem, generating $2.38 billion of the sport’s $3.84 billion global revenue, making it a whopping 62 per cent of the total. The Board of Control for Cricket in India stands as the world’s richest cricket board with a net worth of $2.2 billion, driven primarily by the Indian Premier League, valued at $18.5 billion, with broadcasting rights sold for $6.2 billion for the 2023–2027 cycle.

    These are not simply economic or sports power; it is a geopolitical weapon. Effectively, Indian eyeballs bankroll the sport’s existence everywhere else. A single T20I against India in South Africa generates more revenue than New Zealand’s entire ICC distribution for a year.

    This financial reality is not incidental to cricket diplomacy. It is cricket diplomacy. When you control the money, you control the rules, and when you control the rules, you determine who gets to play the game — and who gets sent home.

    The Indian Premier League, or the IPL, which began in 2008 as a flashy domestic T20 league, has quietly become one of India’s most effective foreign policy instruments. It operates as a form of “soft power coercion.” On one hand, the IPL is genuinely beloved. Players from England, Australia, New Zealand, the West Indies, South Africa, and virtually every cricket-playing nation compete for contracts that far exceed their national board salaries. Top IPL players earn more in eight weeks than most international cricketers earn in an entire year. This creates a structural dependency —foreign boards need their players available for the IPL window, which means they negotiate their entire international calendar around India’s domestic competition. The ICC has accommodated this, carving out a protected IPL window in the global cricket calendar.

    On the other hand, IPL contracts can be revoked, and when they are, the message is rarely purely sporting. On January 3, 2026, the BCCI instructed the Kolkata Knight Riders, or KKR, to release Bangladeshi fast bowler Mustafizur Rahman from their IPL squad. No reason was stated for that directive, but it came amid deteriorating relations between India and Bangladesh. The Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB) responded the following day by writing to the ICC that Bangladesh would not travel to India for its T20 World Cup matches, citing security concerns.

    The whole Mustafizur affair underscored the tensions between the neighbours, and India invoked its power as the economic giant of cricket to circumvent Bangladesh and emphasise its national interests.

    The BCB argued that, given the BCCI’s position, it was unsafe for its players to play in India. This was never really about security in the conventional sense, and all parties understood that. Bangladesh’s withdrawal and the ICC’s cold institutional response were the conclusion of a diplomatic crisis being played out through sporting infrastructure. Bangladesh became the first nation ever to be ejected from a T20 World Cup, setting an example. The message was clear: India is willing to employ its cricket power to advance its national interests.

    Another example of how cricket becomes central to diplomacy, especially in South Asia, was the September 2025 Asia Cup. Following the final against Pakistan, the winning champions India refused to shake hands with the Pakistani players, citing respect for the victims of the terror attack in Pahalgam. They also refused to accept the trophy from Pakistani minister Mohsin Naqvi, who also serves as the President of the Asian Cricket Council, as a protest against Pakistan’s involvement in the attack. Many alleged that Naqvi then left the stage holding the trophy, prompting many of the Indian players to post pictures on social media with edited trophies, taking a jibe at Naqvi.

    Some argued that this was unsportsmanlike and not in line with the principles of a gentleman’s game, but others saw it as a calibrated statement in defence of the nation. By refusing a trophy from a Pakistani state representative, India was signalling something beyond cricket — the refusal to legitimise Pakistani government representatives even in a sporting context. The cricket ground, once a demilitarised zone, was now an extension of hard-power signalling.

    However, it would be a mistake to read India’s cricketing power as exclusively a South Asian phenomenon. The BCCI’s leverage extends to every cricket-playing nation.

    In March 2023, Prime Minister Narendra Modi hosted his Australian counterpart, Anthony Albanese, at the Narendra Modi Stadium. The event was organised as a tribute to 75 years of diplomatic and cricket relations between the two countries. The stadium itself, renamed from the Sardar Patel Stadium, can hold over 130,000 people, making it the largest cricket ground in the world. Hosting a bilateral summit there was not incidental. It was India communicating, through sheer scale, that the terms of engagement had changed.

    For England, the financial dependency is equally stark. The England and Wales Cricket Board scheduled five Test matches against India for 2025, knowing Indian series generates higher revenues than the Ashes cricket. The Ashes, which were historically the most storied rivalry in the sport, now plays second fiddle to an India-England series in revenue terms. The former colonial master, in cricket as in so many other domains, now needs the permission, or at least the commercial participation, of its former colony.

