Knee-jerk Responses

IT is hardly a revelation that violence is becoming a feature of modern-day societies. There are fewer voices today asserting that the visibility of violence, in the street, in the family, in the fields, in the community is only a consequence of media articulation. In the circumstances it is to be expected that the state as well as the political system would react to the phenomenon variously. The state as the agency with the responsi- bility for maintenance of law and order has responded agitatedly by premising the security of the economic environment to that of a section, a large section, of its citizens. But surprising perhaps are the uniformly knee-jerk responses of the political system to the issue of increasing violence, as evident from the perambulations of political parties. And it is this apparent refusal to attempt to inquire into the roots of violence, social, economic, ideological, which is even more disturbing than the obvious growth in the incidence of violence as well as intensification of the sense of violence in the social environment.