The Mismanaged
Dr Ashwani Kumar
In a contemporary, market-driven society, emotional life is no longer something we inherit from tradition or experience in solitude. It is something society expects to manage, perform, and even sell. Sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild described this transformation as the “managed heart,” particularly in jobs requiring people to express feelings they may not actually feel, such as kindness, patience, or empathy. While Hochschild focused largely on Western service industries, this emotional labour has now become a feature of everyday life across much of the world, including India. From teachers and students to office workers and romantic partners, people are under growing pressure to appear emotionally composed and appropriate, not because they truly feel that way, but because social life now demands it.
Indian society finds itself in a unique position. It is transforming slowly from a traditional, community-based rural society to a modern, urban, digitally connected one. But unlike some Western society, where emotional regulation is taught through education systems or therapeutic practices, India has very little presence in their institutional frameworks for emotional regulation. Consequently, people lack that understanding, which requires expressing what they are feeling. The majority of people were never taught the skill of naming their emotions, this compels to manage their emotions on their level. In Indian society emotional awareness is often dismissed or misunderstood. Instead of leading to emotional maturity, this creates what might be called the mismanaged heart. A condition of confusion, anxiety, and emotional numbness, not because of individual failure, but due to larger social and cultural changes that leave people unprepared.
Traditional Indian communities, especially in rural areas, operated through institutions of caste, religion, and kinship organization, where emotional expectations were well-defined. Emotions like love, anger, duty, and loyalty had clear social boundaries and roles. One knew whom to care for, whom to obey, and whom to ignore. While such patterns were often hierarchical and exclusionary.
In contrast, contemporary urban life in India offers no such emotional map. The traditional structures are shrinking, and still we failed to develop the pragmatic alternative. Modern Indian cities are spaces of anonymity and flux, where emotional interaction takes place across a wide variety of settings: workplaces, dating spaces, group chats, classrooms, Instagram reels, and casual friendships. People are expected to regulate their emotions depending on the space they are sharing. But they are rarely taught how. There is no provision for formal education in emotional intelligence. Schools and universities seldom talk about feelings in any meaningful way. And very few homes or public institutions provide the vocabulary or support needed for emotional clarity.
In this vacuum, people have started to learn from the media. Streaming platforms, romantic dramas, mental health influencers, therapy podcasts, and self-help books now act as guides. On the surface, this seems like a step forward; words like “boundaries,” “toxic,” “self-care,” and “mental health” are now part of everyday interactions. But often, these ideas are consumed in shallow or commercialized ways. Instead of prompting real reflection, emotional experiences become more performative. People start mimicking what they think healing or awareness should look like. Emotions are posed for, posted about, and packaged. Healing is marketed as a lifestyle rather than cultivated as a lived process.
The serious consequence is that the majority of people struggle to understand what they are feeling. Many know they feel “off,” “low,” or “stressed,” but cannot differentiate between sadness, shame, loneliness, fear, or anger. These are not just emotional states; they carry different meanings, triggers, and consequences. But without a clear emotional vocabulary or cultural scaffolding, they blend into a vague unease. People misread themselves and each other. This misreading may compel them to react impulsively, suppress deeply personal feelings, or respond in ways that feel disconnected from their inner reality. The result is not emotional mastery but emotional alienation-a growing gap between what we feel and what we are told to display.
This situation is particularly evident in India, where mental health still carries stigma, and academic and economic success are prioritized over emotional well-being. Young people express this problem most intensely. They are caught between two competing worlds: one shaped by traditional family obligations and another driven by digital media and modern aspirations. When faced with emotional hardships, like rejection, failure, or loneliness. They often lack the skill to process them in normal ways. Their struggles are dismissed as personal weaknesses when, in fact, they are signs of a deeper social disconnect.
Hochschild’s idea of emotional labour still holds, but in India, it takes on a unique form. Here, emotional labour is the requirement to regulate society in a normal way; it’s a crucial social skill for surviving in a fragmented, diverse society. In a society with deep divides across caste, class, religion, and language, spontaneous emotional expression is not always safe or helpful. In Indian situations, managing emotions becomes necessary to prevent misunderstanding, conflict, or even harm. In an already unequal society, a managed emotional state helps us to regulate the interactions in a certain manner. In Indian situations, the ability to regulate one’s emotions is not merely a corporate requirement; it is a form of social survival in India.
But emotional resilience cannot be left to chance or media trends. It must be taught and nurtured, intentionally and collectively. Educational organisations should teach emotional intelligence and how emotions are constructed by society. Parenting must create space for vulnerability, not just obedience. Public discourse should treat emotional health as a societal issue, not just a private concern. Most importantly, people need to see their feelings in the context of larger social forces gender roles, economic pressures, cultural expectations, and inequality.
If India hopes to modernize not just its infrastructure but its human experience, then emotional life must be taken seriously. Emotional clarity should not be a privilege reserved for the few. It should be considered a basic part of dignity and awareness for all. Otherwise, Indian society may risk building a society full of mismanaged hearts. People who perform emotions on instinct but never learn to truly feel, express, or understand them. What we need is not just the managed heart, but the conscious one, rooted in empathy, reflection, and shared understanding. That’s where the future lies.
(The author is an Assistant Professor at UILS(Sociology) Chandigarh University, Punjab)
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