    More than just political leverage, cricket has also opened up avenues for more positive humanitarian engagements.

    The Indian economic cricket muscle has already built in cricket’s margins — stadiums in Afghanistan, IPL contracts that have made cricketers from the Caribbean and New Zealand financially secure for life, broadcast deals that have carried the sport to audiences in the United States and the Gulf who would never have encountered it otherwise. The IPL, for all the political freight it now carries, has also done something remarkable: it has created a genuinely transnational sporting economy in which a Sri Lankan spinner, an Australian batter, and a South African pacer share a dressing room, a salary structure, and a WhatsApp group. That is soft power in its most organic form, not manufactured through press releases, but through the lived experience of competitive interdependence.
    The alternative model is visible if India chooses to look for it. China’s infrastructure diplomacy in the West Indies, spending $132 million on cricket facilities compared to the ICC’s own ten-year global development budget of $70 million, was not subtle, but it was effective precisely because it gave something. India, with far deeper cultural ties to cricket’s global community, is better positioned than any other nation to pursue a version of cricket diplomacy that is simultaneously self-interested and genuinely generative: using its institutional weight to expand the sport into new markets, professionalise smaller boards, and create a South Asian cricket ecosystem.

    This is not idealism. It is a calculation. A cricket economy in which Bangladesh is healthy, Pakistan is engaged, and Sri Lanka is stable is one in which India has more leverage, more markets, and more political goodwill than one in which those neighbours are resentful and looking toward Beijing.

    The gentleman’s game, as the English used to call it, was designed by an empire to manage its subjects. The postcolonial twist, that those subjects would master it so completely that they now run the sport’s entire political economy, is perhaps the most satisfying irony in the long, complicated story of cricket and power. The question facing India today is not whether it has that power. It does, unquestionably. The question is what it intends to do with it. Whether the crack of bat on ball will echo as the sound of dominion, or the sound of something more durable — a region, fractious and complicated and passionate about a single sport, choosing, for once, to play together.

    Author: Disha Bharti

  • The “Unhireable” Gen Z and the Rejection of the Hustle Economy

    Infosys co-founder Narayana Murthy made headlines by reiterating his own 70-hour workweeks at the company – “I used to get to the office at 6:30 AM and leave at 8:30 PM, that’s a fact. I have done it,” he told the audience. The remark, along with a similar comment from L&T chief S.N. Subrahmanyan about working 90-hour weeks, ignited a firestorm online. Murthy clarified that no one can force anyone to work these hours, but encouraged it as a personal choice or sacrifice for “success.” But as the older business leaders of India and the world still cling to the narrative of “work as worship” and “hustle culture,” a very different reality is brewing beneath.

    People born between 1997 and 2012 fall under the label of Generation Z, or Gen Z, and they now account for a huge chunk of the Indian population, where 65% of people are under the age of 35. While the average Gen Z may be around 20 years old at this point, they have already started entering the workforce in other countries, and soon enough, will dominate workplaces by numbers. Even apart from that, India is a very young country in terms of its population: the median age of India is just 28. In the USA, Gen Z represents 25% of the population and is poised to become the largest generation globally. They are also unique in the sense that they are the first ones to grow up with the Internet, thus imbuing them with an in-depth and intrinsic understanding of the digital world, a direct edge as professional workers.

    Despite all that, employers are sceptical of hiring Gen Z workers. Many surveys reveal that Gen Z’s “unique” preferences, including their “anti-hustle” philosophy, make them an employer’s “nightmare.” In the USA, it was revealed through a survey that 1 in 6 companies were hesitant to hire Gen Z workers, citing lack of motivation and professionalism, sense of entitlement, poor work ethic, and difficulty in responding to feedback. Further statistical analysis reveals that Gen Z workers change jobs every 2.3 years on average, 134% more frequently than pre-pandemic levels. Each move typically brings salary increases and skill development that internal promotion tracks couldn’t match. When 77% prioritise work-life balance and 72% leave jobs without flexible policies, they are not just making personal choices but forcing an institutional challenge.

