The Rise of “Alternatives” in Contemporary India
Dr. Maguni Charan Behera
Chief Editor, Sampratyaya (sampratyaya.com)
Email: sampratyaya.ijr@gmail.com
In contemporary India, there is a growing preference for “alternatives” as a response to social change, emerging contradictions, and institutional failures that demand resolution. This preference reveals a tendency not to reform or resolve problems from within, but to replace existing arrangements or exit from them altogether. We see the proliferation of such “alternatives” in family life, social relations, and in failing public services and underperforming welfare programmes. While these alternatives appear to offer immediate relief from conflict and contradiction, they more often generate new and deeper social, moral, and institutional crises.
Resolving Social Issues: The Intervention of “Alternatives”
A simple but powerful example can be seen in the way marital conflict is now addressed. Traditionally, quarrels between husband and wife were understood as problems to be resolved within the institution of marriage through negotiation, mediation, adjustment, or endurance. Today, especially in urban and semi-urban India, marital conflict increasingly leads directly to divorce or separation. Divorce is treated as a solution, but in reality it is not a resolution of marital breakdown; it is an exit from the very framework in which the problem arose. The conflict remains unresolved; only the institutional setting is replaced.
The process of divorce is itself entangled with child custody disputes, legal complexities, media exposure, alimony and maintenance claims, property conflicts, and prolonged litigation. Clearly, this does not represent a resolution of marital conflict but rather reveals a deeper social and emotional crisis with far-reaching consequences for individuals, families, and society.
The same logic operates in the rise of live-in relationships. Instead of repairing the emotional, ethical, and social foundations of marriage, an alternative arrangement is proposed that avoids long-term commitment altogether. Here again, the alternative does not solve the crisis of intimacy, trust, or responsibility; it simply sidesteps them. Marriage and sexual access are delinked, and intimacy is reorganised outside the institution of marriage. What is presented as freedom is, in fact, a redefinition of the problem itself.
At the heart of this transformation lies a deeper crisis: the erosion of emotional and physical bonding in long-term relationships. Marriage is no longer viewed as a durable moral and social institution, but as a conditional contract sustained only as long as it provides individual satisfaction. When satisfaction declines, exit becomes the preferred option.
The same logic explains the declining desire to have children, particularly among the urban middle class. Earlier, children were central to the emotional, economic, and moral structure of family life. Today, old-age homes, insurance systems, professional care services, and individual networks of friends and colleagues are seen as functional substitutes for family-based intergenerational support. Once again, the alternative does not repair the weakening of family bonds; it reorganises life in a way that renders those bonds unnecessary.
This is not merely a change in lifestyle; it reflects a profound shift in the way society understands institutions. Institutions such as marriage, family, community, and even the nation were historically designed to resolve conflicts, manage contradictions, and provide continuity across time. They were not meant to guarantee uninterrupted happiness, but to offer a stable framework within which conflicts could be negotiated and lives sustained. The new logic, by contrast, treats institutions as disposable containers for individual satisfaction.
Engaging with Alternatives in Education, Health, Politics, and Policy
This “escape and exit logic” is not confined to family life. It is increasingly visible in education, health, democracy, and social policy.
In education, instead of reforming public institutions to make them effective and equitable, there is a growing tendency to encourage private schools, coaching centres, and online platforms. The structural problems of public education—inequality, poor infrastructure, teacher shortages—are not solved; they are bypassed. The result is a dual system that deepens social inequality and weakens the idea of education as a public good.
In the domain of health, a similar pattern is evident. Rather than building strong public health systems, societies increasingly rely on private healthcare, insurance schemes, and individualised wellness industries. Structural inequalities in access to health are not resolved; they are managed through market mechanisms that exclude large sections of the population. Even government schemes intended to support public health often operate by subsidising private providers, thereby expanding private healthcare markets instead of building universal public systems. Public money thus ends up reinforcing inequality rather than reducing it.
In politics, instead of repairing democratic institutions and practices, citizens retreat into cynicism, apathy, or purely identity-based loyalties. Low voter turnout, disengagement from public debate, and blind allegiance to charismatic leaders are all forms of exit from the difficult work of democratic participation. The problems of democracy are not addressed within democracy; democracy itself is slowly hollowed out.
The same pattern is visible in social justice policy, particularly in the case of reservations for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes. Reservations have continued for more than seven decades, and their extension every decade is justified on the grounds that inequality persists—which is empirically true. What is striking, however, is how rarely the state seriously asks why, despite constitutional protections, welfare schemes, and affirmative action, large sections of SCs and STs remain trapped in poverty, poor education, and insecure livelihoods.
Instead of resolving these issues through evaluation and reform of existing schemes, governments tend to abandon them and introduce new ones that often fail in similar ways. Thus, continuity replaces evaluation, and repetition substitutes for reform.
In all these cases, the pattern is the same: when institutions produce tension, instead of reforming them, society increasingly chooses to abandon or hollow them out. The alternative appears modern and efficient, but in reality it represents a retreat from collective responsibility.
Family, Alternatives, and Their Impact
Returning to the family, the consequences of this logic are particularly profound. The family is not merely a private arrangement; it is one of the fundamental institutions through which society reproduces itself—biologically, emotionally, and morally. When marriage loses stability, child-rearing becomes optional, and intergenerational bonds are replaced by contractual care arrangements, society may appear more flexible and advanced, but individuals increasingly experience emotional detachment, insecurity, and social disorientation.
This raises serious questions about social stability and morality. A society cannot be sustained indefinitely on short-term contracts, reversible commitments, and purely instrumental relationships. Trust, loyalty, sacrifice, and responsibility require institutions that endure beyond momentary satisfaction. When exit becomes easier than repair, institutions gradually lose their capacity to integrate individuals into lasting moral communities.
None of this means that divorce, live-in relationships, or childlessness should be simplistically condemned. In many cases, they may be necessary responses to injustice, violence, or unbearable conditions. Yet across these fields—family, welfare policy, social justice, education, and health—a common pattern recurs:
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When institutions fail, we replace them instead of repairing them.
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When policies fail, we rename and relaunch them instead of restructuring them.
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When social arrangements produce strain, we exit them instead of transforming them.
When exit and escape become the default responses to difficulty, society slowly loses the art of repair—repairing relationships, repairing institutions, repairing social bonds. Conflict, instead of becoming a moment of reflection and reconstruction, becomes a trigger for withdrawal.
In this sense, contemporary society is not merely changing its institutions; it is changing its moral imagination. It is moving from a culture of endurance and reform to a culture of abandonment and replacement. The long-term consequence of this shift may not be greater freedom, but greater fragmentation, loneliness, and moral uncertainty.
The Challenge Before Us
The real challenge, therefore, is not to multiply alternatives or search for exits from existing frameworks, but to recover the capacity to resolve problems from within. Without this capacity, society risks becoming trapped in temporary arrangements, ad hoc policies, and unresolved structural contradictions—where change is constant, but resolution is absent.
