Rain or no rain, now Mumbai evokes a sinking feeling

Off late Mumbai has been evoking a sinking feeling; definitely not because of the incessant rains, the resultant flooding of the low lying areas and the consequent disruptions in the train services. No sir, this is nothing unusual; this had been happening every year but due to the abnormal deluge which this “great” city had come to suffer on 26/7/2005, now, for obvious reasons, every little puddle has come under the media scanner. Anyway, some good seems to have come out of this, as it is becoming evident that the Government is trying to become a bit proactive; good for the common man, good for the car owner, good for the school going children and certainly good for the cell phone service providers.

Coming to the point, what has made my stomach churn is the continual degradation of the soul of the city. The latest case is the news report (Mumbai Mirror-4.7.2006 / page 4) regarding a person named Rajesh Gupta. The gist of the matter (as reported) is as follows-

• Mr. Rajesh Gupta comes across some encroachment on public land.




• On 1.4.2006, he calls up the BMC’s (Bombay Municipal Corporation’s) anti-encroachment cell and registers a complaint.




• Within minutes he gets threatening calls with the underlying refrain to stop indulging in such obvious mischief.




• Mr. Gupta continues in his crusade but as usual nothing happens; ultimately he invokes the (now fast becoming ubiquitous) Right to Information Act to ascertain the status.




• Things move fast and take a nasty turn, on 23.6.2006, he is physically assaulted by a mob comprising of about 30 odd goons.




• A police complaint is filed and some of the goons are arrested but Mr. Gupta remains at the receiving end of threats; he refuses to give in.




• On Sunday, 2.7.2006, Mr. Gupta is arrested by the local police on charges of extorting money from the illegal establishments.

Basically, there are two assumptions on which one can work on- first the obvious one, that Mr. Gupta is indeed a crusader against encroachers and as such he is suffering grave injustice and the way the Police is treating him is absolutely unjustified. Secondly let us consider the diametrically opposite assumption, which in my opinion the cynics are sure to concede- that Mr.Gupta found a highly potent ally in the shape of the Right to Information Act and in the process thought of extorting money from the poor, defenceless and honest people who had illegally encroached upon public land and were running illegal businesses; that the same people complained against his methods and the Police, which is usually reluctant to even register a complaint in the form of the mandatory F.I.R., immediately served Mr. Gupta the comeuppance that he truly and fully deserved.

It is not my case to opine whether Mr. Gupta is a real crusader or is a person with malafide intentions. The only issue that concerns me at the moment is the role of two arms of the Government which are deeply involved in these shenanigans – The BMC and the Police.

First and foremost, it just does not matter whether Mr. Gupta was acting as a crusader or was involved in something wicked. The fact of the matter is that there is rampant encroachment everywhere and believe me it is not a cricket match where you need to appeal to get the Umpire out of his stupor to raise his finger. The BMC is fully empowered to take suo moto action and in fact it is supposed to do so; precisely for that reason, it even has an anti-encroachment cell. Secondly, the Police, when it already had complaints of battery and threats filed by Mr.Gupta, just did not have any reason to arrest him on charges of extortion supposedly filed by people who were obviously in the wrong.

This is not to suggest that Mr.Gupta was well within his rights to attempt extortion from such encroachers (if at all he was indulging in that), but, when prima-facie it is established that the complainants were indeed encroachers, the Police could have tried to be a little less naïve. Or may be they were not at all naïve and their action was indeed motivated. Well, as the things stand, Right to Information Act can not pervade the mind and thoughts and there is no way to officially ascertain the reasons behind the tolerance of the encroachment(s), the leakage of information about the complaint registered by Mr.Gupta or for that matter the real reason behind the swift Police Action.