🪓India's Moral Decay as a Republic.
Thanos was right. He has always been right.
“This universe is finite, its resources finite. If life is left unchecked, life will cease to exist. It needs correction.”
True for any nation as well.
A nation needs sequential correction. But what happens a nation fails to become a Republic?
In Plato’s idea of a Republic, he mapped the stellar decline: aristocracy degrades into timocracy, timocracy into oligarchy, oligarchy into democracy, and democracy into tyranny.
Not as moral judgment but as observation of inevitable cycle. Each form contains seeds of its own destruction. India’s current moral democracy seed is particularly insidious: it elevates freedom above all, including the discipline required to maintain freedom.
And what it results into? Chaos, masquerading as liberation, which population eventually trades for order under tyrant.
India is not approaching this decline. India is in it. Deep.
I want to dissect what exactly leads to the Moral Decay of a Republic?
One: Rewarding Vice Over Virtue
Republic decays when bad behavior yields better outcomes than good behavior.
When cheater prospers more than honest person. When liar wins election over truth-teller. When corrupt official lives better than ethical one. This inverts moral economy. If virtue is punished and vice is rewarded, rational actors choose vice. Not because they are immoral, but because they are rational. System has made morality irrational.
India rewards bad behavior systematically. Cheating in exams is normalized. Students who cheat score higher, get better placements, earn more. Students who do not cheat are disadvantaged. This instills in you: “integrity is liability”. @kunalb11 low trust society theory fits well here.
Businesses that evade taxes, violate regulations, exploit workers outcompete businesses that follow rules. Politicians who lie, manipulate, incite win elections over those who speak uncomfortable truths. Media that sensationalizes, polarizes, manufactures outrage gets more viewership than media that informs responsibly.
Every institution sends the same message: morality is for losers.
If you want to succeed, cheat. If you want power, lie. If you want wealth, steal. And if you are caught, use wealth and power to escape consequences.
Most intellectual critiques of society would label it as anomaly. It’s not. This is system working as designed. Designed to reward those shameless enough to exploit it and punish those principled enough to resist.
Two: Collapse of Accountability
Republic requires accountability. Those who violate rules must face consequences. But is that the case?
Without this, rules become suggestions. And when rules are suggestions, power decides everything. India has achieved complete collapse of accountability for powerful. Minister caught with ₹100 crore walks free with ₹90 crore intact.
Message is clear: evidence means nothing, power means everything.
This is not corruption anymore; corruption implies deviation from norm. This is norm. Institutional rot so complete that corruption is not bug but feature. Courts move slowly when accused is powerful, swiftly when accused is powerless. Agencies selectively wake up to investigate opponents, sleep through crimes of allies. Public outrage is managed through news cycle until people get bored and move on. And accused do not even bother hiding anymore because they know no one will touch them.
When minister is accused of crime and continues attending rallies, giving interviews, holding office, what lesson does this teach? It teaches that laws do not apply equally. They apply selectively based on proximity to power.
This destroys legitimacy of entire legal system.
If everyone knows laws are tools of power rather than constraints on power, why should anyone respect them?
Three: Institutional Capture
Republic dies when institutions meant to check power are captured by power. Courts that should judge impartially become perceived as siding with government and industry. Media that should investigate becomes propaganda. Police that should protect citizens become enforcers for politicians. Regulators that should ensure safety become approvers of unsafe products for bribes.
India’s institutions are hollowed out. Fake cough syrup kills children. Fake rabies vaccines fail to protect. Roads crumble days after inauguration. Bridges crack within months. Criticise them as incompetent, they don’t 2 f*cks.
Corruption so systematic that quality control does not exist. Because regulators are bribed. Because inspectors are paid off. Because officials know they will face no consequences for approving substandard work or deadly products.
And when victims seek justice, courts move glacially if at all. When media covers it, coverage lasts one cycle before next scandal. When politicians are confronted, they deflect, deny, attack questioner. No accountability. No urgency. No consequences. Just institutional rot so deep that expecting justice feels naive.
How will a citizen survive in this filth?
Four: Normalization of Injustice
Most dangerous stage of decay is when population stops being revolutionary.
I have seen the era of India where: crimes become so frequent that each new one barely registers. When corruption becomes so universal that complaining about it feels pointless. When injustice becomes so normal that demanding justice feels radical.