    There is then a disparity between what the higher-ups, such as Narayan Murthy or Elon Musk, who called “working the weekend” a “superpower,” expect from the new lot of workers and how the new generation of workers understands “work”. Millennials, born between 1981 and 1996, were generally seen as the prime proponents of corporate culture, advocating for a professional and dedicated work ethic. Gen Z are seen as more focused on maintaining a work-life balance. Gone are the days of the glorification of “the grind”, the belief in the myth of meritocracy or blind company loyalty. Now, the growing trend is to treat work as work and not your whole life, and not be bound to any company by a false sense of unity.

    The question then comes up: where did this radical change in attitude emerge from, within just one generation?

    The critique of Gen Z’s work ethic usually fails to take into account the economic reality and circumstances that the generation inherited. Millennials entered the workforce with sky-high expectations, with promises that academic qualifications and professional dedication would deliver fulfilling careers and financial security. However, the machinery of capitalism that prioritises cold, hard, and direct profit over anything else is simply incompatible with the promise that it made. Millennials instead received exhaustingly long work days, little to no equity, and overwhelming student debt. Housing was out of reach, the cost of living was unaffordable, and even simple luxuries remained aspirational for many.

    Numbers back this story: In India, 83% of engineering graduates and 50% of MBA holders finished in 2024 without job offers despite their advanced qualifications. Globally, 58% of recent graduates remain unemployed, compared to just 25% of older generations at the same career stage. This isn’t simply a gap in skills or a decline in work ethic — it’s a structural collapse of the employment promise that underpinned previous generations’ career expectations.

    Gen Z witnessed this breakdown firsthand. They watched millennials burn out chasing promotions that never materialised, saw the 2008 financial crisis devastate their parents’ retirement plans, and lived through a pandemic that exposed how quickly “essential” workers could be discarded. Early Millennials often saw overwork as a badge of honour – a path to middle-class stability and success. However, that ethos coincided with great job security and clear promotions in many sectors. For Gen Z, the context is very different: job growth has slowed, competition is fierce, and costs, like housing and education, are much higher than before. By the time Gen Z begins to enter the workforce, the illusion of a social contract between the employers and the employed has been shredded. They realised that their company or boss is not going to hold any obligations towards them. Why then would you go out of your way to maximise shareholder profit when you get nothing in return?

    Ironically, Gen Z’s confident stance emerges amid genuine economic strain. The promise of a booming economy has faltered for many. Despite India’s $5-trillion growth ambition, high unemployment weighs on young people’s minds. India’s Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy reported a staggering 44.5% jobless rate among 20–24 year olds in early 2024.

    The breakdown of the job market coincides with an overall societal rehaul in the face of AI and other landmark socio-political events. This, along with a greater awareness of mental health issues, has shown a rise in the psychological toll on young workers. Nearly half of Gen Z, 46% to be exact, has received a mental health diagnosis, with 42% struggling with depression and hopelessness—rates nearly double those of people over 25. When 47% of an entire generation reports feeling anxious “often or always,” we’re not dealing with individual weakness but systemic failure.

    The mental health crisis and workplace attitudes are not simply cause and effect but are deeply interlinked with one another. They are not separate, but directly drive each other. Unlike previous generations who compartmentalised personal wellbeing, 92% of Gen Z graduates want to discuss mental health at work, while 60% expect managers to actively care about their wellbeing. They’ve witnessed the human cost of hustle culture and refuse to pay it. Instead of HR team bonding activities or pool tables, Gen Z desires real effort at mental health care.

    Further, while millennials saw job stability as a foundation for success, Gen Z sees it as stagnation. An extraordinary 74% believe that changing jobs drives career development, with nearly half expecting to switch employers within the next year. Many call this fickleness and the inability to commit, but others defend it as a strategic adaptation to a job market that doesn’t reward loyalty. Consider the statistics: 70% of Gen Z expect promotion within 18 months, but traditional corporate structures move at a glacial pace. Rather than wait for systems to change, they’ve created their own advancement mechanism through strategic job-hopping. What older generations interpret as disloyalty, Gen Z views as self-advocacy.

    This transformation extends beyond mere workplace attitudes — it is a philosophical shift. The working-class, to a larger extent, no longer accepts the glorification of hustle culture or deludes themselves into believing that if they just worked a little harder, if they put a few more hours in, they would be fairly rewarded. Hustle culture, as critics note, is “inherently privileged and undeniably classist,” assuming everyone has the luxury of passion-driven work while ignoring systemic inequalities. Gen Z, more diverse and socially conscious than any previous generation, recognises these contradictions. It isn’t about individualistic self-care but a collective effort towards professional boundary setting. Companies that ignore these demands face talent exodus, creating market pressure for systemic reform.

