Speak local: it's safer

Contrary to the perception that Delhi is unsafe, the survey found 80% of respondents felt safe in the national capital

If you don’t know the local language, you will experience a higher rate of crime, according to a recent survey.

The Crime Victimisation and Safety Perception survey, conducted between July 2014 and June 2015 by Nielsen India and Commonwealth Health Rights Initiative (CHRI), mapped the perception of crime among people conversant in the language of a city. In Delhi, the survey interviewed both Hindi-speaking and non-Hindi-speaking people, and found that those who didn’t know Hindi experienced a higher rate of crime. A similar finding applied to Mumbai, where many non-Marathi speakers thought crime was a big problem.

Devika Prasad, Co-ordinator, Police Reforms at CHRI, said, “Crimes affects everyone differently, and everyone also thinks about crime and public safety differently. It is very difficult to pick up a sample and conduct such a public survey so we have done random sampling and our only marker was income. The most interesting part in the survey was that the non-Hindi [-speaking] in Delhi and non-Marathi [-speaking] in Mumbai were more victimized and faced more incidents of crime.”

A senior police officer in Mumbai said: “Marathi or non-Marathi, I don’t think the attackers look into those kind of linguistic backgrounds of people when they want to commit a crime. Whether it is Delhi or Mumbai, I do not think language safe guards you or makes you more vulnerable in a city. We as police surely do not make that distinction when we have to register an FIR or look into an investigation of murder or house-break but if a survey that has such a small sample size reflects how people feel, then that is their perception.”

In other findings of the survey, contrary to the perception of Delhi as being rather unsafe, the researchers found that the number of people feeling safe in the national capital was an impressive 80 percent, almost the same number as in Mumbai. Of the Delhi interviewees, 1,147 out of 1,335 males and 1,430 of 1,700 females said they felt safe walking around their neighbourhood in Delhi; in Mumbai, 1,950 of 2,410 males and 1,059 out of 1,248 females felt safe.

“The safety perception in a city largely depends on the demographics of people living there,” said a senior police officer from Delhi. “Both the cities, Mumbai and Delhi have such a floating population that it becomes difficult to gauge who feels what and where. With the finding of this survey one can clearly see that the image of the capital being unsafe is far from true and that people do feel safe and secured in their neighbourhood.” The officer credited effective policing as the reason for the change in perception.

Sudha Sundaraman, National Vice President of All India Democratic Women’s Association, said, “The survey may have its finding, but the fact remains that young girls feel very unsafe in Delhi also the incidents of crime are very high. People living in the slums, the migrants who go out to work or study have a great sense of lack of safety and are daily grappling with incidents of crime and violence. They don’t even go to the police because the authorities don’t register their complaints so their crimes go unreported.”

Overall perception of local police

Question	Delhi	Mumbai
Total Households	3,035	3,659
Very Positive	2%	19%
Positive	40%	45%
Neutral	22%	22%
Negative	32%	13%
Very Negative	3%	1%

Do you feel safe walking around in the neighbourhood during the day?

Question	Delhi	Mumbai
Male	Female	Male	Female
Total Respondents	1,335	1,700	2,410	1248
Yes	1147	1430	1950	1059
No	148	210	204	110
Don’t know	40	60	256	79

Perception of crime v/s length of stay in city

Question	Delhi	Mumbai
Less than 3 years	Four to five years	More than	Less than 3 years	Four to five years	More than
Number of households	129	96	2810	38	59	3561
Big problem	29%	32%	37%	11%	22%	19%
Somewhat of a problem but not very big	50%	39%	39%	32%	31%	33%
Not such a problem	17%	29%	22%	42%	31%	35%
Don’t know	3%	-	2%	16%	17%	13%

Crime perception v/s language spoken

Question	Delhi	Mumbai
Hindi	Non Hindi	Marathi	Non Marathi
Number of households	2,835	200	1,715	1,943
Big problem	37%	29%	13%	24%
Somewhat of a problem but not very big	40%	35%	36%	31%
Not such a problem	21%	35%	36%	34%
Don’t know	2%``	2%	14%	11%

Safety perception v/s language spoken

Question	Delhi	Mumbai
Hindi	Non Hindi	Marathi	Non Marathi
Number of households	2,835	200	1,715	1,943
Very Safe	1%	1%	4%	4%
Safe	45%	41%	54%	43%
Moderate	37%	32%	29%	40%
unsafe	16%	26%	13%	13%
Very unsafe	1%	1%	1%	1%