Apart from the rampant corruption there is another titanic issue ailing our country and that would be the unswerving rates of crimes being committed against the women , with outrageous incidents being reported day after day in the media, by the side of with the larger involvement of women in nearly every sector, violent behavior against them has also increased-- not only in the familial sphere but in the public pitch too. It is not only the violence, but the progressively more hedonistic temperament of this violence, that makes me quiver.
Just about everyday we hear of a minor being sexually assaulted, some times even newborns, leading to irreparable genital distortion. Of late in Madhya Pradesh, an ailing year elderly woman over 80 was brutally raped. A mother of two young children, was severed by her IT-executive husband and later stuffed into the refrigerator till it came to light. In Kerala a college student was thrown off the train whilst refusing to give in to an assaulter, and was raped on the tracks and left for the dead.
Delhi, the capital, boasts of an alarming rate of gang-rapes -- especially in moving cars. In recent times a BPO employee from the North east was kidnapped at her own doorstep when she came back from her shift and was gang-raped.
Burning girls for dowry and honor killings by the Khap-panchayats are huge blemishes on the country’s ostensible front. While schooling, and higher education vis-à-vis the wider involvement of women in the workforce might have led to their financial independence; our chauvinistic social order ,by all means, finds it hard to take in that women emancipation is here to stay.
If a girl declines marriage with a boy of her parents’ picking, she is bound to go through emotional and physical turmoil , both inside and outside the familial domain. There have been numerous instances of agitated men bashing, shooting or throwing acid on a girl when their proposals are snubbed.
The National Crime Records Bureau data for 2009 reaffirmed what is conveniently apparent for one and all to see : that there has been an increase in crimes against women within the confines of Delhi summing up to almost 25 per cent of all the rape cases in the whole country. A lot of individuals besieged by rape are adolescent girls, working or studying women etc.
While these are only the cases that get reported, if we account for the women working in hostile conditions like brick furnaces or for builders and contractors, which go largely unreported , the numbers would be far more apalling. In contrast to the year 2008, there was a growth of 4.1 percent in the figure of crimes against women in the nation. While in 2008, an overall of 196,857 cases were reported ,which went up to 207,806 in 2009 and 267,417 in 2010.
Their struggle aligned with defiance of lack of self-choice and patriarchy is intermittently met with amplified hostility. The challenges are there for everyone’s perusal. despite the fact that there is a vast number of professed choices to single out the kind of quarters they would like, cars, LCDs, Laptops, mobile phones , overseas trips, the same cannot be said for the crucial choices that decide the better part of their lives.
This is the result of the distorted development schemes prevalent in our country since the days of yore. The expanding economic disparities have in one way or another, left the question of women empowerment in the dust. It was, for that reason, deplorable that a Bill to avert sexual harassment at the workplace kept out domestic workers (maids and such) from its purview on a fallacious ground.
As you might expect, this Bill garnered a lot of remonstration but nevertheless it has not been reformed. Domestic workers and home-based workers, who are for the most part ,women, are now acknowledged as a big group of workers in the unorganized sector ,except there are no guidelines to preserve their interests. The other rationale that could be a causative factor to increasing crimes is that of the dilapidated child sex ratio in the nation.
Although it is a far cry to string together violence and skewed sex ratio , however it is specifically in those communities where there are stringent feudal and chauvinistic values, that violent behavior against women takes more severe manifestations.
A recent survey also demonstrated that a good number of women in the national capital were not sentient of their lawful rights. The states of affairs for women have only taken a turn for the worse in the past twenty years of egalitarian and feminist strides. The increase in crimes against women notwithstanding, the paramount susceptibility to aggression - give us an idea about that fact that there is something intolerably wrong in the development model being followed by our polity (oh! well if they actually pay any heed to it) where the amassing of material goods is the tune and financial sensation and turnover are peddled as power supreme.
----Prompt are a few lines in verse-------
Of wry they cry ,
Of late….
