A short clip from Brent Council, Britain, showing workers power-washing red-brown paan stains, went viral and turned local frustration into a policy line, “Don’t mess with Brent.” The council says cleaning paan and gutka residue costs roughly £30,000 a year, and enforcement, with fines up to £100, and targeted signage follows.
That image is small but potent, a private habit made public and measured, and it should be a wake-up call for India about the wider civic habits we export and normalise at home.
Public spitting is only one symptom of a broader civic-sense failure that includes littering, poor waste segregation, open urination, traffic indiscipline, careless use, and damage, of public property, and noise pollution. It shows how weak civic sense creates health, economic, and reputational costs, and what must change.
The Brent Stain Was Small, Its Message Was Huge
The viral video from Brent turned a cultural practice into a municipal ledger item: about £30,000 per year to remove paan stains, with enforcement and signage deployed to stop repeat behaviour. The council’s response made clear that what looks like private taste can become a public externality when repeated across streets and communities.
That is the crucial translation: messy private acts to measurable public costs. The same arithmetic applies back home.
When millions act the same way, spitting, littering, urinating in the open, not segregating waste, small individual acts aggregate into large municipal bills, higher maintenance workloads, and images that travel online and shape how people see us abroad. The Brent video is not about a single borough; it is a concrete example of a universal governance problem.
Civic Failings Are Public Health Failings
Paan, gutka, and many smokeless-tobacco products contain areca nut and tobacco. The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), and a major 2024 global analysis, concluded that about one in three oral cancer cases globally in 2022 were attributable to smokeless tobacco or areca nut; India accounted for 83,400 of the 120,200 attributable cases that year. That converts a “taste” into a real disease burden.
Beyond cancer, poor civic practices increase infectious disease risk, as public spitting spreads pathogens, worsens urban sanitation, and contributes to premature mortality and lost productivity.
The World Bank estimated that inadequate sanitation costs India the equivalent of approximately 6.4% of GDP, based on a 2006 baseline, a stark reminder that poor civic hygiene is an economic drain, not only an aesthetic problem.
It’s Not “Culture” Alone
Saying “it’s cultural” is an excuse, not an explanation. Behavioural evidence and policy studies show three interacting causes: (1) infrastructure gaps, such as insufficient bins and inconsistent street cleaning, (2) social norms, as people copy visible behaviour, and (3) low or inconsistent enforcement, so the perceived cost of bad behaviour is tiny. Where all three align, bad habits ossify into civic expectation.
India’s waste and tobacco data help explain visibility. Municipal reports show India generated roughly 150,761 tonnes per day of municipal solid waste in 2019 to 2020, translating to tens of millions of tonnes annually, while national surveys found that 21.4% of adults used smokeless tobacco in 2016 to 2017.
High prevalence makes poor civic acts visible and self-reinforcing. Change requires all three levers: infrastructure, norm shifting, and credible enforcement, used together.
Authorities Try
There are strong, correct moves on the record: Brent paired clean-ups with enforcement and outreach; Indian campaigns like the Swachh Bharat Mission, Clean India, have pushed latrine coverage up and launched mass messaging; some Indian cities use spot fines and community clean-up drives.
Behavioural units, for example, behavioural insights units under some states or NITI-linked pilots, are beginning to test interventions that actually change micro-habits.
But the common failure is scale and continuity. Cleanliness drives make headlines, then fade. Municipal budgets prioritise capital projects while day-to-day maintenance, such as emptying bins, deep-cleaning stains, and street sweeping, remains underfunded.
Enforcement is uneven and often seen as punitive rather than corrective, and awareness campaigns frequently lack local language, context, or follow-up. The result is short sprints with limited long-term behavioural impact.
Also Read: Why Indians Lack Serious Civic Sense And Basic Hygiene
Beyond Compliance, Towards Collective Stewardship
Every citizen in India is not only entitled to a clean environment, but under Article 51A(g) of the Constitution of India also bears a fundamental duty to “protect and improve the natural environment, including forests, lakes, rivers, and wildlife.” This duty extends implicitly to maintaining public hygiene, respecting common spaces, and preventing pollution or degradation of shared resources. Indian jurisprudence upholds that environmental protection is as much the citizen’s duty as the State’s obligation.
In practical terms, civic duty means more than not littering or spitting; it means actively contributing: using dustbins, segregating waste, cleaning up when possible, demanding accountability from local bodies, and nurturing a culture of respect for shared spaces.
When citizens treat public property like personal property, small acts of negligence, uncollected litter, graffiti, and spitting accumulate into structural neglect. Real change begins when citizens internalise that public hygiene and order are their responsibility too.
A Dented Image Abroad
The headline clean-up number in Brent is small compared with national costs, but it is illustrative. India generates tens of millions of tonnes of municipal solid waste annually, with the CPCB reporting 150,761 tonnes per day in 2019 to 2020, and inadequate sanitation imposes macroeconomic losses.
The World Bank’s 6.4% of GDP figure is a sobering measure. Clean streets are not cosmetic; they are economic infrastructure.
Reputation and mobility matter too. Road discipline and civic behaviour affect tourism, investment, and soft power. Repeated images of littered streets, open defecation, or poor traffic discipline reinforce negative stereotypes about India and Indians in global perceptions.
Viral images of stained pavements or overflowing drains add to narratives that can deter tourists and investors and harden stereotypes about Indians’ public behaviour abroad. That reputational tax is avoidable.
Not Finger-Wagging, But Systems Change
Treat civic sense as infrastructure. Ring-fence maintenance budgets, map hotspots, such as stain-prone pavements, transit hubs, and market streets, add more bins in behavioural hotspots, and create rapid-response cleaning crews with GPS-tracked routes so citizens see action and accountability. Cities that budget maintenance like infrastructure get measurable gains.
Pair infrastructure with behavioural design and humane enforcement. Nudges, including signage, commitment devices, and visible social norms, work best when backed by consistent enforcement and supportive services, such as cessation clinics for smokeless-tobacco users, public-urinal availability, and regular cleaning.
Importantly, pair fines with an option to convert fines into community service or public-interest work; punitive-only approaches backfire and entrench alienation. Use schools, marketplaces, temples, mosques, and community centres for repeated local messaging; civic sense grows where social institutions sustain it.
Brent’s red-stain video did what a million sermons rarely do: it turned a private habit into a public ledger. That ledger, a measurable cost, visible stain, and viral reputational harm, should shame policymakers and citizens equally. Civic sense is not a sentimental add-on; it is public infrastructure that affects health, GDP, and global standing.
The fix is neither exotic nor expensive: invest in maintenance, design public spaces to make good choices easy, nudge norms consistently, and pair credible enforcement with humane support. Do that, including citizens internalising their duty, and stains fade: on our pavements, on our public conscience, and on our global image.
Images: Google Images
Sources: GB News, BBC, NDTV
Find the blogger: Katyayani Joshi
This post is tagged under: civic sense in india, public behaviour, cleanliness and hygiene, indian society, urban india, public spaces, social responsibility, citizen duty, india abroad image, indian diaspora, waste management india, sanitation crisis, behavioural change, public health india, clean cities, swachh bharat, civic responsibility, indian mindset, social accountability, urban governance, everyday civic sense, culture and responsibility, india social issues
Disclaimer: We do not hold any right, copyright over any of the images used, these have been taken from Google. In case of credits or removal, the owner may kindly mail us.
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