SOME emotions have become too complex. Maybe, they always were. Take shame, for instance: feeling shame for something personal you can’t control, like physical ability or appearance, is usually discouraged. However, the absence of shame over a character flaw or harmful action is frowned upon, and rightly so. Victim shaming also takes the form of stigmatisation, but that is a topic for another day. For now, I am fascinated by a recent New Yorker headline about the lack of shame and how it affects democracy. At first, it seemed like a stretch, but come to think of it, politics is a behavioural science.

At home, a social media meme keeps resurfacing, even as the man who gave it new currency keeps being discredited: “koi sharm hoti hai, koi haya hoti hai” (“there’s something called shame and decency”).

The lack of both in not just the political class but also in many quarters that wield power and their camp followers is not only harming democracy, it is also undermining the concept of accountability, which has to be at the core of all human endeavours and systems, especially those that pretend to be representative.

A social contract, whether formalised in a constitution or codified in tradition, will be stymied if it relies solely........

© Dawn