This is where India is. We are being conditioned to tolerate what previous generation would have rioted over. Or not. (Being too optimistic with my vision here but...)
Rapists roaming free, gets bail easily. No outrage. Minister involved in crime. No consequences. Some rich fat father’s son kills 2 souls with a Porsche. Evidence Tampered. Essay writing competitions. Lack-lustre investigation. No moral justice. Ever.
If your blood still doesn’t boils after knowing the conditioning of your country...then just ask yourself: God forbid, but let’s say some mishap, some tragedy happens to you, or your family. And if the system that you’re so ignorant about turns your back on you. Then? How shall you react? What will you do?
This happens repeatedly until outrage is numbed, questions are buried, silence is sold as maturity. “What can we do?” becomes default response. This is how democracies do not collapse overnight. They decay quietly while people convince themselves nothing can be done.
The moment citizens stop demanding accountability and start accepting injustice as “normal,” power stops fearing public. And when power stops fearing people, country is not being governed anymore. It is being occupied. Rulers are not serving citizens. They are extracting from subjects.
Five: Concentration of Power
When a pretentious republic is desperate for order, for decisiveness, for someone to solve problems, they concentrate power in one person. This person promises to cut through bureaucracy, to get things done, to restore greatness. And population, tired of democratic gridlock, surrenders power willingly.
India is in this stage. Power is concentrated in hands of a hierarchal babus, known as a collective man. And that man protects his own. Fair trials? What’s that.
Democracy starts looking less like system and more like stage-managed illusion. Elections happen but outcomes feel predetermined.
And look you can’t fundamentally rely on the opposition in this current state. We have seen what clowns are on the other side.
Democratisation requires distributing power to the republic. But the system that lusts power will never let that happen. Never.
Six: Death of Questioning Culture
Republic requires citizens who question. Who scrutinize. Who refuse to accept official narratives without evidence. India has opposite: blind adherence to authority, hierarchy, tradition.
No questioning culture.
You do not question teacher, boss, parent, political leader, religious authority.
Because someone with inadequate democracy and boastful confidence taught you: “Questioning is disrespect. Compliance is virtue.”
F*CK YOU.
Stop this is colonial hangover. British trained Indians to be obedient subjects, not questioning citizens. And after seventy-eight years, we still operate with same psychology. Imagine the kind of PTSD we carry. We are weaklings in a bucket. Knowing the way of up, but never moving. And if we do, someone’s already there to pull us down.
Add to this tribalism: caste, religion, region, language. that fragments population into competing groups too busy fighting each other to question those above.
And complacent business class that profits from system and has no interest in changing it. What happens then? Population perfectly conditioned to accept whatever they are told by those in power.
How India is Morally Decaying
Understand it from a non-opinionated commentary perspective: Last 10 years have hit peak we never saw before. Yes, crimes existed earlier. Yes, Lalu’s era was lawless. Yes, UP always had reputation. Yes, Hindu-Muslim tussle has always startled my nation.
But that excuse is so pre-2013.
What feels different now is sudden rise in entitlement. A supremacist entitlement. People aligned with current power behave like laws do not apply to them because practically they do not. No fear of consequence. No urgency for justice. No accountability.
This is not about targeting political party by name. This is about recognizing pattern. When crimes, corruption, assaults, rapes, harassment involving ministers, corrupt babus, party members become this frequent and perpetrators face no or mild consequences, system is broken. Not broken accidentally. Broken deliberately to protect powerful.
The design is brilliant in its cynicism. Create crisis through misgovernance. Blame opposition, minorities, previous governments. Generate outrage at scapegoats while protecting actual perpetrators. Control media to amplify favorable narratives and bury uncomfortable ones. Capture institutions so investigations happen selectively. Break opposition through defections and intimidation. And when critics speak up, attack them as anti-national, urban elite, foreign-funded.
The entire cycle of my nation’s Dharma is imbalanced.
Stop romanticising this as rising governance. It’s not. And it all exists because population is conditioned to accept authority, to believe official narratives, to blame scapegoats rather than question power.
It requires a tectonic shift.
Ambedkar’s Prophecy
I remember watching this rare BBC interview with Bhim Rao Ambedkar.
