Civic Sense

Civic Sense is that sense in an individual which makes him a civilized citizen of a country. As far as the normal understanding is concerned, it is felt that people from cultured, educated, and belonging to the upper strata are more or less quite civilized and have a huge stock of civic sense. This may be true in other countries but, as far as we are concerned, what is inherently wrong with us that we, no matter which state and what background we belong to, are utterly lacking in the civic sense.

Lack of civic sense is not far to seek, we find it all-pervading no matter where we go. At home, in our neighborhood, in the colony, on the road, in the office, in a theatre, in a restaurant, and everywhere we go, we leave disgusting signs of incivility. This situation was not always true of us Indians; we were never as uncivil as we are today. Why this deterioration in the civic sense? The reason for this is plausible for, never are we taught to treat things that belong to others nicely, kindly, and well Nowhere in any syllabus in a school or in a daily routine at home is civility part of the program to be instilled in us, it is instead conspicuous by its absence. We never teach the children to treat the neighborhood, society, and public property as something meant to be maintained well. What we are teaching them is just to keep themselves, their things, and their homes in order. Society is becoming no main concern. With this attitude, it is no wonder that parks, cinemas; roads are all littered because they do not belong to anyone. We feel that the municipality is to look after these but, what about our contribution? We only contribute filth wherever we can.

We clean our homes and throw the rubbish in front of our neighbor’s home; we eat sweets and chocolates and throw wrappers here there and everywhere. A very common sight is a biscuit wrapper being flung out of a speeding car in the middle of the road. This only goes to show how very civic-minded our so-called creamy layer of society is. If this is the standard of the cream, the less said about others, the better it would be. One just has to go to a newly built cinema house with all the most modern gadgets but, all the walls are full of pan spit. Is this how we care for our public property? Would we destroy the walls of our homes? No definitely not, then why this indifference for public property? This is because we have become and continue becoming more and more selfish and self-centered. We only look at self and nothing else around us matters. Yet, at the same time if we do not have public amenities we shout the loudest. What an irony? We want everything but cannot contribute to the maintenance of anything. This is the standard of our civic sense. In this, the most tragic fact about the whole affair is that we are at no stage of life taught to respect other peoples’ property or public property. It is educated and the rich who should be the best conducted, contribute maximum to lack of civic sense

We must make destroying public property a punishable offense then people might be less frivolous to civilities.