The gory tale of kidnapping, rape and murder of scores of children from the Nithari urban slum cluster adjacent to Sector 31 in Noida is a stark illustration of the gross neglect of the margins of urban society. These neighbourhood slum pockets are mistakenly called villages, for they lack the typical social and political support network that denotes living in a rural commune. Populated mostly by migrants, these men and women work as domestic help and make life comfortable for innumerable middle class homes in the vicinity. Their employers have a casual relationship with them and generally treat them as transitory entities.

The civic facilities in these clusters are virtually negligible. Many residents are illegal migrants from Nepal or Bangladesh, who have better quality of life than their villages but lack normal rights available to other citizens. The most profitable employment is invariably for women. This results in the absence of the mother from the home, leaving the children at the mercy of the neighbourhood. Cases of missing children in such areas are a common occurrence. What is alarming is the large number of missing persons that has occurred in a single locality over a period of two years and a lack of empathy on the part of the police in pursuing these cases. It was this that allowed the accused to conduct their heinous activities with impunity, until the Allahabad High Court intervened.

This case has thus brought into focus the need for the effective management of urban sprawls which we will inherit in even larger numbers in the years to come. Given the trend of metropolitan isolation, where neighbours are reluctant to pry into each other’s private affairs, a more sensitive and pro-active policing network which can support the margins of society is called for. Without such interventions, our islands of prosperity will be pocked by ghettoes of crime and transgression, allowing the space for social criminals — like domestic help Surendra Koli alias Satish in Noida — a free hand in the neighbourhood which appears completely oblivious of the nefarious happenings going on literally in its backyard.

... contd.