Applied case questions

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The doctrine of karmakarmaकर्मsay: kuhr-muhLiterally: action, deed; from kṛ-, to doKarma means action, and also the result that every action brings back to the person who did it, in this life or a later one.Western link Close to moral causation, or 'you reap what you sow'. The difference: in most schools karma is an impersonal law that works across lives; theistic schools say God oversees it, but even there it is not a judge's verdict on a single life.Full entry in the glossaryClose starts with action. Karma means action of body, speech and mind, and Rao and Paranjpe say that in Indian usage it "clearly implies free will". Every action leaves a trace that bears fruit later. The tradition does not treat this as fate. The MahabharataMahabharataमहाभारतMahābhāratasay: muh-haa-bhaa-ruh-tuhLiterally: the great (story of the) BharatasThe Mahabharata is a very long Sanskrit epic about a war between two related royal families. The Bhagavad Gita is one part of it.Western link Often compared with Homer's Iliad. It is much longer, and it contains whole books of moral and philosophical teaching.Full entry in the glossaryClose calls effort the field and fortune the seed, and says that in the end effort matters more. Halbfass names three jobs that the law of karma does: it explains events, it guides ethical action, and it is a step toward liberation.

fatalismfatalismLiterally: Latin fatum, what has been spoken, fateFatalism is the belief that events are fixed in advance, so human effort cannot change them. It is often wrongly said to follow from belief in karma.Indian link daiva, fortune or destiny formed by past actions. Indian texts usually pair it with effort and say effort matters more.Full entry in the glossaryClose is the belief that events are fixed in advance, so effort cannot change them. Nandini's words lean toward it, because she uses karma only to explain her failures, and she has stopped acting. But that is her reading, not the doctrine's. The second job of karma, guiding action, points the other way: what she does now shapes what comes next.

Her words may also be a way to give meaning to three painful results. That is not the same as giving up for good, and the counsellor should find out which it is. See karma on the worldview page.

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The father repeats an old claim. The sociologist Max Weber, the economist Kapp and the psychologist David McClelland argued that karma, or Hindu values more broadly, made Indians fatalistic or weak in the drive to achieve. Durganand SinhaDurganand SinhaIndian psychologist (1922 to 1998) at Allahabad. He led the call to 'indigenize' psychology in India, so that it fits Indian life and problems.Full entry in the glossaryClose examined the claim and found that it "has not yet been conclusively supported by empirical studies". He concluded that "the manner and source of interpretation of these beliefs may be far more important" than the beliefs themselves.

Indian research also points to social position. Sinha (1980) found that underprivileged students credited their success to God, luck or a teacher's kindness, but blamed themselves for failure. Nandini does exactly this. Children from disadvantaged castes were also more external in their locus of controllocus of controlLiterally: Latin locus, placeLocus of control is how far a person believes that what happens to them depends on their own actions (internal) or on outside forces such as luck or fate (external).Indian link the Mahabharata's discussion of human effort and fortune (daiva), which says that in the end effort matters more.Full entry in the glossaryClose than high-caste children (Das and Panda, 1971).

Nandini is a first-generation graduate in a hard, crowded exam, with no one at home who has been through it. Some of her sense that nothing she does matters may reflect a real lack of control, not a doctrine. So the father's claim is too simple. Her talk of karma may be a sign of her situation as much as a cause of her low effort. See Does karma make people fatalistic?

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Mr Thomas should separate two kinds of thought. Nandini's belief in karmakarmaकर्मsay: kuhr-muhLiterally: action, deed; from kṛ-, to doKarma means action, and also the result that every action brings back to the person who did it, in this life or a later one.Western link Close to moral causation, or 'you reap what you sow'. The difference: in most schools karma is an impersonal law that works across lives; theistic schools say God oversees it, but even there it is not a judge's verdict on a single life.Full entry in the glossaryClose is a view about how the world works, and he can leave it alone. Dalal and his colleagues found that explanations through karma are very common in India and have no single fixed effect, and Dalal's review found "no consistent linkages" with adjustment. Calling the belief a superstition would damage her trust and gain little.

The thoughts worth questioning are the ones that stop her acting. "When I do well in a mock test, it was just luck" and the sense that whatever she does is useless can be tested against evidence, as cognitive therapy does. How close were her three results? What do her mock-test scores show? These thoughts, more than the doctrine, seem to be what stops her studying.

The Bhagavad GitaBhagavad Gitaभगवद्गीताBhagavad Gītāsay: bhuh-guh-vuhd gee-taaLiterally: song of the Blessed LordThe Bhagavad Gita is a 700-verse dialogue inside the Mahabharata. Krishna advises the warrior Arjuna, who is in crisis before a battle.Western link Often read as a counselling text: a person in crisis talks with a guide. Unlike most Western therapy, the guide also gives moral and spiritual teaching.Full entry in the glossaryClose teaches nishkama karmanishkama karmaनिष्काम कर्मniṣkāma karmasay: nish-kaa-muh kuhr-muhLiterally: action without desire (niṣ + kāma + karma)Nishkama karma means doing one's duty without craving its results. The Bhagavad Gita teaches it as a way to act fully while staying calm and free.Western link Close to intrinsic motivation and to focusing on the process rather than the outcome. The difference: it is a spiritual discipline, with action offered as duty or to God.Full entry in the glossaryClose: act fully, but without clinging to the results. In a study plan, that means targets she controls, such as hours of study and practice papers each day, rather than the result of the exam. Pande and Naidu (1992) built a scale of anasaktianasaktiअनासक्तिanāsaktisay: uh-naa-suhk-tiLiterally: non-attachment (an + āsakti, clinging)Anasakti means non-attachment: acting and enjoying life without clinging to things or to results. Indian psychologists study it as a source of calm and happiness.Western link Close to 'non-attachment' in mindfulness research, and to acceptance in acceptance-based therapies. The difference: it is rooted in duty (dharma) and service, not only in managing emotion.Full entry in the glossaryClose, non-attachment, from this teaching, and found that people high on it reported less distress under stress. Western research on mastery goals, which value effort and learning over results, points the same way.

The risk is the one Durganand SinhaDurganand SinhaIndian psychologist (1922 to 1998) at Allahabad. He led the call to 'indigenize' psychology in India, so that it fits Indian life and problems.Full entry in the glossaryClose raised: non-attachment to results might weaken planning, because people learn from the results of what they do. Nobody has tested that worry. So the plan should still set concrete goals, such as a score to reach in next month's mock tests, and check her progress against them.

