Why Dissent Matters?

What is dissent? According to the Oxford Dictionary, dissent is the fact of having or expressing opinions that are different from those that are officially accepted. The state of our country today, and how a faction of people is accepting what is happening without holding anybody accountable or questioning right from wrong, is what I want to talk about. I recently saw an analysis by Newslaundry, an independent media house that relies on subscribers instead of advertisers, on monopolies and duopolies in India and how it creates an environment that is not conducive to a democratic nation. I understand that a lot of people, including some of my own family members, will say that if it happened in the country for over 60 years, what’s the problem now?

The problem now is that we were promised a better India than what we saw before 2014, and the majority of people voted on that promise. However, in this article, I’m only going to look at the last year and tell you why we’re heading towards a worse Bharat instead of a Viksit Bharat. If this lands me in jail under UAPA (like someone else who the current ruling party put in for dissent and has been in custody for over 5 years) and forces me to spend my time there under “pre-trial” propaganda, so be it. Dramatic, much? Well, I only learn from the best of the best and who better than our current Prime Minister!

Let’s begin with January 2025, when, in the Mahakumbh Mela, over 37 people have been confirmed to have died during a crowd crush and stampede, while reports suggest that the number may have been downplayed and was actually much higher. Multiple investigations have found discrepancies in the numbers, and when affected families were interviewed, it was found that 37 families (the official number provided by the UP Government) were paid Rs. 5,00,000 in their bank accounts, but 26 other families received partial payments and some 18 families that are yet to make it to the official count. A lot of these payments were made in cash, and in many more cases, where compensation was not paid, the family members were forced to sign documents saying that the victims had died due to health issues and had nothing to do with the crowd crush. Please don’t take my word for it; look it up and see the discrepancies and statements for yourself, because, as I mentioned at the start, dissent matters. Here are my questions: In all of the preparations that the governments did for one of the biggest religious gatherings in the world, did they not realise the number of people who would attend the event? Did they really think that narrow passageways in some places to approach the river would be enough? Were they just simply too lazy to make sure that such tragedies didn’t happen on their watch as they had in 1954? Live and learn is something the ruling party really doesn’t believe in.

Not unrelated to the January tragedy was the February tragedy at the New Delhi Railway Station. Some lessons are never learnt, and that has been the case for the last 12 years, but I digress. On 15th February 2025, train delays and confusion regarding announcements resulted in the (official) death of 18 people at one of the biggest railway stations in India. All the passengers were of trains that led to Prayagraj heading to attend the Mahakumbh Mela. This is a case of another tragedy that could have been avoided had the government bothered to pay a little attention to the Railway department and had ‘holdover’ areas at the station to avoid overcrowding as a precautionary measure, and not as a reactionary measure. According to The Hindu, even the Lt. Governor of New Delhi edited his post on X to remove any mention of deaths, but after much pressure, the “official” number was released. A two-committee team was set up to investigate this tragedy, and they recommended holding areas at 60 of India’s busiest railway stations. However, in December 2025, I travelled from Hazrat Nizamuddin Railway Station in Delhi and noticed that there was one entry point for the station where the bags were being scanned, and at least 100 people were pushing past me to get to that area. Since I had heavy luggage, I had enlisted the help of a coolie to get me through this and that made it an easy process though an expensive one. With 9 platforms at just this station and trains leaving every 10 minutes, this railway station is still another tragedy waiting to happen. The security was lax, and the officer assigned to check the baggage didn’t even care for a second glance at the screen. I digress, yet again. I can’t even begin to imagine the scale this particular tragedy could have gone to, and say that some people just got lucky that day to say that they survived it. But, given how the public and railway officials wanted to keep the “official” death toll under wraps initially, begs the question that like at the Mahakumbh Mela, how many people really died?

What about Manipur? Isn’t it a part of India? Isn’t the government, at least, accountable to answer some difficult questions regarding the ethnic violence that has been prevalent in the state since 2023? After 79 days of silence on the issue, Narender Modi spent 36 seconds as an initial statement that a video of a woman being paraded naked in Manipur “pained and angered” him. It took him 79 days to get angry? I don’t even take 7.9 seconds! Cut to the No-Confidence Motion on the 10th of August 2023, in a 2-hour and 12-minute Parliament speech, he addressed Manipur for roughly about 10 minutes and emphasised the government’s dedication to the North-East but did not come up with any solutions. Surprised? I’m not. He has briefly mentioned Manipur 5-6 times at public forums, or at the Parliament, and to add fuel to this fire, it took him 865 days to visit the state! I just have one question here: Would it have taken him 865 days if this had happened in Gujarat?