The person who wrote the constitution asked if democracy will work in India responded: “No, democracy will never work in India.” What can work is diligent, circumcised version of communism, something from China’s playbook.
Was he being pessimistic. Of his own nation. Was he anti-India? Was he a traitor?
No.
Ambedkar understood that democracy requires certain preconditions: educated populace, civic consciousness, institutional integrity, questioning culture, commitment to equality.
India at that time (and still) had none of these intrinsically.
We had hierarchical society based on caste. We had illiterate population. We had no tradition of civic participation. We had colonial institutions designed for control, not justice.
So we imported or more like rented democratic structure without building democratic culture.
And that’s where the domino fell: Democracy became a performance.
His suggestion of disciplined communism was not endorsement of authoritarianism. It was recognition that India needs strong state to overcome entrenched hierarchies and build egalitarian society. That democratic chaos would be exploited by those same hierarchies to maintain power. That without discipline imposed from above, India would decay into oligarchy disguised as democracy.
We did not listen. We chose democracy.
And we got exactly what he predicted: oligarchy disguised as democracy. Small elite controlling everything while majority votes for their own continued exploitation because they are kept distracted by cultural and religious conflicts manufactured to divide them.
Can we ever recover from it?
Yes, we can. But we won’t.
Can we restore Accountability: No recovery without accountability. Laws must apply equally regardless of power, wealth, caste, religion, party affiliation. This requires independent judiciary, independent investigative agencies, independent media. All of which are currently captured. So first step is freeing institutions from political control.
Can we rebuild Education: Current education system produces obedient employees, not thinking citizens. Reform requires teaching critical thinking, civic responsibility, ethical reasoning, questioning authority. Not as theory but as practice. Students must learn to think independently, to examine evidence, to challenge narratives, to recognize propaganda. This will be opposed by every vested interest.
Can we decentralize Power: Concentration of power is death of republic. Power must be distributed across institutions that check each other. Strong federalism where states have real autonomy. Independent local governance. Separation of powers that is not just constitutional theory but operational reality. This requires constitutional amendments, institutional reforms, cultural shift away from strongman worship. All extremely difficult. But without decentralization, democracy remains vulnerable to single individual or party capturing everything.
Can we revive Questioning Culture: Most important and most difficult. Culture cannot be legislated. It emerges from values, behaviors, norms practiced daily. Reviving questioning culture requires parents allowing children to question. Teachers encouraging students to challenge. Media investigating rather than propagandizing. Citizens demanding evidence rather than accepting assertions. This is generational work. Current generation is mostly lost. But next generation could be different if we start now.
Can we enforce Dharma: Not dharma as religious ritual. Dharma as cosmic principle of right action, duty, justice, truth. Bhagavad Gita teaches that when dharma declines, Krishna Ji incarnates to restore it. We cannot wait for Shri Krishna or Kalki. We must embody Krishna Ji. Each person enforcing dharma in their domain. Refusing to participate in adharma even when costly.
I laugh at entire design of India.
Not from joy but from dark recognition of absurdity. We are most populous democracy practicing least democratic governance. We have constitution guaranteeing rights while institutions systematically violate them. We have elections while power remains concentrated. We have laws while justice is bought and sold. We have media while truth is manufactured. We have education while thinking is discouraged.
Failed Democracy? Nah, this is success of managed autocracy that maintains democratic aesthetics to satisfy international community and domestic liberals while operating as oligarchy that extracts maximum wealth from population kept divided by caste, religion, region, language. The last ten years accelerated what was always present.
But there are a few catch...made explicit what was always implicit. Removed even pretence of accountability. And underneath is what was always there: power serving power, using democracy as tool rather than constraint.
Moral decay of republic is not coming. It is here. Has been here. Is getting worse. Question is not whether it can be stopped. Question is whether enough people care to try. Current evidence suggests no. Population is comfortable enough to avoid revolt, distracted enough to avoid awareness, divided enough to avoid solidarity. Perfect conditions for continued decay until something breaks catastrophically.
We are not special. We are not exempt.
We are following same pattern every republic follows when moral foundation collapses. Only question is how far we fall before hitting bottom. And whether we learn anything from the fall.
History suggests probably not. But hope remains. Irrational, unreasonable, almost certainly futile hope that enough people will wake up before it is too late.
This hope is probably delusion. But it is all we have left.