All at Sea A Communal dismissal of Navy Chief Crime no Punishment Crimes in Delhi, no sign of abettment

Online Report

Even children in kindergartens know that Delhi is the political capital of India; we adults have now come to regard the city as the crime capital too. The crime rate has been soaring in Delhi and over the last few weeks, the entire city has been terrorised by the twin killings of two aged couples in the posh Saket area. Routine transfers in police stations have been made and the Congress chief minister Sheila Dikshit has squarely blamed the Centre which handles the law and order situation of the capital. The Union home minister, Lal Krishna Advani, has expressed concern and said that paramilitary forces will be deployed in sensitive areas of the city.

Which brings us to the main question; can any city qualify to be the capital of a civilised country where its countrymen need para-military troops during their evening walks? And should any government worth its name take recourse to excuses like shortage of personnel or accountability to evade answerable questions. The idea is to nab the culprits and not passing the buck.Both the Congress and BJP are again at the game in which they are the best; shifting responsibility.

The same holds true for Mumbai, once the very heart and pulse of cosmopolitan India. The blasts had changed the character of the place but the Shiv Sena-BJP Government seems to have changed the people as well. They live in constant dread; if it is not of the political leaders, then there is fear of the culture vultures. And if it is neither of these two, then fear can just be a phone call away. Extortions and kidnapping have led to insomnia among many businessmen in the metropolis now.

Calcutta remains different. We had a blast here too; in fact, that had closely followed the Mumbai explosions by a matter of days. But while Mumbai changed for the worse, Calcutta has grown in its peace and resolve to keep the city free of criminal elements. Basic statistics continue to add to the evidence and the state police minister, Buddhadev Bhattacharaya, said only recently, while inaugurating a novel insurance scheme for the police force in Calcutta, that this city was a ``paradise'' compared to Delhi and Mumbai. He could have not been more accurate.

The thesis is simple; the police, both in Delhi and Mumbai, do not seem equal to the task and have been seen to be subservient to the political leadership. That is unfair to the citizens. In Bengal, the police is free from political influence and confidence-boosting measures like the insurance scheme inaugurated by Bhattacharya only add to that sense of security which any service should naturally entail as a privilege. The Delhi and Mumbai police could take some lessons from the Calcutta police. May be the country will be a better place to live in after that.