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Summary
For decades, potholes, filth and bad roads were dismissed as trivial irritants, unworthy of political attention. That may be changing. As middle-class frustration builds and civic anger spills into public debate, the quality of life could actually matter at the ballot booth.
In my first job, one of my several bosses was managing a crisis at an event the magazine was hosting—police permission was not in place, the electricity had died and the whole thing was about to be called off. I walked in and said the helpers were yet to be fed.
That look on my boss’s face would appear on many other faces through the late 90s and the noughts whenever adults discussed geopolitics and I spoke about potholes and open defecation on beaches.
There was a perception that civic issues were lightweight in the hierarchy of problems. In the beautiful film of our lives, the production design was done by India, and it was atrocious. But this was somehow not a tragedy in a nation where the middle-class seemed to imagine that the threshold for what constitutes a problem was very high.
I would encounter the same irritation in senior bureaucrats when they talked about public transport and I would talk of air-conditioned cabins and automatic doors. There was an entrenched view back then that these were trivial and even anglicized concerns.
Now, for the first time, I sense a change in attitude. In a country that has immense political stamina for useless things, the moment for civic issues and civic order has come.
I sense this in every conversation, the rage over civic conditions on social media and the rising number of citizen complaints about potholes, filth, pavements and wrong-side driving in cities like Mumbai, Gurgaon and Bangalore. And from the fact that the type of Indians who wear sunglasses for glare and not style have been protesting for better air.
The conventional media too has been reporting more and more on civic issues. Last year, India Today did its “first civic survey of India.” The fact that it did such a survey for the first time is among the many indicators that a certain middle-class disenchantment is gathering momentum. Contrary to their scepticism, quality of life has the potential to become a political issue if the story is slyly told by a popular figure.
Without doubt, civic issues are at the moment an upper-class concern but that need not disqualify them from the mainstream. All major political movements, including the Naxal, began as upper-class grumbles. This is the reason why civic issues appearing so frequently in the laments of the upper class is auspicious for India.
In an altered America and Europe, escaping India is no longer a pleasant option. So, there is self-interest in making this a better place. The self-interest of the upper class is how India has done some good things.
Today, mainstream political analysis suggests that civic issues do not matter in elections. To say this is to argue that how Indians actually live does not matter politically. But a smart politician can be persuaded to see quality of life as a new explosive political idea in a country where every other idea seems familiar and tired.
In my best case scenario, our ‘popular politician’ will find a one-kilometre road in his city where he could demonstrate a slice of quality of life. First, on this stretch, the municipality would have done its job entirely well. The road would be beautiful. Its design would have meaning. For instance, it would have no speed-breakers that send cars flying or pavements that require a jump to get on or pedestrian crossings that lead to a wall, or traffic lights hidden by trees. This is important because India has been asking drivers to be better people without doing its own job well first.
The chief reason why Indians appear to change character on the Delhi Metro, I argue in my book Why the Poor don’t Kill Us, is that the transit system has done its job well, leaving little scope for a pragmatic Indian to break the rules. Following the rules on Delhi Metro is often the quickest and best way to travel. Indian roads, not so.
Once this one-kilometre showpiece begins to demonstrate the meaning of civic order, which would take hard work from several departments, it could then slowly expand its territory—to a whole ward, the whole city centre and one day to the whole city.
A political idea that has some bearing on elections is almost always an idea where the politician is gifting something, not asking Indians to sacrifice their freedom by following the rules. Road and railway connections as promises are nothing new. What has not yet become a full-blown political movement is the idea that urban commutes and public spaces can be comfortable, clean, beautiful and safe, like the Delhi Metro.
India’s civic chaos is a failure of the elite. In every society, citizens are trained to follow order, respect others, stay in one’s lane and behind stop lines, and not drive on the wrong side, and not to honk. India needs to begin this training, the way it campaigned against smoking and for the polio vaccine.
There is an argument that I have made in my book that one reason why there is peace between social classes is that Indian public spaces are so impoverished that they reassure most Indians that India has not left them behind. If you feel poor, India looks like an extension of your bad luck. So, you may argue that a more aesthetic India, with civic order, trees and gardens would antagonize the poor.
Structural beauty in our country has a strong association with wealth. Modernity will always alienate some people, but it triumphs through persistence. A great city tires its opponents and gets them accustomed to its sights. Civic order would first suffocate Indians who are among the freest living beings on earth in public spaces, but eventually they will see the wisdom of it all.
The author is a journalist, novelist and screenwriter. His latest book is ‘Why the Poor Don’t Kill Us.’
English (US) ·