SHOBHAN SAXENA - Murders, and Not Terrorism, Make India a Really Dangerous Country
In 2012, some 252 civilians died in terrorist and
insurgency-related violence in India. The same year, 43,355 people were
murdered by criminals or ordinary people known to their victims. The number of
people murdered was 170 times more than the figure of terror victims.
The year
was not an exception. This has been a pattern since 2000. The figure puts India
at the second place in the list of countries with most intentional murders –
homicides. With 58,000 murders in 2012, Brazil tops the chart.
Though terrorism dominates all media coverage and public
debates on violence in India, the chances of a citizen being a victim of
homicide are much higher, according to a “murder map” prepared by Igarapé, a
Brazilian think-tank which tracks homicides across the globe. In the
interactive map, which shows the countries where people are most likely to be
murdered, India is in the dangerous zone. But the issue is hardly discussed in
the media and by policymakers in India, according to Robert Muggah, the founder
and research director of Igarapé. In an exclusive interview with The
Wire at the think-tank’s headquarters here, Muggah said that in
contrast to well-known gun violence in the Americas and Africa, the problem of
homicides is absent from public security and development agendas in India.
“It’s a common narrative that its terrorism or insurgency that is responsible
for most violent deaths. It’s the same in the US, where mass shootings animate
debates on the issue of guns despite the fact that homicides claim 20 times
more victims. Often the public gaze is seized by — and the media contributes to
the view — the sporadic, highly visible incidents of violence that are more
dominant,” says Muggah.
While mass shootings and gang wars are virtually unknown in
India, it belongs to a small group of countries that carry the burden of a vast
number of homicides around the world. Mexico, Brazil, Venezuela, Colombia,
India, South Africa and Nigeria account for two-thirds of the global
distribution of homicide. “The aggregate figure of 45,000 plus homicides is a
big number. India’s homicide rate – 4.5 per 100,000 people – has been going
down and levelling off, but it is still a bit alarming. It is still four times
higher than the homicide rate in the UK, well above the average in OECD
countries but below the global average of 6.3. But there is no public debate in
India on lethal violence outside terrorism and other conflicts,” says Muggah,
explaining the dynamics of murders in India through the Homicide Monitor
launched by Igarapé.
The Homicide Monitor, compiled using the most recently
available date from 2012, draws on information from the UN and statistics from
respective governments, “and classifies the data on murders by country, year,
age of victim, gender, and the type of weapon used. It includes data for more
than 219 countries and territories from 2000 to 2012. “It is a
three-dimensional, digital dashboard of global homicide rates. The idea is to
provoke a debate on homicides. It is an important step in transparency. By
putting the homicide figures – and their causes – in the public domain, we are
trying to shine a light on them,” says Muggah, adding that the think-tank hopes
policymakers and researchers can use the tool to tackle the startling figures
by involving local communities in decision-making and by deploying large
numbers of officers in areas with high murder rates. This technique, called
“hot policing”, reduced the homicide rate in São Paulo from 42.2 per 100,000
people in 2000 to 13.9 per 100,000 in 2010. “What we want to do with this
monitor is to create a hopeful story. We want to show that it’s possible to
check the high rates of murders. We want to provoke a discussion online.”
In India, discussion on homicides is often sparked by
sensational crimes like Aarushi-Hemraj and Sheena Bora murder cases. But the media
coverage and debates remain limited to the whodunit aspect of the crime. How
widespread is this routine, banal violence – as shown by high homicide figures
– is rarely discussed. Based on their findings, Igarapé researchers believe
that the problem in India is actually more serious than believed due to the
scale of unregistered births and deaths, the poor quality of data collection
and under-reporting of crimes by the police. “We have two data sources for
India: one is the data from the national police records (NCRB), and the second
is the one that the UN and OECD have adjusted to count what they think are the
discrepancies in the data. In 2012, the UN-OECD count was 43,000, while the
police count filed by the government on their site was 34,000, almost 10,000
homicides fewer. The UN has actually tried to adjust the rate by putting
together a more accurate picture from different sources. That’s a big
difference. If you go down to the local level, it will become even more
pronounced,” says Muggah.
It’s not just the high murder numbers that are a matter of
concern, the causes – as analysed by the monitor – behind the homicides are
even more worrying. Tens of thousands of Indians are killed in everyday casual
violence with intimate partners or between youths who are inimical to each
other. This kind of violence doesn’t hit the national headlines, but it does a
follow a pattern that makes India a dangerous country.
