The West Bengal government’s handling of the horrific rape and murder of a young doctor at her workplace reflects the most basic shortcomings in governance in general and crimes against women in particular. What emerges from the latest brutal incident is a story of an unequal balance of power between the might of the state and a majority of its citizens, officials’ disregard for protocol, and their seeming unconcern for a grieving family trying to come to terms with a tragedy.
The apathy and negligence of the police and the state administration in this case is shocking, but it shouldn’t surprise anybody in a country where one woman complains of police apathy every two hours, according to National Commission for Women data. It is anyway a well-established fact that the police and bureaucracy are hostage to political power in almost every state, West Bengal being no exception.
The RG Kar episode has shaken the nation’s conscience, just as the Nirbhaya case did 12 years ago and the Hathras case four years ago. The first one involved one of the most heinous crimes in the history of our country in which a 23-year-old physiotherapy intern was brutally gangraped and mutilated in a moving bus in Delhi. It led to one of the most landmark judgments of India, which has brought many changes in the rape laws.
But it’s obvious that the stricter rape laws after the Nirbhaya case did nothing to mitigate the suffering of women. Data released by the National Crime Records Bureau showed a large increase in the number of crimes against women in 2022 over 2021, and nearly a 20% increase compared to the number of gender crimes reported in 2020. The chargesheet rate was a mere 75.8% in 2022. A staggering 31,516 rape cases were recorded in the country in the year and the victim count for workplace sexual harassment against women increased from 402 in 2018 to 422 in 2022.
The actual figures are likely to be much higher because such crimes mostly go unreported due to fear of reprisal, prevailing stigmas around victims, and a lack of faith in police investigation. Notably, the National Family Health Survey-5 report concludes nearly one-third of women aged between 15 and 49 years in India have experienced physical, sexual, or domestic violence.
The reason why the stricter laws haven’t worked is simple: Law can hardly change people’s minds. Beyond media sensationalism and legal recourse, when it comes to violence against women, there is an underlying layer of human interaction that is much more sinister — apathy.
The insensitivity and apathy is visible on the social media itself. “Dank” memes and their host pages churn out joke after joke about rape culture, which often get “haha” reactions. What kind of society is this?
The candle lights and the protest marches are spontaneous reactions to the horrific crime, but the question Indian middle class should ask themselves is whether the expressions of collective trauma, anger, and mourning will serve any purpose beyond the short term. It’s a fact that victim-blaming attitudes and misogynistic undertones prevailing in society also cause under-reporting of several crimes. People have plenty to say on podiums and on their social media accounts on crimes against women, but when it comes to practical scenarios, the apathy which they display is deplorable.
Consider the case where a 28-year-old woman was raped in broad daylight by a 21-year-old drug addict, on a busy pavement in Vishakhapatnam, and onlookers did nothing to help her. Rather some of them recorded the incident on their cell phone and the incident became “viral”. It’s a horrific reflection of where our society is headed towards.
Or take the incident at Hathras four years ago where a 19-year-old Dalit girl was gangraped and brutalised. Two weeks later as the girl succumbed to her injuries in a Delhi hospital, the UP police carried her body back to her village and forcibly cremated her without the consent of her family. Despite clear statements by the victim about sexual assault the police and the government authorities kept denying the charges of rape, and the victims’ family remained isolated and confined to their house and was constantly subjected to slurs by the upper caste residents of the village. Three of the four accused were acquitted later.
There’s more. In May last year, a 16-year-old girl was killed by her alleged boyfriend who stabbed her more than 30 times and hit her with a concrete slab on a busy street in Delhi’s Shahbad Dairy area. Most of the people chose to walk past while some stood quietly, witnessing the gruesome act.
Such bystander approach of citizens is sickening. In her separate opinion in the 2017 Nirbhaya judgment, Justice R Banumathi had hit the nail right on the head when she said, “Apart from effective implementation of the various legislation protecting women, change in the mindset of the society at large and creating awareness in the public on gender justice, would go a long way to combat violence against women.” That should be our priority.
Everyone is happy ticking the boxes. For example, the Supreme Court has set up a task force to formulate protocol for ensuring safety of doctors. What purpose would it serve? There are enough guidelines and recommendations from the ministry of health and family welfare, National Health Mission , and the National Health Policy. But these mandates and policy directives remain on paper. There have been no concrete steps or directions towards translating policy into practice.
The pre-dawn hangings of four men convicted in the Nirbhaya case had brought a semblance of closure to her parents, prompting her mother, to say, “Women will now feel safe.” It’s a colossal tragedy that even 12 years later, her prediction is nowhere close to reality as the biggest problem by far is silence and tolerance ingrained in our psyche. A society genuinely committed to gender equality wouldn’t put up with this situation for a moment. A dramatic shift in public attitudes is the only answer.