India, in its entire independent history, has been glued to the culture of having intelligence lapses, which leads to security issues that are only apologised for by the PR teams and paid for by the Indian Armed Forces with their lives. April 22, 2025, was another such lapse, which was acknowledged and admitted to at an all-party meeting on April 24. Such lapses also diminish the belief that a country has in its ruling government, and the cost was not just the lives lost on the day of the attack, 26 in total, but one also has to take into account the lives that are lost when our security forces sacrifice themselves for the country. Giving compensation is not going to bring the dead back; that’s blood money, and I think if my father had sacrificed his life when he was serving the country, we never would’ve used a single penny. Operation Sindoor and its success were blown up by the media as if it were the only Op that had ever taken place in India, and we had never retaliated before. However, that is not the truth; the media only played what the government wanted them to play, and all the successes before that were deemed irrelevant and non-existent. This hurt me personally because people who’ve served the country were diminished for their previous Ops, and only the superiority of Op Sindoor and the badla surrounding it remained. The families of the people who lost their lives moved on, while the government continues to pat itself on the back for something that should be taken for granted rather than be rewarded at every rally and political opportunity, almost a year after the fact.

Another disaster that could have been avoided was the Bareilly Hospital Oxygen incident, where, following the death of 11 patients, the government and its red tape bureaucracy were found at fault, yet again. 11 lives that could have been saved if just someone had done their job like they’re paid to. A high-level enquiry revealed that the Pressure Swing Adsorption (PSA) oxygen plant failed due to the lack of routine maintenance, and while the hospital’s administration had sent multiple formal requests for repair funds to the Directorate of Medical Education since February, they were reportedly stalled in bureaucracy. Again, the government paid compensation for its lapses through the taxpayers’ money and the private maintenance firm was fined and all its contracts in Uttar Pradesh were cancelled. Also, for some relief, for the first time in such a case, two senior clerks in the health department were arrested on charges of ‘wilful omission of duty’ for sitting on the maintenance files. The Chief Medical Officer (CMO) was also booked under Culpable Homicide, but a ruling is still pending on the cases. To prevent a recurrence, the state government launched an audit portal, but how long the daily log system sustains is the question and that can only be answered if such a tragedy never occurs again.

June was a month of disasters, one after the other. It started with the Bengaluru IPL victory parade stampede in which over 11 people died. We understand that cricket runs on emotions in our country, but does it come at the cost of lives by cutting corners in event management and security and not realising how many would actually show to this once-in-a-lifetime event, given RCB’s cricketing history? Was it really necessary for the Karnataka government to overrule police warnings and make so much money that a stadium with a capacity of 80,000 allowed approximately 2,50,000 to surge into the area? And the accountability of this did not land on the government’s heads, who ignored multiple warnings, but on the police’s heads, who were the ones giving the warnings and were suspended for doing so! And for what? Failing to manage a crowd that the government didn’t anticipate in the first place because they wanted to rush the victory parade to take credit as if they were the ones batting throughout the series themselves.

The second tragedy was the Air India 787-8 Dreamliner crash on the 12th of June, where 260 people died, 241 who were onboard and 19 from on the ground, when the plane crashed into a medical hostel near the airport 32 seconds after it took off. The full report for the reason behind the crash and who was entirely responsible is yet to be published, but the pressure being applied by Boeing suggests that ultimately, they may just blame one of the pilots and end the conversation there, because who can defend the dead? The Federation of Indian Pilots have also repeatedly objected to the part where the investigating authorities are trying to pin the accident on the dead pilots; and it’s not fair because they are being subjected to malice without proper facts and being able to defend themselves. The government should really look into this and ensure that an unbiased report is published about the crash and no one gets blamed unnecessarily.

Last but not least, in June 2025, the Ministry of Road Transport informed the Parliament that in the first half of the year, 26,770 people had died in road accidents, amounting to 6 deaths per hour. Experts have attributed 59% of these deaths to road engineering deficiencies, such as poor design, inadequate signage, and a lack of crash barriers. Who is responsible for these 59% of the deaths if not the government?

