INDIA S RISING CRIME GRAPH

Every living society has its share of renegade and violent elements that disrupt
its functioning and throw up a serious challenge to its law
and order system. The ubiquitous nature of crimes, today, makes it very easy to
assume that the present times are reflective of a world
having gone violently and irretrievably on the path of imminent destruction. Whi
le it may not be wrong to say that there has been evident
degeneration in societal and moral values, still it has come of a course of even
ts and human actions that could not have logically led to any
other outcome. The media has also played its role in the magnification of events
and the creation of a perpetual sense of terror and doom.
But, this is not to discount the obvious facts and figures regarding increasing
crime rates that stare us in the face. Yet, the fact that steady
rise in crime graph is a result of social pathologies born out of man s preoccupa
tion with a twisted logic of civilisational progress has to be
acknowledged before we go on to prescribe the remedies.
Crime, today, in India and the world for that matter, has come to be treated wit
h a serious sense of indifference and in a subtle way, and
therein lies the very root of the problem. With our lives controlled by the sing
ular influence of materialistic pursuits, which have wrecked
and ravaged all primordial ties essential for a meaningful existence, we have co
me to be deprived of the moral compass that would enable
us to stand against this raging blight on our society. In our obsession with our
vulgar ambitions and consequent stoicism towards the
happenings around us, we have been instruments in the disfiguration of our socie
ty. It is only when things get out of control and the
spillover starts to visibly affect us that we learn of the monstrosity that we
ourselves have let enter our lives.
Crimes of passion and of a momentary loss of rationality are but an element of t
he human self, which cannot be prevented through
precautionary measures. The killing of a man, no doubt howsoever abominable, so
metimes finds vindication in arguments, like say the
victim had been a cruel tyrant in life and deserved to die, or often it is a cas
e of a man, temporarily bereft of reason on account of some
terrible emotional upheaval who commits this crime. But it is appalling to disco
ver that murder has become an act more of a rational mind
than that of an irrational one. The NCRB (National Crime Records Bureau) reporte
d the incidence of 34,305 cases of murder in 2011. The
rising trend obviously relates to spread of the crime where it no longer was co
nfined to acts of passion, treachery or sheer insanity.

Murder is an instrument of selfpropagation, be it for an individual, a group or

even the state. The nexus
among politics, business and the instruments of the government has undoubtedly b
een a key in the orchestration of these organised crimes.
Business houses, in collusion with politicians, assume control over
natural resources of the country, either through a manipulated process of allotm
ent or through mafias who usurp resources. Such a system
requires a methodical cleansing of all obstructions, and we have, time and
again, been made cognizant about such cases where the perpetrators have not bee
n apprehended despite incriminating evidence.
The recent incident of sexual crime in Delhi that shook the country to its core,
came in succession of years of such aggression against
women and continued to be followed by such acts even as the country was going th
rough the trauma of the tragedy. The NCRB, in its data
for 2011, reports the incidence of 24,206 rape cases. And it is for common sense
to discern that the actual incidence would be in multiples
of this figure, given that most of the rape cases go unreported because of the s
tigma they attach to the victim and very often, a certain
collusion of forces that we are all too aware of. The growing incidences of crim
e against women, not just sexual assault, but also domestic
violence, dowry tortures, female foeticide, come as a result of significant tra
nsformations that have taken place in the last couple of
decades. Emancipation of women has been a real process, and its implications for
a staunchly patriarchal society have been disastrous.
Patriarchal mindsets find it hard to accept this change in the society that sudd
enly expects from them a change in their traditional attitude
towards women, and the result is a violent backlash a desperate attempt to assert
manhood. All around us, we have been flooded with a
culture of instant gratification and assuaging a primeval instinct seems, in so
me perverse way, also to be a legitimate cause.