Over the past few weeks, many angry questions have been hurled at the police, the judiciary and the political establishment. The failures of the State are staggering and one cannot be grateful enough for the initial rage and outpouring on the street. Without that, there would have been no conversation.
But there is an urgent need now for calmer review, for genuine and calibrated suggestions that can lead to long- and short-term change. There is a need also to ask, are we framing this discourse wisely? Can its shrillness or the suggested remedies have adverse impacts one did not intend?
Before examining any of that though, there is a big missing piece that must find voice. The anger against the State — the demand for greater efficiencies and accountability — is hugely legitimate. But what about the giant shadow in the room? How endemic is the prejudice that stalks our society? What produces and perpetuates it? What creates the idea of women as ‘fair game’ for sexual violence? What, in effect, do Indian men think about women?
The surging outrage at the gangrape of a paramedic in New Delhi this week is welcome and cathartic. But it is also terrifying. There’s a fear that this too shall fade without correctives. But there is also a question we must all face: why did it need an incident so unspeakably brutal to trigger our outrage? What does that say about our collective threshold as a society? Why did hundreds of other stories of rape not suffice to prick our conscience?
The harsh truth is, rape is not deviant in India: it is rampant. The attitude that enables it sits embedded in our brain. Rape is almost culturally sanctioned in India, made possible by crude, unthinking conversations in every strata of society. Conversations that look at crime against women through the prism of women’s responsibility: were they adequately dressed, were they accompanied by a male protector, were they of sterling ‘character’, were they cautious enough.
It’s not just the extreme savagery the young girl suffered that has jolted everyone therefore. Running beneath that is the affront that it could happen at 9.30 pm, while a decently dressed woman was with a male friend, in a well-lit tony south Delhi neighbourhood. This certainly accentuates the impunity that’s set in. But it also lays bare the maddening subtext that blunts our responses at other times. The assumption that rapes later at night, in places more secluded or less privileged, and of women who may be alone or sexily dressed is less worthy of outrage because they feed into two pet ideas India holds: that a woman asks for rape either through her foolishness or promiscuity. In some way or the other, she is fair game.
There are other deep examinations this rape forces on us: what do we consider violence? Does it really need a woman to be tossed out naked on a road with her genitals and intestines ripped up for us to register violence? Why does gangrape horrify us more than mere rape? Why do rapes of Dalit or tribal or Northeastern women not shock the nation into saying “enough is enough”? We do not distinguish between bearable murders and unbearable murders; why does rape come graded in such debasing shade sheets?
Rape is already the most under-reported crime in India. But beneath that courses a whole other universe of violence that is not even acknowledged. It’s not just psychopathic men in a rogue white bus who can be rapists: it’s fathers, husbands, brothers, uncles, friends. Almost one in every two women would have a story — perhaps told, perhaps untold — of being groped, molested or raped in the confines of their own homes. If they dare speak of it at all, they are told to bury and bear it. Take it as a part of life. To name an uncle who has been molesting a minor niece would be to shame the family. And marital rape — that stretches the very imagination. It’s a mark of our bestial ideas about women that even judges often suggest that rape survivors marry their rapists to avoid the hell of life as a single woman rejected by society.
There are, therefore, three reckonings this horrific rape forces upon us now. How can India change its endemically diseased mindset about women? How can strong deterrences be built against rape? And how can contact with the police and justice process not be made to feel like a double rape?
Harsher, swifter punitive measures are definitely needed to puncture the idea of immunity that’s built up around rape. Fear of consequence is a powerful tool. But that can be only one aspect of the correctives. What is equally needed is a government-led gender sensitisation blitzkrieg at every level of Indian society: in schools; in anganwadis; in pop culture; in village shows; in the police, legal and judicial fraternity. Even ‘sensitisation’ is too patriarchal a word: what we need is a determined drive towards modernity. Indians have an inherent impatience for process. We prefer the drama of retributions: demands for lynching and capital punishments. Set aside for a moment the larger argument against death penalties, we forget to ask, who will take these cases to a point where judgments can even be handed out?
Earlier this year, we published a sting investigation on how senior cops in the National Capital Region think about rape. It made for bone-chilling insights. But there was absolutely no action from the establishment. The argument went that the cops’ attitudes were merely a reflection of the society they came from. Nothing should make us more fearful than that.
What we need to fix and how
1. How to Revive a Defunct National Commission for Women
When we did a cover story on violence against women, National Commission for Women (NCW) chairperson Mamta Sharma told this reporter that what women wear isn’t the primary reason for them being raped but it IS a secondary issue.
And that women “need to take their Indian culture along with them when they leave their homes”. While the recent mass outrage has pinned down every politician and religious leader for their misogyny, Sharma’s comments have so far escaped any serious censure even though she heads the watchdog for women’s rights.
