India may be taking giant strides economically but socially it has to cover miles of backwardness. On gender issues, for instance, we lag behind alarmingly. Be it the skewed sex ratio or the number of crimes against women, statistics again and again remind us about the distance we need to cover. Everyday, we face the rising incidents of issues such as female foeticide and infanticide, sexual assaults including rape of children and even infants, domestic violence, human trafficking, sexual harassment at workplace, et al. This despite, India signing international convention and reiterating its commitment to outlawing all sorts of crimes and discrimination against women.
Every year, thousands of Indian girls and women are kidnapped, tortured and trafficked. Some are victims of honour killings ordered by Khap panchayats or fatwas by clerics – due to outdated atavistic ideas of family honour. A large number of cases of domestic violence and marital rape routinely go unreported and unregistered. As a society, Indians choose to not only ignore but also often actively connive in the perpetration of these crimes. Unfortunately, 36 years after adoption of the UN initiated Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) as well as the Beijing and Cairo conferences and the review of the Millennium Development Goals, girls and women in India do not have equal opportunities to realise their rights recognised by law.
India’s child sex ratio (CSR) defined as number of girls per 1000 boys between 0 to 6 years, has been consistently plummeting since 1961, indicating that female foeticide and infanticide remain rampant. The 2011 census data has shown that the country’s CSR has fallen drastically to the lowest – 914 girls for every 1000 boys, as compared to 941:1000 in 1961. An inter-nation study report on child mortality, shows that an Indian girl aged 0 to 5 years is 75 per cent more likely to die than an Indian boy, making this the worst gender differential in child mortality for any country in the world, particularly in view of the well established biological factors which make girls better survivors of early infancy if given equal access to resources.
Findings of a recent International Men and Gender Equality Survey (IMAGES) reflect a new low for Indian men. The survey found Indian men to be worst offenders in terms of sexual violence – nearly one in four Indian men have committed sexual violence at some point in their lives, and one in five has forced his wife or partner to have sex. The survey was conducted in six developing countries, including, besides India, Brazil, Chile, Croatia, Mexico and Rawanda. India reported highest rate of domestic violence with 38 per cent admitting they had physically abused their partners. Worse, more than 65 per cent Indian men believed that women should tolerate violence to keep the family together; that women sometimes deserve to be beaten. The IMAGES is part of the Men and Gender Equality Policy project undertaken by the International Centre for Research on Women and Instituto Promundo, Brazil. The project aims to build evidence on how to change policies to better foster gender equality and to raise awareness among policy-makers on the need to involve men in healthcare, development and gender equality issues.
According to the Global Slavery Index (GSI), a report published by the Walk Free Foundation in Perth, Australia, nearly 14.3 million people, mostly women and children, are ‘trapped’ in modern-day slavery in India, which tops a global index of people under bondage across the globe with an estimated 35.8 million people enslaved. The report said that people are trapped in slavery in India through human trafficking, forced labour, debt bondage, forced or servile marriage or commercial sexual exploitation. Children, mostly girls, are the worst victims of trafficking and the consequent slavery.
Cases of molestation and sexual assault, including rape of minor girls and even of infants, are shockingly on the rise in India. They make news headlines everyday, with one sexual assault case being registered every 22 minutes somewhere in the country. Such incidents show the true picture of our society’s moral decadence. Of course, one cannot be persuaded into believing that atrocities against women are a new phenomenon. Nor should we be silenced into thinking that with the large number of regular exposes on the incident acts, rapists and other sex offenders would mend their ways and accord women the respect due to them. The fact is, incidents of rape in India have exceeded all parameters of civilised living. Offenders have become so brazen that they are unmindful of the reprisals. Hence more than anything else, rape needs to be seen as psychological problem. The atrocities against women is an indicator of the social degeneration of the society that we live in. So, where does the cruz of the matter lie? Can the government do something in creating a climate conducive to safety and security of women in the country?
Definitely! In order to give women the social status, safety and security should be their birth right, the Union government must now take a radically different approach by bringing on board various stakeholders like State governments and Civil Society organisations in ridding us of the national stigma. The agenda for rooting out atrocities against women must also include police and judicial reforms.
Police and judicial reforms are perhaps more important than economic reforms today, if we are to lay claims to being a civilised society. Crimes against women do not happen without the active connivance or abject disregard of some basic norms by the police and the judiciary. Unless these are reformed and the rampant corruption that permits human trafficking and various other crimes against women is eliminated, countless and faceless innocent girls and women will continue to be kidnapped, tortured, raped and murdered in our country.
(The writer is a freelance journalist)