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The team should start with hypotheses that could turn out false. Two come straight from the leaflet: children who do the programme will report less exam anxiety, and will get better marks, than similar children who do not. These are practice-level claims in the guide's three levels, so they can be tested in the ordinary way. Each needs an operational definitionoperational definitionAn operational definition defines a concept by how it is measured, for example defining anxiety as a score on a particular questionnaire.Indian link lakshana, the defining mark of a thing in Indian logic, though a lakshana is not a measurement.Full entry in the glossaryClose: anxiety as a score on a tested questionnaire, and marks as the scores in school records.

Chance should decide which of the twelve schools, or which classes, get the programme. Otherwise the keenest head teachers may choose it, and their schools may differ in other ways. The other schools need an active comparison: twenty minutes of something else each morning, such as reading or storytelling. A waiting list is weaker, because any gain might come from attention, novelty or expectation. Goyal and colleagues (2014) also found no evidence that meditation works better than other active treatments. The team should measure the children before the programme starts, at the end of the year and, if possible, some months later. It should also keep a record of children who leave.

The team should also expect modest results. Reviews of meditation research find moderate effects on emotional measures and smaller effects on attention and memory. A 2007 review found that much earlier research was poorly designed. A careful report will say what changed, by how much and for whom, and it will not claim more than the design can show.

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The first claim can stay, in a more careful form. "Reduces exam stress" is a practice-level claim, and in Rao and Paranjpe's terms it is about satyamsat and satyamसत्, सत्यम्sat, satyamsay: suht, suht-yuhmLiterally: sat: being, what truly is; satyam: truthRao and Paranjpe use sat for an absolute truth that can never be shown false, and satyam for what has been found true so far and stays open to revision.Western link Like the difference between a metaphysical certainty and a scientific finding that holds only until it is refuted, as in Popper's idea of falsification.Full entry in the glossaryClose: truth found so far, open to revision. An honest version names a measure and the evidence: "In our study, children who did the programme reported less exam anxiety than similar children who did not." Until Dr Bhat's study reports, the trust can only say that it is testing this.

The second claim should be held back or made modest. "Improves marks" is testable, but reviews of meditation research find smaller effects on attention, memory and other thinking skills than on emotional measures. A fair version would be: "We are testing whether the programme helps children's marks." If the study finds a small effect, the leaflet can report it with its size.

The third claim needs a decision. "Awakens the child's inner consciousness" is unclear. If it means that children notice their own feelings and attention better, the trust can rewrite it as a testable claim with an operational definitionoperational definitionAn operational definition defines a concept by how it is measured, for example defining anxiety as a score on a particular questionnaire.Indian link lakshana, the defining mark of a thing in Indian logic, though a lakshana is not a measurement.Full entry in the glossaryClose, such as a score on a tested scale of self-awareness. If it means that children touch pure consciousness, it is a claim about sat, truth said to be beyond falsification, and no study of children can test it. A leaflet that reports evidence should then drop it.

Even a strong result would not prove the theory behind the practice. Sedlmeier (2014) compares this with psychotherapy research: showing that a therapy helps does not show that the theory behind it is true. So the new leaflet should not suggest that the study proves anything about consciousness.

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The founder has a point. The editors of the Foundations textbook note that most studies of meditation measure Western outcomes, such as blood pressure or anxiety, which "have little to do with what would have been considered relevant in the culture of origin, such as equanimity, compassion, wisdom and detachment". Studies also tend to teach a short technique out of its setting. A twenty-minute school routine is exactly such a technique, so the team should not claim to be testing "yoga" as a whole.

The team could add outcomes drawn from the tradition's own aims, such as calm under pressure or kindness to classmates. Each would need a measure that is built and checked like any other scale. That is indigenizationindigenizationIndigenization is the process of making a discipline fit a local culture, either by building it from local ideas or by adapting imported theories and methods.Indian link no classical term. It is part of modern efforts to renew Indian psychology.Full entry in the glossaryClose from within: the concept comes from the tradition and the method from psychology, as in Pande and Naidu's scale of non-attachment. The team could also interview a small group of children and teachers about what the practice is like for them. A trained interviewer can help them describe it precisely, which is a second-person method. These reports add detail that scores miss, but they are harder to check from outside.

The complaint does not excuse the founder's own leaflet, though. It promises lower stress and better marks, and those claims still need the evidence that the main study will provide.

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In the SankhyaSankhyaसांख्यSāṃkhyasay: saang-khyuhLiterally: enumeration, countingSankhya explains everything with two realities: pure consciousness (purusha) and nature (prakriti). In Sankhya, the mind belongs to nature, not to consciousness.Western link Close to mind-body dualism, as in Descartes. The key difference: Sankhya puts the mind on the material side; only pure consciousness is separate.Full entry in the glossaryClose school, the three gunasgunaगुणguṇasay: gu-nuhLiterally: strand, thread; qualityThe gunas are the three qualities that make up nature and mind: sattva (clarity), rajas (activity) and tamas (inertia). Their mix shapes personality.Western link Close to trait or temperament models of personality, such as the Big Five. The difference: the gunas also describe matter, and their balance can change with practice.Full entry in the glossaryClose are the strands from which all of nature is made, mind and matter alike. sattvasattvaसत्त्वsay: suht-tvuhLiterally: being-ness; from sat, beingSattva is the guna of clarity, lightness and calm. A sattvic mind is clear, peaceful and ready for knowledge.Western link Close to emotional stability and openness in trait models, or to a calm, focused state. Unlike a trait, sattva is also a quality of foods and actions.Full entry in the glossaryClose stands for clarity, lightness and calm, rajasrajasरजस्say: ruh-juhsLiterally: dust, haze; the coloured or dim spaceRajas is the guna of activity, passion and restlessness. It drives desire, effort and change, and too much of it brings agitation.Western link Close to high arousal, drive or impulsivity. The difference: rajas is one part of a three-way balance, not a single scale.Full entry in the glossaryClose for activity, desire and restlessness, and tamastamasतमस्say: tuh-muhsLiterally: darknessTamas is the guna of heaviness, dullness and inertia. It brings sleep, confusion and resistance to change.Western link Close to low arousal, inertia, or the lethargy seen in depression. The difference: tamas is also a quality of matter and of food.Full entry in the glossaryClose for heaviness, dullness and inertia. Every person, food and action has some mix of the three.

