HOW CRIME AFFECTS NATIONAL LIFE

No criminal can take lightly the need for political patronage in running his crime
syndicate. Be they smuggling syndicates, gambling houses, narcotics dealers or plain
hoodlums, the only way to survive is to have comfortable political protection at the right
levels. The crime syndicates en revanche, pay a good percentage of their criminal gain to
the protectors. Thus, it is an arrangement to mutual advantage. The crime world also
provides hoodlums as volunteers to perform challenging tasks during the election
campaigns of their political patrons, apart from liberally financing these campaigns.
How can a politician, after he gains power with the help of a criminal, ever let down the
criminal? This symbiosis of politicians and criminals which has emerged from the extant
Indian political system is the root cause of all the complications.

The very fact that politicians are prepared to risk their reputations rather than
distance themselves from the crime world, shows how highly the world of crime is
regarded by the politicians in their scheme of things. Politics and crime have become the
tow faces of the same coin in the present state of affairs and a saying goes that there
cannot be politics without crime and no crime without politics. In the present Indian
situation, it is true that the lotus of politics can blossom only in the offal of crime.

UNIVERSALITY OF CRIME

On ultimate analysis, crime is a universal phenomenon. All living being are

criminals in varying degrees. Criminal thought is a part of the natural function of a
healthy mind as is the moral restraint that prevents the criminal thought from being acted
upon. External restraints brought about by the fear of law, custom and adverse reaction
reinforce the inner restraint to prevent the committing of crime. However, as the force of
external restraints weakens for diverse reasons and the proportion of gain to be made in
committing a crime overweighs the risks involved in the balance sheet of the operation,
the lure of crime increases and the deed is done. It is social situation which controls the
external restraints to make committing a crime an asset or a liability and thereby decides
the proliferation or suppression of crime with human nature being what it is always.
Criminals are criminals because society gives them easy openings to thus meet their
needs. Politicians love to befriend criminals rather than bring them to book because the
society they live in makes their lives comfortable with criminals as friends rather than as
adversaries. Policemen find the crime world sweeter because it is how things stand for
them. The remedy for the proliferation and endearment of crime lies in changing the
social dynamics to make crime a liability to criminals and criminals a liability to
politicians and the police. In the existing nexus of politics, crime and police, crime is an
asset to criminals and criminals are an asset to politicians and police. Criminals should
not be construed as a separate block of citizenry. They are a cross-section of people
from all fields of life who have moved beyond a commonly accepted degree in their
criminal tendencies. Criminality may be prolific in certain civilised fields like commerce
and industry in the form of tax evasion, violation of foreign exchange regulations,
hoarding etc; such crimes are generally not taken seriously in spite of the public
awareness of the crimes, with the social standing of the criminals remaining unaffected.
Government servants too come under this category of criminals because of the
unconfined corruption in public life. It is a fact that Indian public life is a vast field of
criminal activities and politicians and police, though the custodians and protectors of the
Indian public life. Form part of the crime world. However, knowledge of the
involvement of politicians and police in this nasty world stirs the public conscience, for
the reason that they are supposed to be the people on whom the public relies to save
them. But, it cannot be because they are also part of the society which makes public life
a nasty affair and nourishes it.

CRIME AND NATIONAL ECONOMY

A word about the effect of the nasty nexus between politics, crime and police on
the national economy. Unity gives strength. It is true about the nasty nexus also. The
only telos of the nexus is gain by synergy, the synergy which brings confidence and
courage to the troika in its nefarious activities, thereby inducing it to more daring and
innovative criminal activities. This results in proliferation of crime, a part from affecting
the quality of crime by opening up new avenues for operation. As the ultimate end of all
crimes in illegal gain and the incidence of crime is directly related to increase in black
money in the national economy, the proliferation of crime invariable results in inflation
and the weakening of the national economy.

More dangerously, it results in a polarisation of the society into criminal rich and
honest poor and destroys the country’s moral fabric. This increscent incidence of easy
money, material comforts and political power of the criminal rich ultimately leads to
internal strife, emeute and popular terrorism.

POLITICISATION OF CRIME

The overworld is just the tip of the real, raw world. There are more things hidden
in this world than that are seen. This is soon realised by opportunist Indian politicians
who seize the first available instance to enlist the support of criminals and underground
operators for their nefarious designs. This is turn is a god-sent benison for criminals to
restore their lost credibility and social standing with the help of their association with the
custodians of power, apart from the security and protection from the police that ensues
from the association. They promptly grab the opportunity to their advantage and show
how useful they can be to politicians in their career-promotion designs and wreaking of
personal vendettas. The experience and professionalism of criminals is handy to
politicians to execute their hasty operations without attracting the stigma attached to
them.

The vast army of criminals has become a ready resource to them for use whenever
need arises. This has given a sense of confidence and security to politicians, who are
otherwise vulnerable in their highly uncertain, challenging and competitive environment.
Often politicians have so much relied on criminals that the latter have become their most
trusted lieutenants even getting elected to legislature with their help and blessings. There
have been instances in India, where prominent politicians have refused to disown their
notorious criminal friends in public even after reaching the vertex of their political career.
This shows the sway held by criminals over politicians in the Indian situation. It is a fact
that no syndicate of organised crime in small and big cities anywhere in the world can
survive even for a day without political patronage. Ergo, all syndicates of organised crime
and their menace are the direct outcome of the internchant nexus between politicians and
criminals, indeed with the police as bystanders.

SOCIAL POLARISATION

The indulgence of the rich and powerful in crime popularises criminal activities
by bringing an aura of status to them and negating all inhibitions in the popular mind.
Society easily accepts the example of the wealthy and powerful for making an easy buck
to lead comfortable lives in the world where life is becoming increasingly difficult
because of the spurt in black money, caused by the proliferation of crime. While decent
life becomes impossible by honest methods, the need of survival forces honest citizenry
to accept crime as a way of life as the last resort. This would be where politicians,
criminals and police lead the country.

Easy money and easy wealth have a tendency to inflate. Criminals tend to spend
lavishly. This ends up in a spurt in prices of land, building and essential commodities
while honest men have to toil hard for an extra quarter. Crime begets money and money
begets more money and more money gets power, comfort and everything. In the crush,
honest man is lost forever. The ocean of criminal wealth around him which is beyond
even his wildest dreams frustrates him and ravages his sense of morality and
righteousness. It turns him violently against all human values and decency, leading him
to a world of crime and violence. It is what we saw in Punjab, Kashmir, Assam, in far
away Srilanka or even in Naxalism where it is hidden in the guise of political ideology.
It is an irony that politicians and the police, who create the demons, eat their own pies by
falling to the bullets of the grievously hurt, self-righteous, once innocent people. It is
said that even the dacoits in Chambal are symptomatic of this social and economic
malady.
 It is true that crime cannot be eliminated from any society as the tendency to
commit crime is ingenerate in human nature. However, crime can be suppressed by
appropriate straints. What straints and how they are to be applied are ironically decided
by politicians and the police. If they come out of their indulgent interests to commit
themselves to their professional objectives, they can certainly save India from the present
predicament. Not that every politician and every policeman can come out to achieve this
noble task, but there certainly are noble elements yet surviving as exceptions among
them, who should take up cudgels in favour of the Indian polity and sacrifice their lives
and careers, if necessary, to make the renaissance of Indian police and Indian public life
possible. The question yet to be posed is whether the inveterate vested interests will let
these sacrifices bear fruit. Let us hope for the best.