Delhi is seething with anger. Up in arms against an inefficient, detached administration, the youth of Delhi is out on the streets exhibiting anguish and disillusionment.
The sad demise of the 23-year-old physiotherapy student, after she was mercilessly gang raped in a moving bus in the very heart of Delhi, has touched too many raw nerves. Delhi for long has had the ignominy of being one of India’s most unsafe cities for women. Every Delhi woman would admit to having experienced at least some sexual harassment on its streets, its public transport, its markets and malls, its corridors of power and its burgeoning corporate centres.
This rape, however, was one of those rarest of rare cases — the gory details of which have shattered the average Indian woman’s sense of wellbeing and confidence in the administration.
Moreover, it is a case that has single-handedly brought to the fore so many interlinked concerns — the quality and seriousness of policing, inadequate and unchecked public transport, ineffective picketing, drunk driving, unstructured employment of our youth, the schism between a backward, lagging behind ‘Bharat’ and an ‘India’ growing in leaps and bounds, the exodus of large swathes of poor youth from villages to urban areas, where they encounter a life of rejection and non-inclusiveness that throws them into the vicious cycle of petty crimes.
More appalling than the crime was the immediate response of the government. Here we have a case of multiple figures of authority finger-pointing at each other. The Lieutenant Governor of Delhi who was on a holiday returned only when things took a serious turn. The Chief Minister of Delhi, Sheila Dikshit has put the blame on the Police, even hinting at sacking of the Police Commissioner of Delhi, Neeraj Kumar. The Chief Secretary and the Police Commissioner in a joint press conference shocked everybody by patting each other on the back for the administration’s ‘outstanding work’. In all of this chaos, the president and the prime minister were not seen or heard for a week.
Here are some hard facts: Thirty per cent of the Delhi police is deployed for VIP security — there is one police officer for 700 persons, while there is one for every 3 politicians. Notice the glaring discrepancy? In handling the delicate case, Delhi Police used excessive force-tear gas shells, water cannons, lathi charge, instigating the silent protestors into chaos and retaliation. There was a marked shortage of women cops to manage the hordes of many a modern day Durga, Kali and Chandi out on the streets, fighting valiantly, unleashing years of indignant fury and resentment at the blind eye meted out to women’s issues in our country.
While the number of rape cases in India have continued to increase at an alarming rate, the conviction rate has dropped from 47 per cent to 26 per cent in the last few years. It has been seven years since this Govt has been trying to carve out an effective sexual assault law, despite the rampant cases all around. There have been far too many acquittals of high profile cases where the perpetrators of crime holding important posts and connections have been allowed to go scot-free, often drawing Govt pensions, given medals and promoted to better positions, setting examples and motivation for total anarchy percolating down to all sections of society.
There is talk of fast track courts, death penalty for the culprits. Somewhere the problem has to be tackled at a very holistic level, engaging with and talking to such criminals and understanding what motivates them into such heinous acts. We all have to look into the degradation of media, films, advertisements that go a long way in objectifying women. We need to rethink running all our mediums of art, entertainment and broadcast as purely capitalist centres of revenue. We have to sensitise our sons (and daughters), students and organisations to gender issues.
The greatest reality that the Indian establishment needs to wake up to is, that a bold new generation brought up on instant messaging and real time solutions wants real time communication and real time answers. They will not be calmed and shirked away by hollow platitudes and five year plans that never see the light of day. They want pre-emptive action, effective deterrence and swift retribution.
No comments:
Post a Comment