My column in the DNA on 9th January 2014

I joined the media in the mid-Nineties.  The television industry was new, budgets were low and we all did everything — we wrote, directed, edited, ran about to find costumes, painted sets on the shoot floor — and it was hard work. Most of us worked 18-20 hour days, for weeks on the trot. We shot in all kinds of places — most of which were lonely where we could film without crowds getting into the frame. Areas like Shakti Mills made for the best-shoot locations — because they gave a certain ambience, a certain atmosphere. We never thought of it being unsafe. And then when the shoot was over, we would take the rushes to a little edit studio in some bylane and edit till late into the night. And at twilight, when the roads were empty, would walk to the main road and catch a rickshaw or taxi to get home. I have forgotten the number of days that we all did this. And yet the predominant memory was of fun. It was a Mumbai recovering from riots and blasts, and yet, I cannot ever remember feeling unsafe or insecure about the environment. Things have changed. The sense of being ‘unsafe’ is palpable.  The sense of not being safe is at the back of the mind — and it doesn’t have to be late at night, or in a lonely area.

What is safety? Most of us know instinctively what it means. Safety is being able to walk home from the station without being robbed, raped or run over. Safety is the ability to cross the road at a zebra crossing without it feeling like an obstacle race. Safety  is the ability to visit a public toilet on the highway, without wondering who is watching. Safety is the ability to take a train without being pushed out (by the crowds). Safely is the ability to walk down a street without feeling eyes following you. Safety is walking on the pavement without being run over by two-wheelers. But, safety is more than that. We know that instinctively too. The Oxford English Dictionary defines Safety as the condition of being protected from or unlikely to cause danger, risk, or injury; The Miriam Webster Dictionary, on the other hand, defines Safety as freedom from harm or danger: the state of being safe; the state of not being dangerous or harmful; a place that is free from harm or danger: a safe place. And these definitions, more or less dovetail with what we believe about safety.

But, are we safe?  If you look at the crime statistics, most of India still is a relatively safe place. There isn’t the kind of madness associated with the drug cartels in South America that impacts ordinary citizens, nor is there the state of constant civil wars that parts of Africa have seen in the last few decades. We don’t have a Syria-like situation, nor is there the kind of ethnic targeting and killing that you see in Pakistan on a daily basis. There are riots that lead to murders, arson, and rape — however, they are contained in a small geographic area. There are sporadic terror attacks.

And while most of us manage to go about our lives without being attacked, do we feel safe about our lives, or the lives of our loved ones? Let me give you an example. For many in my generation, the normal thing to do was to walk to school. We would often cut across slums, construction areas, empty lots, bus depots, railway tracks to get to school and back. Would you be comfortable with your children doing the same? Talk to people and they will say the same thing: “It was different in our generation. Things have become so unsafe”. Frankly, I am unsure whether we felt safe because it was safer, or because we knew no better.

In a way, our sense of safety has been threatened not so much by a serious spike in crime as much as a phenomenal spike in information. Things that would not be talked about or discussed openly even a decade ago is in the public domain now. We feel unsafe, primarily because we read about things that threaten our innate sense of security and well-being.  You cannot open a paper, turn on a television news channel, turn to the Internet without gory details of violent crime assaulting you and your sense of safety. It seems like a dark alley outside your home, and that the only safe harbour is to lock yourself behind  the double doors of your home, and hope it keeps the ‘bad guys’ out.

However, hiding away in our own self-made fortresses may not be the solution. After all, how long do we hide? And, do we bring up the next generation in fortified ghettos or do we make the world safer for them? I would think that the answer is the latter.  It is election year, and our vote is at a greater premium than ever before. All our leaders are more accessible across media and platforms. For the first time, the middle class seems to be an important part of the election process. Ensuring that politicians and parties put our safety as part of their manifestos is necessary. Also, we should not be satisfied with general, vague statements such as ‘we will make India safer’. We need to ask how — how are you going to make India safer? We need to nail it down to specifics, for example police recruitment or better street lights. There is a power that many voices have, that a lone complainer does not. Maybe it is time these voices got together to push the agenda, and that agenda is safety.  The sense of not feeling threatened while doing the mundane things in life — such as walking down a street. That is not too much to ask for, is it?