Though gun-related violence in India, according to the
Homicide Monitor, is concentrated in Manipur, Nagaland, Bihar, Jharkhand, Jammu
and Uttar Pradesh, which together account for over 60 percent of all registered
homicides involving a firearm, India is following the old pattern of a spike in
the murder rate with rapid economic growth accompanied by income and social
inequality.
This kind of explosive situation exists all across India,
but it’s more pronounced in smaller cities. According to the Homicide Monitor
data, the most violent places in India are not mega-cities, but rather
mid-sized cities of between one and three million people. Four of the top five
most violent cities in terms of murder by firearms are located in Uttar
Pradesh. “Big cities like Delhi and Mumbai are not necessarily the most
dangerous places. The smaller, medium-sized cities in India face the biggest
challenge. And the countryside too. Those cities are outside the public gaze,”
says Muggah, adding that unregulated urbanisation could be the reason for
growing violence. “Latin America transited from rural to urban society in the
space of two generations; India is going to do it probably in less than one. So
it’s the medium and small cities, which you have never heard of, that are going
to have the maximum concentration of homicides. You better be alert to this.”
Another aspect of these cities – disproportionately large
populations of unemployed and under-educated youth – is even more alarming.
With more than 50% of its population under the age of 25 and 10 million people
entering the job market every year, rapid urbanization coupled with lack of
opportunities makes a dangerous cocktail. “When you have young males who are
uneducated and unemployed, you tend to see high rate of violence. When
a certain proportion of the population is under 30, you have high
propensity to violence. So India is highly at risk. In India, we had a look at
the demographic of young people in the most violent states like UP and Bihar,
where young people gravitate towards cities for job opportunities. So the
cities are aggregators of this kind of violence,” says Muggah.
Lack of education and jobs is further accentuated by
inequality, as happened in Latin America. In India, according to Igarapé,
income inequality doubled between 1990 and 2010, and this has led India’s
richest 10% to currently own 370 times the share of wealth that the poorest 10%
hold. “It’s not extreme poverty and not even poverty at large in material sense
that fuels violence. The problem is inequality: vertical in terms of income
inequality and horizontal in terms of access to benefits. Those two things are
combustible,” says Muggah. “Brazil wasn’t always violent. Until the 1970s,
there was not much violence.”
In the early 1970s, Brazil and several other South American
nations joined the US-led “war on drugs”. That started a never-ending cycle of
violence in the whole region. It’s a lesson for India, where drug use is on the
rise. According to the most recent data from the Narcotics Control Bureau
(NCB), the quantity of drugs seized in India has increased by more than 450%
between 2011 and 2013, while the number of cases related specifically to
cocaine seizures increased by more than 70% since 2009. According to several
reports, drug cartels from Latin America are trying new ways to reach India.
“There are interesting parallels with Latin America, which has the added
challenge of drugs. But India is not immune to the drug issue. There is more
and more heroin coming through India. There are more reports of drug
consumption as more people move towards the middle class. India has the added
problem of alcohol. Alcohol and drugs are what we call triggers. When you have
the combustible mix of young people who are jobless and you throw in alcohol,
it’s an explosive situation.”
Lessons from Latin America
Drugs, guns and inequality have caused havoc in Latin
America. Brazil alone accounts for 1 in 10 homicides in the world. Just 4
countries in Latin America account for 1 in 4 homicides. Violence is not
innate, or somehow naturally occurring, in Latin America. A combination of
risks converged that are not unique to countries and cities in the region and
in fact are present in parts of India. Muggah believes that India should learn
from the Latin American experience to avoid going down the same path. “The
first thing is to anticipate the emerging risks around urbanisation and youth
and drugs and alcohol. India should generate capabilities to monitor and
analyse these situations. Right now, there is no robust system at the local
level. We have seen a dramatic reduction in violence in Latin Amercia in
those places where the mayors have worked with the private sector and civil
society to introduce data driven interventions. Mayors in Brazil have done
exceptionally good work and we have seen dramatic reduction in several cities
by over 75 percent in 10 years,” says the Igarapé founder.
Globally, homicide rates have been declining. In India, the
official homicide rate – as per NCRB data — was 4.5 in 2000; today it is 3.5.
The UN figure for India is still 4.5; it is not rising but levelling off. But
the absolute number of murders has almost stayed the same since 2000. India
doesn’t fall into the category of hyper-violent societies, but the sheer high
number of murders make it one of the most dangerous countries. Addressing
structural risks like urbanization and job creation would definitely take time,
but India can make a beginning by breaking its silence on the problems of everyday
violence.
