Fewer murders belie dystopian fears

Believe it or not, the murder rate in India in the past few years has been at its lowest level since the 1960s. Even the absolute number of murders in 2014 was lower than in 1992, the year when the murder rate (number of murders per lakh of population) was at its highest.The counter-intuitive fact emerges from an analysis of data from the National Crime Records Bureau’s (NCRB) annual publication, Crime in India.In 2014, the country witnessed 33,981 murders and 3,332 incidents of culpable homicide not amounting to murder. The combined rate of the two crimes per lakh of population was 3.0 in 2014 and 2.98 in the previous year.A lower rate was last recorded in 1970, when 16,180 murders and 2,357 culpable homicides amounted to a combined rate of 2.94.While NCRB has data on the absolute number of murders from 1952, it has been reporting the rate from 1957. It shows the rate started increasing from the mid-60s to reach its peak in 1992 when the combined rate was 5.15, roughly double the level in 1957. Since 1992, it has been falling rather steadily.The state-wise comparison of the data for 1992, the peak year, and 2014 shows that murder rates (number of murders per lakh of population) have decreased in 26 of the 32 states and UTs that existed at that time. (To make the data comparable, 2014 figures of Andhra Pradesh & Telangana, Bihar & Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh & Uttarakhand, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh have been clubbed together).In 1992, Uttar Pradesh witnessed 12,287 incidents of murder and culpable homicide not amounting to murder. It was followed by Bihar (5,743), Madhya Pradesh (3,753), Maharashtra (3,338) and Andhra (2841). Although the order is the same in 2014, all of these states have seen the absolute number of incidents dropping. Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand put together had 6,818 incidents, while for undivided Bihar and Madhya Pradesh, the number of incidents was 5,321 and 3,442 respectively. Similarly Maharashtra and undivided Andhra also saw a decline.In the past two decades, the population of all states has gone up by several millions and therefore the rate of incidents has dropped significantly, in some cases to less than half their 1992 levels. It is not clear why the murder rate first increased rapidly and then has dropped equally sharply, but what is clear is that impressionistic ideas of society getting increasingly violent may need to be revisited.