The Hindu : Rotting cities, rising rage

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, May 11, 2003

Opinion

Opinion - News Analysis

Rotting cities, rising rage

The signs are ominous. Road rage claims another victim. Riots over water and electricity. Ever-increasing crime. Gaurav Vivek Bhatnagar on the growing manifestations of urban anger.

Public transport is stretched to breaking point in most cities... a scene from Delhi.

FEW KNEW Sunita Chaddha till the morning of May 4. That was when she made the headlines. The 36-year-old mother of three young girls was shot dead in the country's capital by a trigger-happy rich boy driving a fancy car for daring to interfere in a fight between him and a scooterist he had hit. The incident again revealed the underbelly of city life where it is folly to be nice and unwise to broker peace as people are on a short fuse.

The desire to get rich quick is telling on the social fabric. People are becoming over-ambitious, greedy, criminalised and insensitive as family values take a backseat and bank balances become the measure. The signs are ominous. Riots over water and electricity. Ever-increasing crime. Sociologists and psychiatrists say it's an uphill task to restore even a semblance of order.

The rot has well and truly set in. Remember Jessica Lal? The model was shot dead while tending the bar, again set up without a licence, at a lavish party attended by the city's elite at a South Delhi restaurant. Her crime, she refused a guest a drink. The incident made people sit up. But the debates led nowhere. The accused, a politician's son, is still on the loose.

Time and again such incidents recur. Go to any shopping mall or market place and you'll find characters ogling women and generally making a nuisance of themselves. Remonstrate with them at your own risk. And, there appears to be no effort to stop them.

The police records state that of the over 500 murders reported in the Capital last year, nearly 20 per cent or 100 people lost their lives over petty issues attributed to lower tolerance level and frustration due to various socio-economic reasons. Of the accused, 43 per cent were drop-outs and 58 per cent were in the 18-25 year age group.

So what is it that is making citizens of our cities restless and violent. Sandeep Vohra, a city psychiatrist, believes "it is the negative impact of urban stress". "Society is becoming increasingly intolerant in the urban areas. With knowledge over-stimulating the senses and life becoming fast-paced and materialistic, people who work hard are developing stress-related problems while those who want to become rich overnight without corresponding effort are becoming increasingly criminalised."

The desire for instant gratification among youngsters is another problem. "The breakdown of the joint family system and the creation of the nuclear family is resulting in greater neglect of children and this is making them self-centred. And it is this target group which is worst affected by uncensored flow of information through television, the internet and the circle of friends."

Dr. Vohra says another reason for growing crime is the availability of money, cars and guns in the hands of youngsters in whom "risk-taking behaviour is high". "The belief that being influential will help them get away prompts them to indulge in acts they would ordinarily not." So, he believes, it is essential that impressionable minds are not allowed to fall in bad company.

Stress, he says, is ultimately the reason behind all criminal tendencies. And our cities are nothing if not stressful. Quoting from a World Health Organisation report, he says "every fourth individual has some stress-related problem and by 2020 depression would have become the second largest cause of global burden of disease after heart problem."

But the Capital has just 500 beds for such patients and only 155 qualified psychiatrists. This, says the doctor, when "of the 14 million people in Delhi, as per conservative estimates about 10 per cent or 14 lakh suffer from stress related problems and of these a tenth or around 1.4 lakh suffer from serious mental problems requiring medical assistance". Dr. Vohra says the problem needs to be "nipped in the bud", that the Government should step in and ensure that "schools have counsellors to guide children and ensure that they do not develop violent or criminal tendencies". This would also remove the social taboo associated with going to psychiatrists or psychologists later in life.

Calling for curbing anti-establishment traits or "Ingrained Maladoptive Pattern", alcoholism and drug abuse among the younger lot, he also stresses on identifying and counselling children with "conduct disorder".

