Measures of Urbanity

A FEW WEEKS AGO, during dinner at a friend’s house in Mumbai, the conversation, as so often happens when Mumbaiites and Delhiites are in the same room, descended into an argument about the two cities in competition with each other. When you are the only Delhiite present, things can get hairy: it takes nerve to defend the virtues of your city from unrelenting attacks. But, that day, it seemed to be going well—until a crackerjack from the opposing camp landed a bomb in my lap. It was a question that, because it defies all answers, defines Delhi: What about the level of safety of women on the streets of Delhi, especially at night?

And, as usual in such a debate, this lethal question brought the discussion to an abrupt end, with the Delhiite in unaccustomed submission.

But the validity of the question lingered beyond the ostensible frivolity of the drawing room discussion: Why does the National Capital Region, which, unlike Mumbai, has a full-fledged government of its own, trail so far behind when it comes to safety, not just of women but of the entire citizenry? It is no secret that the Delhi administration is far more adept and less crooked than Mumbai’s, which is, by all indications, inching towards an implosion under the burden of its burgeoning population, creaky infrastructure and ready corruptibility.

So, how is it that a city that virtually runs on its own has a lower crime record than a city with its own efficient government? Most explanations centre round the discourteous, indeed misogynistic, attitude of Delhiites. As a Dilliwala, though, I find this hard to swallow. After all, this city is also known for its genteelness, especially in the old quarters, and its refined language, poetry, art, literature—its tehzeeb.

I was reading a book published this year by the American political scientist, Francis Fukuyama, titled The Origins of Political Order. Fukuyama tries to explain the evolution of the modern state and political institutions by beginning from prehuman times. The big question that puzzles him is when and how humans made a transition from small, wandering hunter-gatherer tribes to far larger, non-nomadic settlements governed by a rudimentary form of state.

It was the development of agriculture that first prompted the wandering bands to settle down. As humans graduated from living in small tribes to larger settlements, each person started interacting with far more people than they did earlier. With the increase in population density and the consequent increase in levels of social interaction, there emerged rules of behaviour that evolved into social norms and governing principles. What began as a mostly homogeneous tribal consensus grew into a variegated society. The rules and norms were not so much an imposition by a protectionist state as they were a sort of internal set of behavioural moderations the people formulated to protect themselves from themselves.

But how is this relevant to the differentials in the levels of crime and safety of women in Mumbai and New Delhi? Perhaps it’s because implicit in Fukuyama’s theory is an understanding that population density can have an important bearing on social norms and rules developed by a society.

Mumbai’s population density, at 20,482 per sq km, is far higher than Delhi’s 11,297 per sq km. Everyday, thousands more arrive in this island city, which is surrounded by water from three sides, crowding it even more. There is literally no part of the city that isn’t teeming with people at any given time of the day. Delhi, in contrast, has endless horizontal space to expand. Its satellites, which it appropriates rapidly, keep the density low and give the city space to breathe.

Is it that Mumbaiites, having long lived cheek-by-jowl, have developed social norms and attitudes that promote nonaggression? If people knew that they were always surrounded by watchful company, the trust quotient would invariably increase and would over time weed out, and temper the attitudes of, those who would buck the system.

Mumbai and Delhi are not the only two cities where one sees this dichotomy. A similar contrast is evident between New York City and Washington, DC. Like Mumbai, New York—specifically, Manhattan—is circumscribed by water and has an ever-increasing population density, while Washington is sparsely populated, with far greater opportunity for expansion around the city. Crime rate in New York, however, is nearly 60 percent less than in Washington, DC, capital of the most powerful country in the world and therefore presumably with a far better security apparatus.

So, could there be an inverse relation between crime levels and population density? It’s an interesting thought, but one would have to compare only cities that share a socioeconomic environment and comparable political governance. It would be fruitless to compare crime levels in Washington, DC and Mumbai just to disprove such a hypothesis, should one feel the need to do so.

Of course, it would be overly simplistic to attribute differentials in crime rates to population density alone. But as a denizen of Delhi, it wouldn’t be too bad if we could blame the city’s rotten image on a demographic limitation rather than on the character of Dilliwalas—a word that was, once upon a time, synonymous with courteousness and refinement.

Anant Nath