AND THEY ARE SYMPTOMATIC OF THE INSENSITIVE POLITICAL AND
ADMINISTRATIVE MACHINERY
People had to take to the streets again. The public sphere
is evolving spontaneously. People are reacting spontaneously against atrocities,
again and again, post the anti-corruption movement of Anna Hazare.
A 5-year old minor was raped and brutalized in Delhi, again. While
protests were raging, more cases of rape were reported. Statistics say rape is
the fastest growing crime in India.
True, it’s a mindset problem. But, than cannot absolve the
police and government of their own follies, of not being honest with their
responsibility, of not being sincere with their commitment, of not being human
enough to understand the pain of the fellow human who is being victimized.
A gangrape last year, on December 16, that took life of a
23-year old girl, named Nirbhaya by us, who fought with the rapists and
struggled with death for many days, stirred the humanity. Her fight, her
plight, crime against Indian women and the larger issue of women rights in India made the
whole world participate in the process of discussion.
But that was for the humanity, not for the Indian
politicians it seems. Mr. Sushil Kumar Shinde, responsible for internal
security of the country and directly overseeing the administration of the Delhi
Police, and the administrative machinery like the Delhi Police run by the politicians
like Shinde, compel us to think so, again and again.
Criticised for comparing young protesters with Maoists in
the aftermath of the December Delhi 2012 gangrape, the home minister of India let his
lieutenant at the helms of the Delhi Police affairs have a free run despite
glaring lapses by the Delhi Police during and after the crime was perpetrated.
A police security lapse let the bus ply on the road when
it had previously robbed someone on the same stretch of the road on the same
day, in the same time-band. A police functionality lapse delayed the access to
the speedy treatment to the victim. A police functionality lapse denied the
victim the best possible treatment that was her right. These two lapses coupled
with Union and Delhi
governments’ delayed decision-making in shifting the victim to a renowned
hospital later proved fatal for her.
Shinde was as much responsible for it as was Mr. Neeraj
Kumar. But both remained unaffected and unmoved as if nothing had happened when
both needed to take moral and functional responsibilities for the lapses. They
both needed to have stepped down. Okay, proposing this might sound unusual in
the Indian political and bureaucratic set-up of the day but is this not the way
the healthy and progressive democracies are supposed to function?
What Shinde and Neeraj Kumar had done during the December
2012 gangrape and protests, they are doing it again.
Administration is slapping protesters, is shutting Delhi
Metro stations and is imposing Section 144 like it had one in December 2012. Neeraj
Kumar, who had compared human lives as collateral damage then, is lauding his
police force, a police force that tries to discourage the complainants, a
police force that slaps innocent protesters, a police force that frames
innocent youngsters for murder, a police force that offers bribe to the victim
to suppress the issue even if his daughter is raped and mortally wounded.
Even after all this, Mr. Kumar doesn’t bother to face the
nation and when he does so, after four days of the incident, he speaks in his
‘human lives as collateral damage’ style saying it is impossible to prevent all
the rape cases.
And Mr. Neeraj Kumar cannot say and do all this without
approval of his boss, Mr. Shinde.
And Mr. Shinde cannot allow all this to happen without
approval of his bosses, the power-centre duo of the United Progressive Alliance
government.