"Road-rage is all about oneupmanship, abuse of power and stress," says Dr. Vohra and prescribes simple steps for people to help themselves stay calm. "Adequate sleep at night, taking a day off in a week, setting oneself short achievable targets, walking, exercising, and doing yoga and meditation prevent one from becoming irritable." People with a lot of work should either avoid driving or else take less congested routes. Stepping out 15 minutes early can also cut down on stress while on the move.

The Government, he says, should rope in celebrities, the media and non-governmental organisations for guiding people on stress management.

"Water and electricity riots would not break out if there were someone genuine to inform people about the situation and to give an authentic feedback."

Another psychiatrist, Achal Bhagat, avers that riots and increased criminality are results of extreme ideologies getting people together. "In such circumstances, violence becomes accepted and gets public approval."

He says the feeling that is gradually permeating among the youth is that "if you control the tendency to be violent, you will lose out." So, youngsters now pick up a fight at the drop of a hat.

As for the water riots in Malviya Nagar or the power riots in Okhla area of South Delhi in late April, Dr. Bhagat says they are minor representations of what was witnessed in the 1984 anti-Sikh riots or the recent Gujarat carnage. Violence is gradually getting acceptance from society. "In Gujarat even well-to-do-people ransacked showrooms as they felt when no one can identify you why not gain from it."

In such circumstances, when youngsters see violence all around them and especially at home, Dr. Bhagat says they feel there is nothing wrong in it. So, he believes there is a need to inculcate moral education. "The centuries-old metaphors and parables hold great relevance today but sadly our Government is busy changing them to suit its own narrow ends."

Dr. Bhagat also regrets the fact that many icons of today, like film stars, are people who have criminal cases against them. "There is an urgent need to talk about violence, identify the high-risk groups and educate the masses in order to sensitise them."

Having himself initiated Operation Hope as part of the activities of his NGO, Saarthak, Dr. Bhagat says he discovered that children and youngsters who used to call up the helpline for personal guidance proved very good when given small responsibilities like conducting "No More Uphaars", a campaign which assessed the fire discipline in various buildings following the Uphaar cinema tragedy. The experiment, Dr. Bhagat says, showed that young energy if channelled properly can yield great positive results. "Only the children should be made to feel useful and important."

The same logic has made authorities at Tihar Central Jail undertake a reforms programme for the inmates to ensure that they shed their criminal tendencies. Such programmes, say psychologists, work extremely well for people with low "negative deviation of mind".

The Director General (Prisons), Ajay Agrawal, says while counselling of inmates is already on, the jail authorities are roping in a clinical psychologist, who has worked with prisoners for nearly a decade, to understand how people with a criminal bent of mind can be identified and made to see reason. The second approach for curbing anger, stress and criminality involves meditation classes. While meditation takes long to have an effect on the hardened elements it works quickly on the mild-mannered and fringe ones, Mr. Agarwal says.

As for the world outside the four walls of the prisons, the seasoned policeman believes there is a need to check romeos on the roads who think a Rs. 100 challan is their ticket to every freedom. "There is a need to impound the vehicles of these youngsters and make them mandatorily attend counselling sessions over a period of days. For more than money it is time which matters to them."

However, the officer lamented that Delhi police has over the years not drawn up any strategy to check such misconduct by youngsters on the roads and in and around marketplaces. "These issues are never discussed in Law and Order meeting and so we lack a strategy. As for the ordinary constable, he feels too intimidated by the name-dropping to react." Stressing that it is time that a social policy and approach to policing is developed, Mr. Agrawal says that as a first step the policy of appraising performance through statistics should be discarded. "It leads to under-reporting and non-registration of cases. And this in turn helps criminals get away, leads to general lawlessness and prevents increase in staff strength for addressing greater demands of policing."

But while a lot remains to be done, a Delhi court recently showed the way by awarding life imprisonment in the first "road-rage" case of Delhi. A skating instructor, Jagral Singh, who had allegedly run over a businessman, Ravi Chaudhury, before his wife and sons, was sentenced to 14 years in prison.

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