BLOG POST-14 Civic Sense: The Missing Piece in India's Growth Story

 

                 Civic Sense: The Missing Piece in India's Growth Story

                                            The world is watching. But more importantly — so are our children.

 

Last week, I was driving through a busy stretch near my neighbourhood. It was an ordinary morning — auto-rickshaws weaving through traffic, schoolchildren chatting excitedly in their buses, vendors setting up their carts.

And then I saw it.

A pile of garbage on a road divider. Not a small pile. A mountain. Overflowing, spilling onto the road, black and reeking in the morning heat.

What stopped me wasn't the garbage itself. We've all seen it before. What stopped me was everything around it.

A small child, no older than four, was playing beside it — barefoot, completely unbothered. A dog was rummaging through the heap with practised ease, as though this was simply where food came from. And then, even as I watched, a man on a scooter slowed down — not to feel outraged, not to look away in shame — but to add his own small bag of household trash to the pile.

Neatly. Deliberately.

As if this was precisely what that divider was there for.

Everyone walked past. Unbothered. As if the stench wasn't there. As if the child wasn't there. As if none of it was anyone's problem.

I drove on. But that image has not left me.

Here is something that has always puzzled me about us Indians. Step inside most Indian homes — even modest ones — and you will find them spotless. Floors mopped, vessels gleaming, kitchens immaculate. We take enormous pride in the cleanliness of our private spaces.

And then we step outside — and something changes.

The street corner becomes fair game. The road divider becomes a dumping ground. People throw wrappers from moving vehicles. Drains overflow and we shrug. It is as though the moment we cross our own threshold, we stop feeling responsible.

The question I keep returning to is this: Why do we not think of our country as our home?

Because that is really what this is about.

Not just garbage.

Not just spitting.

Not just the driver who parks wherever convenient, blocks an entire lane, and walks away.

It is about a fundamental disconnect — the belief that public space belongs to nobody, and therefore nobody needs to care for it.

What makes this harder to accept is that this is not simply a problem of poverty or lack of education.

Harsh Goenka, Chairman of RPG Enterprises, recently wrote about finding a notice in a Swiss hotel directed specifically at Indian guests — reminding them not to remove cutlery from the breakfast area and to be mindful of other guests. The notice was uncomfortable to read. The uncomfortable truth is that such notices do not appear out of thin air.

Closer to home, videos have gone viral showing Indian tourists dancing on airport tarmacs and turning crowded public spaces abroad into social media stages. Many celebrate this as cultural expression.

It isn't.

It is the absence of a simple awareness that says: this is a shared space, and I am not its only occupant.

That awareness has a name.

It is called civic sense.

And as a nation, we seem to be running desperately short of it.

I have sat in traffic and watched educated, successful people throw bottles and food packets out of their car windows. I have watched vehicles thunder past with music blaring, as though the peace of an entire neighbourhood was a small price for one person's entertainment. I have watched motorists drive on the wrong side of the road simply because a U-turn felt inconvenient.

Not by accident.

Deliberately.

Never mind the vehicles coming the other way. Never mind the pedestrian who didn't expect traffic from that direction. Their convenience matters more than everyone else's safety.

What is perhaps most disturbing is how normal all of this has become.

Nobody says anything.

Nobody expects better.

We have quietly accepted that this is just how things are.

But does it have to be?

Japan, a nation rebuilt from devastation after World War II, is admired not only for its technology or economy but for the everyday behaviour of its citizens. Japanese football fans cleaning stadiums after matches became global news because it reflected something deeper — a culture of responsibility toward shared spaces.

That is soft power.

And it costs nothing.

The good news is that we have already proved we can do better.

Walk through many of our metro stations, airports, and shopping malls today. They are cleaner, more orderly, and better maintained than they were a decade ago. Millions of Indians use these spaces every day and, for the most part, respect them.

That tells me something important.

The problem is not that Indians are incapable of civic discipline. We have already demonstrated that we can follow rules, maintain cleanliness, and respect shared spaces when we choose to.

The challenge is extending those same standards beyond the airport terminal and the metro station — to our roads, footpaths, neighbourhoods, and street corners.

Somewhere, the old "chalta hai" attitude still lingers. The belief that one wrapper tossed aside, one rule ignored, one act of carelessness does not really matter.

But nations are shaped by exactly those small acts.

If we can keep our airports and metro stations clean, we can keep our streets clean too. The capability is not the issue. The willingness is.

                                    

We speak proudly of a developed India. We celebrate our achievements in technology, infrastructure, entrepreneurship, and space exploration. We should.

But a nation's greatness is not measured only in its GDP or its rockets.

It is measured in the dignity of its public spaces.

In whether a child can walk to school on a clean footpath.

In whether visitors can walk through our streets without covering their noses.

In whether people see Indians — at home and abroad — as citizens who understand that freedom comes with responsibility.

Right now, that is not always the image we project.

And the gap between the India we dream of and the India we maintain lives in the small choices each of us makes every day.

I think often about that child beside the garbage heap.

She does not know yet that the filth around her is not normal.

She is learning what adults consider acceptable.

She is learning what nobody thinks is worth fixing.

What are we teaching her?

Every time we throw trash from a moving vehicle, we teach children that public space is disposable.

Every time we block a road because it suits us, we teach them that convenience matters more than consideration.

Every time we break rules because nobody is watching, we teach them that rules are for other people.

And every time we walk past a mountain of garbage without a second thought, we teach them that indifference is an acceptable response to a shared problem.

This does not require a new government scheme.

It requires something smaller and harder.

A shift in how we see ourselves in relation to the space around us.

It requires us to believe that the street outside our gate is as much our responsibility as the floor inside our home.

It requires the educated among us — especially those who know better — to stop treating civic behaviour as someone else's job.

Real change rarely begins with grand campaigns.

It begins with ordinary choices.

A wrapper placed in a bin.

A lane followed instead of cut across.

A wrong-side shortcut refused.

A neighbour willing to speak up.

The world will stop looking at us differently the day we stop giving it reasons to.

That day is not inevitable.

It is a choice.

And it begins — as all meaningful change does — not with the government, not with the municipality, not with someone else.

It begins with you.

It begins with me.

It begins today.

Because the India we want tomorrow is being built by the habits we tolerate today.

 

                                           What is one small civic habit you could commit to this week?

                                                                The street outside your home is waiting.