Who Owns Civic Sense Beyond Individual Blame?
- connect2783
- Jul 23
- 11 min read
Updated: Aug 22
In India’s small and mid-sized cities, civic behaviour is often framed as a question of personal morality but what if the story is more complex? This commentary examines how systemic gaps, weak enforcement, cultural conditioning, and the pressures of daily survival shape public conduct. Moving beyond the rhetoric of “zero civic sense,” it asks who truly bears responsibility for maintaining civic order, is it the individuals, institutions, or the collective and what it would take to build a shared culture of responsibility.
In the middle of July, on the concluding day of the Aam Mahotsav in Lucknow, a local celebration of the seasonal fruit turned chaotic. It became an occasion of ‘looting’ the displayed mangoes. A video emerged on Instagram, quickly going viral. It showed people rushing to stalls, toppling plates, and grabbing mangoes by the armful. They stuffed them in bags, sarees, and pockets. In the absence of crowd control or personal restraint, the exhibition space descended into chaos.
Soon, the internet was filled with comments expressing embarrassment, amusement, and outrage. Amidst the dismissal of such behaviour as a ‘lack of civic sense,’ some raised a pertinent question: How prepared was the local administration to host such public events?
Everyday, the internet is brimming with memes and news on similar occurrences with titles as ‘India is not for beginners’, the problem of ‘the Chalta hai’ attitude and ‘Zero Civic Sense’ and one wonders if we Indians have normalised the dysfunction of the public system to an extent where it is accepted as a way of life. There have been instances where this lack of civic sense have caused more life-threatening outcomes than stolen mangoes, like in the case of rash-driving and traffic jumping, vandalism of public property, stampedes caused due to disorder in crowded spaces, etc.
Why Civic Sense Matters in Smaller Cities?
With the physical and social landscape of India’s smaller cities morphing at a rapid pace, not just physically but also socio-culturally, the crisis of civic sense becomes more profound. 'Physical infrastructure is not so difficult to build and operate. How we choose to live in urban environments, that are supposed to rid us of “backward” rural attitudes, has always been a more complex task…The most fundamental of these is the idea of publicness or the distinction between the private and the public' (Srivastava, 2025).
Through this article we look at some of the possibilities on what makes ‘civic sense’ so much harder to assume in today’s times, and try contextualising it within the small and mid-sized cities of India. To begin to understand its role in smaller cities, we first establish what we mean by civic sense.
What is Civic Sense?
In an op-ed article for Times of India, Narayan (2021) notes civic sense as the notion to understand social ethics and further describes that civic sense is a way of demonstrating moral behaviour at the personal and social level to keep the social systems functioning. In another article for India Youth Net, Sujata directly connects civic sense to the constitutional duty of a citizen according to the Article 51A. It outlines a civic framework of “basic guidelines to uphold and value a set of principles in order to ensure proper conduct of the society in keeping with the nation’s goals and ideals.”
Since there is no formal legal definition on what civic sense is, its common understanding only implies the role of individual responsibility, but misses the emphasis on the functioning of public systems for it to be practiced. When instead civic sense is about how an individual’s behavior plays out in spaces that are shared, governed, and structured by public systems.
Civic refers to public life, while sense refers to the awareness of living in a shared common entity. It involves being mindful of others and avoiding personal gain at the expense of another. It thrives within an efficient public system, allowing public spaces to flourish.
Is Civic Sense Solely About the Citizen?
In India, this understanding of both ‘civic’ and ‘sense’ is not arrow-sharp but is a complicated lived reality for the citizens. The socio-economic context of our cities with a large number of shared and common resources often creates a conflict on who owns, manages and/or shares these resources. Other times the infrastructure and the administration are either absent or inadequate, and in trying to find a way around it citizens struggle to figure out their personal space and conduct within the public. At this intersection of personal yet public, lies the delicate balance of civic sense. Hence, it is definitely not just an innate common sense of an individual rather a responsibility that has to be nurtured for the community to function collectively.
Civic sense is a two-way street. In 2013, the Patna High Court, in response to a PIL filed against improper garbage disposal and growth of trash mountains, demonstrated this need for both a systemic and an individual change. The court observed that there is a lack of civic sense being practiced by both the government and the citizens. It directed the urban development authority and municipal corporation to launch campaigns to educate both officials and citizens regarding their roles in sanitation and public hygiene.
Is Building Civic Sense Just About Awareness?
