WHEN DOES IT CHANGE

The story of #Anamika, #Nirbhaya - 23-year old student who died due to injuries suffered when she was raped in a private bus and then thrown out of it in Delhi has opened a pandoras box of such incidents all over the country.... it is not that such incidents have increased, but just that for a change the media has found it an important issue to increase their ratings. It sure had outraged most concerned citizens though today stays as only a small memory. Incidentally, among the 53 cities in India with a population of over 1 million, Delhi recorded the highest number of rape cases in 2011. The state with that dubious #honour was Madhya Pradesh.

 The most common response to any report of such a crime is to call for harsher punishments for rapists. Some want capital punishment, others want the rapists to be castrated. Among the countries that have chemical castration as punishment for rapists is South Korea, a country ranked just ahead of most Islamic countries in gender equality.  Considering the reprehensible nature of crime, the emotional response of the people — demand for sterner punishment — is understandable. But i believe that the first step is a higher rate of conviction by our judicial system than  harsher punishment. More police, better trained police, police free of political control, professional investigations, quick convictions, early disposal of appeals, prompt justice — the wishlist is already known to be repeated. Also the creation of a system, wherein the dignity of the victim and psychological stresses are given due cognisance, is put in place.

The only way to revive the horse is to reform the system. Police reforms and judicial reforms are the answer. There are many reports laying out the roadmap of these reforms.  You need to take out the existing reports and start implementing them. But there is no political incentive for such reforms. Law and order being a state subject further complicates the process. The judiciary also seems bereft of introspection. The benefits of the current stakeholders and decision-makers are aligned with maintaining the status quo.

So we will have #Veeranganas on the street (Guwahati follows this model), or helplines for women’s crime, or women-only police stations, public-police partnerships, government-funded public campaigns against #rape, a call for CCTV cameras in buses, or some other such suggestions. 

But I  guess none of this will happen. We will end up with some cosmetic steps to satisfy the outraged public and keep the media at bay. The media will probably move to the next story. And we will wait for the next "BIG" rape — one of the 24,000 rape cases reported every year from India – to start all over again.