Brand Banter: When The State Sleeps, Are Citizens Meant To Tiptoe On A Tightrope? |
I thought the start of the year was the right time to voice this nagging assumption which has never been articulated or acknowledged. If the state appears slow, lethargic and perpetually “considering the matter”, perhaps it is expecting the citizens to compensate. Not protest. Not rebel. Just behave better. Act responsibly. Be mindful. Do the right thing.
It is an elegant, fantastical idea, a fragile one.
Osho once observed that society loves outcomes but avoids responsibility. Everyone wants order, harmony, and safety, but no one wants to own the systems that create them. Responsibility, he said, is fashionable only when someone else is carrying it. The moment it demands structure and discipline, the common man’s interest evaporates.
Today, governance is operating in a paused state. Announcements flow like the Brahmaputra in the rains, but the action is stuck in neutral. And in that pause, an unspoken hope arises: citizens will self-correct. They will not cut trees or create unauthorised structures. Neither will they overcrowd religious places nor bribe corrupt officials for personal gains. Oh, the enlightened citizens will not ever exploit climate, faith, or loopholes.
They will, somehow, be better than the system controlled by the people they have blindly entrusted to create.
Take agriculture. Year after year, distress claims farmers’ lives, and yet reform arrives in fragments, or the intended reforms are withdrawn on political grounds. The crisis is not........