Civility is knowing when not to shout, not to touch, not to spit, not to pee on someone because you’ve had one drink too many at 35,000 feet. Until that lesson is learned, especially by a newly mobile population rushing into spaces it hasn’t been taught to share, India will keep mistaking noise for confidence, entitlement for freedom, and disgrace for swagger. – Ravi Shankar
Lionel Messi didn’t leave Kolkata early because of heat, fatigue, or scheduling issues. He left because admiration in India has a habit of curdling into mob ownership, and no amount of star power can survive a crowd that mistakes access for entitlement. Especially VIPs with selfie mania. In Mumbai, the same instinct surfaced when spectators booed politicians and film stars taking selfies with him, because they were mad at establishment exclusivity in full plebeian view. Everyone wanted proof-of-presence, a digital relic to upload.
This was post-liberalisation India in full display: richer, louder, more mobile, and astonishingly unembarrassed. Money prevailed over manners. Flights became affordable, passports multiplied, foreign cities shrank to weekend plans. What never arrived was a national education in how to exist once you arrive somewhere; anywhere. Travel was democratised but civic sense was not. The result is a catalogue the world now knows by heart. Indians stealing towels to soap from hotels and getting caught. Bags planted in queues like territorial signs. Feet on seats. Trash dropped inches from a bin because bending is beneath dignity. Sidewalks blocked by impromptu family conferences. Cinema halls hijacked by selfie-takers filming themselves while the movie plays. Fingers snapped at waiters. Let’s stop pretending this is about “a few bad apples.” This is a full orchard problem. You’ve seen them: the guy livestreaming himself shouting on the underground in NY. The uncle spitting paan on London streets like he’s reclaiming colonial territory. The tourist peeing in Thailand’s turquoise waters because “nature, bro.” The airport floor campers unpacking parathas and pickle like it’s a family picnic next to a duty-free Dior store. The men who confuse foreign women with interactive exhibits. Then there is the airborne disgrace. Indian passengers getting drunk mid-flight, abusing cabin crew, refusing seatbelts because “do you know who I am,” vomiting in aisles, and urinating on fellow passengers as if an aircraft cabin were a lawless frontier. These aren’t freak incidents anymore; they’re recurring headlines. What’s more revealing than the acts is the defence that follows like stress, alcohol, misunderstanding, culture; anything except accountability. And when locals recoil, the conclusion is predictable: racism, jealousy, conspiracy. Never reflection.
At the centre of this national embarrassment is the newly mobile Indian from Tier-II and Tier-III towns, suddenly flush with cash and access but starved of exposure to urban civility. This isn’t a moral judgement; it’s a sociological one. Smaller towns often function on intimacy and informality, where everyone knows everyone and behaviour is negotiated privately. Drop that social wiring into dense, anonymous urban and global spaces—metros, airports, foreign streets—and without recalibration it turns abrasive. What worked in a familiar ecosystem becomes boorish in a shared one. Liberalisation moved up people faster than it taught them how to adjust. Before the 1990s, foreign travel was restricted, elitist, gatekept. You had to know how to behave because the cost of embarrassment was social exile. Now travel is EMI-enabled, Insta-reel optimised, and zero shame. Today, misbehaviour travels faster than correction. It goes viral, gets defended as authenticity, and is rewarded with attention. Shame, once a powerful social regulator, has been euthanised and replaced with a shrug. To be corrected is to be insulted. To follow rules is to be a fool.
Gen Z didn’t invent this culture, but it performs it with sharper tools and better cameras. The language is new, being main character energy, sigma mindset but the impulse is old: I matter more than the space I occupy. Public life is my stage. When politicians flout laws, celebrities cut lines, and institutions enforce nothing, the lesson sinks in early. Power matters. Behaviour doesn’t. There’s a lazy defence that civic sense is a Western obsession, alien to Indian culture. It’s a convenient lie. Indian society once survived on restraint, adjustment, and an acute awareness of shared space. What we’re witnessing now isn’t tradition asserting itself; it’s individualism on steroids, lubricated by money and validated by silence. The costs are no longer abstract. Celebrity achiever cut visits short. Airlines quietly flag passengers. Tourist towns resent the influx. What begins as embarrassment hardens into exclusion. A country that cannot regulate itself in public eventually loses the privilege of being welcomed elsewhere.
Civilisation isn’t GDP or startup valuations. It’s knowing when not to shout, not to touch, not to spit, not to pee on someone because you’ve had one drink too many at 35,000 feet. Until that lesson is learned, especially by a newly mobile population rushing into spaces it hasn’t been taught to share, India will keep mistaking noise for confidence, entitlement for freedom, and disgrace for swagger, while the world, politely at first and then decisively, keeps its distance. – The New Indian Express, 21 December 2025
› Ravi Shankar is a columnist and editor with The New Indian Express.
Filed under: india, world | Tagged: bad manners, boorishness, disregard for rules, indian civil society, urban civility |
BHARATA BHARATI 