In a Mumbai slum a quarrel over the location of a public water tap is sought to be settled by political workers by making a human torch of a woman civic corporator. That was one of the more grotesque and insane instances of the resort to violence in recent times. Even so, in a month in which so much other violence had been witnessed already inside and outside Parliament, it may not have a lasting impact on the public mind. With politically generated violence and the justifications political leaders give for it becoming the order of the day, the shock value of each new incident declines.

Certainly public revulsion over the misconduct of politicians big and small does exist. Indeed it is widespread. Butpeople react less because they have come to expect the worst from politicians. It cannot be otherwise. Nightly television newscasts bring verbal and physical violence right into homes.

Millions saw cinema theatres being wrecked by political party workers armed with iron bars and heard that the Chief Minister of Maharashtra had condoned the criminals. People have seen honourable members of legislatures swinging microphones like lathis while others cowered under tables. This week they watched MPs roughing up each other in Parliament. Parents and educationists who worry about the impact of television violence on children would not be wrong to switch off sets during newsbroadcasts. This is what it has come to.

Something must be done. Legislators are rarely of one mind on how to deal with verbal and physical violence in the chamber. However, this week there was strong and near universal condemnation in Parliament of the abusive language of Shiv Sena MP Sanjay Nirupam which compelled him to offer anunconditional apology. Such correction is good but far from enough.

Political leaders should seriously apply their minds to what can be done about the discourse of violence outside the House. Although the political establishment as a whole is guilty of turning a deaf ear to those who instigate their followers to violence or justify rape or vandalism, some parties flourish by fanning violence. Those who fail to condemn such outrageous behaviour are complicit by their silence in the crime.

It is one of the tragedies of the times that the role models today for frustrated, illiterate, unemployed youths are either fire-spitting politicians or mafia dons. It is a macho society in which muscle and increasingly the gun, do the talking. There is little respect for the law or its makers and custodians. It no longer requires grassroots political work and a programme to raise an army of followers. The chance to act out one's frustration under the protection of a political organisation is enough to bring people out.The culture of violence should not be allowed to spread unchallenged.