CRIMES AGAINST WOMEN ON THE RISE; REMEDY NOWHERE

OUR leaders make us believe that our country is fast developing and would be in the league of great nations. How can we become a developed and powerful nation when politician-criminal-bureaucrat nexus has grown into a gangrenous disease that is destroying the very socio-economic fabric of our society? How, when a poor Raja Ram spends 35 years in Faizabad jail without trial for a petty theft while high-heeled murderer(s) of model Jessica Lall are acquitted for lack of evidence even after seven years of investigation and prosecution? She was killed from point blank range in the presence of at least one hundred people on April 29,1999 in posh Tamarind Court restaurant in New Delhi.
Why crimes are on the rise and what are the remedies. Until and unless we tackle this social monster, we would be befooling ourselves if we think we are developing and everything is hanky-dry.
The GDP rate is fluctuating but the rate of crime is steadily rising, never looking back. Murder and molestation and robbery and rape have become commonplace. Not only in small, remote towns but also in glittering giant metros, crimes are being committed with much impunity. The offenders do not seem to have any shed of fear of law, law enforcing agencies or even judiciary. A Jessica Lall and a Daya Nayak embolden them rather.
Ms.Kiran Bedi,IPS, is right in her capacity what she writes in "Guest Column" in "The Hindustan Times", dated March 5,2006, "Our police force is one reason why Manu Sharma got away with murder. And the rot in the system is due to a blinked leadership and poor man management…The outcome of Jessica Lall’s case is a product of yeas of neglect or indifference in just too many areas of policing. The tragedy is that each passing day; things seem to further decline. There are many reasons for this. And one primary reason is that the huge human resource that is the police force is not getting as much attention as the current challenges demand." And in the last of the article she says, "…A person who cannot be trusted in sensitive departments, which involve internal security, cannot be made to hang around. He needs to be directed instead to ‘stay at home till further orders’ and not be in the sensitive department where he can have access to all information or responsibilities…it is the men writing the case diaries who matter considerably. Our leadership has to tell us who they are. And how things have come to such a pass. And how many more."
The reasons of the rising crime graph are not unknown. We all know that unemployment is considered one of the big reasons. Drug abuse in youth, who from nearly half of the total population of the country, is another big reason. The gross social and economic disparity, which is on the increase day by day, an exploitation of the poor and illiterate by politicians are also contributing their share. Earlier it was said that politicians’ soft attitude towards criminal elements and history-sheeters is helping the society in becoming crime-prone, Now it is very difficult for common people to distinguish which of the two is true-crime is being politicised or politics being criminalised. Moreover, poverty and illiteracy are making people from the lower strata of society violators of law. They easily fall prey to drug addiction and trafficking in girls and children.
To make society peaceful and prosperous, you will have to minimise the unemployment of youth to nil and illiteracy to zero, and to make poverty an alien word. You will have to vote out criminal politicians irrespective of their political and /or ethnic affiliations.
Furthermore, these should be reform programs for jail inmates so that they should feel encouraged and motivated to live a civil life. We have to change laws to maintain the law and order as well as peace in the society.
There is no denying the fact that society and environment sow the seeds of crime. So until you root out the causes of the menace, you cannot succeed in containing the crime by pruning its branches. The government should be vigilant about the sources that are inculcating criminal mentality and violence in children and youth. There is an urgent need to have check and balance regime for silver screen, Internet, films, media and publications. They are collectively ruining the moral integrity of the children and youth. Moral teaching should be incorporated in the school and college syllabi, and fear of law of the land.