Prakash reads a guna score as if it were a trait score, and that misreads the theory in three ways. First, everyone has all three gunas in some mix, so there are no "sattva people" and "tamas people" to sort into three boxes. Second, the gunas are ranked: sattva is admired and tamas is not. Extraversion is neither good nor bad, so a trait score does not rank people as better or worse. The plan turns the ranking of the gunas into a ranking of applicants, and a tamas label becomes a moral judgement about a person. Third, a person's mix is said to change with practice, diet and way of life, while a trait is not expected to change through diet or spiritual practice. Rejecting someone for one high tamas score treats as fixed what the theory itself calls changeable.

So the plan takes an Indian idea and uses it in a way that its own theory does not allow. See the bridge on doshas, gunas and traits on the three perspectives page.

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The plan has two weaknesses besides its misreading of the theory. The first is the measure. In Indian culture sattvasattvaसत्त्वsay: suht-tvuhLiterally: being-ness; from sat, beingSattva is the guna of clarity, lightness and calm. A sattvic mind is clear, peaceful and ready for knowledge.Western link Close to emotional stability and openness in trait models, or to a calm, focused state. Unlike a trait, sattva is also a quality of foods and actions.Full entry in the glossaryClose is admired and tamastamasतमस्say: tuh-muhsLiterally: darknessTamas is the guna of heaviness, dullness and inertia. It brings sleep, confusion and resistance to change.Western link Close to low arousal, inertia, or the lethargy seen in depression. The difference: tamas is also a quality of matter and of food.Full entry in the glossaryClose is not, so few people want to describe themselves as tamasic. Rao and Paranjpe warn that self-report guna scales may measure what people wish they were. In a job application the pull is even stronger, because applicants know they are being judged. Rao and Paranjpe also warn that some guna scales were checked only against other guna scales, which "courts the danger of both, or all, of the two or more tests being equally wrong". A free online test of unknown origin has even less behind it: no evidence that it measures what it claims, and none that it predicts how people work.

The second weakness is the argument. "It is ancient, so it must fit" values an idea because it is old, which is what Durganand SinhaDurganand SinhaIndian psychologist (1922 to 1998) at Allahabad. He led the call to 'indigenize' psychology in India, so that it fits Indian life and problems.Full entry in the glossaryClose called revivalismrevivalismPraising old ideas because they are old, and rejecting modern science. Durganand Sinha used the word for an uncritical return to ancient Indian texts.Compare Compare: separation in John Berry's model of acculturation, where a group keeps its own culture and rejects the other. Sinha applied Berry's model to systems of knowledge rather than to people.Full entry in the glossaryClose. And the word "Indian" names where an idea came from. It is not proof that the idea works for Indian workers. That has to be tested, as it would be for any Western test.

Put together, the risks are real. Applicants who guess the "right" answers would look sattvic and be hired as managers, while honest applicants could be rejected. Because the company has no check on whether the scores predict work, nobody would notice the mistake.

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Aisha should advise that no guna test be used for hiring until there is evidence for it. A published scale is the minimum: Shilpa and Murthy's Mysore Triguna Scale, for example, was tested with more than 1,500 people. Even then the company would need to check the scale against things outside it, such as ratings by supervisors and observed behaviour, and not only against other gunagunaगुणguṇasay: gu-nuhLiterally: strand, thread; qualityThe gunas are the three qualities that make up nature and mind: sattva (clarity), rajas (activity) and tamas (inertia). Their mix shapes personality.Western link Close to trait or temperament models of personality, such as the Big Five. The difference: the gunas also describe matter, and their balance can change with practice.Full entry in the glossaryClose scales. It would also need to test, with its own staff, whether the scores predict how well people do the job, and whether the test treats different groups of applicants fairly.

The bridge on the three perspectives page gives the right attitude: treat a guna score as a value-laden self-description, not as a neutral trait test. If the company finds the idea useful, a safer use is voluntary. Examples are a workshop where staff reflect on their own habits, or a research study that staff can choose to join. Using the scores to reject applicants should wait until the evidence exists, and it may never be justified.

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An emicemic and eticsay: ee-mik, e-tikLiterally: from the linguistics terms 'phonemic' and 'phonetic'An emic approach studies a culture from the inside, using its own concepts. An etic approach studies it from the outside, using concepts meant to fit all cultures.Indian link studying a darshana on its own terms (emic) versus comparing it with Western psychology (etic).Full entry in the glossaryClose approach studies a culture from the inside, with its own concepts. An etic approach uses concepts meant to fit all cultures. The American questionnaire is built on one culture's emic idea of depression. Translating it word for word and using it in Tamil villages treats that idea as universal, which is an imposed etic. Berry and colleagues (1992) list where this kind of bias enters research: in the items, the instruments, the concepts and the topics. This questionnaire risks all four.

The sadness item shows the problem. If women in distress usually speak of a mind that "will not rest" or a heavy body, an item about feeling sad may miss them. Their scores would then be low because the test does not fit, not because they are well. The norms are a second problem. Tests like this were mostly built on WEIRDWEIRD samplesLiterally: acronym: Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, DemocraticWEIRD stands for Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich and Democratic. Most psychology research has studied such people, yet presents the results as true for all humans.Indian link none; but the finding supports Indian psychologists' long-standing claim that mainstream findings are not culture-free.Full entry in the glossaryClose samples, so an American cut-off score may not mean the same thing in a Tamil village.

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The item assumes that a person who feels little control has an external locus of controllocus of controlLiterally: Latin locus, placeLocus of control is how far a person believes that what happens to them depends on their own actions (internal) or on outside forces such as luck or fate (external).Indian link the Mahabharata's discussion of human effort and fortune (daiva), which says that in the end effort matters more.Full entry in the glossaryClose, and that this is a sign of hopelessness. For many women in these villages, a "yes" may mean something else. Belief in karmakarmaकर्मsay: kuhr-muhLiterally: action, deed; from kṛ-, to doKarma means action, and also the result that every action brings back to the person who did it, in this life or a later one.Western link Close to moral causation, or 'you reap what you sow'. The difference: in most schools karma is an impersonal law that works across lives; theistic schools say God oversees it, but even there it is not a judge's verdict on a single life.Full entry in the glossaryClose or God's will is an explanation of events, not necessarily giving up. In Indian usage karma "clearly implies free will", and the tradition does not treat it as fate. Dalal's studies found such explanations very common among Indian patients, with "no consistent linkages" to how well they adjusted.

