Crimes of all kinds have been on the increase. Does this indicate the rise of a social anarchy in our societyIJ Many explanations have come for the trend, but the role of market economy remains less discussed
Remember the first stanza of YB Yeats’ Second ComingIJ
If you don’t, then here it is: “Turning and turning in the widening gyre/ The falcon cannot hear the falconer,/ Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; / Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,/The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere/ The ceremony of innocence is drowned;/ The best lack all conviction, while the worst/ Are full of passionate intensity.”
The stanza slips my mind every time an incident like the gang rape in Delhi on December 16 last year or in Mumbai on August 22 this year, or the Muzaffarnagar riots, occur. Whether it is individual crimes involving unspeakable savagery or collective slaughter as in a communal riot, each proclaims the perversion of humanity in the culprits. Two agonised questions confront immediately thereafter. Is mere anarchy being unleashed on IndiaIJ Is the blood-dimmed tide being loosed and the ceremony of innocence being drownedIJ
looking back on the 75 years of my life, I cannot recall any period other than the one immediately before and after the Partition and Independence when India had witnessed so much violence and savagery and ordered existence had collapsed over such extensive tracts. There were times of troubles in specific areas — the large-scale political violence involving cadres of the Naxalite parties, Communist Party of India (Marxist) and its allies and the Congress, in West Bengal from 1967-72; secessionist violence in Punjab between 1980 and, say, 1992; Maoist uprisings in Andhra Pradesh, Odisha, Bihar, Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh and parts of West Bengal. And, of course, secessionist violence and insurgency has continued in Jammu & Kashmir since its revival in the early 1980s by terrorist outfits based in Pakistan and supported by its Government.
There, however, has now been a qualitative change in the situation in that a rise in the level of collective violence has been accompanied by what can only be called ubiquitous criminal acts. Whether it is white-collar crimes like bribery, fraud and cheating or violent crimes like robbery, murder or rape or non-violent ones like theft, the rise in their incidence has been sharp and countrywide.To cite just one example, according to a recent PTI report, Delhi, the national capital, has had as many as 1,121 cases of rape registered in the first eight months of the year, the highest in the last 13 years, against 468 in the same period in 2012. The figures were 572 in 2011 and 507 in 2010.
Prima facie, something seems to have happened since the last year to cause the growing latent individual criminality and collective violence to explode. Some of the causes are well known — migration from villages to cities leading to the presence in urban areas of large floating populations of single men outside the moral supervision of village elders which ensured their observance of traditional behavioural norms.
They are also out of the conservative social environment of the villages and in a strange glittering world where money flows and women are not only visible everywhere but move freely and independently, conforming to the received stereotype of deviant women stamped on their psyches from childhood. Finally, unlike in the small communities of the villages where they are known and recognised by their names, they are faceless, nameless nonentities in the cities oppressed by a sense of identity loss and insignificance. Crime, at one level, is a means of asserting their existence, almost a way of stating, with apologies to Rene Descartes, “I rape, therefore, I exist.” In fact, it can be anything in that vein, such as, “I rob, therefore, I exist.”
Crimes, of course, are by no means a monopoly of migrant rural men. The ranks of criminals also include urban and rural men in their respective areas. Different sets of explanations apply to their cases. A common one is that of sections, recently empowered by socio-economic changes, flexing their muscles and deliberately flouting the law to announce their arrival.
Another is the power and arrogance born of wealth which has on many occasions prevented the criminal justice system from punishing the rich and the well-connected. Corruption, mainly in the form of bribery, is one cause of this. Another is growing criminalisation of bureaucrats and politicians which often prevents an honest civil or police official from doing his/her duty. Witness the harassment of Durga Shakti Nagpal for taking on the sand mafia in Uttar Pradesh. The result is growing demoralisation in the dwindling ranks of honest and competent officers and the boisterous promotion of the corrupt and incompetent who become extortionists and collection agents for their political bosses.
The causes listed above have been discussed at length at some time or the other. What has escaped adequate attention is the impact of the increasingly omnipotent market economy and its cutting edge, the advertising industry. The rise of the former after World War II has marked a new stage in the evolution of capitalism in which surplus value is extracted primarily not from workers’ wages but from consumers — sometimes through price wars leading to lower prices or inflated prices. The market is increasingly the source of both revenue and capital realised through progressively higher sales, which in turn depends greatly on advertising
Advertising can play a very useful role by presenting to people a wide range of goods they can choose from and helping in the choice by focussing on the qualities of each, albeit in an extremely laudatory vein. Unfortunately, competition and the entry of unscrupulous elements into the advertising industry has led to the use of attractive models and other attention-arresting visuals that project women as sex objects.
Simultaneously, the frequent projection of the items advertised not only as desirable in per se but also as indicators of a person’s worth and status, makes their possession an end in itself to the exclusion of most other goals and the relegates attributes like courage, compassion, wisdom and the rights of others. The rich and successful flaunting their wealth are increasingly replacing the wise, just and compassionate as role models.
Hence, if one does not have the money to buy what one wants desperately, one robs. If one does not have consensual sex, one rapes. This is a rather reductionist presentation, but the underlying causality merits serious reflection.