To lay the entire blame on the forces of security for the breakdown of law and order in Mauritius is to ignore a plethora of interrelated factors which have sparked off this situation.

Man does not live by bread alone but needs peace and security. When men in the street arm themselves to put an end to drug abuse, the police force, regulatory commissions and courts which are mandated for the enforcement of law and order, lose credibility. Such a situation is analysed by the top notch historian Arnold Toynbee: “the purpose of politics is to rid human social life of violence that is the price of anarchy by substituting for it the peace and security of which the price is law and order”.

Our society is in disorder because we are each of us in disorder. The society as a whole lacks self control and is slowly committing suicide as if in a “laissez tuer” philosophy. Wherever one turns one’s attention what looms large – rape, murder, kidnapping, vandalism, drugs, prostitution, suicide, corruption – a replica of our international order—wars, terrorism, violence, kidnapping, hijacking… Inwardly are we not all human beings alike – suffering from loneliness, sorrow, conflict, misery and confusion?

Mauritian culture has changed radically with industrialisation reflecting a changed mentality . The theory of enough for my needs gives way to “the sky is the limit….” to the detriment of “quality time” to spend with loved ones, our children, for our hobbies. Denied are we also time and enthusiastic interest to nurture our deeper, finer energies and feel who we really are and what we really want. Martin Luther King opines “if a man hasn’t found something he will die for, he is not fit to live”. What happened to the other values that made the human race so great?—the spirit of adventure, exploration, inventiveness, creativity, and search for insights.

Success is measured not by something to live for and dedicated work but by money, power, status and clan solidarity. The get rich quick mentality is fostered by a targeted segment of the ruling elite to keep the uninformed public in the rat race and in ignorance of the major issues of the day.

In a society which values wealth as an end in itself, as a credential to success without man being the measure of everything, would not a son be influenced to kill even his mother, a bank scam be engineered, a taxi driver molested, graft and embezzlement generated as the new talisman of salvation. Patience, hard work and civic spirit are reduced to a bogus amulet. Mauritius today is possession oriented and acquisitive. There’s definitely a maladjustment of wealth, labour and leisure.

Our society is tremendously influenced by the ostentatious lifestyle of foreign visitors to us – from child sex to high level crime and terrorism. Tv and its sisters, are a condoned thief and interloper mother. Although a few programmes are educational and worth paying attention to, the major part auction violence, sex sprees, defiance of law and order, further degrading an already degraded taste.

Most films arouse desire for easy money, luxury, glamour, pomp let alone killer energy and rowdiness. We are taught from screen experience that a gunman can afford what materialists call “good things in life”. Those range from expensive cars to posh hotels, sexily dressed woman, trips on intercontinental airliners and a large gamut of vanities, plus power to play “God”. We are thus given an impression that “dishonesty and non observation of law and order is the best policy”.

Not only are violence, rape, torture, police brutality glamourised but war and terrorism are glorified, gangsterism romanticised. Human allegiance to authority, gets the worst blow when the police, the army, the highest executives, the politicians, the very law makers and legislators are all derided as corrupt and inadequate. Ignorance of purpose has reduced schools to a mass of factories to programme the student population for the new production ethos. Revulsion from purposelessness accelerates recurrence of truancy, violence, indiscipline, challenge to school law and order, manifesting a false sense of juvenile norms – teenage pregnancy, students’ pornography, drug sprees and non respect of public etiquette. Many simply waste away post independence prosperity in terms of free education and free bus fares, ignorant of what is right and what is wrong.

Today, in Mauritius, it seems by press report, that the existing crime control structures are too anachronistic to hold off the escalating rates and especially the new forms of criminality. The science of crime fighting and mapping crime operations in danger zones have to be synchronised with the internet age and infotech exigencies. All the intelligence in the world will be short circuited should police delay to act professionally and promptly to deal with a common road accident liable to flare up into an ethnic rift.

Safety and security rank high in the chemistry of good governance and a balanced society. So fraught with responsibility is law and order that the prime minister himself assumes the ministry of internal affairs. To simply tighten up police vigilance equivalent to a police state is a mockery of civil society. As the most effective therapy is not curative drugs or surgical operation but the preventive incantation be it a change in lifestyle or attitude, so a qualitative change in the human psyche is imperative as a prerequisite of sustainable law and order. Today Mauritius needs an intellectual and cultural re-awakening to diagnose what is actually making us non law abiding citizens. The laws are still there and so is the police authority. What are absent are the guidelines outlining codes of conduct. This shortcoming has given rise to lawlessness and disorder, outwardly and inwardly. We are a land of allegations and commissions but also minaret, cross and trident fully conversant with moral order and law.

A truly human world, self correcting, within the framework of law and order, and therefore stable, will come only when temporal values are duly balanced with non – material values.

<B>Yoonoos PEERBOCUS</B>