As I near 5 years since I moved abroad, each trip back here makes me realise how India is a low-trust society.

What makes me think so

1. OTPs for everything
   • Package deliveries for values as low as ₹400 require providing an OTP to the delivery person. This makes un-attended deliveries almost impossible.
   • OTP is required to start Uber/Ola rides.
2. Extensive authentication required to go into a residential building, which requires approval from the resident and in some cases proper interrogations from the security guard(s).
3. Credit Card transactions at PoS machines require a PIN.
4. Credit Card transactions at online merchants are not seamless, making recurring un-attended transactions impossible in most cases (Eg you cannot associate a credit card with your Apple account and buy things with 1 tap).
5. Cannot enter Airport without showing a valid ticket.
6. X-Ray machines, metal detectors at shopping malls. They even check below your car to see if you have a bomb strapped to it.
7. Some merchants allow very limited quantities of some items. Eg, I wanted to replace the bulbs in my room and Blinkit won’t let me order 2 of any one type of bulb. Eventually I had to select 2 different makes.
8. Hospitals make you pay before you even see a doctor.
9. People are paranoid about security, even in gated societies, even with the above authentication. See example below

Why has it come to this?

Now, I am not arguing that the above steps are not required (they most certainly are), but why are they specifically required for us?

Barring security issues which are courtesy terrorism, most of the above comes down to how un-trustworthy we Indians are. Surely, we have been stealing others’ Uber rides, package deliveries, credit cards long enough that they had to come up with all this.

Sad.