Slum Acts (After the Postcolonial) by Veena Das

Author:Veena Das [Das, Veena]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781509537877
Publisher: Polity Press
Published: 2022-01-30T18:30:00+00:00

Navigating Everyday Dangers

The case of Kh had brought back memories and some discussions in the local media (small newspapers in Hindi that have limited circulation) about another notorious case known as the Nithari case, which happened in 2006, in the neighborhood where Kh lives. This was the case of serial killings in which skulls and bones of 17 victims were found in plastic bags in a drain in Nithari, an area within the larger Noida area. Of these victims, one was an adult woman but all the others were children. The case created a terrible scandal not only because the killers turned out to be a rich businessman and his man servant, but also because villagers accused the police of having ignored their complaints of disappeared children for nearly two years. Both the accused were ultimately found guilty and sentenced to death in 2017. In the locality where Kh lived, however, people were very reluctant to get involved in any discussions on cases of this sort. Instead of claiming to know anything definite, people in these neighborhoods resorted to indefinites. “You know that the mahaul (milieu) of this area is very bad,” “you know that girls find it difficult to navigate alone here,” “you know that we do not engage in anyone else’s affairs,” “we just engage with others as much as our work requires.”7 So, whatever the anger that had built up in 2006 (the Nithari case) or 2011 (Kh’s case), it did not take long for it to dissipate completely. Yet people do use these indefinite forms of “knowing” when the need arises. I give a few short vignettes from my ethnography to show how the navigation of specific dangers requires people to know what resources they can marshal. And though uncertainty of outcomes is inherent in these navigations, these vignettes will, I hope, show the potentials contained in the network of police procedures in these neighborhoods.

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