Vigilantism and informal citizen policing often emerge where state capacity is weak — discuss with examples.

Vigilantism — private citizens assuming policing and punitive functions without legal sanction — thrives wherever the state's monopoly over legitimate force is thin. India's own figures show that thinness: nearly 24% vacancies in state police forces and an actual strength of 137 police per lakh persons against the UN benchmark of 222 [1]. Weak capacity is rarely the sole cause, but it is the permissive condition.

Why weak capacity invites informal policing

• Absent first responder: with roughly one police person for every 512 persons, and far worse ratios in states like Bihar [2], delayed response encourages demands for "instant justice".
• Overburdened forces: the Second ARC noted that non-core duties overburden the police and recommended shifting them to other agencies [1].
• Post-conflict dislocation: in 1926 Soviet Russia, street violence made Moscow and Leningrad unsafe after dark, and workmen's clubs formed unofficial self-protection bodies [3] — informal policing filling a policing vacuum.
• Information deficit: the Home Ministry has told Parliament it holds no centralised data on mob lynching, prevention being a State subject [4] — unmeasured disorder stays unaddressed.

Examples and their consequences

• Salwa Judum (Chhattisgarh): tribal youth armed as Special Police Officers to substitute for regular forces; in Nandini Sundar v. State of Chhattisgarh (2011) the Supreme Court held this violative of Articles 14 and 21 and ordered disbanding and disarming [5].
• Cow-protection mobs: following the Court's 2018 judgment, MHA advisories (July and September 2018) directed States to appoint district nodal officers and act against lynching [4].
• Punitive shortcuts: the Soviet Commissar of Interior proposed executing the worst offenders, citing Ukraine's precedent [3] — harsh penalties standing in for institutional capacity.

Yet capacity is necessary, not sufficient: prejudice, rumour and majoritarian mobilisation independently fuel mobs, while citizen participation institutionalised under police supervision — beat committees, community policing — strengthens rather than displaces legality.

The durable answer is therefore institutional: fill vacancies, shed non-core duties as the ARC urged, enforce the Court's preventive-remedial directives, and channel civic vigilance into supervised community policing — so that safety is delivered by the rule of law under Article 21, not by the mob.