The last two incidents I witnessed have refused to leave my mind. Both happened within a span of two days. Both involved people who probably earn less in a month than many of us spend on a weekend. And both made me wonder...
Are our systems designed to improve people, or simply to punish them?
For the last few weeks I have been spending a lot of time at a construction site. It has given me an opportunity to interact closely with the people we often call "labourers." Most of them come from villages. Most of them have left their families behind. Most of them work six or seven days a week. They don't complain much. They simply work.
Last Saturday was payment day. One of the workers requested me to transfer his wages through GPay. I did. A few minutes later he walked back towards me. He wasn't angry. He wasn't asking for more money. He was simply confused. His phone was linked to two bank accounts. The money had gone into an older account that he no longer used regularly. Over the months, the bank had deducted charges for not maintaining the minimum balance. More than ₹2,000 had disappeared. I still remember his face. Not because he cried. He didn't. Not because he shouted. He didn't. He simply stood there trying to calculate how he would now survive the coming week. That money wasn't for a vacation. It wasn't for a new phone. It wasn't even for himself. It was rent. Groceries. Money to send home. School fees. Medicine. To many of us, ₹2,000 is a dinner bill. To him, it was the difference between sleeping peacefully and spending the next seven days worrying.
The very next day I witnessed something else.
An RTA officer stopped a small trolley vehicle. The driver's offence? The font on his number plate was slightly smaller than what the rules prescribed. The number plate wasn't fake. It wasn't hidden. It wasn't designed to escape the law. It was simply an older vehicle with an older number plate. The penalty was ₹3,000.
The driver folded his hands. "Sir... that is three days of my earnings." There was no argument. No arrogance. Just a request. The fine remained.
As I watched him walk away, I wasn't thinking about the rule. I was thinking about his home. Someone would be waiting for him. A wife. Children. Old parents. Maybe all of them. That evening somebody would ask,
"Did you buy the medicines?" "Did you pay the school fees?" "When are you sending money?" How do you explain that three days of your hard work disappeared because the letters on your number plate were a little smaller?
Again, please don't misunderstand me. Rules are necessary. Without rules there is no society. People who deliberately cheat the system should absolutely face consequences. But is every mistake an act of dishonesty? Should every violation be treated exactly the same? Or should intent matter? Somewhere along the way, we seem to have forgotten that every file has a family behind it. Every penalty has a kitchen behind it. Every deduction has a child behind it. Every fine has a week that suddenly becomes much harder.
The part that disturbed me the most was something else. The officer issuing the fine probably did not grow up in a wealthy household. The bank employee processing charges probably knows what financial struggle looks like. Most people working in these positions come from ordinary families. Families where every rupee mattered. So what changes? At what point do we stop seeing ourselves in the person standing across the table? When does the uniform become more important than the human being?
When does policy become more important than purpose? I am not questioning the law. I am questioning the absence of empathy. Because there is a difference between enforcing discipline and forgetting compassion. The strongest systems in the world are not those that punish the most people. They are the ones that correct people without breaking them.
A warning can educate. A conversation can change behaviour. A little empathy can build more respect for the law than fear ever will.
Sometimes I wonder...
If the purpose of governance is to build better citizens, why do so many citizens walk away feeling smaller than when they arrived?
Maybe the true strength of a system is not measured by how many fines it collects. Maybe it is measured by how many lives it improves. Because rules create order. But empathy creates a society.
And without empathy, even the best policy slowly becomes just another punishment.
Beautifully articulated the harsh realities of Indian society. It left me deeply emotional. This isn't an untouched or rarely explored subject—it's one that has been written about time and again, yet the pain persists, with little respite and even less change.
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