Reported Stolen

Editorial:-

A news-report on a burglary is front-paged in today’s edition. As far as crime is concerned, this one is appears a routine kind of break-in, effected when no one was home and only very general stuff like loose cash and some jewelry stolen from a rented home. Readers would have noticed that burglaries are back in the news, with quite a few reported over the past fortnight. The winter months, with several families on vacation and the cold weather sending people to bed early and less likely to keep an eye out on the neighbourhood. The burglaries have invariably targeted homes while the families are away, and as in the latest case, been chance attempts, offering the burglars no guarantees of scoring a big hit. This suggests that these are not handiworks of career criminals because they would go after bigger hits, aiming for larger bounties than the loose cash and odd jewelry that most recent burglaries have been reporting stolen. But before one can heave a sigh of relief, feeling safer because no ‘gang’ is in operation, one needs to begin worrying about that danger that the trend portends. Sikkim has often heard its leaders and associations hold forth on how the State could witness a violent movement if the unemployment situation was not contained or if Sikkim’s aspirations not delivered on. This inference is too simplistic. While unemployed and thereby frustrated youth do provide the fodder for such ‘movements,’ Sikkim does not have a history of violent uprisings. It is unlikely that history will be rewritten on this front anytime soon. What is cause for more worry is that in place of ideology-driven violence, many would settle for mindless crime and then graduate to pointless violence. Enough warning signs about these developments have been thrown up – in the excessive violence with which political camps respond to situations and also in the reckless disregard that some have displayed for life and property in some individual cases. As mentioned, it would be too simplistic to suggest that the crimes and misdemeanors were the handiwork of unemployed or desperate or frustrated youth [although in Sikkim’s case, this condition is not limited to the youth]. Unemployment does not lead everyone to crime, a weak social fabric does. The social fabric has developed worrying tears through which the young slip and fall perilously towards futures which cannot be good for anyone.s