The National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), Government of India’s agency for collecting and analysing crime data, as defined by the Indian Penal Code, has been publishing the related information through the country’s dailies. The agency, formed in March 1986, not adequately staffed to take note of criminal acts taking place in all the nooks and corners of the land, may have to rely on sources in the 36 States and Union Territories, particularly their respective Police Departments to a major extent, for garnering crime data both comprehensively and timely. To what purpose and in which systematic manner the NCRB data are used where it matters is not clear to people at large, who are the true stakeholders in the business of keeping crime in check across the country. The inordinate delay in court procedures, a well-known feature, has a great deal to do with that business not paying dividends to the desired extent.

The definition of crime under IPC may be marked by excellent rhetoric, but may send the law-keeping functionaries into a tizzy, given the reportedly very low rate of conviction of perpetrators of crime of all sorts, thanks to the liberal help from the lawyer fraternity in bailing out the accused. Similar to diagnosing a disease and not the causes, the why of crime doesn’t seem to have been bestowed the same attention as crime itself.

Columns of dailies are currently being hogged by reports of criminal acts in their nature, range and numbers on scales not only unprecedented but also proving beyond the capabilities of administration, in spite of steadily rising budgets of the governments for safeguarding law and order. That is the cost society is paying for the despicable acts of a growing presence of citizens taking to crimes, rattling the peace and tranquillity in families as well as the workplace. The stakes for zealously avoiding all sorts of misdemeanour on the part of citizens in daily life has assumed criticality like never before, thanks to a) disrespect to elders in family, b) absence of teachers of the calibre of their ancestors, c) vacuum of mentors in society, to mention only a few causative factors.

In the forgoing context, the advisory sounded this week by a top official in Mysuru’s district administration to officials not to mix work with personal life, has happened not a day too early. Stresses in daily life, hurting sanity, also tells upon the performance of their duties on the part of officials. Citizens are grudgingly taking the resultant brunt of decline in administration.