Why India has Zero Civic Sense

Añadido: 2026-05-23

[00:00:00]Civic sense. Civic sense. Civic sense.

[00:00:04]Civic sense is how civic sense.

[00:00:06]Actually, >> this term has been going viral recently.

[00:00:14]Today, I'll explain exactly what civic sense even is, why it isn't as bad as media wants you to believe, and how it's connected to Indian society and politics. Let's begin. First of all, let's define it. Civic sense has three broad parts. Hygiene, behavior and thinking. These three things done properly would mean you have good civic sense. And for India, these three things being terrible is what makes us lack civic sense. Hygiene is the easiest to understand. Everyone wants to live in a clean, hygienic, beautiful place. Roads to be perfectly serene and all public places to be proper. But here in India, We have people peeing everywhere, trash everywhere, and maintenance nowhere.

[00:01:11]Behavior is next. A civic nation behaves civil. No shouting randomly, no overly exaggerated egos, a peaceful life. Here we see road rage everywhere, people arguing at a hair's worth of annoyance.

[00:01:26]And connected to that is thinking. We don't respect others. Indians see others as arch enemies to defeat somehow not people to show fellow respect and consideration towards. It's respect that makes a society follow rules. You don't want to inconvenience others. So you don't break rules. Here we drive vehicles on foot paths on the wrong side and park absolutely everywhere. But then why? There are two categories. social reasons and political reasons. For social reasons, first I want to point to a political academic theory by Ronald Inglehart. Inglehart opined that once society achieves economic stability, industrial development and basic materials, then they move to higher values like environment protection, rights, quality of life, equality, hygiene, etc. A very basic theory that just means a society that barely clings on to life doesn't have highly liberal value-based thinking which implies to India we are poor a per capita income of 2.3 lakhs a year our people the majority of society has gotten accustomed to being lowly having a small dingy house having pothole ridden unmaintained roads and not thinking two shits about cleanliness or hygiene Moreover, we share a thinking of chalga formalism. We all know what we should do, but we do what is convenient for us.

[00:02:58]We know a single queue is the norm, but a crowd is easier. Waiting in traffic is the norm, the law. But driving in the footpath to reach quicker is easier. We are all guilty of this. Us students could do our assignments by searching the original sources and concluding ourselves. Instead, we just ask Chad GPD to do everything. When we continue this instilled ideology in the public areas, that's when reals are made and posted with the caption civic sense.

[00:03:30]Which leads me to the political reasons, the systemic reasons.

[00:03:35]Why should people follow rules systemically? We know how flawed the justice system is. Even heinous, worst of the worst crimes take decades to get punished. What will go wrong if you just pee in a wall or throw trash at a corner or drive in the wrong lane? What is the motivation to be correct? The guy that follows rules just feels awkward because everyone moves on ahead with no replications. If they were punished on the spot, then everyone would do the right thing. An educated man could choose to live his day following every little rule and policy. But to be real, that wouldn't do any good for the country at all. It is the government's job to survey public areas, clean up trash, clean the roads, fix the roads within 24 hours, clear traffic, solve traffic, and publish public service announcements to grow awareness. Monkey Together strong. The point is one man or even 10 men or even 100, thousand, 10,000 men change their lifestyle, it doesn't matter at all. If an entire city decides unanimously to change, only then does it matter. An influencer, the biggest influencer, let's say Ashish Chanelani, Karim Minati, Bhan Balam together convince five lakh Indians to start living with civic sense through social media. Guess what? It wouldn't change anything. The system plays 1,000 times more important role in such a thing than us people or even influencers. If the system, if the politicians decided to implement every law strictly, India would become as disciplined as Japan in one week. The state, the governments hold this power.

[00:05:22]If all 29 states launch a program to make India better, we can change overnight.

[00:05:27]Any influencers YouTube video or Instagram reel or trend cannot change anything. Social media has nothing to do with civic sense. So much so that it is outright comical how many people have posted videos on this topic. Civic sense is an entirely politically solvable issue which points to another deeper rooted issue of how our system doesn't do honest work or bluntly doesn't do any work at all. A civic country is nothing but a lawful country, a rich country, a systemically well-off country. Indians have been left to be poor, to work hard but to achieve nothing, to study but not be guaranteed employment, to earn pennies compared to other countries. And it's unfair to expect civility from such a nation. Civility itself is a rich concept. You don't look at homeless people and say, "Oh, look how bad he's dressed and how ugly and dirty he is and how he has no manners." No, but you say that to India. Well, I hate to say this, but India broadly is very close to being a nation of homeless people. What is the solution? I'll rather give you three parameters that if achieved will guarantee great civic sense in the country. Number one, a speedy judiciary.

[00:06:46]When Supreme Courts don't take literal years to solve a single case, civic sense will begin to grow. People will fear consequences and laws will be followed. Number two, rise in living standards. When people's income and quality of life will increase like Ronald Inglehart has stated, they will begin thinking of higher value objectives like hygiene, environment, manners, etc. And number three, political responsibility. There is no democracy in the world right now. at least no true democracy. When politicians will have to listen to people's real demands, development will be quick and civic sense will follow. So yeah, I'd say civic sense isn't a big issue. In other words, the big problem that India already has are the causers of the civic sense issue. Civic sense is the embodiment of all the problems India has. Low development, bad politics, bad education, no employment, etc. So you and me need to relax and stop spamming Civic Sense reels on our stories. It has a bigger picture behind it. Yeah. Bye.