A "yes" may also reflect real life. Indian research shows that people with less power report less control, often because they have less: children from disadvantaged castes were more external than high-caste children (Das and Panda, 1971), and underprivileged students blamed themselves for failure but credited success to God or luck (Sinha, 1980). A village woman with little say over money or land may answer "yes" for good reason. So the same answer could come from a religious belief, from real circumstances or from depression, and the item cannot tell them apart. Counting every "yes" as depression would mislabel many women. See what these beliefs do.

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The charity should treat the translation as a start, not an end. Translating and adapting the American questionnaire is indigenizationindigenizationIndigenization is the process of making a discipline fit a local culture, either by building it from local ideas or by adapting imported theories and methods.Indian link no classical term. It is part of modern efforts to renew Indian psychology.Full entry in the glossaryClose from without: Enriquez's "from without", and Durganand Sinha's "indigenization of the exogenous". That step is useful, but on its own it keeps the American concept.

The next step goes the other way. Selvi, or a trained interviewer, could talk with women in the villages about how they describe distress, in their own words. That is emicemic and eticsay: ee-mik, e-tikLiterally: from the linguistics terms 'phonemic' and 'phonetic'An emic approach studies a culture from the inside, using its own concepts. An etic approach studies it from the outside, using concepts meant to fit all cultures.Indian link studying a darshana on its own terms (emic) versus comparing it with Western psychology (etic).Full entry in the glossaryClose research and indigenization from within. Phrases that come up often, such as "my mind will not rest", can become new items or replace weak ones. The new version should then be checked against careful interviews by clinicians, and local norms should be built before any cut-off score is used. Over time, comparing studies like this from several regions is how a derived etic concept of depression can be built, instead of an imposed one.

All of this takes more than two weeks, and the charity should say so plainly. A rushed screen that labels the wrong women as depressed, or misses the right ones, could do more harm than no screen at all. See two directions of indigenization.

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Aditya makes three claims, and each runs into a warning in the guide. The first, that the rishis "discovered everything", is the opposite of the colonial claim that India had no psychology. The old texts hold a great deal of psychological thinking, but they did not run experiments, collect data from many people or test rival theories. Rao and Paranjpe (2016) call claims like Aditya's "sanctimonious chest beating", which "is seldom conducive to promoting Indian psychology as a scientific discipline".

The second claim, about brain scans, mixes two levels. Research can test whether meditation goes with changes in the brain, and one review concluded that the nervous system "is clearly affected by meditation". But scientists have not found a clear brain pattern that marks meditation, and in any case a brain pattern is a fact about the brain. It cannot show that an eternal self exists. "Meditation reveals the eternal self" is a claim about satsat and satyamसत्, सत्यम्sat, satyamsay: suht, suht-yuhmLiterally: sat: being, what truly is; satyam: truthRao and Paranjpe use sat for an absolute truth that can never be shown false, and satyam for what has been found true so far and stays open to revision.Western link Like the difference between a metaphysical certainty and a scientific finding that holds only until it is refuted, as in Popper's idea of falsification.Full entry in the glossaryClose, a truth said to be beyond falsification, so no scan can prove it.

The third claim, "if it is Indian and ancient, it is scientific", values ideas for their age. Durganand SinhaDurganand SinhaIndian psychologist (1922 to 1998) at Allahabad. He led the call to 'indigenize' psychology in India, so that it fits Indian life and problems.Full entry in the glossaryClose called this revivalismrevivalismPraising old ideas because they are old, and rejecting modern science. Durganand Sinha used the word for an uncritical return to ancient Indian texts.Compare Compare: separation in John Berry's model of acculturation, where a group keeps its own culture and rejects the other. Sinha applied Berry's model to systems of knowledge rather than to people.Full entry in the glossaryClose and linked it with antiscientism. The word "Indian" names where ideas came from, not whether they are true. Meera Nanda (2003) also warned that such arguments can feed political claims of a superior "Vedic science".

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Sana is partly right. Most writing on Indian psychology, including the course textbooks, draws mainly on Hindu sources, and Rao and Paranjpe make YogaYogaयोगsay: yo-guhLiterally: joining, yoking; discipline; from yuj-, to yokeYoga is both a school of philosophy and a set of practices that train body, breath and mind. Its classic text is Patanjali's Yoga Sutra.Western link Often compared with mind-body or mindfulness-based interventions. The key difference: classical Yoga is a full ethical and spiritual path, not only a technique for health.Full entry in the glossaryClose and AdvaitaAdvaita Vedantaअद्वैत वेदान्तAdvaita Vedāntasay: uhd-vai-tuh vay-daan-tuhLiterally: not-two; non-dualAdvaita Vedanta teaches that the true self (atman) and ultimate reality (Brahman) are one. The feeling of being a separate person comes from ignorance.Western link Often called monism. Advaita writers prefer 'non-dualism': reality is not two, but it is not described as one countable thing either.Full entry in the glossaryClose the "foundation base" of their model. DalitDalitदलितdalitasay: duh-litLiterally: broken, crushed, oppressedDalit is a name used by and for people from the castes that were once treated as 'untouchable'. Many prefer it to older insulting labels because it names the oppression they faced.Full entry in the glossaryClose, AdivasiAdivasiआदिवासीādivāsīsay: aa-di-vaa-seeLiterally: original inhabitantsAdivasi, 'original inhabitants', is a name for India's tribal peoples. Many live in forest and hill regions, with their own languages, religions and ways of life.Compare Close to 'Indigenous peoples' in other countries.Full entry in the glossaryClose, Islamic and folk traditions appear rarely. She is also right that the deepest claims cannot be tested. Sedlmeier (2014) says that for most Indian scholars "the metatheory itself is not open to falsification".

But "Hindu religion in a lab coat" goes too far. Classical SankhyaSankhyaसांख्यSāṃkhyasay: saang-khyuhLiterally: enumeration, countingSankhya explains everything with two realities: pure consciousness (purusha) and nature (prakriti). In Sankhya, the mind belongs to nature, not to consciousness.Western link Close to mind-body dualism, as in Descartes. The key difference: Sankhya puts the mind on the material side; only pure consciousness is separate.Full entry in the glossaryClose is atheistic, Buddhism and Jainism do without a creator God, and atheists can practise meditation. ShankaraShankaraशङ्करŚaṅkarasay: shuhng-kuh-ruhIndian philosopher of the 8th century CE, the most influential teacher of Advaita Vedanta, which holds that the true self and ultimate reality are one.Full entry in the glossaryClose wrote that "even a hundred scriptural passages" cannot make fire cool, which puts experience above scripture. "None of it can ever be tested" is also wrong. Many specific hypotheses can be tested, and some have been. Meditation programmes show moderate benefits for anxiety, depression and pain, and Pande and Naidu found that non-attachment predicted symptoms under stress.

