When police expects you to take care of your own

When I look around, I see an eerie world of back-ups we have created for ourselves. Not by choice, of course.

Slipped into the attics or under the stairs of our homes are inverters and mini generators as a substitute for power.

Submersible pumps and booster devices make up for short supplies of water.

Expensive private schooling has proliferated across urban India because of incredibly low standards of education at state-run institutions.

Overpriced hospitals have similarly mushroomed because government healthcare facilities are bursting at the seams.

But when I see armies of private guards, privately-built boom barriers on public passages and surveillance cameras in almost every store, I find them a sombre reflection on the state's responsibility to protect lives and properties.

This Sunday, law enforcers drove down to my neighbourhood, wracked by car thefts, to hold a panchayat with the residents.

The station-house officer of Rajouri Garden arrived in his civvies after I spoke with his superior, the additional deputy commissioner of West Delhi.

Less than a month ago, a couple of cars were stolen from the same lane.

I texted the complaint to the district's DCP on July 15. Two blue ticks flashed quickly but he didn't reply.

It was certainly a bit audacious for thieves to strike the same neighbourhood so soon.

Anyway, the SHO held his 30-minute briefing to worried residents when he graciously came in on Sunday.

But I found it to be a lecture on self-containment. Here's the gist of the solutions he offered to taxpayers: create an RWA, place an automated barricade and deploy a private guard.

He gave no firm assurance about recovery of the vehicles or about his men going the extra mile to protect the property and lives of citizens under his watch.

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I am saying lives because thieves can also turn into armed robbers if they realise areas they are able to target over and over are too weakly protected.

Rather, the SHO spoke about the staff crunch.

But barely a couple of kilometres from where I live is the posh neighbourhood of Rajouri Garden.

At night, it's converted into a fortress. You have to wind across longer routes to get in and out of it because barriers are placed all over the colony, where many addresses already have private security.

This short distance paints a peculiar picture. Resources are diverted most to wealthy concentrations.

I am not sure he would have even come had I not been a journalist.

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But I am sure his department would have demonstrated greater alacrity in its action if the story about frequent thefts had appeared in the city pages of a national daily.

That's again a distinctive feature of the system we live in.

You need the media for authorities to at least show they are not passive to ordinary citizens' concerns. But that's not how it should be, ideally.

The basis of our legal system is the Indian Penal Code that the British enacted after the events of 1857 unfolded.

Perhaps that's the reason why effective policing still revolves around power.

It still unfortunately is pro-rich and pro-ruler.

For the lesser mortals, there are sermons on self-reliance and backups that my SHO delivered to us on Sunday.