Gang leaders for half a century
I finished Sudhir Venkatesh’s Gang Leader for a Day with an interesting insight: wherever government fails in its most basic functions — defense, controlling crime, settling disputes, dealing with natural disasters — gangs arise to fill the needs. As in countries which criminalize drugs or alcohol, the gangs make a killing trading black market goods. In this case, the goods are governance, and the payment in kind is that the community looks the other way while the gangs conduct their primary lines of business: the Black Kings selling crack in Chicago, the Taliban selling opium in Afghanistan, the LeT training jihadis or D-Company’s extortion racket in Bombay.
The book’s scope is not so broad, of course. What it does with Chicago alone is fascinating, ripping back the covers on widespread corruption. In the projects, writes Venkatesh, neither police nor ambulances came around. So the gangs took on the job of policing petty criminals, tamping down random violence (which is bad for crack sales), settling disputes with beatings, funding small community celebrations, and having women (unlikely to be stopped by hospital guards) take the infirm or injured to the hospital. As with the Taliban, because the host community was related to the gangs by blood, they were unlikely to turn them in.
As in slums like Dharavi, the weak government meant tenants had to step up, and they became tremendously entrepreneurial in both legitimate trade and petty scams. Women in the project Venkatesh studied would sell candy and dress hair from their apartments. Tenants became adept at charging rent to squatters, extracting money from the crack gang in exchange for storing guns, drugs and cash, and bartering favors. They learned to leave men’s names off leases and hide their day jobs to stay eligible for welfare. Women traded sex for food and diapers; young men slept with older women in exchange for a warm place to sleep at night. The gang took a cut from everyone ranging from squatters to parking lot mechanics; tenant leaders also collected vigs. Like a Bombay chawl, families would pool their money to pay bribes to ensure one stove, one shower and one toilet on a shared floor would always function.
The role of the police was even more interesting. They knew who the gang leaders are but on the whole preferred to leave them be, because organized crime is less violent than low-level anarchy. This, interestingly, is the same argument people make for why Bombay is safer after dark than Delhi: the dons enforce their sales territories and take out competitors.
The Chicago PD was also somewhat of a gang itself, raiding gang members for cars, jewelry and cash — off the books — whenever they became jealous of the money flowing in. A violent cop who disliked Venkatesh’s closeness with the gang he was researching broke into his car looking for his notes; the sociologist felt relatively safe in the projects but was afraid of the police.
The absence of basic local governance empowered petty empire builders, local tenant leaders in the projects who doled out favors and relied on the gang to mete out punishments. The most powerful leader promised to direct customers to a specific cornershop in exchange for cases of liquor. She then bartered the liquor for supplies she could hand out to women in need. She charged bribes to get basic maintenance done in the apartments. The same rogue cop who targeted Venkatesh’s car apparently roughed up a tenant whose only sin was to oppose the leader’s decree.
This, then, is what you get when government doesn’t function: alternate providers usurping the monopoly powers of the government to provide quick justice in exchange for their corrupt pursuits. If that describes crack gangs and jihadis, it also has resonance with the situation in India, where the justice system barely functions, gangsters plug the gaps, criminals man the Parliament, and the price for the privilege of receiving a passport in six months after paying a hefty bribe is to avert your gaze from large-scale political thievery.
Gang Leader for a Day is a quick, captivating read. The human race always finds new, innovative ways to disappoint me.
Comments are closed.