India's Great Divide

Surveying the sunset over Bombay's southern coastline from the calm of his palatial first-floor office, police joint commissioner Ahmad Javed could scarcely look less like an outsider. His uniform is stiff with starch, his shoes impeccably shined, and when the 45-year-old smoothes his neatly clipped moustache, he does so with perfectly manicured fingers. On his polished wood desk, an In tray bulges with the responsibilities of the second-most-senior policeman in India's biggest metropolis; meanwhile, outside a nervous line of saluting adjutants waits for signatures, permissions and orders in triplicate. When Javed speaks, it is with the erudite polish and faintly...