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Indians are not inherently corrupt or dishonest. Judge individuals for their actions, not an entire nation based on the misconduct of a few.
That line from a LinkedIn post captures a notion that has bothered me for a while.
Is corruption a function of the environment people operate in? Or is the environment corrupt because of a culture built by the people in it? Which came first?
In Ricky Gervais' The Invention of Lying, no one has ever lied. When Gervais tells the first lie, everyone takes him at face value. They can't wrap their heads around it. Why would anyone lie? It makes no sense to them.
Viewed through that prism, every Indian is willing to break a rule in a heartbeat. Not because we're born that way, but because of the environment we inhabit, fostered, and sustain with our own behaviour.
I have no delusions that I'm morally upstanding. I've paid bribes. I've parked on roads. I've driven on the wrong side. Every time, the path of least friction was the most logical thing to do. The cost of not paying the bribe was too high. Go to court? Pay a bigger fine there? Bribe someone further up the ladder? Why?
When the price of doing the right thing is much higher than the price of being the rule-breaker, you have an environment that brings out the worst traits in everyone.
And I never felt alone or ashamed doing it. It felt normal. That's the deal: in India it is normal to cheat, to abuse public spaces, to pay your way out. Not because the people are evil.
But put enough people together who think littering isn't shameful, a bribe isn't evil, cat-calling isn't cruel, you get a society where broken rules, filth, and terrible governance are simply the norm. Nothing sad or wrong about it. This is how the place works. Like a friend who says inappropriate things after a drink or two. Strange? Sure. But that's just how he is.
So here's the uncomfortable truth: India runs on poor standards of governance, high tolerance for squalor, and low expectations of public behaviour. Are the people capable of better? Most of the time: Yes. The same Indian who litters on a railway platform won't litter in the Singapore Metro. But put enough of us together under today's rules, and more often than not you'll get sub-par, corrupt, poor outcomes.
The people aren't inherently corrupt. The collective milieu we create and inhabit together is. And every bribe I paid was a vote to keep it that way.