However, education, awareness and campaigns are often sought as corrective means to address this ‘lack of civic sense’ among citizens. For reference, in Section 7 of Karnataka Education Act, 1983, the government prescribed curricula also included ‘promotion of civic sense’ (2.f), followed by ‘inculcation of the sense of the following duties of citizens, enshrined in the Constitution…’ making a reference to Article 51A. However, using education as means to “promote” civic sense may be an inadequate approach, as it only functions on the assumption that people are unaware of the issue or concern and need to be educated about it.
This assumed unawareness is only partly true. This validated in the recently conductd Civic Survey by India Today Group. In March 2025, they published report of the survey spanning 20 states and two Union Territories in India and ranked the states on a four category matrix of Civic Behaviour, Public Safety, Gender Attitude and Diversity & Discrimination. The report reveals data points that reflect how morality and action are in contradiction among the citizens. In their analysis they summarised how,
‘Civic Behaviour (within the citizens) reflects a blend of contradictions, where individuals acknowledge the importance of public responsibility but often struggle to uphold those values when faced with personal gain or convenience.’
The report also elaborates how ‘Civic conduct is marked by significant regional variation, highlighting how social conditioning, local governance and community culture shape people’s willingness to act for greater good’. Therefore, in India, perhaps we don’t inherently lack a civic sense but we lack an efficient system to engage in civic responsibility.
Sociologist Dipankar Gupta reflecting on India Today’s survey notes,
“These findings reveal that most citizens understand what is right but fail to act upon it. This upends the assumption that ignorance was behind India’s civic shortcomings.”
This highlights that civic sense is not just an individual moral issue, but also reflects deeper social and systemic conditions, bringing out the nuances within the “Zero Civic Sense” titles and blames we see.
Larger Possibilities: What is Happening?
In Urban India, particularly in small and mid-sized cities, there is no singular explanation as to why civic sense is often absent in practice. To address this gap, in this section we look into different underlying perspectives as to why functioning in a civic manner is not always a choice, but sometimes more of a constrained response to other social factors that shape the people's lived realities.
1. Is behaving ‘civically’ a challenge, in the midst of urban survival?
A writer on Medium critically reflects on the lack of civic sense, pointing out that it is not just behavioural. It is also a result of mental fatigue from living in crowded areas, driving in rush hour traffic, and being surrounded by others who lack civic responsibility. Over time, people simply stop caring. He writes,
“When someone in Tokyo or Berlin needs to throw trash, they aren’t dodging cars in 42°C heat, running between jobs, or stressed by the threat of eviction. They have the cognitive space to look for a dustbin, follow norms, and be patient. In contrast, urban India is a psychological battlefield where roads are broken and traffic is lawless.”
In contrast, urban India is a psychological battlefield (where) roads are broken and traffic is lawless. Systems are unresponsive where complaints are ignored, public spaces are loud, polluted, and exhausting.” This shows up as constantly living in survival mode and brings down our altruistic quotient to care about anyone else apart from ourselves, for “civic sense is not about DNA. It’s about how much psychological surplus a citizen has left after dealing with their environment.”
Within the small cities of India, this idea of civic sense gets further complicated in the daily hustle when the infrastructure like public transport, third spaces and footpaths with good lighting are often either missing or not accessible, and so over time when the systems are not taken care of citizens stop interacting with it. This indifference leads into learned helplessness as a coping mechanism to adjust with dysfunctional aspects of the city and survive.
2. Is Civic Sense Owned or Outsourced?
Take a walk across markets in Indian cities and the evident spitting, littering, garbage dumps are all because of a quiet assumption that someone else will take care of it after. Someone else will clean after, pick the litter, unclog the drains or inlet channels. This reflects in a passive engagement with the city and at the root shapes how civic sense is practiced publicly. This attitude is commonly communicated in phrases like “It’s the government’s responsibility” or “Yeh kissi aur ka kaam hai” (“This is someone else’s work").
This tendency to assume that others, whether cleaning personnels, municipal corporation, neighbours- will manage tasks of cleaning public spaces or unclogging drains, doesn’t indicate an absence of civic duty but reflects a system from institutional inadequacy is normalised. These habitual expectations shape civic attitudes and the citizens are less likely to see themselves as equal and responsible agents in the city. This subsequent outsourcing, then, is not merely behavioural but also conditioned through a socio-economic structure. The ripples of this outsourced responsibility lead to passive neglect and a constant othering among citizens.
Households blame neighbours, locals blame tourists, residents blame migrants, and everyone blames the “government.” When no one feels responsible, the burden falls on the next person, and ultimately, no one takes it up. This fragmentation of social responsibility results in what economist Garett Hardin calls the ‘tragedy of the commons.’ Individuals acting on their self-interest degrade common resources because no one feels accountable for the loss and damage.
