INSTITUTE OF PERCEPTION STUDIES

About Us

Institute of Perception Studies (IPS), New Delhi, is a research organization dedicated to the study and understanding of perception through in-depth and methodologically innovative access of its impact on society and politics.

Perception is opinion and judgment, based on both cognitive and intuitive understanding. Perception is essential for knowledge, and is a gateway for explorations that are inductive, deductive, as well as intuitive, predictive. The Institute of Perception Studies (IPS) unifies the various aspects of the social, political and cultural, to reveal the underlying disparities that societies across the world have accepted as ‘normal’. Citizens are the inadvertent practitioners of perceptions created by the normative and experiential devices of perception-making of politics and policy, evidenced in the sociological and economic distress. However, distress in the contemporary world is under-explained and less understood because of its normalisation through a shared perception of its inevitability and, therefore, invisibility. The main objective of IPS research has been to unravel ‘new distress’ through a redefinition that makes the concept as well as the solutions more inclusive.

Distress understood only through economics neglects a far more wide-spread and insidious version that has come to represent the state of developing democracies like India. While poverty and deprivation may be examples of direct distress, there is an indirect distress prevalent as discontent in society that remains uncharted and, therefore, unaddressed. Even the expression of discontent, notably through the anti-incumbent vote, does not address the indirect distress with the same alacrity and commitment as financial distress of the markets, industry or banks is tackled. Further, such indirect distress is often dismissed by compartmentalizing it within a community or a sector, which assists in diminishing its severity in perception and reach. As a result, the direct distress of corporations and industry has a better chance of recovery than individual distress of citizens when it is reversible, until the long-term neglect changes lives irreversibly and irreparably. The objectives of IPS are the following: One, to redefine distress in Indian democracy beyond its perception. Two, to demarcate different kinds of indirect distress. Three, to find methodologies of distress. Four, to identify interventions that can reverse distress.