The NCW was created in January 1992 out of a clamour from the women’s movements for a national-level advocacy bodycum-watchdog. But over the past two decades, women’s groups say its structure has rendered it practically defunct. Appointments to key positions are political and as gender activist and lawyer Malavika Rajkotia puts it, “even the politicians give it step-sisterly treatment and don’t care about who they appoint”.
Kalpana Vishwanath of the Delhi-based NGO Jagori says a serious review of the NCW is needed to revamp it. Akhila Sivadas, executive director of the Centre for Advocacy Research, remembers a time when the NCW did function as a proactive body that fought for women’s rights. That was 15 years ago when Mohini Giri was its chairperson. Since then, she and many others from the women’s movements believe, it’s only been downhill.
If the NCW engages with women’s movements again, it could be revived, say both Sivadas and Vishwanath. Another suggestion is for the NCW to liaise with government departments such as the home ministry and draw up a list of protocols to pass on to police stations, hospitals and trauma centres for all those involved, from doctors to beat constables, to follow. Now thanks to the public outrage, the NCW is finally developing a ‘Guideline for Rape Manual’.
NCW member Charu Wali Khanna says the commission has a skeletal staff and could do with an investigative cell to probe cases of violence against women. She also says part of the problem is that the NCW is only an advisory body. According to Khanna, the NCW chairperson only has a secretary-level rank whereas other institutional heads are given the status of Cabinet secretaries.
Others argue that this is precisely the problem. Looking for a better place in the hierarchy is equal to placing the NCW right in the middle of the patriarchal set-up it was meant to smash.
2. Planning Gender-Safe Public Spaces and Transport
Could the gangrape have been prevented if our pubic spaces had been made safe for women? In the conversations on how to prevent such crimes, Delhibased NGO Jagori has been conducting safety audits in the city since 2007. In 2010, it put together a comprehensive document on how women need access to the city just as much as men. But for them to actually live up to the promise of equality, some basics need to be in place:
• Adequate street lighting
• Proper maintenance of public spaces
• Clean, safe and adequate toilets for both men and women — male public toilets should be redesigned so that they don’t open out on the street
• Well-designed bus stops, with voice announcements
• Safer public transport
• Bringing back street hawkers in public spaces and bus stops as they act as the “eyes on the street”, making them safer for women
A simple but essential measure that could go a long way is to widen the pavements. “If you are a woman walking on a very narrow pavement, and you see a man walking towards you, instinctively you will step off the pavement,” says Jagori’s Kalpana Vishwanath.
Transport is another crucial area where Jagori has made some interventions. In 2008, it partnered with Delhi Transport Corporation (DTC) to make buses safer for women. Signages were designed and 3,800 bus drivers and conductors were put through one-hour training programmes on how to pay attention to the predicament of women on buses. Many drivers said the fact of men “falling onto women” when the driver slams the brakes was never seen by them before as deliberate or a violation. Now, in the DTC training programme for drivers, a module on gender sensitivity is an essential part, albeit for 30 minutes of the total two-hour training.
Another example comes from Mumbai. An umbrella group of community organisations called Aastha Parivaar set up a rapid response system five years ago to deal with violence committed against sex workers by their clients and the police. The system has been described by an observer to be as efficient as the dabbawallas. In case of distress, a sex worker’s call is responded to within 30 minutes.
3. Helplines that Work, Police that Responds
IN THE past few weeks, the Delhi government was faced with the embarrassment that its much-publicised crisis helpline for women — 181 — wasn’t working at all. The flaws with helplines isn’t a new story, but in other parts of the country, systems have been put in place that could serve as solutions. In Odisha, Satish Agnihotri, former secretary of the Department of Women and Child Development (DWCD), explains how he took on the system and changed it.
He found that communication gaps between various departments often become the large gaping holes in the crisis response system, rendering it dysfunctional or inefficient. Police stations across the state didn’t have a list of shelter homes available for sending women to when they faced violence. The homes existed, but the information didn’t. This was immediately corrected and lists put up at stations.
Agnihotri created desks at all police stations in Odisha to deal with women and child-related issues. Standard operating procedures were put in place and training of police personnel set up. But crucially, a radical step was taken to enable the desks to be set up.
From the DWCD funds, 1 crore was set aside and transferred to the home department, which looks after the police. This transfer of funds made it possible for the desks to be set up at police stations, along with counsellors who would be paid on a case-by-case basis to deal with victims of violence and trauma.
The message Agnihotri would like to send out is this: it can be done not just in Odisha, but in every state. Provided there is the will to track the conversations and outrage against violence into simple, workable solutions.
