Writer : Sehajta Kaur, New Delhi
India is a country known for its rich culture and heritage. The country has a tradition of giving great honour & respect to women.
Women represent half of the country’s population, and the fact can’t be denied that in today’s era, women are working shoulder-to-shoulder with men in every field, whether it is politics, banking, school, sports, police, defence sector, own business, etc.
However, over the past few decades, the level of women’s safety has been continuously falling. Every day, women walk out of the house and many of them get harassed. Areas like streets, public spaces, public transport, etc. have been the territory of such ruthless people who consider women as an opportunity. Not just that, nowadays women are not even safe in their workplaces and schools. Many cases emerge from different parts of the country where women are assaulted in their workplaces, schools or colleges. In some cases, a girl child is sold by her parents just to earn some money.
According to the National Crime Records Bureau’s (NCRB) 2022 report, a total of 4,45,256 cases of crimes against women were registered across India in 2022, marking an increase of 4% from the previous year, which translated to nearly 51 FIRs every hour. The rate of crimes against women per lakh population stood at 66.4, while the filing charge sheet rate was recorded at 75.8.
It is not necessary that these crimes occur only in the late evenings or nights, in fact, it is such a shame that some cases even emerge from the participation of the family relatives as well. When we talk about the crimes against women such as acid attacks, violence, sexual violence, dowry death, rape, foetal murder and mental harassment, the list goes on.
According to some surveys, some of the reasons for these crimes are lack of co-operative work in the workplace, alcohol consumption, addiction, etc.
The world is lacking humanity day-by-day. There are several news reports on the internet where crimes occurred against women in public places and the crowd remained quiet. Nobody stood up for the women and some of them even took out their phones or cameras to record the incident instead of helping the victim.
Society has a habit of victim blaming. When a woman takes a stand for herself and tries to seek justice, she is blamed. Statements come out like what clothes was she wearing? Why was she out of the house? Why does she behave so friendly with people?
But what about those newborns or 2–3-year-old girl children and even those older women of 60 years of age who are assaulted? Were they so friendly with people? Was it their clothes? Were they roaming out of the house?
Every year we celebrate our Independence Day and at another point of time, in some corner of the country, a woman is getting molested. The question is, are we really an independent nation? The question is, where is our society heading? Is this the kind of environment we want to give to our upcoming generations? Are we giving a world to our upcoming generations where every time a crime happens, people will close their eyes and hold silence?
Mahatma Gandhi once said, “The day a woman can walk freely on the road at night, that day we can say that India has achieved independence”.
Our history has several examples such as the Lanka Dahan and Mahabharata war where the whole world got to see the consequences when something wrong was done with women.
We belong to a country where women are given the status of Goddess Lakshmi which makes it even more important for us to make sure that women in each corner of the country feel safe while stepping out of their homes. Remember, “a woman alone on the road is not an opportunity, she’s a responsibility”.
So, let’s just not wait for some miracle to happen, rather take a step further to stand up against the wrong.
Source of information: https://www.drishtiias.com/daily-updates/daily-news-editorials/addressing-women-s-safety-in-india
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