Our society is completely skewed and oriented towards providing services and facilities to only the rich and powerful. Take farmer loans write-offs where they made to run from pillar to post. This even after the banner headlines in newspapers about farm loan waivers. But industrialists who are also bank debtors in that sense get away with murder by taking loans for thousands of crores, then defaulting on these and thereafter fleeing the country.
Take rape cases where infants and minor girls up to 14 years are the primary age segment targeted since they are the most vulnerable, happen with machine-like frequency and increasing bestiality but nothing is done for that but for the rich and well connected in the #MeToo movement a government committee is quickly established to provide justice to them. Industry associations are launching awareness programs of sexual harassment at the workplace in trying to make women safer while pursuing their professional dreams. There is no problem in doing this but should we not do a little bit to prevent rape in our society like psychological counselling starting at the school and college level. Even sentences given by courts like the death by hanging for the perpetrators of the Nirbhaya rape case have still not been implemented even after six years of the crime. This kind of delay dilutes the deterrent impact on rapists. Thus little do these people who are supposedly our efficient administrators and ‘socially conscious’ ministers (and women at that) realise that for a rape victim the life is scarred from the day of the incident and the earlier it happens the torture and torment is more long drawn out. Society is also not sympathetic to rape victims and they tend to be ostracised. Thus one would say that rape is a multifaceted problem that requires prevention and also when it happens the provision of succour to the rape victims.
We keep talking that we need to eliminate the caste system but unfortunately parallel to it we have created an overlay to it of entitlement by the order of wealth and power. Whether it is the old caste system or the new pecking order both corner facilities and resources to the exclusion of those who are weak, poor and the deprived.