Some do rue , when time is right ;
And then fall back ,
Consigning to fate……….
The chain of rime ,
Heard but seldom seen ,
Waking them up ,
In ways sublime.
-----R.Ajay.Kumar
Just about everyday we hear of a minor being sexually assaulted, some times even newborns, leading to irreparable genital distortion. Of late in Madhya Pradesh, an ailing year elderly woman over 80 was brutally raped. A mother of two young children, was severed by her IT-executive husband and later stuffed into the refrigerator till it came to light. In Kerala a college student was thrown off the train whilst refusing to give in to an assaulter, and was raped on the tracks and left for the dead.
Delhi, the capital, boasts of an alarming rate of gang-rapes -- especially in moving cars. In recent times a BPO employee from the North east was kidnapped at her own doorstep when she came back from her shift and was gang-raped.
Burning girls for dowry and honor killings by the Khap-panchayats are huge blemishes on the country’s ostensible front. While schooling, and higher education vis-à-vis the wider involvement of women in the workforce might have led to their financial independence; our chauvinistic social order ,by all means, finds it hard to take in that women emancipation is here to stay.
If a girl declines marriage with a boy of her parents’ picking, she is bound to go through emotional and physical turmoil , both inside and outside the familial domain. There have been numerous instances of agitated men bashing, shooting or throwing acid on a girl when their proposals are snubbed.
The National Crime Records Bureau data for 2009 reaffirmed what is conveniently apparent for one and all to see : that there has been an increase in crimes against women within the confines of Delhi summing up to almost 25 per cent of all the rape cases in the whole country. A lot of individuals besieged by rape are adolescent girls, working or studying women etc.
While these are only the cases that get reported, if we account for the women working in hostile conditions like brick furnaces or for builders and contractors, which go largely unreported , the numbers would be far more apalling. In contrast to the year 2008, there was a growth of 4.1 percent in the figure of crimes against women in the nation. While in 2008, an overall of 196,857 cases were reported ,which went up to 207,806 in 2009 and 267,417 in 2010.
Their struggle aligned with defiance of lack of self-choice and patriarchy is intermittently met with amplified hostility. The challenges are there for everyone’s perusal. despite the fact that there is a vast number of professed choices to single out the kind of quarters they would like, cars, LCDs, Laptops, mobile phones , overseas trips, the same cannot be said for the crucial choices that decide the better part of their lives.
This is the result of the distorted development schemes prevalent in our country since the days of yore. The expanding economic disparities have in one way or another, left the question of women empowerment in the dust. It was, for that reason, deplorable that a Bill to avert sexual harassment at the workplace kept out domestic workers (maids and such) from its purview on a fallacious ground.
As you might expect, this Bill garnered a lot of remonstration but nevertheless it has not been reformed. Domestic workers and home-based workers, who are for the most part ,women, are now acknowledged as a big group of workers in the unorganized sector ,except there are no guidelines to preserve their interests. The other rationale that could be a causative factor to increasing crimes is that of the dilapidated child sex ratio in the nation.
Although it is a far cry to string together violence and skewed sex ratio , however it is specifically in those communities where there are stringent feudal and chauvinistic values, that violent behavior against women takes more severe manifestations.
A recent survey also demonstrated that a good number of women in the national capital were not sentient of their lawful rights. The states of affairs for women have only taken a turn for the worse in the past twenty years of egalitarian and feminist strides. The increase in crimes against women notwithstanding, the paramount susceptibility to aggression - give us an idea about that fact that there is something intolerably wrong in the development model being followed by our polity (oh! well if they actually pay any heed to it) where the amassing of material goods is the tune and financial sensation and turnover are peddled as power supreme.
----Prompt are a few lines in verse-------
Of wry they cry ,
Of late….
Some do rue , when time is right ;
And then fall back ,
Consigning to fate……….
The chain of rime ,
Heard but seldom seen ,
Waking them up ,
In ways sublime.
-----R.Ajay.Kumar