India Is a Low-Trust Society
India’s public spaces are battlegrounds where the strong impose and the weak yield.
Order is not given - it is taken.
A prime seat in a waiting area? Someone will sit uncomfortably close until you leave. A long queue? Someone will inch ahead the moment you hesitate.
This isn’t rudeness. It’s hyper-pragmatism born from a low-trust environment.
In high-trust societies, people follow unwritten rules because they expect others to do the same. Order is self-reinforcing. In Japan, nobody jumps a queue. Not because of strict policing, but because the social contract is deeply ingrained. In India, that contract does not exist.
Trust is reserved for kin, not for strangers. Rules are flexible, not fixed. The assumption is clear: if you don’t seize an advantage, someone else will.
For centuries, India’s social structure was built on rigid caste divisions, not collective trust. The British weaponized this, turning groups against each other to maintain control. Post-independence, corruption and weak enforcement ensured people never expected fairness from the state—only from their own circles.
The result?
A society where cooperation is conditional, advantage-seeking is instinctive, and fairness is a fool’s expectation.
This is why Indians behave differently in structured versus unstructured settings. In private circles, they display warmth, generosity, and hospitality. But in public, it’s every man for himself.
There is no implicit assumption of shared responsibility - only competition for limited resources. Roads, queues, and public infrastructure are not seen as collective assets but as contested space.
A stranger in front of you isn’t another citizen. They’re an obstacle.
This isn’t simple selfishness; it’s rational adaptation to an environment where institutions do not reliably enforce order. When rules are weak, playing fair is a losing strategy. People don’t trust that waiting patiently will get them anywhere, so they take what they can, when they can. Cutting in line, pushing through crowds, and bypassing systems aren’t breaches of etiquette.
They are tactical moves in a low-trust game.
This behaviour is not unique to India. Every low-trust society exhibits the same patterns. In China, personal connections (guanxi) override official rules. In Russia, bureaucracy is designed to be navigated through favors and bribes. In much of the Middle East, power determines the application of law.
The key difference between high-trust and low-trust societies is not culture - it is institutional predictability.
When systems function consistently, people adapt by following rules. When they don’t, people adapt by gaming them.
Economic growth alone won’t change this. GDP does not build trust. If prosperity alone were the answer, China - now the world’s second-largest economy - would have transformed into a high-trust society. But it hasn’t. Trust isn’t a function of wealth; it’s a function of repeated, predictable fairness.
If laws are selectively enforced, if corruption is expected, if disorder is normal, people will continue to prioritize personal advantage over social order.
The only way to shift societal behavior is through top-down enforcement of trustworthiness. This means institutions must operate with absolute consistency. There can be no selective application of rules, no tolerance for corruption, and no double standards for the powerful versus the powerless.
Trust is not built from the bottom up - it is imposed from the top down, until it becomes cultural habit.
Until that happens, India will remain a nation of fragmented interests, where collective progress is always secondary to personal advantage.
Public space is not shared - it is seized.
The only rule is: move fast, or be moved.
And in a world that rewards coordination, a country that plays for individual gain will always lag behind one that plays as a unit.