HOW JAIPUR BECAME AN ECONOMIC CRIMES HUB

Bang in the middle of one of Jaipur's busiest arterial streets, the Sansar Chandra Road, is a modest office cradled on to the corner of a threestorey building.

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The entryway, covered up with an array of notices, was sealed shut. The office itself is devoid of activity, but outside a small group had gathered after a protest in front of the city's Securities and Exchange Board of India branch.

Sanjay Singh, 45, from Dausa and Madan Singh Yadav from Udaipur, both small-time investors, had showed up to see if anybody could tell them anything about their now-lost Rs 15 lakh. Once upon a time, the office belonged to Pearl Agrotech Corp. Ltd (PACL), a credit cooperative society. Now, the only remaining evidence of its existence is in the form of a few nameplates, in the stairwell or next to the elevator.

The PACL scam amounting to an estimated Rs 49,100 crore considered to be one of the biggest chit-fund scams in the country affecting nearly 56 million investors-hides a larger tale about a silent transformation that has been underway in Rajasthan.

Hints about that hidden tale tumbled out a few weeks ago when the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) released its long-delayed 2017 report documenting the nature of crimes across the country. Surprisingly, the rate of economic crimes (cases per 100,000 people) in Rajasthan's capital city, Jaipur, topped even Delhi and Mumbai.

Despite having only one-sixth of the population of Mumbai, the pink city recorded almost as many cases of economic offences as the country's financial capital (about 4,400 or 12 cases a day). In 2017, Rajasthan?also accounted for the highest share of economic crimes (cases of forgery, cheating and fraud) in the country, pushing the more populous Uttar Pradesh to second place.

How and why did Jaipur become the country's economic crime capital? And what does it say about the nature of economic transformation that is currently underway in India's emerging cities?