Mangalore: What's Law and Order Got to do With it?

Gurudutt Kamath and Vijayakumar can never forget the birthday party they attended on July 29. It ended with 13 college kids, including girls, being beaten up by a gang of local rowdies.

They are the only two willing to fight this till they see justice as the girls have refused to go through the pain of being in glare of the media. The 2009 pub attack resulted in one of the girls discontinuing her education and relocating to Gujarat because of the intense scrutiny around her life.

While public outrage has been high this time, most of the people have been arrested and the hunt is on for those not in custody yet. Yesterday, there was the first civil society meet in Mangalore called Arise Mangalore, where citizens have decided enough is enough. However, unless something is fixed in the police department, things may not change.

I was in Mangalore last week, and had a number of conversations with people to understand why the frequency of incidents like these has increased. One insightful comment was that there have been a number of transfers in the police department. Officers who try to work and ensure law and order cannot do so because of various political outfits. If they displease the ruling authority, they get transferred.  One example is Pramod Kumar, the current sub-inspector of Karkala, another district in Karnataka, who was the sub-inspector of two different localities in Mangalore.

He got transferred as he was not willing to put up with the fancies of politicians and since then has moved to Karkala. Recently, he was supposed to be moved from Karkala as well, but locals – of both Hindu and Muslim communities – got together and refused to allow the move as they were very happy with his work.

Another example is of Subodh Yadav, Additional Commercial Tax Commissioner, who was transferred just seven months into his job as deputy commissioner of Dakshina Kannada last year. Yadav came to Mangalore and was taken aback by the attitude of the people. He says, “The people are very dynamic here. It is a place full of energy. You just need to give ideas and they will run with it.”

He says that with a lot of pride as within his shortened tenure, he ran programmes like a beach cleaning project, where they cleaned up the entire Mangalore coast of 43 beaches and collected 93 truckloads of garbage. Another programme he ran was a marathon that saw 7,000 people in attendance: it was a first for the city.

But he also was not allowed to work the way he knew best. Sources say that he is a “no nonsense” officer and this put many politicians off.

Another officer, who wanted to stay off-the-record, says that political interference has always been high, but in Karnataka, especially Mangalore it has reached intolerable levels.

While interference by politicians in transferring good civil servants is one of the reasons Mangalore sees incidents like a pub attack or moral policing, another reason such incidents are increasing is money.

Both the pub attacks and even the home-stay attack is allegedly because the owners did not pay the required sum, like a hafta, to the local authorities. An officer says if Bangalore is the political capital of Karnataka, Mysore is its cultural capital, Mangalore is definitely the financial capital. Money from all kinds of sources flows into the city, he said.

A third reason why Mangalore is becoming a boiling pot is many locals stay abroad. This leaves a number of ancestral properties unattended to, and a target for corrupt officials. Good government officials, who stand in the way of illegal land transactions get transferred, and the good work they begin gets stunted.

As the city transitions from a tier II to a tier I equivalent, the one thing it has to ensure for growth to continue is the enforcement of law and order. Without which the city may get affected economically.

The thoughts and opinions shared here are of the author.