Imre LakatosImre Lakatossay: im-ray lak-uh-tosHungarian-born philosopher of science who worked in London. He described science as competing 'research programmes', each with a protected hard core and a testable outer belt.Full entry in the glossaryClose gives the best reply to her main point. Every research programmeresearch programmeImre Lakatos's term for a line of research with a protected 'hard core' of basic assumptions and an outer 'protective belt' of hypotheses that are tested and changed.Indian link a darshana, a school with fixed core assumptions and many arguments built around them.Full entry in the glossaryClose protects a hard core that is not tested directly. What matters is whether its protective belt of hypotheses produces testable predictions and new findings. Mainstream psychology also rests on assumptions it does not test, such as materialismmaterialismMaterialism, or physicalism, is the view that only matter and physical forces are real. On this view, the mind is a product of the brain.Indian link Charvaka (Lokayata) materialism. Sankhya partly agrees, because it treats the mind as material, but it adds purusha.Full entry in the glossaryClose.

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A fair verdict might read like this. "Neither speaker wins outright, because Indian psychology is not one kind of claim. At the level of practices, some, such as meditation, have moderate support for some outcomes, though many studies are weak. At the level of concepts, ideas such as the three gunasgunaगुणguṇasay: gu-nuhLiterally: strand, thread; qualityThe gunas are the three qualities that make up nature and mind: sattva (clarity), rajas (activity) and tamas (inertia). Their mix shapes personality.Western link Close to trait or temperament models of personality, such as the Big Five. The difference: the gunas also describe matter, and their balance can change with practice.Full entry in the glossaryClose can be measured, although the quality of the scales varies. At the level of metaphysics, claims about pure consciousness are not tested by current research and may not be testable. So parts of Indian psychology can be studied as science, and parts cannot."

The judge could add a word about the course itself. The UGC guidelines ask that IKS courses be "based on authentic sources". By Durganand Sinha's standard, a course meets the bar if it reads the traditions critically and tests their claims, and fails it if it simply praises them. An IKS course can therefore be scientific in the way it handles evidence, without claiming that the metaphysics has been proved. See a fair verdict.

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The daughter speaks of dharmadharmaधर्मsay: dhuhr-muhLiterally: that which holds or supports; from dhṛ-, to holdDharma is the right way of living: duty, ethics, and the order that holds society and the world together. It depends partly on one's role and stage of life.Western link Close to 'ethics', 'duty' or 'moral order'. The difference: dharma joins personal ethics, social roles and cosmic law, and it depends on context.Full entry in the glossaryClose as if it were one fixed rule: a good child keeps a parent at home. But dharma is wider than that. It covers duty, right, justice and the order that holds a family and society together. Some duties, such as truthfulness, apply to everyone. Others depend on a person's role and stage of life. Rao and Paranjpe stress that dharma is lived practice, so it has to be worked out in real situations.

The phrase desh-kala-patradesh-kala-patraदेश-काल-पात्रdeśa-kāla-pātrasay: day-shuh kaa-luh paa-truhLiterally: place, time and person (literally 'vessel')Place, time and person: the three things Hindu tradition says you must know before you can judge an action as right or wrong.Western link Close to Kurt Lewin's idea that behaviour depends on the person and the situation together. The difference: desh-kala-patra adds time, and it is used to judge whether an act is right, not only to explain it.Full entry in the glossaryClose gives the family a way to work it out. It says that an act must be judged in the light of place, time and person, so the same choice can be right in one setting and wrong in another. Here the place includes a son in Pune and a daughter in Thrissur. The time is a period of growing memory loss and real danger from the gas stove. The person is a father with clear wishes of his own.

Kurt Lewin also said that behaviour depends on the person and the environment together, but his idea only describes. Desh-kala-patra is a rule for judging what is right, so it fits a decision about duty. It lets the family ask what dharma asks of them in this case, rather than what people will say.

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Mr Gopalan's calm fits a worldview that is common in India. Rao and Paranjpe write that rebirth (punarjanmapunarjanmaपुनर्जन्मsay: pu-nuhr-juhn-muhLiterally: birth again (punar + janma)Punarjanma means rebirth: the belief that after death a being is born again in a new body, according to its karma.Western link Close to 'reincarnation'. Mainstream psychology treats it as a belief to study, not a fact; it matters for understanding how many Indian clients make sense of life events.Full entry in the glossaryClose) is part of the traditional worldview "shared by almost all schools of Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain thought", except the materialist Charvakas. A man who believes he will be born again may face death with less fear than his grandson expects.

There is a little evidence on this. Lamba and colleagues (2021) studied 105 older Hindu pilgrims at the Kumbh Mela. Stronger belief in rebirth and more meaning in life went with lower anxiety about death. This fits terror management theoryterror management theoryA theory in social psychology that says people hold on to their cultural worldview partly because it protects them from the fear of death.Indian link belief in rebirth, which one Indian study linked to lower death anxiety in older pilgrims.Full entry in the glossaryClose, which says that cultural worldviews protect people from the fear of death. But the study is small and measured everything at the same time, so it cannot show that the belief causes the calm. It also cannot tell us about one particular man.

So the grandson's conclusion is too quick. Calm about death is not, by itself, a sign of giving up. It may be what his grandfather's beliefs lead him to feel. The grandson should look at how his grandfather actually lives from day to day, and ask him, before deciding that something is wrong. Whatever his beliefs, the memory loss and the gas stove need a medical assessment. See non-attachment, rebirth and the gaps.

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An independent view of the self, in Markus and Kitayama's (1991) terms, would frame the decision around individual choices. What does Mr Gopalan want? What does the son's career need? An interdependent selfinterdependent selfA way of seeing oneself as part of a web of relationships, with family, group and duties at the centre of who one is, rather than a separate set of personal traits.Indian link the self as defined through family, community and dharma, the duties of one's role.Full entry in the glossaryClose view would frame it around relationships and duties: what the children owe their father, and how the family will be seen. The daughter's "What will people say?" comes from this side. J. B. P. Sinha (1982) wrote that the "Hindu experienced self is more structured around we, ours, and us".

