Editorial · Community, Courtesy & Civic Responsibility
The WhatsApp Loudspeaker: Somebody Else, Please Do Something!
When complaints go public but action is always somebody else’s job, neighbourliness can quickly become entitlement.
“I don’t have to announce my thank-yous to everyone.”
Of course you don’t. But the sentence made me think about something increasingly common in neighbourhood groups. Complaints are made before hundreds of people, repeated for days or weeks, yet when somebody steps in and helps, the acknowledgement often moves quietly to a private message.
Criticism has acquired a loudspeaker while gratitude is increasingly sent by private message.
The WhatsApp Loudspeaker
There’s no water again! The cell-phone signal is still weak! The garbage hasn’t been collected today either! When will this be fixed?
These may be perfectly genuine problems. But repeating a problem is not the same as pursuing it.
WhatsApp can alert a neighbourhood. After that comes the actual work: put the complaint in writing, log it with the responsible department or company, obtain a reference number, keep the correspondence and escalate it if nothing happens. If several households are affected, collect names and signatures. Call a meeting, form a small delegation, meet the councillor, MLA, company representative or responsible official, and follow up in writing.
That is how a complaint acquires weight.
Curiously, some of the loudest voices disappear when action is proposed. Ask twenty people discussing a problem to meet in the park and perhaps five arrive. Suggest a delegation to the concerned authority and enthusiasm can evaporate rather quickly.
Age and health can genuinely restrict physical participation, and that deserves understanding. But one can still write, call, document, organise and follow up. Help yourself as far as you can, then ask others to help you go further.
Your Neighbour Is Not a Helpline
The problem begins when repeated complaining carries an expectation that somebody else will eventually take charge. A neighbour makes a call, uses a contact, drafts a letter or arranges a meeting. Soon the volunteer is somehow expected to deliver the solution.
That is not community participation. It is outsourcing responsibility.
And eventually people stop stepping in. Not because they no longer care, but because they begin to ask the obvious question: why aren’t you doing something about it yourself?
Perhaps that is useful too. Help should show us the door, not carry us through it. Put down the phone occasionally, make the call, write the letter, attend the meeting or join the delegation. If somebody helped you get started, thank them, then take the next step yourself.
Albert Schweitzer wrote, “At times our own light goes out and is rekindled by a spark from another person.” Someone may lend us that spark. They cannot be expected to keep our lamp burning.
Neighbourliness works when people stand beside one another, not when a few are expected to carry everybody else’s battles.
Please and Thank You
Gertrude Stein observed, “Silent gratitude isn’t very much use to anyone.”
Many of us grew up being taught to thank the waiter, the guard, the driver, the shopkeeper, the neighbour and the stranger who helped us. It was not about status or obligation. It was simply an acknowledgement that another person’s effort had value.
Cicero called gratitude “not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all the others.”
Perhaps the language of manners and upbringing sounds old-fashioned today. I am not sure that makes it obsolete.
When voluntary help is repeatedly treated as an entitlement, people naturally become more selective about where they put their time. Someone may happily rescue an injured street animal, feed a hungry dog or protect a tree because those beings cannot make the telephone call, write the letter or walk into an office themselves.
People who can speak for themselves should use that voice.
If the Complaint Was Public
This, for me, is the simplest part.
If hundreds of people repeatedly heard that the water was not coming, the mobile network was failing or nobody was helping, surely they should also hear when somebody helped move the matter towards a solution.
A private thank-you acknowledges the individual. It does not correct the public impression.
The familiar maxim “Praise in public; criticize in private” may not always be practical. Sometimes criticism genuinely has to be public. When it does, there is even more reason for the acknowledgement not to disappear afterwards.
There is nothing wrong with demanding better services or asking neighbours for support. But community works better when we do what we can ourselves, turn up when collective action is organised, and remember that another person’s voluntary effort is precisely that: voluntary.
We have become remarkably comfortable broadcasting what went wrong. Perhaps we also need to become comfortable putting the phone down, getting involved and doing something about it. And when somebody else has already taken the trouble to help, acknowledge that too.
If the complaint had a loudspeaker, let the thank-you have one too.
Shamshir Rai Luthra
Veteran broadcaster, editor, environmental thinker, and active participant in civic life, Shamshir Rai Luthra writes at the intersection of media, culture, ecology, and community responsibility. His work seeks to connect public conscience with lived neighbourhood realities.
