The most unsettling image of Delhi’s worsening law-and-order situation is no more a crime scene but an empty classroom. Last week, Lady Shri Ram College for Women cancelled physical classes and shifted teaching online after a 17-year-old girl was allegedly gang-raped inside Aastha Kunj Park near Kalkaji Mandir. The decision came after one of the accused was apprehended following an exchange of fire with police barely 50 metres from the college’s back gate. The college subsequently sought increased police patrolling around the campus and adjoining areas.
This is not just another disturbing crime story, it’s a measure of how insecurity is beginning to influence the way Delhi lives. Over the past few months, the nature of the stories appearing from Delhi and the National Capital Region has been remarkably diverse from organised crime and extortion, violence linked to gyms, cyber fraud, narcotics, contract killings, violence triggered by disputes over noise, attacks on vulnerable workers and crimes involving unregulated residential and commercial spaces.
The disturbing feature is that all these crimes have no common perpetrator. Different forms of criminality appear to be finding different entry points into everyday urban life. Consider the gym, what was once essentially a neighbourhood fitness facility has today created spaces vulnerable to extortion, gang rivalry and criminal influence.
Then there is noise, a dispute over loud music, which in an orderly city should end with a complaint or a warning, has in recent cases escalated into catastrophe. Cybercrime represents another frontier altogether. Here the criminal may never enter the victim’s neighbourhood yet the money stolen from a Delhi resident can pass through layers of mule accounts, digital wallets and intermediaries before disappearing into another jurisdiction. And then there is the traditional underbelly of the city consisting of narcotics, illegal firearms, extortion and gang networks.
Delhi has long carried the uncomfortable description of being India’s crime capital. The phrase has become almost normalised in public discourse, which itself is dangerous. A crime capital is a statistical description. Given the frequency and volume of crime, the tag needs an upgrade.
A crime-prime city would be something more appropriate for a city in which crime becomes so embedded in everyday urban life that people begin modifying their behaviour around it. For example, don’t enter that park alone, be careful while walking on that road, don’t get into an argument even if you have been wronged, avoid carrying cash, don’t complain about the noise, don’t click the link, don’t trust the person claiming to be a policeman, the list is unending.
When these instructions become part of the informal survival manual of a city it means something fundamental has changed. When citizens begin adapting themselves to insecurity, it means the capital is not safe. Unfortunately, despite the situation there is a clear sense of accountability, though after events after an incident like the Lieutenant Governor calling a meeting does take place.
The city has always had a complicated governance structure. Delhi Police operates under the Centre. The Delhi government controls several important public services. MCD manages civic functions. DDA controls land and planning in major areas. PWD, transport agencies, educational institutions and other authorities have their own responsibilities. However, the citizen does not see Delhi through organisational charts but as one entity.
The real measure of Delhi’s law-and-order machinery will not be how many accused are arrested after a crime. It is whether citizens can go to college, walk through a park, run a business, return home at night and travel across the city without constantly calculating the risks around them. If fear pushes a classroom behind a screen, as it happened at LSR, Delhi should take notice.
The question is no longer whether Delhi has a crime problem, the question is whether Delhi is allowing crime to become a way of life. The even bigger question is whether Delhi from being crime capital is becoming something more troubling, a crime-prime capital.
Sidharth Mishra,
Author and president, Centre for Reforms,
Development & Justice
