| One of the exciting things about being in the newsmagazine
business is that you don't know what your next cover is going to feature. In an ideal
world there are some stories we'd love to avoid: those with an excess of blood and gore.
Journalists though are a tribe wedded to reality. That explains the lead article of the
issue you're reading. It is a story which was a voyage of discovery for us but certainly
not one we enjoyed. Crime and youth make a heady and potent cocktail. Some of us may find
watching films based on such themes entertaining and go home with the reassurance that it
was all fiction. However, what is on the silver screen is coming far closer to our
neighbourhood than we would have thought. There is a general sense of alarm across the
nation -- aroused by a recent spurt in crime involving the young and including everything
from extortion to robbery, even murder. We decided
to investigate the reach of the problem. A team of seven reporters headed by Special
Correspondent Vijay Jung Thapa and Principal Correspondent Sayantan Chakravarty in Delhi
and Principal Correspondent Sheela Raval in Mumbai fanned out across the country. What
they came up with was crushing. Dubious characters like Romesh Sharma, whose superfast
rags to riches story we reported only two months ago, seem to be the role models for some
of our deviant youth. This is the other face of glitzy liberalisation. A flashy lifestyle
is the owner's pride; increasingly, it is also the neighbour's envy. Quick money seems to
be the new mantra. With family values already under stress and a recessionary economy
squeezing the job market, crime suddenly seems an alluring option even for middle-class
children. A distorted legal system that lets crimes go unpunished doesn't help matter
either. The real change, as Thapa found, is that "some of these kids are actually
quite affluent. They're crime junkies, doing it only for a kick." That's the sad
part. The motivation is no longer economic necessity but the ever elusive search for a new
high.
(Aroon Purie) |
