Mobbed

The images out of Bihar of late are not pretty, and the tale they tell, even less so. Nitish Kumar’s Bihar seems to be the grip of a surge of barbarism, with mobs dispensing rough justice at will to petty thieves and offenders. Such behaviour should rightly figure only in the annals of the dark ages. In today’s India, it is an affront to every constitutional canon and a pointer to a disturbing breakdown of the criminal justice system. It cannot portent well for the Indian system.

Explanations there are aplenty for why such violence persists. People in a mob behave in a manner that is distinct from how they would conduct themselves as individuals. Rational judgment and a sense of right and wrong are invariably discarded in the animal passions of the moment, and the fact that personal culpability is never acknowledged, far less punished, is a contributory factor. We also know that such attacks reflect widespread popular frustration, not just with institutions like the police, administration and judiciary, but with the lack of options and opportunities for personal growth.

It needed four major episodes of horrific mob violence in two weeks – the latest being last Thursday’s lynching of 10 thieves in Vaishali — to get Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar to even acknowledge the problem and admit to administrative and policing lapses. Collective punishment is never effective. He needs to convey to every face in the mob; to every police constable/officer and bureaucrat, that justice can be dispensed only by the state and those who contravene this will face severe and certain punishment. So tepid has been the response from the Bihar government so far, that it appears that it is almost half-prepared to allow knots of brutes to dispense justice since its own ability to do is so heavily compromised. This way lies anarchy. The CM’s predecessor, Lalu Prasad Yadav, was accused of having presided over a ‘jungle raj’. If he doesn’t take care, the epithet may well travel to Nitish Kumar’s Bihar.