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Shamed, yet again

What record does Delhi want to set straight? How many more instances of atrocities against people from the North East will tumble out of the capital’s crime records closet? Why cannot they be integrated in the mainstream just like thousands and thousands of Hindi speaking people are? If they come from a particular region and speak and dress in particular manner it is not their problem. It is time perhaps that we widen the horizons of  our thought processes and give them their rightful due.

The national capital is nobody’s fiefdom and people from the North East are as much welcome here as people from Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Haryana or Rajasthan. They have as much claim to Delhi as any of us do. A lot of the blame also needs to be shared by the city administration which has failed in every manner to sensitise people against committing such heinous crimes like that of murder and assault. If name calling earlier wasn’t enough the scourge of evil has descended in the form of losing one’s life upon people from the North East, especially from earlier this year.

Nido Taniam, a 20-year-old Arunachali student who lost his life on 29 January, 2014 was the first of the long spurt of deaths and assaults that have been reported from in and around the national capital of late. The level of brutality is usually so excessive that at times it becomes even difficult to visualise the sequence of events. The recent murders of two Manipuri youth, one a PhD student at Mumbai’s TISS and the other a student at Delhi University are not only condemnable but should prompt authorities including the police to not only speed up investigations but provide permanent security to areas wherever people from the North East live.

If we would continue to marginalise them unabatedly, there may be a situation that any migrant to the national capital will start fearing for their lives. The kind of cultural and demographic canvas that a city like Delhi has, any decision by any migrant population to vacate the city permanently will have a bearing on the economy and the workforce of the area.
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