    This is essentially a reset in values, or a “values revolution” — while capitalism had historically succeeded in convincing workers that company success and personal success were aligned, Gen Z has severed that connection, or more aptly, they have been forced to see the reality by virtue of the economic conditions that they have inherited. They are better able to distinguish between working for survival and working for someone else’s wealth accumulation and refuse to conflate the two, as the illusion of meritocracy has collapsed with the failure of the machinery of capitalism.
    The narrative that Gen Z is “unhirable” reveals more about employers than employees. When 75% of companies report Gen Z hires as “unsatisfactory,” the disconnect isn’t about capability but expectations. Gen Z enters workplaces expecting transparency, flexibility, and meaningful work—reasonable requests that expose how many employers have relied on desperation rather than a genuine value proposition.

    The “unhirable” label is particularly ignorant as it refuses to acknowledge the broader socio-economic context within which the new batch of workers has begun their careers. An entire generation isn’t lazy or unmotivated, or even if they are, there have to be systematic pitfalls behind the same. Unemployment or worker dissatisfaction isn’t about individual unemployability but structural unemployment. Despite higher education levels than ever before, they encounter higher unemployment rates. Among 30,000 Gen Z professionals surveyed, unemployment persists despite advanced degrees from prestigious institutions. The disconnect between educational investment and employment returns has created a generation sceptical of traditional career advice.

    With the digital revolution, new, unprecedented avenues of making a living have emerged. More and more young people are finding new ways of sustaining themselves through content creation, freelancing, and remote work. Traditional office jobs are no longer the only way to have a career or earn money. A growing number of young workers have started to prefer working for start-ups rather than well-known conglomerates, due to their flexibility. Big companies like Canva and Netflix remain popular among Gen Z workers for their flexible work hours, diversity, creative freedom, and autonomy.

    Remote work, also known as “work-from-home”, has also completely changed the game. Since the pandemic, young workers have realised that there isn’t much sense in spending hours commuting to offices when the same work can be done from the comfort of their home or workspace at their preferred hours. It is a virtual overhaul of traditional corporate work structures. When the old rules don’t guarantee success, why follow them? Gen Z’s apparent “entitlement” to work-life balance and meaningful employment, and aversion to traditional careers, isn’t narcissism—it’s pragmatism in the face of economic uncertainty.

    So when Murthy or Musk say the secret to their success is putting in the hours and working hard, Gen Z doesn’t see that as inspiration; they see it as a myth from a different era—out of touch with today’s realities, where hard work alone no longer guarantees success or well-being.

    Author: Disha Bharti

  • The Ad Invasion: How Advertising Colonised Our Digital and Physical Lives

    When the modern home refrigerator was invented in 1913, it had a simple yet revolutionary job: to keep our food cool and fresh for longer. No one could have thought this cooling box would one day become an in-home hoarding for advertisements.

    It’s 2026, fridges, too, have screens now. And what usually follows the screens are advertisements. Samsung’s smart fridges, which can go for as high as 4 lakhs, may soon start showing ads on their screens. The conglomerate started its pilot program for some users in the United States, claiming that showing “promotions and curated advertisements” to users will “enhance everyday value for customers.” How that might happen, we are unsure.

    It’s not just fridges either. It seems like advertisements are everywhere – omnipresent, inescapable, and superimposing. Whether you are scrolling through reels, X threads, YouTube, or even LinkedIn, it’s become interwoven into the very fabric of the online ecosystem.

    On average, Indians spend over 7 hours on the internet, as per Meltwater’s Global Digital Report 2025. Roughly 20-25% of content on the Internet is ads, according to estimates by PPAI Media. This means one spends about 105 minutes a day at least, watching ads on their phones alone. This does not even account for integrated or undisclosed ads, paid content, outdoor advertisements, radio ads, etc.

    This “ad invasion” isn’t simply numbers, either. Many users report feeling a sense of “ad fatigue.” Everything feels like an ad, even if it isn’t technically one – most reels, posts, and tweets feel like they have an ulterior motive of selling you something or subtly pitching a product.

