Institutions are meant to reduce public anxiety, yet everyday life seems to get more uncertain for Indians

While the awareness of and access to mental health professionals are both abysmally low, especially among lower-income populations, round-the-clock access to social media in a digital world exacerbates any underlying biological mental health vulnerabilities. Counselling around social-media use and consequent feelings of inadequacy can help individuals, but so can the creation of a broader environment of trust.

Globally, political and environmental uncertainties—with implications for employment, mobility and a secure future—have been identified as among the many inter-connected causes of a growing mental health crisis in Gen Z.

In this complex interplay of causal factors for anxiety and depression is an unacceptably high level of mistrust in the institutions meant to provide order and stability in any society—governments, the judiciary, news media and the workplace, in particular.

The 2025 Trust Barometer report from Edelman reveals a global decline in trust in employers to do the ‘right’ thing. Even more worrisome is the perceived fear that leaders are purposely misleading people by saying things they know are false or gross exaggerations. This category includes not just government and business leaders, but also journalists.

Recent examples illustrate how uncertainties are compounded by wishful thinking, knee-jerk reactions and immediacy compulsions. That these examples relate to issues that deeply touch people’s lives also serves to illustrate the compounding of anxiety and depression among people at large.

First, the issue of crackers. At a time when air quality was already deadly in the national capital, the government of Delhi, the judiciary and experts permitted the use of poorly-defined ‘green crackers’ even though it was not feasible to check their ‘greenness’.

This was done on the promise of using cloud seeding to create artificial rain that would wash down the pollution, conveniently overlooking the fact that you need clouds to be able to seed them. When this attempt was made, it failed, leaving citizens to fend for themselves.

So, for the enjoyment of a few who light crackers, the health of many more residents of Delhi was compromised. The media did little to consistently educate people on the dire consequences of bursting a large volume of crackers. As for social media, it is overloaded on most issues with posts by elements that hold extreme views.

Second, take the government’s and court’s handling of the stray dogs issue. After an order that was impractical and a second interim one that offered hope, followed by a recognition of the apathy of governments in implementing humane and implementable solutions, the Supreme Court again demanded the removal of stray dogs from defined public spaces, but without assigning any accountability or imposing penalties on the public bodies that allowed such a ‘dangerous’ situation to arise through their incompetence and inefficiency.

There is no reliable data on the true number of dog bites. A judge raised the question, “What about cruelty to humans?" To be cruel, by definition, is to be extremely unkind in causing intentional pain to people or animals. One rarely, if ever, speaks of animals being cruel to humans—their reactions are either instinctive or learnt behaviours important for survival.

In urban spaces dominated by humans, dogs are likely responding with aggression to the traumas they suffer but remain unaddressed. The media coverage of this issue too was polarizing and perhaps agenda-driven, creating a wedge in society and adding to fear on all sides, albeit for different reasons.

In my last Eco Square column, titled ‘Himalayan blunders: People must demand accountability for ecological havoc’, I had discussed vulnerabilities caused by unmindful and unregulated development in the fragile mountain systems of the Himalayas. While the details need not be repeated, this is another prime example of how the vulnerabilities of millions of humans and animals are worsened by negligence on the part of governments over time.

The point of this article is to contrast the enthusiasm with which our courts have sought to address the relatively minor issue of dog bites (which is not to take away from the horrors suffered by individuals and their families) with the overlooking of much more serious and deadly issues that are perennial problems in the country.

In general, we should question the consistency with which we apply the test of fairness and justice for all to orders, policies and narratives, and also the attention we pay to their impact on larger populations. Maybe there is a need to transparently revisit the rules and protocols followed by all institutions that have the power to amplify societal anxiety through their actions.

The author is an independent expert on climate change and clean energy.