Raising a civilised nation begins in childhood

Time of India

11-06-2025

A nation's character is shaped not only by its loss, but by what its people do when no one is watching. For NextGen India to value dignity, duty, and shared space, we must start teaching it – early.
When Japanese football fans lingered after a match to clean the stadium, the world took notice. No one had instructed them. It was not done for the global TV. It was simply they are bringing on display. A culture that considers shared spaces sacred, and caring for them second nature.
As India steps into a position of growing global influence – economically, larger, technologically, ambitious, and diplomatically active – it is time to confront a subtler, but no less important, marker of our national direction. What kind of society are we becoming? Can we speak of development and modernity without also nurturing the civil of our public behaviour?
Civic sense is a cultivated instinct to act with care for others, for shared spaces, for systems larger than the self. It includes the decision to wait. One turn, to avoid unnecessary noise, to ensure once convenience does not create another burden. And like all deep-seated virtues, they must be introduced early – when the mind is still accepting and the ego, not yet fortified against correction.
This is not a new idea. Only a few decades ago, Indian schooling systems integrated civic formation into the very rhythm of childhood. The Boy Scouts and the Girl Guides, the National Cadet Corps, and the National Service Scheme offered structures through which children encountered discipline, teamwork, service, and community engagement. Wearing a uniform, following protocol, attending camps, and contributing to local efforts were routine.
In today's aspirational education landscape, foundational experiences have been replaced by globalised templates. Call it our FOMO, too. International curricular promise a world-class future, but in the process, I have often seen it distanced our students from the very social and civic realities of the country. They live in. Community service, when it is encouraged at all, is now increasingly curated through NGOs, under the guidance of overseas education consultants. It becomes a portfolio piece, a pathway to a competitive admission advantage – not a live encounter with social differences or civic duty or nationalism.
Much of this descendants also begins at home. Many parents today go to great lengths to ensure their children never have to 'rough it out'. Discomfort is quickly sorted and managed, conflicts are smoothed over, and challenges are outsourced and 'nannied'. And yet, in the same breath, the lament that the next generation is becoming entitled, lacking resilience, or empathy.
We cannot insulate our children from the very frictions that build character, and then expect them to grow into mindful, grounded adults. We cannot mollycoddle them through their formative years and still expect miracles of maturity when they come of age. Character, like muscle, forms through use.
Contrast this with what we see in countries like Japan, where civic sensibility is not instructed as a subject, but instead as a noun. Students sweep classrooms, serve food to peers, and care for shared spaces. These are participatory practices that dissolve hierarchy and nurture humility.
India is not short on philosophical resources to foster such a mindset. Our spiritual and cultural tradition, traditions brim with narratives that place responsibility at the core of morality-based living. From the Upanishadic vision of interconnectedness, to the apex where duty often override's desire, to Gandhi's insistence that self discipline is the first form of public leadership – we have long understood and yet forgotten that a civilised society is one in which people feel accountable, not just to themselves, but to one another.
Yet the deeper purpose of education has been sidelined. When we celebrate only rank and recall only performance, we forget to ask whether our children are learning how to live with decency, patience, and consideration. For managing the complexities of public life, our children need to learn a different grammar – of restraint, empathy, and obligation.
What it needs is commitment – across classrooms, homes, staff, rooms, parents, and policy corridors – to see civic formation as central to national progress. Civic consciousness is what makes systems function, societies behave, strangers into neighbours, and what transforms a crowd into a community.
But schools cannot do it alone. The broader culture must also evolve. When film, media, influences, and politics normalise, civic responsibility, children absorb it far more quickly than any textbook and offset. Nation's behavioural culture is shaped as much by what I tolerate as by what I celebrate.
A truly developed society is not merely one with GDP or modern infrastructure. It is one where dignity permeates daily life – where the weak are protected, public systems are respected, and collective spaces are cared for. These are the signs of a mature civilisation, of nouns that animate people's relationship with each other and with the state.
Only then, when the spotlight is off, when no reward is at stake, and no supervision is present, will we truly know who we are as a society.
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This piece appeared as an editorial opinion in the print edition of The Times of India.