Rising crimes against women also have to do with social factors such as a skewed sex ratio, recent migration patterns and growing inequality
The horrors of the Delhi gang rape case revisited again as visuals of the haunted Shakti Mills were flashed across television screens last week. Another ‘Nirbhaya’ was humiliated in the financial capital of India, brutally gang raped by five men, now believed to have been born and brought up in Mumbai. Consequently, the Union Home Minister made a statement in the lok Sabha assuring “expeditious action”. Neither a time-frame nor a mechanism to operationalise this expeditiousness was, however, articulated.
The incident has re-ignited the debate on how piecemeal efforts and myopic vision of the Government has brought us to the same starting point where it had left. This view of the Government doesn't see violence against women as a systemic ailment — part of a larger process at work which needs long-term vision coupled with short-term pragmatism — but instead becomes a prisoner to event-specific announcements.
The uproar following the Delhi gang rape incident gripped the country in a frenzy and led the Government to come up with a slew of measures, some of which aimed at reforming institutions like the police and the judiciary. Reform is required not only in institutions, but also in the growth trajectory that this country has taken up. In light of an unequal society, our urban centres are increasingly becoming the harbingers of crime against women, a narrative hitherto unexplored.
What is indisputable is a statistical co-relation between a skewed sex ratio and an increase in violent crime. A study funded by the United Nations Fund for Population Activities suggests that in countries like India and China, where the ratio of men to women is unnaturally high due to the selective abortion of female foetuses and neglect of girl children, the rates of violence towards women tend to increase.
This narrative, however, isn't to be read in exclusivity. Focussing on crimes committed in urban areas against women, we increasingly observe that they are becoming more brutal. Criss-crossing patriarchal mindsets with narrow caste-based parochialism it is producing a new breed of criminals with utter disregard for the female form; a tribe far removed from the reality, has little regard for the rule of law, is frustrated and takes shelter in the anonymity of the city — something urban India today exemplifies.
But, our understanding of the criminal and his psyche for committing the heinous crime or the question of why India today comes across as a misogynist, intolerant society hasn't been properly deliberated upon. One line of thinking that might provide an insight into this conundrum is the inequity in society leading to more social problems. A highly contested book, The Spirit level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better, by Richard G Wilkinson and Kate Pickett, looks at various countries dataset to provide an insight as to how inequality has causal relationship to growing health and social problems.
There is considerable debate about whether there is, and the possible extent of, any causal relationship between income inequality and health and social problems. There is certainly some evidence that there is a causal relationship, and while the size of this effect looks small statistically, the number of people involved is substantial because income inequality affects the majority of the population. But these are evidences that need research in this complex field which requires clear theoretical models, valid data and rigorous empirical methods.
Given that this narrative hasn't been given a thought, could it be possible for us to overlook the trajectory of growth, pattern of migration and urban spaces we are creatingIJ What is thus required at the moment is a broader vision that not only answers the question of short-term institutional reform but also a rejig in the idea of India and the path of growth we are choosing for ourselves.
(The writer is with the Centre for Policy Research, and, also heads Youth for Policy and Dialogue)