    Our phones, which once felt like a portal to a whole new virtual world, now feel like yet another megaphone for advertisements. This is what Canadian writer Cory Doctorow calls enshittification. Enshittification is a process of online platforms declining in quality over time. Developers or companies create high-quality platforms and products and offer them to the public virtually for free. They then gradually degrade the quality or put up paywalls, making the user experience worse. This has been the strategy or course that most social media platforms took – they offered their apps and services for free, then gradually introduced ads, which then multiplied over time. Sometimes they also took the route of paid apps or premium subscriptions, although these have been relatively unpopular compared to in-app ads.

    You may ask, how is that a beneficial strategy? How would making the user experience bad help with user retention, and subsequently with profit-making for the platform?

    The answer to this lies in the psychology of the consumer in a post-truth world. At its core, advertising is all about attracting people, about making your product or service desirable. It started with simply picking an object to market and picking a group to market it to – xyz is good because it does abc for you. Nowadays, however, that kind of almost rustic advertisement has virtually disappeared.

    In a landscape of endless options, one may assume that an app or service that offers a poor user experience would drive people away instantly. However, many apps, specifically social media apps, have successfully been able to cement habits during their “free” phase. Many of these apps work on the rather simple principle of FOMO – fear of missing out. People are on these apps because everyone is there. It is through social media that one gets their news, gossip, updates, and information first. Not being on these apps creates a perhaps unfounded feeling that you are missing out on things.

    Further, consumers now crave constant stimulation thanks to the digital ecosystem. Amid such fragmented realities, platforms weaponise FOMO via timed ads or “just one more scroll.” Retention climbs because the brain prioritises closure over comfort, funnelling more eyeballs and ad impressions than a seamless UX ever could. Online culture is another world altogether; there is a separate language, culture, and ecosystem on the internet that someone who doesn’t engage with it could not understand so clearly.

    Moreover, platforms like YouTube layer unskippable ads and pop-ups to create a “sunk cost” effect – after enduring interruptions, users feel more inclined to complete the session rather than abandon it midway — “I have already sat through the ads, might as well watch the video.” This mirrors loss aversion, where the pain of quitting outweighs temporary annoyance, keeping daily active users steady even as satisfaction dips.

    From advertisement as interruption to advertisement as infrastructure, the shift is evident. It’s not accidental excess but structural design. Not only has the gradual change affected commerce, but also how consumers experience and consume non-advertisment content online. Advertising doesn’t sit outside the content anymore; it is no longer the occasional annoyance, but it has become embedded well within the content itself. Sponsored posts mimic organic content as a deliberate strategy. Ads are designed to be as indistinguishable as possible from entertainment or journalism. Even language has evolved to incorporate this change – “collaboration,” “partnership,” “sponsorship”, and similar semantic loopholes blur the line between organic content and advertisements.

    India’s digital marketing industry is a major sector, valued at $5.15 billion in 2024 and expected to grow at a high compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of over 30%, reaching USD 20–55 billion by 2032–2035. So, ads are not going anywhere. In fact, they are bound to infiltrate even more facets of our lives. It is almost a “colonisation of space” – and not just digital space, but physical as well.

    Going back to the beginning, while it is now not far-fetched to imagine your refrigerators soon showing you ads, other physical, public spaces, such as metros, have already become riddled with advertisements. It is not uncommon to see entire trains covered in ads, doubling as moving billboards. Airports, malls, and even residential elevators have also become a canvas for branding. Urban spaces then no longer remain places of residence or commerce, but monetised spaces that capture our attention for marketing.

    Advertisements move beyond products and into the environment as a part of the environment. Even moments of pause — waiting for a train, standing in a queue — are now opportunities for exposure. Cultural Critic Naomi Klein elucidated this in her book, No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies, where she argued that corporations are no longer content with simply selling or branding their products; they now seek to embed themselves in popular culture.

    Take Coca-Cola, for example. If you go to any store or restaurant and ask for a “cold drink”, chances are you will be served a Coca-Cola, unless you state otherwise. Recently, Crocs, an American apparel company famous for its sandals, launched a Coca-Cola collection, which had a lineup of its classic Crocs printed with the Coca-Cola logo. Rationally speaking, a beverage brand and a footwear brand do not really have anything in common for them to collaborate. However, this points out how Coca-Cola has become more than just a beverage, it has become a part of culture.

