Painting everything with the brush of religion
Today everything we talk is first scanned through the religion-tinted glasses, and then blown out of proportion to forcibly include the actually absent religious insinuations.  Be it talking about something as elementary as food choices or social issues like bursting crackers. Anything that remotely goes against what the majority believes in is translated as blasphemous. One cannot even expect that all his beliefs will be free from criticism, denial or ridicule.

 

Missing sensibility and sensitivity when it comes to public properties       
In India, all public properties are built with public money, which comes from the taxes we as citizens pay. While the government is responsible for maintaining the property, it does not discount the fact that we as responsible citizens play an important role in its upkeep too. But instead, rather than maintaining them, a lot of us end up destroying public properties by littering, vandalizing, scribbling on monuments, ripping apart bus and train seats, abusing public washrooms…and the list goes on!

 

Talking about everything on social media but actually not doing anything about it
Today people are not even remotely cautious about sharing their opinion on social media. However, our actions are no more as active as they used to be – thanks to the feeling of solidarity that social media provides without even moving a finger. Now debates only happen on social media. I’m scared to see people confuse sharing a viral tweet or a post for making a genuine effort towards a cause, which it is not! And if someone does not agree with the opinion that we hold to be true, then we…

 

Start imposing our beliefs on others’ personal choices
We keep jumping on and off the ‘moral judgments bandwagon’ as per our convenience. In the current affairs context, if you were to laud or criticize demonetization, you will have hundred people telling you how you are wrong. When do we constantly stop scrutinizing? Be it someone’s sexual orientation or their stance on feminism, we shoot off our opinions without even completely understanding the issue.

 

Because patience is a rare virtue now
 We don’t listen to understand, we listen to reply! Being loud and overpowering seems to be in fashion. Aggression is now seen as a merit, and is much celebrated. Whatever happened to good old assertiveness? Acknowledging, listening, and being sensitive to other people’s opinion is simply an outdated idea. It’s a world driven with the motto of “I need to be heard; I am all that matters”. These qualities are not only reflected in speech but also in actions such as indulging in road rage, jumping the queues and maintaining no decorum by the sheer power of aggressiveness. Today, people confuse being aggressive with being a go-getter. If you’re polite, you’re weak. If you’re accessible, you’re not important. I’m scared that it’s the cloak of arrogance and pseudo intelligence that is in fact in vogue.

 

Everything is a fad
Start-ups, slam poetry, food pornography – everyone wants to do what everyone else is doing, because YOLO. You know, you-only-live-once. Apparently this startling fact that came into being only a few years ago has made everything a fad and shrunk life out of everything we do! Clicking 100 pictures to get the right shot of what your order looks like has become the new etiquette in table manners. Today, everything is for effect, but not for execution. We market for glamour, while we actually have no substance. The trend of doing something eventful and posting on social media has reversed. We now seek eventfulness in the most mundane things just so that we have something to share on social media and garner the Likes, Loves and Wows.

 

Saying anything offensive about iconic figures
Case in point, Tanmay Bhatt’s Snapchat video a few months ago. While the video was found to be not so funny and not in such great taste by the majority, the way people took off on Tanmay Bhatt because it was mimicking two iconic personalities of India – Sachin Tendulkar and Lata Mangeshkar was rather amusing. He was in fact threatened to be killed for making a video like this and obviously criticized on national scale! However, when other stand-up comedians in our country make sexist jokes or producers make offensively obscene films such as the one about three sex-starved husbands wrapped as comedy, we don’t seem to mind this at all. Net, net, it is only celebrities whom we cannot offend. Double standards much?

 

Getting caught in the web of democracy
 How can we Indians escape from this! We are the largest democracy in the world, with its citizens grappling with the true meaning of democracy every single day. “Does my right to freedom of speech only count if it does not offend anyone?” is one of the frequent questions we ponder over before truly expressing ourselves. We are scared that we may not know when we cross the line and get into some major trouble! Forget nationalist and anti-nationalist, I am even scared to speak against certain actors, knowing their frenzied fans will be up in arms to fight me if I say a word against the person they idolize!

 

Clarity in objective
Some of the recent initiatives taken by the government such as demonetisation, Standup India, Startup India, Digital India etc. are indeed laudable. However, any attempt to gauge the outcome will lead us to question the objective of these initiatives. Demonetisation for instance, was a bold move and initially stated that it was aimed at curbing counterfeit currency. Sometime later, the government announced that the move was targeted at black money. Again, it declared that demonetisation was aimed to tackle terrorism and then said, it was meant to promote cashless economy. The objective however, remains a puzzle