sab dekh rahe the

Last month, my friend Arjun witnessed something that's been haunting him.

A bike accident near Koramangala in Bengaluru. The rider lay bleeding on the road. Within minutes, a crowd of 50+ people gathered. Everyone had their phones out.

Recording. Taking photos. Some even going live on Instagram.

Arjun pulled out his phone to call 108. Then he paused.

"Surely someone's already called," he thought. "With this many people here, the ambulance must be on its way."

He waited. Everyone waited. Everyone filmed.

The ambulance arrived 34 minutes later. The rider didn't make it.

Later, when police reviewed the scene, they found something shocking.

Out of 50+ bystanders with phones, not a single person had called for help.

Everyone assumed someone else already had.

This isn't just Arjun's story. It's India's story.

After Arjun told me his story, I started noticing this everywhere.

September 2025: A Finance Ministry official dies at Delhi's Dhaula Kuan. Crowds gathered to film.

November 2024: Six students killed in Dehradun. Graphic videos went viral before families were notified.

October 2024: A 12-year-old girl in Kannauj, visibly injured, pleading for help while bystanders filmed.

The data makes it worse. 74% of bystanders at road accidents don't help.

That's not 74% of accidents where nobody helps. That's 74% of individual people who witness emergencies and choose to watch.

India records approximately 1.5 lakh road deaths annually.

Experts estimate 50% could be prevented with immediate bystander intervention.

That's 70,000+ preventable deaths every year.

192 people dying daily because crowds watch instead of help.

I kept asking myself: When did we become a nation of spectators?

In 1968, two psychologists ran an experiment that would change how we understand human behavior.

John Darley and Bibb Latané gathered university students for what they said was a discussion about college life. Students talked via intercom. Suddenly, one "participant" (actually a recording) started having a seizure, gasping for help.

The more people present, the less likely anyone was to act.

They called it the Bystander Effect.

Here's what happens in your brain: When you see someone in trouble alone, your brain screams "DO SOMETHING." Clear responsibility. Clear action.

But add more people, and your brain does this calculation: "With 50 people here, someone else has probably called. Someone more qualified. Someone braver. I don't want to overreact if it's already handled."

Psychologists call this diffusion of responsibility. The responsibility gets divided among everyone present until it becomes so diluted that nobody feels personally accountable.

It's not that people don't care. It's that our brains are wired to assume others will act when we're in groups.

This explained Arjun perfectly. This explained the Dhaula Kuan crowd. This explained why only 31% of people in groups of five help compared to 85% when alone.

I thought the bystander effect meant people were inherently selfish in crowds. That more witnesses always meant less help.

Then I found research from 2019 that flipped everything.

Researchers analyzed 219 real CCTV recordings of violence in Amsterdam, Lancaster, and Cape Town. Real emergencies. 

Bystanders intervened in over 90% of aggressive situations.

More surprising: The more bystanders present, the MORE likely someone was to help. The opposite of lab experiments.

What changed?

The lab experiments in 1968 created ambiguous situations. Students heard sounds over intercoms. They couldn't see what was happening. They couldn't gauge severity.

Real violence is unambiguous. You see someone getting hurt. You know it's an emergency. There's no question about whether action is needed.

In these clear-cut situations, the bystander effect reverses. More people means:

• More physical backup if things go wrong

• Safety in numbers

• Higher chance at least one person will be brave enough to act

This gave me hope. The problem isn't that Indians don't care. The problem is that modern smartphone culture has made emergencies ambiguous again.

When everyone's filming, it looks like the situation is handled. "If it was really serious, someone would be helping instead of recording, right?"

Wrong.

Here's something most Indians don't know: We have legal protection to help.

In 2016, India's Supreme Court established comprehensive Good Samaritan guidelines, later codified as Section 134A of the Motor Vehicles Act.

The protection is stronger than you think:

• You can't be held liable if your help goes wrong

• Police can't detain you or force you to give statements

• Hospitals can't demand your personal details or make you pay

• The government pays ₹5,000 per incident for helping

Karnataka even offers an additional ₹1,500-2,000 plus legal expense reimbursement.

When this law passed, something remarkable happened.

Willingness to help jumped from 26% to 88% between 2013 and 2018.

But here's the problem: 84% of Indians still don't know this law exists.

I didn't know until I started researching this newsletter.

Think about that. We have a law that could save 70,000+ lives annually.

Strong protections. Financial incentives. And nobody knows about it.

Even worse: 90% of doctors and healthcare workers are unaware of the law. The people who are supposed to protect Good Samaritans don't know they're supposed to.

So people still get harassed. 59% of helpers report being detained despite legal protections. 77% say hospitals demanded fees they weren't supposed to pay.

The infrastructure to save lives exists. The legal framework exists. The willingness exists once people know they're protected.

The only missing piece? Awareness.

The bystander effect isn't about bad people. It's about normal people in groups making a calculated assumption that turns out to be wrong.

Every time we see someone in trouble and think "someone else probably already helped," we're participating in a collective delusion where everyone makes the same assumption simultaneously.

The result? Nobody helps. And someone dies.

India is at an inflection point. We're urbanizing rapidly.

We're losing the village culture where helping was automatic because everyone knew everyone. We're adopting urban anonymity where it's easy to think "not my problem."

But here's what gives me hope: The 2019 CCTV research showing that 90% of people intervene in real violence.

We haven't lost our humanity. We've just lost the trigger that tells us we're needed.

In villages, that trigger was personal connection. You helped because you knew the person.

In cities, we need a new trigger. And I think that trigger is this:

The conscious choice to be the first person who moves.

Because once one person acts, others follow. The spell breaks. The ambiguity disappears. The crowd transforms from spectators to helpers.

You don't need to be brave. You don't need special training. You just need to be willing to be first.

Point at someone. Give them a task. Break the diffusion of responsibility.

That's it.

That one action can save a life.

TLDR: The bystander effect isn't that people don't care. It's that everyone assumes someone else already called for help. Nobody calls. People die. The solution: Be the first person to act. Point at specific people and give them specific tasks. Research shows this increases helping from 20% to 80% in groups.

Until next week,
Ritesh

P.S. - Share this with your WhatsApp groups. Tell your family about the Good Samaritan Law. The next time you see an emergency, you'll know you're legally protected to help. And you might be someone's only chance.

PPS: Section 134A protects you. Screenshot it. Save it. Share it. 84% of Indians don't know this law exists. Be part of changing that.