Does Mumbai need the Malegaon Paathshala??

Maalegaon V/s Mumbai
-Nimish Inamdar
11th September 2006

We always boast of the resilience of Mumbai and its attitude to jump back to life, to help the decease and clog the blood banks right after any natural or man-made calamity. The very next day we all are seen in local trains or BEST busses heading to our workstation lamenting upon yesterday’s tragedy. “Jindadiili” is the word coined by media for the workaholics of Mumbai. But do we anytime question law and order?

Law and order is one of the highest contenders when it comes to annual budget. The police, their sources of information, their intelligence, forensic labs, arms and ammunitions and many other areas flourish in the taxpayer’s money. But its not about the money, its about the moral responsibility. Mumbaikars have a laid back attitude towards law and order. “What were the police doing??” “Where were their sources??” “What was the intelligence doing??” These questions are the ones always hammered by the opposition in Assembly; the govt. giving out lame excuses to it and the matter is sealed. We might as well talk the issue in trains, busses and just nod on the line “Is desh ka kuch nahi hoga.”

Maalegaon on the other hand had another outlook towards the matter. The cheques given by Sonia Gandhi were returned back, crowd gathered after two days and protested against the lack of policing, there people are anxiously and alertly waiting for one word; ‘justice’. Have people in Mumbai forgotten that word? Or is it that we have lost our faith in that word. How many of us have a track of what is going on with the pending case of 1992 blasts that took place 14 yrs back? The newspapers talk about it in one of the middle pages and the news is lost amongst few political debacles. How many of us know about the Ghatkopar blast case, the vile parle blast case, recent multiple explosions in trains etc. How many monitor the recklessness and inability of police to come up with the final outcome even after 14 years? Where is the justice?

I admire the courage and the attitude of those who returned the cheques of 1 lakh rupees. It was a slap on the face of politicians who grade money above all. I want to conclude the article with one moral that I learnt from the incident “ It is the duty of the police to take care of our safety, and it is the duty of citizens to police the police”