US-Based Investor's Comments On Indians' Status Obsession Sparks Debate. What's Your Take?

Indians attach a lot of importance to academic records, job titles, and one’s social standing. That’s something we are all aware of, and recently, a US-based investor of Indian origin commented on how every conversation he had in India turned into a “status game”.

Debarghya (Deedy) Das, an investor in venture capital fund Menlo Ventures, wrote on X, “One of my least favourite things about living in India was that every small interaction, especially with a new person, inevitably becomes a status game.” This post soon gathered 1.3 million views since it was shared on July 20.

In the comments, many accused him of generalising Indians despite India having a large and diverse population. Many also argued that places like the San Francisco Bay Area in the USA were very competitive when it came to earning points on social status.

In response, Debarghya Das listed a number of clarifications and said that while many places were status-obsessed, such attitudes were “far more subtle than in India”. He also gave examples of how Indians reportedly flexed their social status and wrote some common phrases they say.

These were, “You definitely can’t show up to that wedding in an Uber, we’re carpooling with the guy with the Merc” and “Yes, oh , he’s a friend”. He argued that not having an iPhone is looked down upon and asking about school or work feels “less informational and more of an appraisal.”

In response to these posts, an X user wrote, “While I agree with a lot of things you say, Deedy, got to disagree with you on this one. While I, like you, grew up in a Bengali household and detested the status game played by Bengalis, I have slowly come to realize that the crop of Indians in the Bay Area is worse than India.”

Another person wrote, “Sometimes the status angle is transparent and straightforward to navigate with Indians, Asians, even Europeans. But with Americans, it takes more effort and social intelligence because they pretend that status doesn’t exist.”

As per a study by the World Inequality Lab, India’s wealth inequality is worse than the United States’. In just 2022-2023, the top one per cent of India’s population held 40 per cent of the country’s wealth. In the USA, 37 percent of wealth is held by the richest one percent.