As a nation weeps...

Aruna Shanbaug, Priyadarshini Mattoo, Baby ‘Falak’, ‘Amanat’... I can go on. Each of these cases of abominable crimes against women has shaken the collective conscience of an entire nation. A familiar cycle follows –

Let’s look at the key issues, setting aside platitudes and tangential discussions:

1. Mindset (not poor education): The educated middle-class often tends to believe (or likes to believe) that perpetrators of these heinous crimes belong to some other part of the society. They don’t. Quite often these criminals are well-educated and have regular jobs or businesses. The issue therefore is mindset and not education. For millennia, men around the world have believed that their physical edge over women translates to “supremacy” over women on all fronts. This “supremacy” is sometimes asserted via sadomasochistic barbarism towards women.
2. Criminal justice system: By any measure, India is woefully short of crime-prevention & investigating personnel (policemen, judges, detectives etc) and agencies/institutions equipped with state-of-the-art technology and modern mechanisms to tackle crimes of this nature. Antiquated laws framed in the 1800s don’t help either.
3. Stigma: “Victims” of sexual assaults and/or rapes often are stigmatized by neighbours and relatives. One often hears of cases where marriage is proposed as a “solution” for a young girl who has been raped (often by a known person) so that the crime may be suppressed without social stigma. “Ladki ki izzat lut gayi, ab iski shaadi nahi hogi” mentality is the root cause behind many girls attempting/committing suicide. Marital rape in contrast doesn’t have as much stigma attached, but as a consequence is often ignored.
4. Sensitivity: UPA Government’s reaction, especially in Amanat’s case (NOT her real name) has caused much anguish and rightly so! Muzzling genuine anger directed towards an insolent State by shutting down nearby metro-stations, imposing Section 144 (incidentally used by the British to prevent Indians from “unlawfully assembling”); using water cannons, expired tear-gas shells and lathi-charging the youth & elderly (see the picture below) leaves you wondering whose side the State is on. In addition, NSUI thugs were allegedly sent in to create a ruckus to derail the movement. Sushil Kumar Shinde, Honorable Home Minister in a shocking display of apathy said: “If tomorrow 100 adivasis die in Gadchiroli, I can’t go and speak to them”. Manmohan Singh, Honorable Prime Minister read out a vapid speech filled with platitudes and ended it with “Theek hai” (seeking approval upon reading out the speech correctly). When the nation sees a crisis, its citizens expect the Government to stand up and respond with compassion and honesty of purpose. I leave it to your judgement to decide how the UPA responded.

Source: IndiaTimes

In times of chaos and madness, it is imperative that we keep our emotions within us and be ruthlessly logical in our thesis. Hence, may I critique a few “solutions” that seem to have become popular:

NON-solutions:

1. Vigilante justice: Gangaajal type solutions tend to be strongly approved when public anger swells beyond a point demanding “instant justice” and the state is seen as ineffective. Unfortunately, this anger does more harm than good (for instance – see the support for this image displaying retaliatory action that’s supposedly the “right punishment” for rapists). The outraged common citizen as well as several public “intellectuals” have called for “cutting off the manhood”, “stoning to death”,  “hanging in public”, “chemical castration”, “immediate death penalty” etc as “solutions”. Countering barbarism with even more barbarism isn’t a solution in a civilized society. “Oh but the perpetrators weren’t civilized so they don’t deserve civility” argument doesn’t hold. The law must be allowed to take its course and the nature of punishment (exemplary vs not, death vs not, etc)  is perhaps best left to the wisdom of courts themselves. 
2. Fast-tracking some cases: This is contentious, but I’m against fast-tracking certain cases if there’s pressure building up underneath arguing for the same. It is a zero sum game because judicial & police bandwidth is finite. Fast tracking a particular rape-case automatically implies going slow on a terrorism case or a different rape case in another part of India. Should one rape case be treated differently from another simply because the media/public has latched on one and not the other?
3. Blaming police: Most policemen I know or have interacted with at different points of time in my life are like you and me – they are ordinary citizens of the country who do their duty sincerely (like you and me) and occasionally screw up (like you and me). It is insidious to think that the policemen are against us or derive some sadistic pleasure by harassing us. What is important to acknowledge is – they sometimes have hard bosses whose orders they simply can’t refuse (just as you or I can’t refuse an office senior’s orders). So when “orders from top” (typically politicians you and I have elected) direct the police to act in a certain way, they usually do. Can you blame them?
4. Martial arts training for women: Particularly dangerous should the woman get over-powered by the potential rapist/assaulter. She can be brutally beaten to death or worse...
5. Removing dark films & curtains on windows of vehicles: May potentially address a small percent of “vehicle rape” cases (doubtful nonetheless), but futile in all other cases. This is a classic example of a specious knee-jerk solution.
6. Having female CMs / heads of coalitions: Has absolutely no correlation with prevention or investigation of a crime, which is an executive and judicial process. Sure, political will helps frame tough laws and energize the executive but I doubt if gender has any role here.
7. Asking girls/people to stay home post 9 pm: This is an escapist solution and a lame admission that the State can't guarantee anyone's security. Isn't the whole point to ensure that people feel safe 24x7?

Unfortunately, there are no easy answers. Nonetheless, let me take a shot at recommending a few solutions:

1. Mindset: Starts at the family level first and then transcends to a societal level. As long as some men continue to assume that their physical edge over women grants them legitimacy to assert their “superiority” on all other fronts, preventing crimes against women will continue to remain a dream. Mindset change is not an overnight process as decades of conditioning has to be undone for new thoughts to settle in. I believe it is possible but it has to start at home and our schools.
2.  Judicial, police and administrative reforms: Several committees and commissions by renowned experts and senior jurists have looked at radical across-the-board judicial, police and administrative reforms to address challenges of modern times. May we start implementing their recommendations to ensure our criminal justice system works smoothly, institutions are allowed to function effectively and rule of law is proactively upheld in all cases? I’m not advocating a police state here, but tough laws and stringent implementation are necessary. While robust institutions are essential for a nation’s progress, it is invariably the underlying political leadership that determines the strength of these institutions. 
3. Stigma: Stigma can be removed if “rape victims” are treated as “rape survivors” (just as accident survivors). Forcefully marrying a raped girl to her rapist only exacerbates the problem – let the girl decide who she wants to spend the rest of her life with. Just as stigma over divorce is now luckily decreasing (atleast in the upper middle class society), I believe stigma over rape will reduce too and this will lead to a gradual increase in reporting of rape/sexual-assault cases.
4. Sensitivity: Sensitivity is crucial since all girls feel unsafe at some level every time a case of rape or sexual assault is reported in the media (“She could be one of us” is an undeniably common feeling that naturally sends shivers down their spine). Greater sensitivity in handling cases like these – first from the police while registering it, to the officers investigating it, the media folks reporting it and finally the government while addressing concerns over security of its citizens, is a basic necessity.

I welcome your comments and suggestions. You may reach me at utsavmitra@hotmail.com or via Twitter @UtsavMitra