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Sat, Oct 17th 2009, 10:19

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The problem over crime fighting, criminalization of societies, democracy and human rights come and arise from a few factors. First is one's socialization. Socialization entails the internalization of values. What they are and what they are not is what separates between civil society (the notion of civil arises from the concept of citizenship that entails the basic conditions that allows an individual to exist in a group of individuals. Ideally, non-violence and the conditions of negative freedom and positive peace exist as the standard bearers of values. The notion of the existence of others who enjoy the equal right is where one encounters the needs of positive freedom while the peace quotient may or may not necessarily be affected. This remains the backbone of Human Rights which is an inalienably liberal value.

What is the quality of such a comprehension forms what we term as socialization or the internalization of values and such recognitions and comprehensions. The idea of the civil society and the state and its relations arise from such concerns.) and the uncivil society. Civil society by itself calls for arrangements that safeguard these basic and inalienable rights and their conditions - or what one terms as the state. Uncivil society marks the opposition to such recognitions.

The difference between states and societies make for the degree of differences of internalization/socialization of the values that are crucial for democracies. The differences form the markers for the recognition of states and societies as democratic or undemocratic - irrespective of the nomenclature employed by the state or its populace. The problem arises when democracies (if truly democratic states exist) and their civil society get infiltrated by the elements of the uncivil society or elements of the "civil society" or "the state" of states and societies that show a negative (meaning undesirable) trajectory of internalization/socialization of the values that so mark and form the cornerstone of democracies.

How one deals with elements (criminal) within this ambit is what requires a very fine combing of data and analysis? How would one deal with a pathological killer - let us say a serial killer - from Afghanistan (or even Osama Bin Laden (since he forms the current global favourite whipping boy) in a democracy that shows the maturity of being a democracy. Of course, in the event of the non-existence of perfect democracies - we know about states and societies and where they stand in the listings - of the states closest to the notion of a successful/perfect state and those furthest from it.

India as a democracy or Pakistan as a democracy is quite distinct from say Denmark as a democracy or Sweden as a democracy. That difference mark the differences of socializations that neither nomenclature nor rhetorics nor whitewashings can hide! Between ill-dressed illnesses and well-dressed illnesses, the healthy usually find that out sooner than later - through the whitewashings or the rhetorics or the nomenclature. This is why a fine combing is what usually helps save the healthy from the ill.