BMW Hit-and-Run Case
Criminalisation of Our Elite
Like politics, our elite too is getting criminalised. Delhi's BMW hit-and-run episode is a revolting sign of this. Criminality pervades every bit of it: driving without licence; overspeeding (at 140 kmph); manslaughter of six; hiding and destroying material evidence; obstructing the police....
The Rs. 70-lakh car was even not registered in India - to evade import duty. Non-registration too is a criminal offence. And it is of course pure coincidence that the prime accused is the grandson of former navy chief S.M. Nanda, who embraced the noble profession of selling arms. It takes more than hubris to do what Sanjeev Nanda, Manik Kapoor and Sidharth Gupta did. You don't ram into a police picket, killing three, then hit four more individuals, and still try to cover up your crime - unless you feel you will get away. You need to have monumental callousness towards the non-BMW class.
The BMW episode is a class crime. In Delhi, 93 per cent of all heinous crimes in 1998 were committed by young novices, many from affluent backgrounds. The pattern is repeated in other cities: men between 16 and 30 account for two-thirds of rapes, robberies and kidnappings in India. The most exclusive schools in our metropolises have become among the most violent. Carrying a gun ("hot lead" in slang) has become the ultimate status symbol and fashion accessory for super- affluent youth - like Cartier watches, cocaine or five-star discos. Today's typical young criminal is not a school dropout, or a frustrated man who picks pockets. He is more likely someone who speaks English, likes fancy cars, and uses a jacuzzi. He is infinitely far more purposive and professional than the petty thief.
Economic offences are on the rise. In Delhi - our most violent and aggressive metropolis - 2,420 such offences were registered last year, 2.5 times more than in 1995. Delhi has rich kids who rob lakhs of rupees from their own homes. Many factors explain the elite's criminalisation. First, consumerism and ostentatious lifestyles. Consumerism has grown by leaps and bounds in the 1990s with higher executive incomes and freer imports of luxury goods, and greater availability of status symbols such as branded garments and posh cars. Mumbai and Delhi's posh shopping malls crawl with youth for whom buying a pair of sunglasses for Rs. 5,000 comes as naturally as having a glass of water. Our youth's conscience is becoming devoid of any notion of social responsibility.
The entire upper middle class is inculcating an opportunist, instrumentalist morality among children. So exclusive has access to higher education become, that scoring high marks by whatever means is accepted. For a whole generation, education has less to do with understanding the world than with scoring marks. A "good" pupil would rather skip whole portions of the curriculum to concentrate on her "strong" subject, to score well. Our education is fast losing its ethical and human content. Under the influence of communalism, it no longer inculcates universalist-liberal values of responsible citizenship. Two other phenomena are central to the elite's criminalisation. The first is corruption and bribery. So widespread is this, that nothing, from arms deals to electricity bills, and from school admissions to oil policy, is immune from it. This produces moral dissonance. If everyone at the top is corrupt, why remain clean at the bottom of the pile? If money and lack of scruple are worshipped by the upper crust, why be honest? The example set by the high and mighty is wholly negative. It brutalises sensibilitises and debases public conduct.
Secondly, just as there are no inner constraints upon public misconduct, there are few external deterrents either. When there is no rule of law, when regulations are violated with impunity, the powerful do not fear punishment: they know they have the right connections. This society is grossly under-regulated too. In my 13 years in Delhi, my driving licence has not been checked once. In the U.S., by contrast, rare was the month when my papers were not checked. How can you have the incentive to learn traffic rules when you can buy a licence without taking a test? This breakdown of the crime-punishment link extends to pre- meditated murder. Fifteen years on, there is at best token punishment for the perpetrators of the anti-Sikh pogrom of 1984. No Shiv Sena leader has been sentenced for killing hundreds of people in Mumbai in 1993.
The BJP's response to anti-Christian violence is to call not for punishing the guilty, but for a "national debate" on conversions (why not one on whether slavery is good?). Why should the Sena's goons feel deterred from terrorising all and sundry when the Home Minister genuflects before their chief to get the cricket ban lifted for a year? The message that is going out from the high offices of India is that thugs won't be punished if they are powerful. If this state of affairs continues, Indian cities will go the way of Chicago of the 1920s, Lagos of the 1980s or Karachi of the 1990s.
Growing lawlessness will generate pressures for draconian "correctives", with perverse consequences. For, criminalisation has not bypassed the police. There are 200 criminal cases pending in the country against IPS officers alone. In Karachi, the army, which has failed to control ethnic violence, has been given judicial powers to try civilians criminal and give a verdict within eight days! This spells descent into chaos, despotism and ultimately barbarism, with horrendously undemocratic and inhuman consequences. So the BMW case must become a litmus test for us. If our justice delivery system does not adequately punish the guilty, the criminalised elite will prevail. This can only be prevented if citizens remain alert and the media does not erase its own memory.
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