    Coca-Cola has also embedded itself into popular global culture in more hidden ways as well. Starting in 1931, Coca-Cola commissioned illustrator Haddon Sundblom to create Santa Claus images for winter advertisements, when their sales usually dropped, given the cold weather. Before the 1930s, while images of a jolly, plump Santa dressed in red existed, it was not the standard or universal depiction. Santa used to be depicted in many different ways – in green or brown coats, as tall or gaunt or elf-like. What Coca-Cola’s campaign did was to concretise the image and establish an implicit, psychological connection between the brand and the feeling of Christmas.

    Similarly, other beverage brands like Red Bull and Monster, too, managed to move beyond just products and establish themselves as part of culture – Red Bull as synonymous with sports, specifically racing culture, and Monster with alternative and gaming culture. If you are a gamer or an F1 fan, you might try a Monster or a Red Bull, not because of the drink itself but because of the culture surrounding the drink.

    What was once a product or a brand became a shared ritual exchange, a cultural symbol, and a platform for identity-creation. Buying a product isn’t simply commerce anymore; it has evolved into a social ritual. Entire cityscapes now function as canvases for commercial messaging. Metro stations are renamed after corporations, public benches carry brand insignias, and even festivals and cultural events are often inseparable from their sponsors. The distinction between public and private space has blurred, with advertising quietly occupying areas that were once neutral or communal. What was once considered an intrusion is now accepted as infrastructure. This expansion then feels not only complete but normalised, almost invisible in its ubiquity.

    If ubiquity is the visible face of modern advertisement, data is its invisible engine.

    With the coming of a digital-first approach and algorithms, advertising has also moved beyond simple mass media messaging. It has evolved into hyper-personalised digital realities. The same brand may now advertise the same product in different ways to different niches. This way, advertisement becomes even more embedded in everyday culture. For example, it is not uncommon to see brands collaborate with niche meme pages and pay them to make a post that looks like a meme, but is actually an advertisement for their product.

    Further, brands often take part in social media trends or comment on viral posts and reels. It not only increases visibility but also enables them to come off as an approachable and user-friendly brand. These strategies have been adopted by huge companies such as McDonald’s and Duolingo.

    Thus, advertising is no longer standardised mass communication. It now consists of hyper-personalised, hyper-specific, and niche marketing strategies to capture the imagination of consumers at the most cognitive level.

    The question then arises: Is escape possible?

    In theory, yes. We can pay for subscriptions, ad-free services, or disengage from social media. But practically speaking, these methods of opting out are often obstructed by social and economic costs. Digital platforms are no longer optional; they are infrastructural. They mediate communication, work, entertainment, and information. To exit them entirely is to step outside contemporary life. The ad invasion persists not because it is unavoidable, but because the systems it inhabits are indispensable.

    It is also worth acknowledging an undeniable, and perhaps uncomfortable truth: advertising is the fuel behind the modern internet. It is the reason why a large number of people can access digital services. We pay for these services not with money, but with our attention and time.

    Search engines, social networks, email services, news platforms — many of the tools we rely on daily are subsidised by advertising revenue. Without it, users would likely face higher direct costs. A complex bargain is thus created: We accept advertising in exchange for access. We trade attention for convenience. We tolerate intrusion for affordability. The tipping point arrives when the cost of attention begins to outweigh the value in service, which is a characteristic of the ad invasion.

    If complete elimination is realistic, what option are we left with? To make peace with constant and intrusive advertisements in all facets of our lives?

    Not quite. Regulation remains the path of moderation. The first step in the fight for more consumer-friendly regulation is the protection of data and greater control over our information. Stricter disclosure norms and algorithmic transparency remain crucial pillars in ethical advertising practices.

    While these require infrastructural interventions, consumer awareness can be brought about at the level of individual consumers in the meantime. Recognising sponsored content, questioning recommendations, and understanding platform incentives are forms of digital literacy that can rebalance power.

    The fridge that now shows ads to you is not an anomaly. It is a metaphor. A reminder that no surface is too private, no moment too mundane, no device too domestic to escape monetisation.

    The invasion is not coming. It is already here. And the real challenge is not how to avoid it — but how to live with it, without letting it define us.

    Author: Disha Bharti