Rupees and Reason

There are three things that triggered this post.

One, I’ve been working on a marketing brief for a financial client. As part of it, I’ve been digging into the context of money and wealth. Two, few days back, I was talking to my mom, and she made a passing reference about a relative visiting my native place He is generally treated with high reverence as he has made himself “successful”, and doing good favours for the extended family. Well, how he became successful…that’s a topic for a different conversation. Three, a couple of weekends ago, I met an old friend for breakfast at a Udipi restaurant. After the dosas, puris, and filter coffee, the bill arrived, and like clockwork, we tossed in a 20 rupees tip — less a gesture of generosity, more a tick mark on the social contract. I was left with a nagging feeling on why didn’t I tip more. I thought to myself, if we were at a shiny café where the coffee costs three times more and comes with a heart on the foam, and there’s already a 40 INR service charge on the bill, we don’t even blink. We pay. We Instagram. We leave.

We don’t notice it, but money — or rather, the context of it — subtly redraws our sense of right and wrong.

We tip based on ambience, not effort. The waiter at the Udipi restaurant would have done 10x more work than the barista who called my name to pick my order at the cafe.
We question the street-side chaat guy’s hygiene, but not the ₹160 plate sandwich toast from a similar set-up—now just called a "Food Truck."
We hesitate to tip a food delivery rider, but pay “platform charges” to Swiggy or Zomato without a murmur.

What looks like generosity is sometimes something else entirely — a performance of morality, carefully staged for effect.

Consider how we view theft. A maid who is suspected of taking ₹100 is labelled a thief. There’s a moral taint, a breach of trust. But a startup unnecessarily burning—or worse, defaulting—crores of venture funding? That’s “a risk that didn’t pay off.” Some even admire the audacity.

A salaried employee tweaks their ITR to avoid a few thousand in taxes and calls it “smart planning.” But those same people will forward WhatsApp messages condemning corporate tax fraud. We draw ethical lines in direct proportion to financial ones.

It’s not that we are inherently dishonest. It’s just that money has this strange way of creating moral blind spots. When a poor person bends a rule, it feels like a transgression. When a rich person does it, it feels like strategy.

Even our idea of generosity shifts with scale. You rarely see people drop money into a homeless person’s cup on a non-busy street. But at a temple or dargah, the same hand becomes looser with change. Virtue seems to come with better packaging during festivals. One wonders—is it kindness, or just virtue-signalling dressed as tradition?

Historically, we’ve judged people less for how they made their money and more for how they displayed it. Much of old Indian business wealth came from murky origins — opium trade, wartime profiteering, license raj barters done in smoky backrooms. But as wealth grew, so did reverence. Philanthropic institutions were named after the very families who had once bent the rules to build them. If you build a hospital wing, your past is politely forgotten.

In a strange way, money has become the new detergent. It doesn't just buy influence — it buys moral amnesty. It rebrands. It recasts. It makes questionable choices look bold, and silence seem dignified.

In a world increasingly run on optics, even morality begins to look for better lighting. A donation link on LinkedIn gets you more social capital than years of quiet volunteering. CSR isn’t just responsibility anymore — it’s PR strategy.

Perhaps the realisation that  our moral compass doesn’t always point true north. It shifts with context, convenience, and currency.
What feels like integrity in one situation might seem like indulgence in another.
And when the terrain is tilted by money, even the most well-meaning compass begins to wobble.

We say money changes people.
Maybe what it really changes is how we see them.