[Reader-list] on identification and social control

[Ravi Sundaram]

Jeebesh's post on the new processes of (electronic) identification in some
middle-class housing societies is a pointer on how these cultures actually
spread and legitimate themselves. The panics around crime and criminality
have emerged as a major theme in the popular press in the recent years,
despite the fact that voilent crime is relatively low in India as compared
the West or other parts of the 'Third World'. 

Discourses on crime go hand in hand with a new restructing of urban life.
Surveillence systems of the kind we are talking about(television monitors
etc)are pretty common in the West, and in Brazil and South Africa, only
recently do we see them being introduced in India in the scale that Jeebesh
mentions.

Comparisons are useful. Teresa Caldiera in her recent book on Sao Paulo
(City of Walls, UC Press, 2001) argues that the new gated neighbourhoods in
Sao Paulo emerged as a response to the crisis of the inner city and major
discourses on crime, fear, and the loss of control. These communities are
almost completely self-sufficient living units, with shops, inner spaces of
leisure. These are secure spaces of consumption, where constant policing by
private security is the rule.Electronic surveillance is high with all
visitors, who include a daily work-force which commutes.

This is a scenario not widely seen in India (where slums co-exist with
middle-class buildings) but emerging in 'developer' parts of the city like
DLF-South Delhi and parts of Bombay. The delegitimation of the 'old' city
(Chandni Chowk) by the Deputy Commisioner of Police in Delhi in Jeebesh's
posting  bears comparison to the attacks on the inner-city in Sao Paulo.