Another part of the problem with the police force is their response time to victims and much of this centres on setting up effective and workable helplines.
Kalpana Vishwanath of the Delhi-based NGO Jagori has an interesting suggestion. 911 in America is a helpline that is not manned by the police. Similarly, our police personnel didn’t join the force just “to answer the phone”, she explains. So, why not create a synergy with BPOs trained in responding to calls within a certain period of time and free up more police personnel to do what they really signed up for?
4. Trauma Centres that Don’t Add Trauma
THE CLERK told me a male doctor will conduct the test (forensic examination) and asked me whether that was ok. I said ‘yes’… I was so scared and nervous and praying all the time: ‘God, let this be over and let me get out of here fast.’ I didn’t even know it was going to be like a delivery examination (an internal gynecological examination).” This account from Mumbai is how Human Rights Watch begins its report on the way in which forensic examinations of rape victims are conducted.
The report came out in 2010 but anecdotal evidence suggests little has changed since then. The report also found that at least three leading government hospitals in Mumbai still conduct the two-finger test. Where two fingers are thrust up the often damaged and bruised rape victim’s vagina to check if her hymen is broken and whether she regularly has sex or not. In fact, the Delhi and Maharashtra governments brought out new templates for forensically examining rape victims in 2010 that make it de rigueur to ask for the hymen size.
Far removed from this government-endorsed misogyny, a Mumbai-based NGO, Centre for Enquiry into Health and Allied Themes, has been working on an alternative. It has in place training and manuals for doctors, nurses and counsellors dealing with rape victims.
They have also brought out a Sexual Assault Forensic Evidence Kit (Safe Kit) with cue cards and easy-to-use devices for forensic teams examining rape victims. It is in use in Rajawadi Hospital and Oshiwara Maternity Home in Mumbai.
Dr Abhijit Das, a community health specialist and head of the Centre for Health and Social Justice, laments that healthcare is still not acknowledged to be an essential part of the crisis management and care given to a victim even though the first interface for her is most often the hospital. “The procedures prescribed are archaic and inappropriate, and even those aren’t carried out properly,” he says. At the trauma centres, victims are often asked to take a bath without any care given to collecting clothes and samples of semen before crucial evidence is washed away.
Another problem is the predicament of the doctor who conducts the forensic exam and pronounces the case to be rape. Since the case drags on for years, the doctor is now at the receiving end of the system and years after he/she is transferred out of his/her post, is expected to make trips to the court to be there in person and tell the court once again all that is already there in the written report. “Even the best-intentioned medical officer often feels harassed,” says Das.
5. Sex Education that Informs
I think one of the worst things that parents do when children touch themselves is to say ‘shame, shame’. That’s where it starts. I’m not saying one should encourage children to masturbate all the time. But it’s normal and you must tell them about it,” says dancer Mallika Sarabhai, one of India’s most strident voices on women’s empowerment. She represents the small and enlightened section of parents who don’t obfuscate sexuality in bringing up kids.
“My five-year-old son saw a tampon and wanted to know what it was. So, I didn’t say it was an earplug. I told him that women have eggs. And some of these eggs can become a child and you came out of my egg. But when the egg doesn’t become a child, the inside of a woman needs to clean itself. So everything goes out as blood. And that blood spills everywhere. In order for it not to spill, this is what we use. I’m sure it made no sense to him then. But my kids never came back to me to say, ‘You lied.’ Of course, they never felt ashamed of their bodies,” she says.
Tarshi, an NGO that has worked on educating India about sex for 20 years now, has a yellow book that parents can buy and an orange one for teachers that explains how to talk about sex to a child. How even in naming the parts of the body, if parents and teachers omit the genitals, they are creating taboos around sex. Tarshi is frequently called upon to hold workshops with parents and teachers to train them in how to have conversations on sex. It has also tried to impress upon government bodies to mainstream these lessons. While a few more progressive officers readily agree, the overall takeaway has still been a big NO.
The most common misgiving Tarshi encounters among parents and teachers is, “Will sex education endorse having sex with each other for my adolescent kid?” Tarshi explains that there has so far been no link to show that adolescents are encouraged to start having sex because they are told about it any more than they try making bombs after their chemistry class. However, the absence of knowledge of their bodies is actually harmful. Girls grow up frightened of their bodies, especially of menstruation. Boys grow up thinking that wet dreams are abnormal. Warped notions on sexuality are the first steps in creating conditions for warped ideas about sex and violence.
Tarshi has also started a campaign for asking for sexual education in India to be revamped. Its critique of the existing lessons makes a compelling and urgent case for taking sex education out of the dark ages, where it is still described to students and even to teachers in their training manuals as “a sperm fusing with an ova”, which, as far as students are concerned, could be an activity happening in outer space.
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