As a result, social responsibility is fragmented and results in what the economist Garett Hardin calls the ‘tragedy of commons’, a concept where individuals acting upon their own self-interest end up degrading the common pool resources, as no one feels responsible and accountable for the loss and damage. However, this reality is not inevitable as Elinor Ostrom challenged this ‘tragedy’ by studying societies where common and shared resources were efficiently managed without a top-down imposition. It happens when citizens are involved in creating and enforcing rules and systems for the management of resources and shared spaces, as they are more likely to practice ownership over it and thus sustain it.
3. Can Civic Responsibility Exist Without Systemic Enforcement?
Indian cities are infamous for bad traffic and poor driving habits, with no lane systems, traffic bottlenecks, and unsafe driving. However, beyond this stereotype lies a systemic problem of road infrastructure design and traffic control.
In Pune’s growing satellite town of Pimpri-Chinchwad, constant traffic bottlenecks are common, particularly around the Hinjewadi IT Park and the highways connecting Pune to Mumbai and Nashik. On Monday, July 8, 2025, an IT professional shared that it took him an hour to cover a distance of 3.5 km, which would typically require only 10-15 minutes. Local authorities attributed the congestion to repair work by the State Electricity Transmission Company (MSETCL).
However, this situation is not isolated. The twin city has suffered from bad traffic congestion for over a year, particularly during peak hours. This leads to rash and uncivil driving patterns among commuters, with some spending 4-5 hours a day stuck in traffic. In such situations, no one seems to care for anyone else.
Constant roadwork and construction disrupt the flow of traffic, leading to irregular diversions and poor signage. This causes people to drive on the wrong side of the road, jump signals, and park haphazardly, restricting pedestrian movement.
In the face of these bottlenecks and detours, the collective civic sense of citizens diminishes as they struggle to navigate the uncertainty of routes.
In contrast, the steel city of Bokaro, Jharkhand, regulates its vehicular traffic and avoids road congestion without traffic signals. The city has infrastructural planning that separates the residential, industrial and commercial zones, which promotes a culture of cautious driving shaped by the town’s planning. Despite having the physical infrastructure in place, most of the regulation happens through social accountability as people see others, respond in real time and move without invading other’s space and avoiding conflict. Thus, in Bokaro despite the low-vehicular density, most of the seamless traffic emerges from spatial predictability and clarity of traffic movement.
This cross-city comparison between Bokaro and Pimpri supports the argument that civic sense can be shaped by the people resonping to the quality of infrastructure available them.
The need for building a civic culture,
one shared responsibility at a time.
So, how do we address these varied layers of why civic sense often fail within our cities?
In cities like Bokaro where traffic functions on the mutual understanding of discipline and not surveillance, in Indore where over the years the city has been able to inculcate a feeling of ownership around cleanliness and proper garbage disposal or in Kerala’s Alappuzha where local residents manage the decentralised water systems, signalling that civic sense may flourish when responsibility on the ground is designed to be shared.
Within small cities in India, where the inadequacy of infrastructure is lacking compared to larger cities and the baton of responsibility is tossed around from local governments to state governments, it is the citizens who own up to a cause within their city and address it. Civic sense in smaller cities is not merely a function of strict surveillance or punitive rules but of social norms shaped by compliance, willingness to learn, visibility of outcomes, and local agency. However this agency or compliance may not get kickstarted or last for long if systems falter.
Many cities have tried to enforce this civic sense within its citizens by public shaming, or imposing heavy fines on defaulters.
According to Ostrom, civic sense cannot be (re)built through shame and punishment but through participatory governance and local stewardship. When people see themselves as stewards of public systems, the responsibility of protecting those systems sustains without governmental enforcement. This is particularly relevant for smaller cities, where civic and administrative actors often live as neighbours, and the impact of one’s actions is more directly felt by others.
Resources on civic sense largely talk about education, awareness and conduct as a means to improve public behaviour, however, these viewpoints isolate civic responsibility as an individual failing. This overlooks the perspective of how within the city, civic responsibility functions as a response to the infrastructure, governance, socialisation patterns and local cultures. When these public systems fail, the citizens learn to adopt living within dysfunction while also adding to it.
We don’t just need education about civic sense, we need active engagement of citizens with their city and of the administration with its people. To strengthen civic sense within a certain community, we need to move beyond campaigns and place them in the context of efficient infrastructure and look for ways to strengthen social accountability for its sustenance.
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