WITH EYES WIDE OPEN
D. N. Bezboruah
It is reasonable to assume that there is no country in the world that is safe for all its citizens at all places and at all times. Any country that can stake a claim to satisfy these requirements can well change its name to Utopia. After all, the origin of the word utopia can be traced to the Greek roots ou (not)+topos (place) indicating that no such place exists. Even the most civilized countries have their share of unlawful elements that must make a living out of unlawful activities that include murder, rape and abduction not to mention lesser crimes. Quite obviously, the concern about the safety of citizens is often confined mostly to the safety of women, girls and children (not taking into account our VIPs) since they are deemed to be more vulnerable than male adults. This could well be an erroneous generalization considering that there have been several instances of courageous women and smart children who have managed to overpower or outwit criminal elements. However, there is no denying that there is no dearth of locations in India that are totally unsafe for most people. Unfortunately, the tourist or traveller to an unfamiliar place has no way of knowing the places in an unfamiliar city that are unsafe due the activities of criminal or law-breaking elements. For most people, a safe bet is to stay in hotels in fairly crowded locations and to use public transport as far as possible. These measures of trying to remain safe in unfamiliar places are based on the fact that it is more difficult for criminal elements to attack anyone in the presence of a large number of people.
It is important to bear in mind that we are living very changed times where crime has become far more common than it was three of four decades ago. There are quite a few reasons for this, with the very high level of unemployment perhaps being at the top of the list. People must make a living by whatever means possible, and when the fair means are closed to them, people will take to whatever activity will provide them with a livelihood. For a lot of people, crime remains an alternative. The rationalization often offered is that they wanted to make a living through honest work but that there were no jobs for them. Their getting involved in crime is projected as a desperate choice in order to earn a living when they had no honest jobs. The other strong motivation for taking to criminal activities is greed. At certain levels, criminal activities, like drug peddling for instance, can be far more lucrative than the usual run of jobs in government offices. All that the individual with criminal inclinations has to do is to find strong rationalizations for getting into crime for a livelihood. One strong rationalization touted is that even well-known people (often referring to people in politics) are also into such activities; so why should anyone complain when lesser mortals take to them? Then we have many sad cases of people involved in criminal acts because of frustration. Everyone must have observed with anguish how the murder of family members has increased in Assam during the last two decades. There are daily reports of son killing father or mother, brother killing brother, people killing other elders of the family and so on. Such things would have been deemed impossible in Assam two decades ago. We have situations where a grown-up son has had to be a dependant on his parents due to his inability to get a job. He has also watched how people less educated than him and people who ranked far lower than him in the qualifying examination have managed to get jobs while he has had to languish as a good-for-nothing idler in the eyes of all neighbours. Those who got jobs either had powerful connections in the political world or the kind of money needed to buy jobs. The unfair stigma of his having to remain a “vagabond” works strongly on the mental make-up of the entire family. There are occasions when a hard-pressed father taunts him like others. Some people are unable to stand this day after day. After all, it is not the young man’s fault that he cannot get a job. The malaise lies somewhere else. To be constantly taunted or rebuked for what is not one’s fault often triggers off the most unfortunate consequences. I am beginning to discover even at this age that such ridicule of an individual for a malaise of our society can even lead to patricide or matricide. And that is what prompts me to pray that our politicians will start behaving responsibly enough not to tamper with fair selections in order to favour someone in the family, because through just one unfair appointment they do great injustice to several other deserving persons. This is not what the people expect from their elected representatives. After all, they are not expected to be the representatives of just their families.
But these are not the sole motives for the crimes committed against girls, women and children. Human greed has several manifestations, and one of them has its moorings in sexual longings. And because all civilized societies recognize this, there are efforts to protect girls and women from criminal elements that have no respect for time-honoured laws and norms of proper conduct and due respect for women. It is a sad situation for the State to find that crimes like rape, gang rape and rape followed by murder have increased in Assam to abominable levels. In such an ambience our security forces have a special responsibility not only in preventing such crimes but also in ensuring that the culprits are tried very swiftly and those convicted of the crimes receive very stringent and speedy punishment. Twenty such cases of speedy trials with the most deterrent sentences that are well publicized have the potential of preventing hundreds of similar crimes. The sad part of the prevailing practices is that the police forces sometimes tend to protect the criminals rather than ensuring that they cannot escape their due punishment. A time may come when people might have to confront errant police officers and to seek satisfactory explanations for their attempts to protect criminals. In places like Singapore, someone accused of rape can be tried and sentenced within a fortnight and promptly put behind bars. Where would one expect greater respect for the laws of the land? In such a city-state or in India where a CBI court acquits all the 22 accused in the fake-encounter killing of alleged gangster Sohrabuddin Sheikh, his wife Kausar Bi and associate Tulsiram Prajapati 13 years after the killing? The much-awaited verdict, running into more than 500 pages, has come 13 years after the alleged ‘fake encounters’ of Sohrabuddin and his associate Prajapati, beside the rape and murder of Kausar Bi, Sohrabuddin’s wife.
We cannot claim to be living in a safe India because the politician has demonstrated time and again that he can turn laws into meaningless rituals. Therefore, even if we can invoke the law, it is the politician who has means of having his ways regardless of what the law determines.
It is in this kind of a milieu that we are talking about safety for anyone. Perhaps it makes sense to admit that only those who have some kind of a link with lawmakers can afford to talk about the way we can have an India where someone can be assured of complete safety no matter where he or she may be. Going by the kind of India we have now, this may well take about a century to happen. Till then we must be content to wait and watch.