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As the rich and well-heeled made preparations to ring in the new year in style across a new, shining India, a wave of revulsion swept through the country after the report of mass killings in a sleepy, poor housing area. This was in Nithari, no more than eighteen miles from the capital, Delhi, and in one of India’s most prosperous and upcoming districts, Noida. Violent death involving such larger numbers is not so rare in India, especially where the poor are concerned. Nithari provoked a different response, because this case illustrates best the most barbaric and basic truth about the Indian state.
The incident reveals how the country’s poor is still under the threat of injustice. It is one example of how the poor and weak have just no place in the Indian system. It also deeply concerns how the Indian media has been sucked into covering the relatively more mundane, but sensational issues. The media had heard of reports of children disappearing but no one took the trouble to take up the issue. The inefficiency of the police is just a cover- up as this could never have happened if the victims belonged to a rich or middle-class neighbourhood.
Speaking to a BBC Hindi service show, one of India’s most celebrated police officers, Kiran Bedi, said that the Nithari case was an example of how, for the common man in the country, there is no police or justice system. “The system needs to be completely overhauled and wide-ranging reforms are needed in the police structure,” she said.
But only police reforms are insufficient, the entire system and attitudes desperately need to be reformed. India’s economic prowess and potential is much talked about but can we say with the same degree of optimism that there will not be another Nithari, when India does realise its dreams?