The green bloom on the Dvāra Pulse map was a declaration of independence that did not go unchallenged. The empire had struck a nerve, and the nerve reacted.
The first salvo came from the global tech giants whose business models were the unspoken target of the Garden Mode. An op-ed in a leading international business daily, penned by a "tech policy strategist" (widely known to be a lobbyist), framed Dvāra not as innovation, but as "digital Luddism." It argued that "walling off data in local silos stifles the AI innovation that benefits all mankind," and ominously suggested that "techno-nationalist experiments" could lead to a "Balkanized internet."
The second, more dangerous attack was domestic. A rival Indian electronics conglomerate, Vyan Electronics, launched a blistering ad campaign for their own smart home device, the "Vyan Vani." The ads were pure emotional manipulation. They showed a frustrated elderly man tapping at an unresponsive device. A voiceover said, "Why make technology complicated? Vyan Vani. No confusing switches. No data dilemmas. Just simple, smart help for Indian families." It painted Harsh's ethical choice as elitist, confusing, and anti-family.
The whispers started in the business press: "Has Harsh Patel lost touch with the common man?" "Is the 'Garden' just a playground for the woke rich?"
But the most insidious backlash was silent and structural. Vikram Joshi delivered the report in person, his face grim.
"We're seeing sophisticated bot campaigns on Samanvay and other social platforms. They're targeting the #MySwitch conversation. Not attacking it directly. Mimicking it." He showed examples. Posts that seemed like enthusiastic Switchers, but with subtly poisonous twists.
"Switched to Garden! Finally, a tech that puts real Indians first, not globalist agendas!"
"Market Mode is for people who don't care if their data helps foreign companies spy on our culture."
The campaign was designed to hijack the civic-minded ethos of the Switchers and bend it towards xenophobia and jingoism. It sought to turn the Garden into a gated community, its walls built not of privacy, but of prejudice.
Harsh saw the trap immediately. If the narrative shifted from "privacy and community" to "India vs. The World," the delicate, open-source, collaborative spirit of the Garden would be poisoned. It would become just another weapon in the culture wars.
He had to respond, but a direct counter-attack would only feed the trolls. He needed to change the story.
He turned to the one part of his empire that was designed for this: Udaan.
He met with Rohan and the Udaan team. "We need a new 'Compass Layer' module. Not for children. For everyone. Call it 'Disha for Discourse.'"
The idea was simple. They would use a stripped-down, transparent version of Disha's pattern-recognition not to predict landslides, but to map narrative landslides. It would be a browser plug-in and a Samanvay-integrated tool. When a user encountered a post about Dvāra, the tech, or data privacy, a small, neutral icon could appear. Clicking it would reveal a simple analysis: "This claim about data sharing is unverified." "This post uses language patterns common to coordinated influence campaigns." "Here are links to the open-source Dvāra protocol and independent analysis."
It wouldn't censor. It wouldn't label things "fake news." It would contextualize. It would be a compass for the information jungle, built on the same principle of transparent, local intelligence as Gram-Disha.
Launching it was a minefield. They would be accused of being the "truth police," of using their platform to silence critics. Harsh knew they had to be impeccable. The tool's algorithms would be fully open-source. Its design would be overseen by a board of independent linguists, journalists, and ethicists. It would only flag patterns, not content, and it would always show its workings.
It was the "Pratyaksha" principle applied to truth itself: make the invisible machinery of persuasion visible, and let people decide.
Simultaneously, he sent Meera on the offensive with a soft-power move. She organized a series of livestreamed conversations called "Switch Debates." They featured unlikely pairings: a Harsh Group engineer and a privacy activist debating a Vyan Electronics executive. A rural doctor using Garden Mode data alongside a slick urban marketer. The rule was civility and evidence. The goal was not to win, but to complexify.
The backlash was met not with a wall, but with a lens and a forum.
The day "Disha for Discourse" launched, the bot-fueled posts didn't disappear. But next to them, a small icon of a compass began to appear. And a curious thing happened. The most venomous posts, when flagged as part of a coordinated campaign, lost their power. They started to look like what they were: manufactured, not organic.
The Switch Debates, meanwhile, were messy, frustrating, and hugely popular. They showed that the issue wasn't simple. That there were trade-offs. That good people could disagree.
The green pins on the Dvāra Pulse map continued to multiply, but now the conversation around them was richer, tougher, and more real. The Garden hadn't been overrun by weeds of prejudice. It had been pruned and strengthened by the storm.
Harsh had learned that you couldn't protect a Garden just by building a fence. You had to improve the soil, so that when poisonous seeds blew in, they found no place to take root. The real defence against a backlash wasn't a bigger hammer, but a smarter, more resilient ecosystem.
(Chapter End)