Dragged for Existing: How Governance Turned Citizenship Into a Punishment
Democracy doesn’t collapse with tanks on the streets. It collapses quietly—in corridors, counters, and weekly office visits. In Indore, a man with his blind mother was forced to visit the SDM office every single week for months—not for a benefit, not for charity, but to restore his basic right to vote. His crime? His name vanished from the voter list during SIR—despite submitting all required documents. The helplessness on his mother’s face says what government press notes never will.
The rot, laid bare
1) When existence needs approval
A citizen submits documents. The state deletes his name anyway. Then demands he prove—again and again—that he exists. This isn’t verification. It’s humiliation by procedure.
2) The cruelty of repetition
One visit is bureaucracy. Weekly visits for months? That’s punishment. Especially when the man has to escort his blind mother through government corridors that have no urgency, no empathy, and no accountability.
3) The burden has been flipped
In a functioning democracy, the state proves its case. Here, citizens are forced to prove their innocence of being alive, indian, and eligible. The presumption has shifted from trust to suspicion.
4) SIR: Reform on paper, trauma on the ground
The Special Intensive Revision process was sold as a cleanup. On the ground, it has turned into a sieve that catches the poor, the elderly, the disabled—while those with access sail through.
5) office to office, dignity to dust
Instead of the government working for the people, people are dragged from counter to counter, officer to officer, file to file. Time is stolen. Wages are lost. Pride is crushed.
6) The face that haunts this story
Look at the blind mother. She isn’t asking for favours. She’s asking why her son—an indian citizen—must beg weekly for a right that is supposed to be automatic.
7) The politics of indifference
This fiasco sits squarely with those in power. When governance becomes a maze without exits, responsibility doesn’t vanish. It points upward—to the ruling establishment, including the Bharatiya Janata Party. One netizen even commented, "BJP deserve a special place in hell for SIR fiasco."
8) Citizenship as a privilege, not a right
The message being sent is chilling: your rights are conditional. On paperwork. On patience. On your ability to keep showing up without collapsing.
9) Democracy doesn’t die loudly—it bleeds slowly
Each deleted name. Each endless visit. Each exhausted citizen quietly teaches society that resistance is futile and compliance is survival.
10) This is the reality check
No slogans. No ads. No speeches. Just a blind woman and a son worn down by a system that forgot who it’s meant to serve.
The bottom line
This is not a clerical error.
This is structural callousness.
When the burden of citizenship is dumped on those already struggling for a dignified life, democracy becomes performative—existing on posters, not in practice. Governance today isn’t failing loudly; it’s failing methodically.
Welcome to a reality where the state asks its weakest citizens the same question every week:
“Prove you belong.”
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