When the Maharashtra Maritime Board (MMB) filed an affidavit before the Bombay High Court defending its long-planned public jetty project, it did more than just respond to a writ petition by a Colaba Residents Association. It exposed, albeit inadvertently, a far more corrosive phenomenon festering beneath the surface of urban civil life across India—a phenomenon where residential associations, many unregistered and some self-professed custodians of ‘public sentiment,’ conspire to stall governance under the veil of representation.
What makes this trend especially insidious today is not just the legal overreach, but the machinery of perception management that backs it. In close consultation with politically aligned local players camouflaged as independent media, such associations engineer narratives of public outrage and dissent where none truly exist. News reports—with little or no editorial scrutiny—are churned out to create the illusion of opposition, often before the facts have even surfaced.
It doesn't stop there. In a strategic move that reveals how deeply manufactured dissent has burrowed into our civic fabric, social media ‘influencers’ with surging paid followers are roped in to echo and amplify the narrative, hashtag by hashtag, until the deception snowballs into a presumed reality.
What began as a civic cooperative—meant to manage building maintenance and ensure waste segregation—now positions itself as a voice of public conscience, challenging executive action. From matters of road widening and Metro development to waterfront security and public transport terminals, residential associations routinely oppose infrastructure projects by invoking heritage, environment, or “sentiments.”
But let’s call this out for what it is: Not every collective with a seal and a bank account can act as an alternate government.
India’s legal framework grants no policy-making authority to housing collectives. Whether registered under the law, these bodies are private entities tasked with internal welfare—not arbiters of public policy. They can’t veto State projects. They can’t override elected governments. And they certainly can’t invoke democracy as a shield while silencing the larger public interest with localised elitism.
What amplifies their extra-legal assertions is the fusion of influence and optics. Through backdoor alliances with sympathetic politicos—often out of favour or seeking local relevance—associations engineer public sentiment through carefully orchestrated “news” reports in fringe publications, editorials penned by interested parties, and on-ground resistance magnified by click-hungry social media echo chambers.
Today, perceived protest is more lucrative than principled protest. With the right media partner, a WhatsApp forward, a tweetstorm, and a micro-influencer in tow, an association can pose as a crusader against “State apathy,” even when the State is acting in the collective good.
The line between news and narrative has blurred. Where once “residents’ dissent” was a matter of fact, today it is a well-produced artefact, staged, lit, and shared across platforms to simulate public interest.
Legal instruments like writ petitions—meant to safeguard against rights violations—are now often misused by associations seeking to stall lawful projects. Courts have repeatedly warned against such misuse.
In Divisional Manager, Aravali Golf Club v. Chander Hass (2008), the Supreme Court cautioned against interference in administrative matters by unelected entities. It read, "Judges must exercise judicial restraint and must not encroach into the executive or legislative domain... In the name of judicial activism Judges cannot cross their limits and try to take over functions which belong to another organ of the State."
Also, in Narmada Bachao Andolan v. Union of India (2000), the Apex Court reiterated that once policy decisions are taken after due consideration, courts should not second-guess the merits of such decisions.
And, in State of Punjab v. Ram Lubhaya Bagga (1998), the Supreme Court held that government policy can be changed with changing circumstances, and courts are ill-equipped to run the administration.
The judiciary must resist being drawn into the drama of manufactured dissent. The moment it indulges these theatrics, it inadvertently validates a rogue playbook—one that devalues legitimate civic engagement and weaponises procedural law against public welfare.
A handful of residential associations across India have evolved from stakeholders to saboteurs—not by statutory expansion, but by strategic self-promotion. They brand themselves as the voice of the people while representing a gated minority. They cite public inconvenience while pushing private agendas. And now, emboldened by media manipulation and social amplification, they pursue proxy politics dressed up as participative democracy.
When a duly elected government plans infrastructure in response to security alerts or urban chaos, it does so with the larger public in mind. It cannot—and must not—be forced to justify its every step before self-appointed, self-promoting gatekeepers.
Democracy mandates that all voices be heard—but it also demands that decisions be made by those chosen through law, not likes.
It is time for courts, bureaucracies, and even the public to pierce the veil of representation that some residential associations so conveniently don, and distinguish authentic civic participation from orchestrated obstruction.
India cannot afford for infrastructure and policy to be hijacked by entities whose legitimacy lies not in the Constitution, but in the cunning use of media optics and digital manipulation.
Let residential associations do what they were meant to do—fix broken lifts, manage water supply, and sweep stairwells. Let the State govern, as it must. Let the courts uphold the law, as they are bound to. And let the people—the real people—decide, as they do, every five years.
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A version of this article was first published in The Draft
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