So how did Amnesty arrive at the conviction rate of 15 per cent? It appears to have considered only a part of the crimes under the SC/ST Prevention of Atrocities Act, which possibly are less severe compared to the violent crimes that are booked under IPC also. This throws up an interesting question: Why are the conviction rates for less severe crimes against SCs and STs significantly less compared to the violent crimes against them? Is it because the former crimes are difficult to prove? Is it because they have a large number of false cases? These may indeed be questions worth pursuing.

The Claims About Under-reporting Of Crimes

Amnesty’s cleverly worded statement also furthers another oft-repeated claim that cases against SCs and STs are under-reported and hence NCRB crime data should not be relied upon. This claim is attributed to unnamed “rights organizations”. As Dunkin Jalki and Sufiya Pathan point out in their research paper on the subject published in 2017, this claim is often used as a ‘caveat’ to salvage the unfounded conclusions about excessive violence that are said to be based on NCRB data.

Crimes are indeed known to be under-reported in all populations, serious violent crimes like murders to a lesser degree than the less severe ones like altercations. But it would be extraordinary if one were to imply (without any evidence whatsoever) that there is disproportionately more violence against SCs and STs and that under-reporting hides this from the crime data. For example, the total number of murders reported in India was 32,127 in 2015. Of these, in 813 cases, the victims were SCs and in 316 cases the victims were STs. So if you claim that SCs (with about 16.6 per cent of the population) and STs (with about 8.6 per cent of the population) are more likely to get murdered than others, you will have to show that at least 7,000 murders of SCs and STs have gone unreported in India in 2015 alone. This amounts to more than a 100,000 unreported murders of SCs and STs since 1994. Amnesty may want to castigate the whole of India as a perennial war zone like Syria to make such ludicrous claims plausible. But at least those who are not under the spell of such atrocity propaganda may demand evidence. As Carl Sagan would put it, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. They cannot stand on extraordinary assertions.

Yes, the data on crimes may not be perfect, may have ambiguities, may need to be more robust to aid crime reduction, and may not be a panacea. But the data is not unreliable in the sense that it needs to be substituted by fact-free ideological assertions or anecdotal evidence.

Nice try, Amnesty!

Politicisation Of Policy-making On Crimes

Accompanying the propaganda on caste violence is often the clamour for harder and draconian provisions that are said to be required for curtailing the spiraling violence against SCs and STs. The SC/ST Prevention of Atrocities Act already provides very strict provisions like automatic arrests and denial of anticipatory bail for even very minor crimes without graduating them based on the severity. As the Supreme Court recently noted, even in the dreaded Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act (TADA) (which has been repealed as it was considered too draconian) or in the Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA), which deals with organised crimes, such provisions exist only for very serious offenses. But in spite of that, there have been concerted efforts by political activists, even through manufactured instances of political unrest, to make the case that the violence has been spiraling out of control and more draconian measures are needed.

While strict punishments and measures can indeed be prescribed for serious crimes, the propaganda has drowned reasonable pleas such as for graded measures based on the severity of crimes – a feature that is inherent to every mature justice system. Agencies like Amnesty have even taken it upon themselves to browbeat the Supreme Court into reconsidering its order that seeks at least a preliminary inquiry before arrests are made, especially for minor crimes under the Act. Even the government and the political parties seem to have succumbed to such demands due to the influence of this propaganda and the exigencies of electoral politics.

But as we have seen, the discourse behind such demands has no basis in fact. Rather, it seems to be driven by an extreme sense of vengeance, ideological assumptions, and political considerations. Criminal justice systems, the world over, no more view punishments as retributions, but as means to deter crimes. In many parts of the world, robust data is also being used to make effective policies to reduce even the most violent of crimes. But in India, it appears that even policy-making on crimes has become politicised and outsourced to ideology.

Imagine using a hacked thermometer that faultily reports high body temperatures, creating anxiety and calling for popping more and more paracetamols every time. Should we not pause for a moment and look at the horror that this thermometer (or the quack employing it) may be inflicting? It is a tragedy that policy measures are being forced into becoming blunt instruments trying to solve a wrongly diagnosed problem. The claims that such uncalibrated measures are somehow in the interests of Dalits are also unfounded. In fact, as some studies suggest, such draconian provisions may also be creating a fear psychosis among other sections of society and making economic transactions difficult, leading to a loss of livelihood and economic opportunities for Dalits.

Establishing The Field In Scientific Rigour

If we are genuinely concerned about the problems of discrimination and crimes against the underprivileged in India, we need robust data and targeted measures to address them.

While activists and other interested parties, including foreign agencies, may be blatantly misusing the crime data to further their political and ideological narratives, the government too is to blame for this. The government has not been professional in dealing with the crime data and its implications. The data that is published by NCRB is in a raw format and not enough care has been taken even to present it in the proper statistical context. In fact, the NCRB data on crimes against SCs and STs from 2016 is not even fully commensurate with the overall numbers and requires normalisation to even be compared. No wonder then that this opens up the data for misrepresentation.

It may be tempting to view all the manipulations, errors, and fallacies that we have seen as a result of malice or reckless activism. But while not denying their role, it is also important to understand that common cognitive biases (or what Nobel Laureate Daniel Kahneman calls ‘intuitive statistics’) form an important part in their making. In fact, they work in tandem. And while healing the blind spots due to ideology may be hard, at least the statistical errors due to cognitive biases could be addressed by taking a few very simple steps. For example, even the standing committee of the Parliament which deliberated on the amendments to the SC/ST Prevention of Atrocities Act in 2015 seems to have made serious errors in statistical judgment. This includes using absolute numbers from NCRB data to conclude that atrocities are at a “disturbing level”, without even looking at similar rates for the overall population. Wouldn’t it help in accurate policy-making if NCRB itself could provide a proper analysis of these numbers and explain them in a contextualised manner?

The government could even consider soliciting help from independent analysts or the NITI Aayog to use the latest methods and technologies to not just analyse and present these numbers but to suggest policy measures, evaluate effectiveness, bring in best practices from around the world, and track progress – similar to how the Economic Survey of India is doing, for example? This will not only help in depoliticising the discourse but also in guarding policy-making against the frenzy of atrocity propaganda. These would also be good first steps in establishing the discourse in empirical data and scientific rigour. Does the government of India not owe its people these very simple but critical reforms?

Also Read: Have Crimes Against SCs And STs Increased Of Late? Here Are The Facts