A question of civic sense
For the last many months, there has been a lot of conversation about how Indians lack civic sense. There is certainly no paucity of evidence, whether in instances of alleged misbehaviour abroad or in everyday life in India, which abounds with examples of this lack. Traffic rules are flouted frequently, littering seems to be second nature, queues are not sacrosanct, and public urination is an easy reflex. On social media, this is bemoaned with the diagnosis that unless ‘we’ change as a people, nothing can be done about it.
The problem with this argument is that it gets the causal arrow backwards. Civic sense is not an inherent trait that people are either born with or without. We behave well when our context gives us the right signals. When the boundaries between what is acceptable and what is not are clearly drawn, and when we suffer consequences when we step out of line. Pretty much how children learn what is good behaviour and what attracts punishment.
Civic order is the outcome of design, enforcement, predictability and fairness. Every society runs this training programme. In India, however, the context gives mixed signals, and the training data often points in the opposite direction. Rule-breaking is often rewarded while rule-following feels foolish. The person who jumps the queue gets served first. The driver who forces his way into traffic saves time. Over time, a lesson is absorbed: rules are negotiable and something to be worked around.
Yet, in another sense, we are great sticklers for rules— social ones. Try giving a cheap gift to a close relative. Or miss an important family function. The full wrath of the great Indian family will descend on you. Your infraction will be noted in the invisible social ledger all families keep, and you will never hear the end of it. The same person who tosses a plastic packet on the road will follow these rules unfailingly.
Our problem is not that we don’t follow rules but that we follow only certain kinds of rules. In our heads, there is a world of difference between two concepts which otherwise seem related— the social and the civic.
The social is rooted in relationships. The civic involves strangers. We are born into the social— family, caste, kinship network and religious community. We know the elaborate rules, the unspoken expectations and the consequences of stepping out of line. The civic is an implicit contract between strangers. It works in societies that have managed to make responsibility towards people we don’t know feel real. India hasn’t managed it, perhaps because the communities we are born into are always more powerful than the ones we choose.
This explains why a group of people can perform folk dances at any public place anywhere in the world without embarrassment. The only people who matter, who can judge them, are those dancing with them. Strangers don’t exist as an audience worth considering. It also explains the second-hand embarrassment some people feel when they see this. In India, they are not related to us, and we feel no responsibility. But internationally, they represent ‘us’, and we feel shamed as a collective.
At a fundamental level, we engage with rules through one mental model— that of exemptions. One example is particularly revealing. At all new highways, before the toll booth, you will find a giant hoarding listing the categories of people exempt from paying ( 25 categories). At many airports, there is a similar list of those exempt from being frisked (34 categories). There are never any equivalent advertisements for what happens if we break the rules— only for who gets to break them with official sanction.
This is an extraordinary insight into the culture. It is one thing to have exemptions. It is another to be primarily concerned with who gets to break rules. What is a site of civic universality— everyone uses the same road and pays the same amount— becomes a place for marking hierarchy. The social wins over the civic. I am too important to be subject to any universal rule, and the system not only acknowledges it but advertises it.
The logic of exemptions finds its most democratic expression in public space. Here, everyone is exempt, for the rules are implicit and there is no social consequence to any action. Littering, jumping a queue, playing loud music in a serene hill station— the only people troubled are strangers who don’t count. This is the commons of exemption, where unaccountability thrives.
The cultural issue with civic sense is real. But it is a consequence of how the state has designed its reward and punishment system. Instead of being an instrument of change, the govt becomes a legitimiser of the social over the civic. The minister who can delay a flight. The official who places his designation on a private vehicle. The policeman is riding without a helmet. The exemption list is proudly displayed at the toll plaza. Each communicates the same lesson— rules are a way of marking hierarchy, not a means of establishing order.
We are not the source of the problem. We are the vehicles of a problem sustained by a system that does not take its own rules seriously. Unless the rule makers change, we will continue to mistake a failure of design for a failure of people.
Disclaimer
Views expressed above are the author’s own.
