Don’t breathe if the air is toxic. Don’t walk if the roads are broken. Don’t drive if fuel is expensive. Don’t sit for exams if papers are leaked. Don’t watch television if the news divides society. Don’t question fake godmen. And don’t look for jobs if unemployment is rising. There is a troubling pattern in these sarcastic instructions on how public grievances are answered in India. Whether citizens raise questions about pollution, unsafe roads, rising living costs, examination scandals, divisive media, religious exploitation, or unemployment, they are met with variations of the same response: if the problem bothers you, change your behavior.
This is the politics of passing the burden from the system to the individual. Personal precautions cannot become a substitute for public policy. A citizen can choose not to drive, but cannot repair a road. A student can prepare for an exam, but cannot prevent a paper leak. A family can buy an air purifier, but cannot clean the air outside its home. A functioning democracy is measured by how seriously its institutions respond when citizens demand better.
Consider the severe public health emergency that large parts of northern India experience every winter. The familiar advice follows: stay indoors, wear a mask, install air purifiers, and avoid outdoor exercise. While these precautions may reduce exposure, they do not address the source. IQAir’s World Air Quality Report 2024 put India's annual average PM2.5 concentration at 50.6 micrograms per cubic metre—more than ten times the World Health Organization's annual guideline of 5 micrograms. Furthermore, a 2024 analysis published in The Lancet estimated that air pollution was associated with 2.01 million deaths in India in 2023. Industrial emissions, vehicle exhaust, construction dust, waste burning, and crop-residue burning require coordinated policy enforcement. Clean air is not a luxury that people should have to purchase through expensive filters; it is a fundamental public-health requirement.
Similarly, when roads are unsafe, the consequences extend far beyond mere inconvenience, as these infrastructure networks connect people to schools, hospitals, workplaces, and markets. A Lok Sabha reply on pothole-related road crashes recorded 5,432 accidents and 2,385 deaths across India in 2024, with Maharashtra alone reporting 75 accidents and 43 deaths. The answer cannot be telling pedestrians and motorists to be more careful while allowing poor construction, inadequate drainage, and weak contractor accountability to persist. Taxpayers should not have to fund infrastructure that repeatedly collapses, nor should they accept a system where maintenance standards, independent quality checks, and public disclosures of contractor performance are not strictly enforced. People do not need lectures on avoiding hazards; they need roads that do not endanger their lives.
When petrol prices rise, the standard advice is to use public transport, carpool, or cut unnecessary travel. While sensible, these suggestions overlook economic reality. For millions of workers, traders, and families living outside reliable transit networks, private vehicles are practical necessities. Fuel pricing remains heavily shaped by taxation; in a written parliamentary reply in February 2025, the government stated that central excise duty stood at ₹19.90 per liter on petrol and ₹15.80 on diesel, alongside state-level taxes. Citizens have every right to ask how much of the retail price goes toward taxes and whether public revenues are being reinvested into accessible public transit. Telling people to stop driving does not answer these structural questions, nor can dependence on private transport drop without massive investments in safe buses, suburban rail, and walkable cities.
Few systemic failures are as devastating as an examination paper leak, which threatens the years of preparation, family savings, and personal hope invested by students. A parliamentary committee report on the National Testing Agency noted that in 2024 alone, several major examinations faced severe disruptions: UGC-NET, CSIR-NET, and NEET-PG were postponed, NEET-UG faced paper-leak allegations, and CUET results were delayed. The committee also cited errors in JEE Main 2025 and called for systemic overhauls. While the government enacted the Public Examinations (Prevention of Unfair Means) Act, 2024, legislation alone is insufficient. Secure paper-setting, transparent tendering, reliable digital systems, and swift investigations are equally critical. The responsibility for conducting a fair examination belongs to the testing authority, not the student who trusted it.
In the realm of information, television news is meant to inform the public and hold power accountable, yet many outlets prioritize political spectacle, communal provocation, and shouting matches over investigative journalism. The Reuters Institute’s Digital News Report 2025 recorded an overall news-trust score of just 43% among Indian survey respondents, citing concerns over concentrated media ownership and pressure on independent journalism. Critics frequently decry sensationalist news channels that avoid scrutinizing public funds or fact-checking official claims. While viewers should exercise media literacy, telling citizens to simply turn off the television is not a valid substitute for editorial independence, broadcast standards, and media transparency. A healthy democracy requires informed citizens, not citizens who have simply given up on the news.
Faith, too, must never become a shield for exploitation. India’s rich spiritual traditions deserve respect, but cases involving self-styled spiritual leaders accused or convicted of sexual abuse, fraud, and financial exploitation require thorough investigation and due process. Currently, India lacks a single, comprehensive national crime category capturing offences committed by self-styled godmen, as cases are split under various legal codes like fraud, intimidation, or sexual assault, complicating oversight. Stronger financial transparency, accessible complaint mechanisms, and protection for victims are essential. Faith should not demand blind obedience, and questioning an individual claiming extraordinary spiritual authority is not an attack on religion; it is a defense against its misuse.
Finally, perhaps the most dismissive response to unemployment is suggesting that jobseekers simply lack initiative. India has a massive young population investing heavily in education, for whom unemployment means financial anxiety and lost potential. The Periodic Labour Force Survey for 2025 reported an overall unemployment rate of 3.1% for ages 15 and above. However, the youth unemployment rate for ages 15 to 29 stood at 9.9%, spiking to 13.6% among urban youth, with 56.2% of total workers categorized as self-employed. These figures highlight the need to look beyond headline metrics to evaluate job quality, wage growth, underemployment, and skill utilization. Encouraging personal skill development is vital, but the state must foster an economic environment capable of generating meaningful, secure employment.
There is a vast difference between asking citizens to act responsibly and expecting them to accept institutional failure as normal. Citizens can adjust their habits, but they should never be asked to lower their expectations of state accountability. The solution to toxic air is clean air, not fewer people outdoors. The solution to potholes is safe roads, not fewer pedestrians. The solution to paper leaks is secure examinations, not fewer students. And the solution to unemployment is meaningful work, not a generation told to stop searching. Citizens deserve public services that work reliably and fairly, without having to demand them repeatedly. A democracy must never make silence the price of citizenship; it must make institutional accountability the absolute duty of those entrusted with power.
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Mohd Ziyaullah Khan is a freelance content writer and editor based in Nagpur. He is also an activist and social entrepreneur, and the co-founder of TruthScape, a team of digital activists fighting disinformation on social media
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