None should doubt the manifestation of youth power in Bengal. Hordes of them are changing the business targets and fortunes of national and multinational companies, others are troubleshooting on the telephone link with overseas customers, and still others are changing the way the populace should look at their government and administration. Twenty-four-year-old Mohammad Aslam belongs to the last category. His half-hour run through the ‘high-security zone’ of Ballygunge, where the chief minister lives, following the theft of a mobile phone, came to an end only after the public took upon itself the responsibility to nab him and hand him over to the law. In the course of this eventful chase, during which he successfully evaded the police and shot at four individuals at random, the youth laid bare the hollowness of the police system that is supposed to guarantee the security of the lives of both the ordinary and the not-so-ordinary. Aslam is not alone in doing so. Together with many others of his age who wield the same kind of crude weapons, show the same daring and remorselessness in their actions, criminals like Aslam are also beginning to raise difficult questions about the society that judges them.

Calcutta and its suburbs have, for a significant period now, been in throes of the terror spawned by petty crimes that, more often than not, end in mindless violence and even death. These are not always conducted by allegedly seasoned criminals like Aslam. Several of them are first-time crimes, carried out on the spur of the moment by hired help (some of them trusted by the victims), who cannot resist the lure of the future which ‘safely-kept’ ornaments and money seem to promise them. While executing their mission, they have scant regard for emotions, age, or the physical and mental condition of their victims. They are as impatient for success as those of their age in white-collar jobs. They are ruthless with those who come in their path, and often use their poverty to justify resorting to illicit means to fulfil their ‘needs’. Uneven economic development, its creation of new desires and widening social disparities lie at the root of the problem. Which is why, together with the inefficiency of the police force and the government’s failure to provide employment, the society also needs to take a hard look at itself from within in order to find out why it is being self-consumed.