Who will speak for Neha Yadav? The burnt Girl

Few of Delhi’s journalists will know where Sagarpur in West Delhi is, but they do know where Khirki village is (in the heart of elite South Delhi, next to a mall, and famous for a fancy art studio). This past week, they have gone on and on about Khirki for good reasons, but ignored Indira Park. In both places, the new Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government in Delhi tried to prove a point. It blundered in Khirki, so the media has gone after it. Black and white narratives demand ignoring the other side of the story. For the media, the AAP can be either heroic or evil. Complexity is bad for target rating points (TRPs).

But Neha Yadav would be grateful to the AAP, even as she lies in Safdarjung Hospital with 45 per cent burns. Her six-year-old son wakes up remembering the horror of seeing his mother being set on fire by her in-laws. The burns on her neck, chest and waist are so severe that she may not survive. Even after 11 years of marriage, she was being harassed for dowry; the real reason being that they wanted her to leave the house and divorce the husband so he could marry someone else. The local police knew about this case because neighbours had told them of the continuing torture and harassment of Neha Yadav. And yet, when Neha Yadav was set ablaze, the police was so lax that it let the in-laws flee (for, some allege, a bribe).

This is nothing extraordinary for policing by South Asian standards, except that in another place, the protesting neighbours and Neha Yadav’s parents could have gone to the local legislator and the chief minister, or just the local representative of the ruling party and put pressure on the police. Except that in Delhi, the ruling party does not control the police. The Delhi chief minister (CM) is India’s only CM who does not control the police. The Delhi police reports to the Ministry of Home Affairs. Since Delhi is the capital and Delhi police has to guard the embassies and ensure Barack Obama’s security when he comes, Neha Yadav must suffer police apathy. That is the argument the Congress party’s pathetic Sushilkumar Shinde has made.

India’s feminist movement has a long history of struggle against bride burning, but that didn’t help Neha Yadav. I don’t see any of Delhi’s feisty feminists protest or express outrage for Neha Yadav, let alone the insensitive TRP-hungry media. That’s because they have all decided that the AAP is evil, and the evil party intervened in the Neha Yadav case and made sure the police was forced to find the absconding in-laws.

Another intervention the AAP government made in Khirki village was to ask the police to nab African migrants indulging in trading drugs and prostitution. Laws against narcotics and trafficking of women do not require a warrant, yet it has been falsely said that the AAP was asking the Delhi police to conduct raids without warrants. But the AAP’s law minister did say racist things against Africans, and this is indeed a case of the AAP pandering to local racist sentiment against Africans, and it does show dangers of ‘giving power to the people’. It is great pressure from the media and activists that is making the AAP rethink the dangers of eulogising ‘the people’ as though the people can’t be wrong.

But even so, does the AAP not deserve credit for thinking about Neha Yadav, and for generally showing up Delhi police’s apathy to citizens, and making the point that the police force of a city of 16 million people should be answerable to its citizens and not to the central government? Ah, no. That would be giving the AAP too much credit.

The pro-establishment media and intellectuals are too uncomfortable with the AAP changing the old order. The old elite are unhappy their powers are going away. Obviously, the home ministry does not want to lose control of the Delhi police. Who wants to give up any powers? So let us find a stick or two to beat the AAP with, until we discredit it enough that nobody wants the home ministry to let the Delhi police be accountable to Delhi’s residents.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 24th, 2014.