Teenage 'gang culture', a relatively new phenomenon, has lately started taking root in Dhaka's urban life. Its flare-ups and ferocity has triggered concern in social circles, which is a normal response. Encouragingly, the law enforcement agencies have taken stringent measures to stem the violence in Uttara where it took place first. Clashes between two feuding teenage groups over dominance in a neighbourhood led to the killing of a class-IX student in early January. The violence was brought under control by revving up police surveillance and patrol in the large residential area.
Perhaps to demonstrate that restraining teenage hooliganism was not the task of the law enforcers only, the senseless Uttara murder was followed up by two similar violent incidents in Dhaka's Tejgaon and Roopnagar areas in the same month. One teenager was killed, while another was wounded badly in a vengeful beating by the boys of his rival gang. Against this grim backdrop, the killing of a class-VI boy by a senior student in Ashulia on the city's outskirts on September 10 has brought the grave issue to the fore once again. In this case, too, what led to the rivalry and killing was the wielding of supremacy in the neighbourhood.
Needless to say, the rising trend of gang culture is worrying. What adds to the grimness of the episode is the involvement of teenagers from middle-class background in these delinquencies. Moreover, most of the boys study in schools --a fact which normally keeps youths from getting engaged in anarchic violence. In such cases, the prime focus shifts on to experts dealing with society's trends.
Upon delving into the menace, the reasons do not seem too elusive. In a fast changing social milieu with alien recreational outlets, a lot of catalysts and factors come up. Turf wars fought by neighbourhood adult youths have long been integral to the capital's alternative popular culture. In the bygone days, these rivalries and the following animosities would remain centred on the demonstration of muscle and perverse derring-do. The propensity to assert supremacy in certain areas would derive from the normal tendency to announce one's presence. The deterioration of this youthful, but unacceptable, rivalry into one that involved drugs and other vices has eventually emerged as a threat to social peace. The gang culture prevalent among grown up youths could not be uprooted. In cases, it is seen assuming distressing proportions in terms of the horrific extent of violence. In such a vulnerable state, teenage boys joining the bandwagon of turf war applying all its recklessness are highly disturbing.
Due to the tenderness of age and gullibility, the teenagers' gang culture comprises a number of dreaded spectres. On being engaged in violent local feuds for long and becoming seasoned, these pre-youth teens carry all the potential for turning out to be hardened criminals later. In many cases, they become school dropouts and get hooked on different types of addiction. Besides, unscrupulous quarters wait in the wings for opportune times to recruit them for bigger crimes. What await a lot of these unfortunate teenagers are a life lost in labyrinths, and also premature deaths. Keeping the youths on track and rehabilitating those already gone astray are a responsibility to be borne by parents. Schools also have a prime role in this regard. The senior people in the neighbourhoods can provide necessary guidance to them. Above all, increased socio-cultural engagements can prove an effective antidote to the vulnerable boys getting spoiled.