Indian research suggests that the family need not choose one. Sinha and Tripathi (1994) found individualist and collectivist tendencies side by side in Indians, and this family already shows both. The son weighs his career, and he also wants his father close to him. The father wants to stay in his own house, which is a personal wish and also a wish to stay near his daughter's family. A good decision can weigh the father's wishes and the family's duties together.

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The counsellor should use all three perspectives, as the guide does for Lakshmi on the three perspectives page. The biological lens comes first because of the danger. Mr Gopalan needs a medical and memory assessment, and the family needs a plan for the gas stove now.

The socio-cultural lens looks at the family's situation: who lives where, who would do the daily caring, what each option costs, and the pressure the daughter feels from her community. The indigenous lens asks what the family's own ideas say. The tradition links the four aims of life, the purusharthaspurusharthaपुरुषार्थpuruṣārthasay: pu-ru-shaar-thuhLiterally: aim of a person (puruṣa + artha)The purusharthas are the four aims of human life: dharma (right living), artha (wealth and security), kama (pleasure and love) and moksha (liberation).Western link Close to models of human needs and goals, such as Maslow's hierarchy. The difference: the aims form a moral framework in which ethics guides the others, not a ladder of needs.Full entry in the glossaryClose, to stages of life, and its highest aim, mokshamokshaमोक्षmokṣasay: mok-shuhLiterally: release, freedom; from muc-, to freeMoksha means liberation: final freedom from the cycle of rebirth and from suffering. It is the highest of the four aims of life.Western link Close to 'salvation' in religion, or to 'self-transcendence' in transpersonal psychology. The difference: moksha is freedom through knowledge or insight, not a reward from outside.Full entry in the glossaryClose, is release rather than more striving. Mr Gopalan's wish to spend his last years with the Gita can be read in these terms. Rather than treat his calm as a symptom, the counsellor can treat it as a goal he has chosen.

No one lens is enough. A purely indigenous approach could romanticise tradition and ignore the stove. A purely biological one could miss what the father wants from his last years. The biopsychosocial modelbiopsychosocial modelThe view, used widely in medicine and clinical psychology, that health and illness come from biological, psychological and social causes working together.Indian link Ayurveda's view of body, mind and self as one system, and the pancha kosha model of the person in layers.Full entry in the glossaryClose also asks for breadth, but its "psycho" level is filled by Western psychology. The indigenous lens adds the family's own ideas of a good old age.

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The psychologist should measure each kind of explanation on its own scale: karma, God's will, family history, stress and self-blame. A single "karma or not" question would miss the fact that people often hold supernatural and natural explanations side by side, as Legare and colleagues (2012) found. Dalal's research on illness attributionsattribution theoryAttribution theory studies how people explain the causes of events, such as their own success, an illness or an accident. The explanation they choose affects how they feel and act.Indian link karma, which gives a ready explanation for misfortune that links it to a person's own past actions.Full entry in the glossaryClose asked the same kind of question of accident victims, heart patients and women with cancer.

Outcomes should come from records where possible: blood sugar results, clinic visits and medicine refills, plus patients' own reports of diet and exercise. The study should follow the same patients for the whole year, measuring explanations at the start and outcomes at several points. It should also record income, education, caste and how far patients live from the clinic. Social position shapes both how people explain events and what they can do. Without these measures, a link between karmakarmaकर्मsay: kuhr-muhLiterally: action, deed; from kṛ-, to doKarma means action, and also the result that every action brings back to the person who did it, in this life or a later one.Western link Close to moral causation, or 'you reap what you sow'. The difference: in most schools karma is an impersonal law that works across lives; theistic schools say God oversees it, but even there it is not a judge's verdict on a single life.Full entry in the glossaryClose and poor control could really be a link between poverty and poor control. A smaller group of patients could be interviewed about what their explanation means to them, because Dalal (2000) found that the meaning of these beliefs shifts with the illness and the setting.

The results could show which explanations go with better or worse management, after taking social position into account. They could not prove that a belief causes an outcome, because no one can assign beliefs to patients by chance. Like Dalal's studies, this would be a correlational study, and it should be reported that way.

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Dr Hegde's claim does not match the Indian evidence. Reviewing five hospital studies, Ajit K. DalalAjit K. DalalIndian psychologist at the University of Allahabad who studied health beliefs and folk healing, and wrote a widely used history chapter on psychology in India.Full entry in the glossaryClose (2000) found that patients "consistently attributed their illness to karma and God's will", but found "no consistent linkages" between these beliefs and how well patients adjusted. In a study of 70 men after a first heart attack, beliefs in karmakarmaकर्मsay: kuhr-muhLiterally: action, deed; from kṛ-, to doKarma means action, and also the result that every action brings back to the person who did it, in this life or a later one.Western link Close to moral causation, or 'you reap what you sow'. The difference: in most schools karma is an impersonal law that works across lives; theistic schools say God oversees it, but even there it is not a judge's verdict on a single life.Full entry in the glossaryClose, God and a just world went with better recovery (Agrawal and Dalal, 1993). Blaming the illness on God, by contrast, went with worse recovery and mood. Karma explanations often sit alongside medical treatment, and they are not simply fatalismfatalismLiterally: Latin fatum, what has been spoken, fateFatalism is the belief that events are fixed in advance, so human effort cannot change them. It is often wrongly said to follow from belief in karma.Indian link daiva, fortune or destiny formed by past actions. Indian texts usually pair it with effort and say effort matters more.Full entry in the glossaryClose.

The doctor may still be noticing something real. Patients who blame karma might, in his clinic, also be poorer, live further away or have less schooling, and those things could explain why they miss visits. His claim is a fair hypothesis for the psychologist's study to test. It is not yet a finding. Acting on it, for example by lecturing patients about their beliefs, could damage trust without helping their health.

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The Charaka SamhitaCharaka SamhitaचरकसंहिताCarakasaṃhitāsay: chuh-ruh-kuh suhm-hi-taaLiterally: the compendium of CarakaThe Charaka Samhita is the oldest major text of Ayurveda. It covers health, disease and treatment, and it has much to say about the mind.Western link Comparable to the Hippocratic writings of Greek medicine as a founding medical text. It differs in giving a full place to the mind and to ethics in health.Full entry in the glossaryClose asks exactly this patient's question: why do people fall ill when they know how to stay well? Charaka's answer is prajnaparadhaprajnaparadhaप्रज्ञापराधprajñāparādhasay: pruhg-yaa-puh-raa-dhuhLiterally: an offence (or failure) of the intellectIn Ayurveda, a failure of judgement: knowing better but acting against it. Charaka treats it as a root cause of illness.Western link Close to ideas in health psychology about poor self-regulation and the gap between knowing and doing. The difference: Charaka treats it as a moral and cognitive failure together.Full entry in the glossaryClose, a failure of judgement. The intellect fails to tell good from harmful, self-restraint fails to hold back, and memory fails to recall what one has learned. His cure includes good conduct and a steady mind, not only medicine.

