Every few weeks, India invents an episode of national emergency, followed almost immediately by national amnesia. We do it in the face of war, fuel shortages and economic uncertainty. We do it amid deprivation and death. This is the OTT model of politics: the spectacle value of events turns politics from an agent of change into entertainment.
Each issue arrives as an apocalypse. For a few days, television anchors go frenzied, political parties declare that the nation stands at a crossroads and social media behaves as though social order will collapse if the issue is not settled immediately. Then comes the break. We go about our chores and wait for the next instalment.
Take, for instance, the Uniform Civil Code. For months, it was presented as the great unfinished business of Indian democracy. Every election season, it returned as a promise and a panacea for all our ills. Yet there is still no nationwide UCC law. India continues to follow different personal laws for different religious communities in matters such as marriage, divorce, inheritance and adoption.
Uttarakhand implemented its own UCC in January 2025, becoming the first state in modern India to do so (Goa inherited one from Portuguese colonial times). Gujarat passed its own version in March 2026. Chhattisgarh is now preparing a draft.
The matter remains largely at the discretion of states because Muslim organisations fear that the UCC is aimed mainly at eroding Muslim personal law. Tribal groups and northeastern states fear it could weaken customary practices and constitutional protections. Even supporters disagree over what should be included: inheritance rules, divorce rules, cousin marriage, live-in relationship registration and exemptions for tribal communities.
The UCC did not disappear because it was resolved. It disappeared because it became politically too complicated to sustain nationally. And because, in the OTT format, no issue can go on for too long—the viewer gets restless.
Consider the National Register of Citizens. Between 2019 and 2021, it seemed the entire country would be reorganised around questions of citizenship, documentation and identity. Protests erupted. Delhi’s Shaheen Bagh became a national symbol of resistance. Ministers spoke as though the NRC and the Citizenship Amendment Act would define the next phase of India. Today, even many of those who once pushed the issue hard barely mention it.
Or go back further to the riveting demonetisation episode of November 2016. We were told it would destroy black money, eliminate counterfeit currency and cripple terror finance. Instead, 99.3 percent of the demonetised currency found its way back into the banking system. The cash economy survived. The black economy survived. Yet there has never been a full political reckoning over whether demonetisation achieved what it promised.
Or the Uri instalment of September 2016. Investigators pointed to infiltration from Pakistan-occupied Kashmir and procedural lapses at an army base, including poor fencing, failures in perimeter security and lack of coordination between guard posts. But there was never a full public report—which would mean action separating the real from the reel—explaining exactly how the attackers entered, how they remained undetected, or who was held responsible for the security failure.
The same happened after Pulwama in February 2019 and the Balakot airstrikes that followed later that month. We know intelligence warnings existed beforehand. We know a suicide bomber was somehow able to assemble explosives, move a vehicle bomb and strike a major Central Reserve Police Force convoy. Internal findings later pointed to intelligence failures. But there has never been a comprehensive public accounting of what exactly went wrong, who failed and whether those failures were fixed.
The Ahmedabad air crash of June 2025 produced wall-to-wall coverage, endless speculation and emotional tributes. But there is still no final public report. We know only that both engines shut down seconds after takeoff. We still do not know why.
The Red Fort car blast in November 2025 followed the same pattern. Investigators alleged that doctors, professors and medical students linked to Al-Falah Medical College had become part of a terror module. Police said the bomb-laden car had reportedly been parked inside the college campus for days before being driven into Delhi. But the deeper questions remain unanswered: how did a medical college become a hub for an alleged terror network? Where did the explosives come from? Which institutions of vigilance failed?
The problem is not merely that governments create distractions—all governments do. The problem is that nobody follows up—not people’s representatives, nor the media. A democracy without follow-up becomes an OTT democracy: one without true accountability. Governments learn that they do not need to solve problems; they only need to manage headlines, distract from distraction by distraction. Politics as theatre. Parliament as entertainment. Politicians as actors. Even courtroom hearings are becoming sources of riveting entertainment. Soon, death sentences could be on camera, and we would most certainly watch them being executed. Welcome to the nation of gawkers.
C P Surendran | Author whose latest volume of poetry is Window with a Train Attached
(Views are personal)
(cpsurendran@gmail.com)