It
is perhaps impossible to shut one's ears to the public protests going on all over India, and Delhi in particular, in response to the
medieval act of brutality meted out to a young lady and her friend.
Impossible, unless you are the Prime Minister of this country, or so
say some. I would rather say that the Home Minister and his likes
have been responsive to the situation in all the wrong ways;
unresponsiveness probably would have served somewhat a better
purpose. (The last statement was made out of an inherent respect for
Dr. Singh's above-the-average academic achievements and not for his
failure as the leader of world's greatest democracy.)
I
am not here to discuss what the Government should or shouldn't have
done. Having studied in a public university, I am well aware of how
government officials are expected to react in such turbulent times
that hurt their slumber; as a rule of thumb, this is what they do:
buy time! This is not difficult to see given that the mass suffers
from 'short-term' memory. We've seen that in recent cases of protest
against corruption and in the past, during protest against
reservations. The current rage is all-pervading, except that it is
likely to die down very soon, that the media now already has other
breaking news such as Sachin's retirement from one-day cricket or
more ridiculously, the success of Dabangg-2. This is not
surprising, especially because the ones protesting are driven more by
passion and less by thoughts. Let us assume the ideal situation where
as a result of the huge participation in the nationwide protests, the
case is fast-tracked and all the accused are sentenced to death. The
country will rejoice, come down to streets and the media will be
somewhat relieved at not having to figure out what would feature on
their cover page that particular day. What would hurt me most is that
my Facebook news feeds would be flooded by the same status updates, slightly
varying in some cases, some teary-eyed, others full of pride. Case
closed- until the modesty of another woman is outraged the very next
night.
Some
people complain that the Government has been too complacent about the
way it carries out its duties, others say that the policemen are
worthless pot-belly haggards, good only at accepting bribes. True, to
a large extent. But I still fail to understand how an efficient
policeman would have been able to prevent the crime in this country
of ours. How would a policeman know what's going on inside a moving
bus? Does one realize how many cops are required to keep a firm vigil
on all vehicles- public and private- moving across just Delhi, with
so few security cameras at our disposal? One might call the
Government's failure to install security cameras a total
disappointment. But unlike popular road-signs “accident-prone
area”, one does not expect anything called a “rape-prone area”;
atrocities such as these could occur in the remotest corner of
Rajasthan to the posh locale of Mumbai. Does a government go about
installing CCTVs everywhere? Even with an incorruptible system and
higher taxes deducted from your salary (which again has the potential
to start a fresh round of protest!), this would still not be
feasible.
As
has been oft said, punishing the criminal serves no purpose unless
you look carefully where exactly are things going wrong. When people
say “hanging” the criminal would deter others from doing the same
crime again, think again. I can readily provide the example of
Dhananjoy who was hanged for the same crime, after his mercy plea was
rejected by the then President of India, Dr. Kalam. Probably it
'brought justice to the girl' and her family, as they were quoted to
have said. But justice wasn't brought to the millions of women who
come so close to have escaped a similar fate as that girl, every day.
Most readers would by now be thinking that I am here to discuss that
there's no solution to this problem. Well, there is.
Investigate further. How does one decide whether or not to
commit a particular crime at any give moment? Since I am neither a
criminal myself (really, believe me or not) nor a Sigmund Freud, my
vision is limited. But from what I understand, there has to be some
spur- a catalyst- some lightning-fast life-altering decision driven
by an unsettled mind, wanting to break free of certain customs
fettered by one's upbringing. What they lack at that moment is
perhaps control of the self.
Education,
I would argue, largely takes care of this problem, except in certain
physiological cases. By education, I don't mean literacy. Literacy
certainly forms the big chunk in education and could help curb these
crimes to half the current number. I cannot but agree with Shashi
Tharoor when he points out that if there has to be one solution to
all the problems in this society, it must be: Educate the girl child.
By educating the girl, we are educating not one person, but a family.
An educated mother would mean informed decisions, better
family-planning and broader outlook that would disseminate to her
children (both male and female). Educated families would mean an
educated society. An educated society would mean greater respect for
women and reduced crimes- not just against women. It would also mean
not accepting dowries which, as one of my seniors rightly pointed out
on Facebook, originates from the same misfortune (or so shall we say)
of considering women as “objects”. It is thus no surprise, as
Amartya Sen argues, that the states of Kerala and the North-eastern
states, which have an above-the-Indian-average literacy rate,
registers extremely few cases of crime against women while states
such as Uttar Pradesh presents horrific statistics. An interesting
point to note here is that abundance of wealth has no role to play in
this context. An opulent state like Punjab or Delhi could be put to
shame by the poverty-stricken Nagaland, if their statistics of crimes
against women were to be compared. While there is no comparison as to
which states are better and which are not, there certainly are
lessons that the rest of the country can learn from the so-called
disadvantaged states; they deserve utmost respect and applause,
simply because they need not drive Audis to learn and respect the
basic principles of living in a human(e) society.