The biopsychosocial modelbiopsychosocial modelThe view, used widely in medicine and clinical psychology, that health and illness come from biological, psychological and social causes working together.Indian link Ayurveda's view of body, mind and self as one system, and the pancha kosha model of the person in layers.Full entry in the glossaryClose would also see more than a fault in the body. It looks for biological, psychological and social causes together: perhaps a family history of diabetes, habits formed over years, and family meals or festivals full of sweets. The two views agree that the gap between knowing what is healthy and doing it is a central problem. They differ in framing. AyurvedaAyurvedaआयुर्वेदĀyurvedasay: aa-yur-vay-duhLiterally: knowledge of life (āyus + veda)Ayurveda is India's traditional system of medicine. It treats body and mind together and aims to keep health in balance, not only to cure illness.Western link Close to holistic or biopsychosocial medicine. The key difference: its concepts (doshas, gunas) do not match Western physiology, and its care includes diet, daily routine and ethics.Full entry in the glossaryClose treats the failure as both moral and cognitive, and it uses ideas such as the doshasdoshaदोषdoṣasay: do-shuhLiterally: fault, defectIn Ayurveda, the doshas are three bodily forces: vata, pitta and kapha. Health is their balance; illness comes when they are out of balance.Western link Loosely close to the four humours of ancient Greek medicine, or to temperament types. The difference: doshas are not part of modern physiology, and self-report dosha questionnaires still need validation.Full entry in the glossaryClose and gunas that have no direct match in Western physiology. The biopsychosocial model describes causes without a moral judgement.

For a psychologist, Charaka's idea is a useful description of the gap between knowing and doing, and a possible source of hypotheses about judgement, self-restraint and memory. It should be used without blame, and alongside the social pressures that the biopsychosocial model points to. See the bridge in Ayurveda: suffering of the mind.

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The findings echo Durganand SinhaDurganand SinhaIndian psychologist (1922 to 1998) at Allahabad. He led the call to 'indigenize' psychology in India, so that it fits Indian life and problems.Full entry in the glossaryClose's study of the young and the old. In 1969 he compared 300 students, 150 young teachers and 150 older teachers in Allahabad, the same city. The young chose all their role models from the present day, and "very rarely" from "the great personalities of the past". They also hesitated more over moral questions and suspended judgement more often than the older teachers. Sinha (1978) explained this as a break with the past: "Old values have tumbled and the new are still in a state of flux". For him a mature identity needs "a subjective sense of continuous existence, and a coherent memory".

This bears on the third of the six arguments for Indian psychology: psyche, culture, values and personality hang together, and rapid social change sets them in conflict.

The survey has clear limits. It asked only students, so it cannot show that the young differ from their elders, which was the heart of Sinha's design. Its questions and its sample come from four colleges in one district at one time. It shows that a problem may exist. It does not show the cause, and it does not show that a programme is needed. See the six arguments.

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Proposal A has real strengths as mainstream psychology. It measures, so its claims can be checked: objectivity and quantification are what let a district know whether money was well spent.

Its weaknesses come from where the tool was made. A questionnaire built and tested in the United States and then translated is, at best, indigenizationindigenizationIndigenization is the process of making a discipline fit a local culture, either by building it from local ideas or by adapting imported theories and methods.Indian link no classical term. It is part of modern efforts to renew Indian psychology.Full entry in the glossaryClose from without. Its items may not mean the same thing to students in Prayagraj. Treating it as if it fitted everyone is an imposed etic, the problem behind the second of the six arguments, since most such tools were built on WEIRD samplesWEIRD samplesLiterally: acronym: Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, DemocraticWEIRD stands for Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich and Democratic. Most psychology research has studied such people, yet presents the results as true for all humans.Indian link none; but the finding supports Indian psychologists' long-standing claim that mainstream findings are not culture-free.Full entry in the glossaryClose. Before any score is compared, Dr Siddiqui should check what the items mean to these students and whether Indian norms exist.

The aim is also narrow. Success is defined as a rank: each college's average score compared with other people's scores. The Foundations editors say Indian psychology is "built on self-knowledge rather than on knowledge of statistically generalized others" (2014, p. xviii). A student could score above the national average and still not know what they value. The goals of Indian psychology point elsewhere: self-knowledge, growth beyond normal, and, in the Foundations editors' words, "the mastery and transformation of oneself" rather than "changes in others" (2014, p. xiv). Most of all, the workshop does nothing about the problem the survey suggests, the students' weak link with their own past. The workshop could still be useful if its questionnaire is adapted and checked, and if it is tested against a comparison group. See features and goals and the two pictures side by side.

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Proposal B draws on a real feature of Indian psychology: learning through ritual, community and story. The Foundations editors describe know-how passed "from generation to generation" through customs and institutions (2014, p. xv), and Rao and Paranjpe describe villagers who stage stories from the epics without a written script. Stories told by elders also meet the problem in the survey head on, because they give students role models from the past. That is the continuity Sinha found missing.

The leaflet's promise is the weak point. "Ancient values will cure modern confusion" is revivalismrevivalismPraising old ideas because they are old, and rejecting modern science. Durganand Sinha used the word for an uncritical return to ancient Indian texts.Compare Compare: separation in John Berry's model of acculturation, where a group keeps its own culture and rejects the other. Sinha applied Berry's model to systems of knowledge rather than to people.Full entry in the glossaryClose, which Sinha warned against: praising an idea because it is old. The proposal also has a blind spot. The same tradition that spread stories to everyone kept some people out: the law books (DharmashastrasDharmashastraधर्मशास्त्रdharmaśāstrasay: dhuhr-muh-shaas-truhLiterally: teaching (śāstra) on dharmaThe Dharmashastras are Sanskrit treatises on dharma: duties, law, ritual and social rules for people of each social group and stage of life. Manu's is the best known.Western link Close to codes of law and ethics that set social roles. The difference: they tie duty to birth group and life stage, and present it as part of a cosmic order.Full entry in the glossaryClose) barred Shudras from Vedic learning. A programme drawn only from Hindu epics and Puranas may also leave out Muslim, Christian, Buddhist, Dalit and Adivasi students and their own traditions. Indian is not the same as Hindu.

