Government should act on the NCRB report
The ‘Crime in India Report' released by the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) on Tuesday shows an alarming rise of violence in the country with agrarian riots being at the top of the chart with 327 per cent rise in 2015 over 2014. Notwithstanding the sharp increase in surveillance followed by 24X7 monitoring of the crime situations and mapping of the variables that lead to these untoward incidents, some States like Kerala, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra have been consistently recording extremely higher rates of violence throughout 2015. The need of the hour for the Governments in these States is to trace the roots of such disturbing trends by employing both Government agencies and civil society organisations. In many cases it is recorded that despite having best of the laws in practice, followed by long stretch of court trials, criminals and offenders are still engaged in horrific violent acts. Hence, the Government agencies handling crime must now reach out to professional services and should try to identify the symptoms of some of the major violent activities like rape, agrarian riots, caste conflict, communal riots and most importantly the burgeoning of political clashes. It has been observed that even an up-scaling of violent activities are fast becoming an integral part of almost all societies globally. And this has been the result of massive impact of free flow of information, excessive stress, desire to achieve faster, cross-cultural contacts, higher migration to cities and probably fast erosion of values are working altogether in the post-globalised societies around the globe. Worrisome as many crime experts say is that emerging economies like that of India may fall in the category of States where violence will be on the rise in coming days.
The NCRB data shows that the incidents of agrarian riots increased from 628 in 2014 to 2,683 in 2015. It may be the result of crop failure, bad monsoon, mounting bank loans and price rise which directly affects the farming community across the country. But these are chronic problems and the Government must step in to remove them gradually. Specifically the shocking number of rape cases which jumped from 86 per cent in 2014 to 95.5 per cent in 2015 should be taken very seriously by the Government. With this major cities like Delhi and Mumbai have the exception of highest number of rape offenders in 2015. The survey finds that out of the total rape cases reported in 2015, as many as 33,098 offenders were to be known to the victims. Delhi being the capital city and Mumbai, the commercial hub, the respective security agencies must work hard to make our womenfolk safe for sure. However, the report has given a little sigh of relief as it reflects a declining trend in cases of communal riots from 1,227 in 2014 to 789 in 2015. It is action time — both the Government and civil society must fight together.