The shadow of crime is lengthening

The shadow of crime is lengthening
H S BALRAM
The Times of India

Three young men misbehave with a young couple at a pub on Brigade Road in the heart of Bangalore. The pub staff plead with them to exercise restraint, but to no avail. A bouncer is summoned and they are thrown out. The three return after a while fully armed, chase the bouncer down the road and hack him to death in full public view.
A nine-year-old girl stands watching a pack of dogs feast on left-over meat on a road in Chandra Layout. The dogs suddenly pounce on the girl, drag her across the length and breadth of the road and maul her to death, even as passersby try to rescue her.
Police intercept a bus coming from Bellary to Bangalore. They stumble upon a man with terrorist links. An AK-47 assault rifle, 300 rounds of ammunition, four fully-loaded magazines, five hand grenades, a satellite phone, cellphones, additional SIM cards, and a map with a few locations, including Infosys and Wipro campuses, marked clearly, are found on him.
Scary isn’t it? The three incidents took place in the last one week. Bangalore is imbibing the wrongs of all big cities. Crime is on the rise. Terror is lurking. We used to hear of such incidents only in the North. Now, the South hasn’t been spared. Fast-growing Bangalore, with a booming economy, is bearing the brunt. Not a day passes without news of violence, abduction, rape, murder and road rage making the headlines. The situation may not be as bad as in some North Indian cities. But that crime and terror are slowly engulfing what was once a pensioner’s paradise sends a chill down one’s spine.
The police have been vigilant, given the conditions under which they work. They have managed to nab persons who were getting set to create terror. They have caught anti-social elements within days after they committed crime. So far so good. But they need more personnel, a brilliant intelligence wing, adequate funds, modern weapons and ammunition, good vehicles, sophisticated gadgets and better salaries and perks. After all, Bangalore houses a number of IT giants, defence and scientific installations, and PSUs. Plus it has a sizeable section that has money to splurge.
Citizens too have a role to play. Resident Welfare Associations (RWAs) must help the police maintain vigil in their respective areas. They must create awareness among residents on how to deal with growing crime, keep an eye on suspicious elements, force the local corporator and MLA to help redress grievances and involve civic authorities and animal welfare organisations in finding a solution to the stray dog and cattle menace. Bangalore must not be allowed to go the way of Delhi and Bihar.
In spite of the shadow of crime and inadequate infrastructure, the world continues to look at Bangalore with envy. Trend-spotters have come up with a new phrase ‘Bangalore envy’, which they claim would shape people’s lives in the US in 2007. The expression, which refers to “movement of much of the world’s smart money to where many of the world’s smart people are’’, is one of the 10 phrases that find place in Next Now, a book compiled by marketing guru Ira Matathia and trendspotter Marian Salzman. ‘‘A new Silicon Valley is rising in India,’’ the authors say. However, they feel the phrase would add to the anxiety of people in the US, as they grow increasingly scared for their jobs and their future.
Two years ago, Bangalore became the second modern city in the world to be turned into a verb — Bangalored — after Shanghaied, a word that broadly means losing jobs or businesses after relocation. An online anti-outsourcing website marketed a T-shirt with a legend “Don’t get Bangalored’’, a term suggesting losing one’s job to outsourcing.
Bangaloreans squirm on hearing these phrases. For, they know that the ground reality is different. But cynicism doesn’t help. They must take advantage of the attention that the world is paying, strive to set right the problems, shun a narrow-minded approach, become more competitive and put the city on the fast track. From the government to industry and trade, civic bodies to citizens, everyone needs to chip in.