Sunrita Sen -
The brutal rape of a 23-year-old physiotherapy student in a moving bus in India’s capital on December 16, 2012, sent shock waves through India sparking widespread protests.
The government tightened laws, introduced stricter punishment for sexual offenders, and yet, more than seven years later the number of such crimes continue to rise.
Only some of these, perhaps the most horrific make headlines in India. Even as the Delhi gang rape trial neared its end in late 2019 a couple of shocking cases brought the spotlight back on sexual assaults on women.
In one case, a young woman was set on fire by men she accused of rape in Uttar Pradesh state’s Unnao and later died. The second was the gang rape and murder of a young woman veterinarian in Hyderabad. These are among the 30,000 rape cases reported to police every year in India. Even though India has a population of 1.3 billion, the numbers are high compared to other countries. Activists say many more rapes go unreported.
In 2018, a total of 294 cases of rape or gang rape with murder were reported, the latest year for which data is available.
“Deeply entrenched systems in society are perpetuating this violence,” gender rights activist Ranjana Kumari says.
Discrimination against Indian women begins even before they are born, with thousands of female foetuses aborted every year in a country that places a premium on male children.
As a result, there are 940 women for every 1,000 men, according to the 2011 census.
Discrimination continues as girls suffer higher rates of malnutrition, lower numbers attend school and find work, and when they do, they are paid less.
“There is change, but it is slow and limited, and leads to its own set of problems as new urban public spaces open up for women — new office areas, new living places where young women are entering and often encountering violence,” says sociologist Sanjay Srivastava.
The problem, Srivastava adds, is that “changes have come for a small number of people. Many, many more are much further behind.”
“Look at the profile of most of the people accused in the violent gang rape cases. They are mostly migrant workers or people on the move away from their own communities within which there are values and accountability. They are people left out from the change,” says Kumari. More and more women are attending schools and colleges and going out to work, a transition which is difficult to handle for India’s traditionally patriarchal society, say sociologists and gender studies experts. — dpa
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