On July 9th, on a vital bustling bridge connecting Vadodara and Anand districts, spanning the Mahisagar river, in Gujarat, a slab on the bridge suddenly collapsed, resulting in the ultimate loss of 22 people. It was later revealed that local leaders had been repeatedly warning the Roads & Buildings Department about the condition of the bridge since 2021, and everyone concerned was turning a deaf ear to their concerns. Following this, the Chief Minister of Gujarat suspended (not fired) four engineers from the R&B Department for their failure to monitor the bridge’s structural health. An immediate inspection of more than 1,800 bridges across the state was also ordered, in which 20 bridges were shut down, and 113 bridges saw partial closure. Had this accident not happened, this inspection would never have happened, and a more serious collapse could have taken place and resulted in more people losing their lives.

On 5th August 2025, the Uttarkashi floods happened after a massive cloud burst, and 5 people died, and over 50 people went missing. Critics and experts have repeatedly highlighted the fragility of the Himalayas and how unregulated construction and “hill cutting” for infrastructure projects significantly amplify a flood’s destructive power in the region. The government has always let these concerns be just that and has been actively cutting into mountainsides in the name of tourism and development without actually taking into account the impact these activities have on the region long-term. A similar tragedy repeated itself in Punjab and Jammu & Kashmir a few days later when a bout of heavy rainfall caused massive flooding, which resulted in 57 deaths in Punjab and 122 in J&K. The South Asia Network on Dams, Rivers and People (SANDRP) reported that sudden, unwarned releases of water from the Ranjit Sagar and Surwal dams created “manmade flood disasters” downstream. The Punjab government was also blamed for not following the 2024 flood-preparedness guidebook and failing to complete essential desilting and riverbank reinforcement tasks as mandated.

A peace-loving region in India came under fire when, even after years of dialogue with the central government bore no fruitful conversation regarding statehood for the region of Ladakh. On 24th September, an ongoing protest seeking the constitutional safeguards of Statehood and tribal status for the region turned violent. According to an “official” statement, the protestors started the violence by attacking security personnel, which was retaliated with the police opening fire on the crowds. While several witnesses have come out and said that the police fired first, the protest and deaths resulted by the firing turned into a “he said, she said.” The official number of deaths remains questionable to this day and may remain buried till the end of time to protect the interests of some political leaders/parties. On 26th September, Sonam Wangchuk was arrested on trumped-up charges of treason and conspiring with Pakistan to achieve Statehood for Ladakh. He was transported 1,600 km to a jail in Jodhpur, where he remains in custody with no release in sight as his family fights legal battle after legal battle to at least bring him out on bail. He has been charged under the National Security Act, which allows for him to be imprisoned without trial for a year. If you ask the people of Leh-Ladakh, they say Sonam was a leader and not an instigator; he was a nationalist who built the region on education and not an anti-nationalist who supported tearing it down. Many leading media organisations have already played jury, judge and executioner in his case, and now it is a waiting game to see what the actual judiciary of our country does.

According to the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), crimes against women have increased by 7.5% since 2010, and in India, a woman is raped every 20 minutes. In one such case, people who don the uniform to protect a woman turned out to be the perpetrators in raping a 28-year old doctor posted in Phaltan in Maharashtra on 24th October 2025. The victim had scribbled on her palms that a police sub-inspector raped her, and her pleas for help fell on deaf ears before she died by suicide. She also blamed a software engineer for mental harassment and broke down to such a point that she had to take her own life. This dying declaration would never have come to light if one of her relatives (another doctor in Maharashtra) hadn’t applied pressure to be present for her autopsy. The evidence could easily have been washed away, and no one would have known better. According to a lot of experts, 80-90% cases of rape or sexual harassment aren’t even reported in our country, and victim shaming is the go-to response for many politicians and media outlets rather than fact-based reporting. Even with the new Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS), which claims to create a “women centric justice system,” there is a second wave of shame that a victim has to endure as her entire personal life is put on public display, trying to find one loophole where she can be blamed for causing the crime rather than punishing those who committed it.

