According to the national crime Records Bureau (NCRB) Report 2024, the number of reported crimes in India last year was 445.9 for every 100,000 people, slightly lower (487.8) than in 2022. The most frequent crime is theft, followed by robbery and assault. States with greatest lawlessness are Uttar Pradesh, Kerala, Maharashtra, Delhi, and Bihar, and crime rates are higher in urban areas compared to rural India. “The overall crime rate has decreased due to more police presence, better law enforcement, and increased public awareness about crime,” says the report.

This claim that crime and criminality nationwide has decreased even marginally, is difficult to digest. Quite the contrary, if the tidal wave of breaking stories on television, banner headlines in newspapers and viral postings on social media are indicative. Crime has increased exponentially with several states of the Indian Union hurtling towards anarchy. In this connection, it’s important to note that NCRB provides data of reported crimes. And as is highlighted every second day in the media, police personnel countrywide are very reluctant to record criminal complaints because if the number of unsolved crimes in their jurisdiction increases, it will adversely impact their career progression.

Rising lawlessness and collapse of public confidence in the police, judiciary, bureaucracy and politicians are symptomatic of a gradual breakdown of the social contract in society. This is evidenced by prolonged street-level agitations as in the aftermath of the brutal murder-rape of a woman doctor in Kolkata, spate of exams cheating cases in academia and mob-lynchings of people suspected of a variety of offences ranging from child kidnap to cattle smuggling.

Frustrated with the law’s delay and contumely of elected leaders, angry citizens are increasingly applauding vigilante justice and ‘encounter’ executions. And not only lay citizens. Even duly elected governments are resorting to ‘bulldozer justice’ by razing painstakingly built homes of mere suspects of wrong-doing. That the Supreme Court of India took its own time to condemn bulldozer justice freely dispensed in several north Indian states is painful evidence of the imminent collapse of the social contract.

Although it seems self-evident, there is little awareness within Indian society that high quality early childhood and primary-secondary education with revised syllabuses/curriculums that teach morality and civic obligations to children from youngest age, is the best prescription for restoring rule of law, social order and harmony. Eminent academics, economists and sociologists confabulating in high councils, seminars and think tanks are paying too little attention to the country’s collapsed public education system. The development strategy of restricting quality education to the middle class while denying it to the over one billion underclass citizens, is deepening social inequality and schisms. Unless the education deficit is made good, the social contract will suffer continuous erosion.