Dr Siddiqui could advise a plan that joins the two. Keep the storytelling and the elders, but choose stories and role models from several traditions, with the students' help. Keep Proposal A's habit of measuring, but use measures checked for these students, and compare colleges that run the programme with similar colleges that do not. Set a goal in Indian terms, such as students' growing sense of who they are and what they value, and test whether it is reached. This follows Dalal's view that "we need both the paradigms" (2014, p. 35), and Sinha's rule that Indian ideas should be tested, not simply admired.

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The programme uses three Indian concepts. bhaktibhaktiभक्तिsay: bhuhk-tiLiterally: sharing, devotion (bhaj-, to share, to worship)Bhakti means loving devotion to God. Bhakti yoga, the path of devotion, is one of three main paths in the Bhagavad Gita, with action and knowledge.Western link Close to religious devotion, and to positive emotions such as love and gratitude in the psychology of religion. The difference: bhakti is a full path to liberation.Full entry in the glossaryClose is set beside positive emotion, gratitude and relationships. The match holds in part: devotional singing is full of love, gratitude and joy, and it is done in community, which fits the R of PERMA. It breaks because bhakti is love of God for its own sake. Rao and Paranjpe call devotion that seeks gains the "garden variety", "ironically, opposite to the teachings of most forms of yoga". Singing "to build positive emotion" turns devotion into a technique.

samatvasamatvaसमत्वsay: suh-muht-vuhLiterally: evenness, sameness (sama, even + -tva, -ness)Samatva means evenness of mind: staying the same in success and failure, pleasure and pain, praise and blame. The Bhagavad Gita (2.48) calls it yoga itself.Western link Close to equanimity as meditation researchers define it, and loosely to resilience and emotion regulation. The difference: resilience is recovery after setbacks, while samatva is evenness toward good and bad events alike, and comes from loosening the ego's stake in results.Full entry in the glossaryClose is set beside resilienceresilienceResilience is doing well, or recovering well, in spite of adversity such as loss, illness or trauma.Indian link samatva and the Gita's steady person (sthitaprajna). The difference: samatva is evenness toward good events as well as bad ones.Full entry in the glossaryClose. Both describe a person who is not thrown off balance. But resilience is defined by adversity: bouncing back after a blow. Samatva, in the Gita (2.38 and 2.48), is evenness toward pleasure and pain, gain and loss alike, and it comes from loosening the ego's stake in results, not from hiding feelings. Calling it "the Gita's word for resilience" loses this.

karma yogakarma yogaकर्मयोगkarmayogasay: kuhr-muh yo-guhLiterally: the yoga (discipline) of actionKarma yoga is the path of action: doing one's duty fully and well while giving up craving for its results. The Bhagavad Gita teaches it as a way to freedom.Western link Close to a focus on process rather than outcome, to intrinsic motivation and to flow, and to altruism when it serves others. The difference: flow is a passing, enjoyable state, while karma yoga is a lifelong attitude, held in dull or painful duty too, and aimed at liberation.Full entry in the glossaryClose and duty are set beside meaning. Doing one's duties can carry meaning, but meaning-in-life research measures what a person feels, while dharma is an order a person is bound by, which may bring no felt meaning. The course pairs karma yoga with engagement and flow, and dharma with meaning; the charity has moved karma yoga to meaning. See the concepts one by one.

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Priya lived among survivors of the Kachchh earthquake for at least three years. They believed that carrying out their duties to family, society and nature was the condition for peace of mind, and their belief in karmakarmaकर्मsay: kuhr-muhLiterally: action, deed; from kṛ-, to doKarma means action, and also the result that every action brings back to the person who did it, in this life or a later one.Western link Close to moral causation, or 'you reap what you sow'. The difference: in most schools karma is an impersonal law that works across lives; theistic schools say God oversees it, but even there it is not a judge's verdict on a single life.Full entry in the glossaryClose "gave them new and positive meaning in life". This suggests that talk of duty may make sense to many families in the village, and that it can help people find meaning after loss.

The limits are serious. The study is ethnographic and small, about 40 adults in one region, so it shows how duty can carry meaning, not that it does for everyone. Indian studies of karma and recovery are mixed: Dalal (2000) found "no consistent linkages" between karma beliefs and adjustment. And karma beliefs have a darker use, when people are told their suffering is deserved, which the worldview page discusses. Talks on duty must not suggest that the families brought the cyclone on themselves.

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First, the measures. A resilience questionnaire and the PERMA-Profiler measure Western ideas of wellbeing. The editors of the course textbook warn that yoga and meditation have been measured "almost exclusively on variables like blood pressure, anxiety, depression and extroversion", not on what the culture of origin valued, "such as equanimity, compassion, wisdom and detachment". Ms Das should keep the Western scales but add measures of what the programme claims to build, such as evenness of mind or peace of mind, and first ask the families what wellbeing means to them. This is an emicemic and eticsay: ee-mik, e-tikLiterally: from the linguistics terms 'phonemic' and 'phonetic'An emic approach studies a culture from the inside, using its own concepts. An etic approach studies it from the outside, using concepts meant to fit all cultures.Indian link studying a darshana on its own terms (emic) versus comparing it with Western psychology (etic).Full entry in the glossaryClose step, and it respects desh-kala-patradesh-kala-patraदेश-काल-पात्रdeśa-kāla-pātrasay: day-shuh kaa-luh paa-truhLiterally: place, time and person (literally 'vessel')Place, time and person: the three things Hindu tradition says you must know before you can judge an action as right or wrong.Western link Close to Kurt Lewin's idea that behaviour depends on the person and the situation together. The difference: desh-kala-patra adds time, and it is used to judge whether an act is right, not only to explain it.Full entry in the glossaryClose: place, time and person.

Second, the design. A change from the start to three months later could come from time, rebuilding or relief money. The charity should compare families in the programme with a similar group, for example families who join later, and measure again some months afterwards. Any result should be reported as a link unless the design can show cause.

Third, the context. India is not one religion, and this village is not either. Devotional singing should be offered, not required, and Christian and Muslim families should be able to use their own practices. Last, wellbeing after a cyclone depends on homes, boats, income and health. Talks on samatva and duty can help, but only beside practical support. See the debate.