On 10th November 2025, a car exploded near Red Fort in New Delhi, killing 15 people and injuring more than 20. It was found during the investigation that it was a terrorist attack, and this was part of a larger network than the 2-3 accused who were found to have had foreign handlers. This brings into question the security gaps that continue to persist when it comes to intelligence and how thousands of kilograms of explosives managed to cross state lines without being flagged. It also shows that when resources are used correctly, entire networks can be brought down, but the bureaucracy chooses to sit on information till the last minute and then scrambles the next day to successfully recover over 2,500 kg of explosives and related materials. Not surprisingly, the Prime Minister was yet again travelling out of the country at the time on taxpayers’ money and didn’t return until two days after the blast. He was in Bhutan on an official state visit and could have easily flown back, but chose to do it two days later, once the fog cleared and things settled down, so that he could be readily seen for his photo-op at the Lok Nayak Hospital speaking to the victims of the blast. Timing great hai aapki, sir ji.

To say that the year ended with a bang would be a joke; it was, in fact, absolutely disastrous! The month started off with over 3 lakh passengers being stranded all over the country on just one day in what was a systematic “meltdown” that led to the cancellation of 1,600 flights while the DGCA was caught sleeping at the wheel. Flight Duty Time Limitation (FDTL) was proposed 2 years ago, and while many airlines stuck to the timeline, IndiGo purposely waited till the last minute to say that they don’t have enough pilots and hence can’t follow these new rules. This led to a severe crisis that spanned days, with the worst being on the 5th of December, when IndiGo just cancelled all flights with little to no prior notice. I was among those who were impacted on this day and luckily for me there was one last ticket left on a train and I left the airport and rushed to catch that to make it to my destination. I was lucky enough that I was caught in a city where living arrangements were not a problem because flights to Bhopal from Delhi didn’t resume normal operations till the 8th of December, and IndiGo was being obtuse about stay arrangements. I spent over Rs 2,000 to and from the airport on the 4th and 5th of December before I finally gave up and took a train. Never have I been so happy by the Indian Railways. I didn’t even mind the bad food and stinking, dirty toilets on a premium train like Vande Bharat that day.

The very next night, on the 6th of December, a fire broke out at a popular nightclub in Goa, which killed over 25 people. What was shocking was that even after being such a popular tourist destination, Birch by Romeo Lane was operating in North Goa without a valid licence or mandatory fire safety clearances for months and was even built illegally! Local authorities failed to conduct inspections on such a high-traffic spot that would have flagged the lack of emergency exits and the improper use of indoor fireworks.

The year ended with another tragedy in Indore, where 20 people lost their lives by drinking water that was supplied by the Municipal Corporation to the “cleanest city” in the country. This also affected over 3,000 residents who had been complaining about “black, foul-smelling” water since October 2025, but as always, the government chose to ignore it and dismissed the problems as routine supply issues. Even the Madhya Pradesh High Court weighed in and called out the government for their “insensitive response” while the local MLAs chose to abuse journalists for asking them difficult questions.

Dissent really seems like the thing that keeps democracy from falling apart, not something that messes it up. In a place as big and different as India, you can't just run things by making everyone quiet or agreeing all the time. People have to speak up about things like polluted air or water that kills people, or when big systems fail somehow. I think when they do that, they are actually helping the country get stronger, not weaker. But if questions go ignored, or protests get pushed aside, and nobody takes the blame, it starts eating away at what people believe in the government. That pulls things toward less real answers and more like control without checks.

History shows this pretty clearly, I guess. Democracies don't just drop dead in one day. They kind of wear down slowly, when people calling out problems get labelled as anti-nationals or tukde-tukde, or when death becomes normal, and leaders don't have to say why they did what they did. Once a government stops getting asked about things, it starts thinking no one can ask at all. And that feeling, it blurs what is supposed to be chosen leaders into something more like corporates who don't listen.

So, speaking out isn’t just something nice to do, it’s what we all should. Questioning the people in charge isn’t hating the whole nation, its guarding it. Staying quiet might seem easier right now, but down the line it costs a lot, like losing the say we have, or real checks on power, and even freedom. If nobody keeps pushing with hard questions, then those in power won’t bother explaining anymore. Power that doesn’t have to face the people, it just faces itself.

That part about dissent reminding everyone that being in charge is only temporary, borrowed from us, it stands out. Giving that up means handing over what comes next to power with no limits, and no real democracy lasts through that. Just look at the good old US of A. Need I say anymore?