India My Country…

Crime Against Women in India

यत्र नार्यस्तु पूज्यन्ते, रमन्ते तत्र देवता

यत्र नार्यस्तु ना पूज्यन्ते तत्र सर्व क्रिया विफ़ल: ।

This is an old saying in Sanskrit meaning “Places where woman is worshiped there the Gods delighted. Where Woman is not worshiped, there good deeds are without fruit!”

“Ten times more worthy of worship than the Father is the Guru, but a thousand times more worthy than the Guru is the Mother!”

I have drawn these adages, proverbs, sayings and whatever you want to call them from the Indian history. How do they apply to the present?

To understand more about crimes against Women in India, I did some thorough research on the internet – visited government databases, read news articles, read articles on various websites. Being an engineer, I cannot live without numbers and so calculated various numbers as well. Here is a summary of my analysis:

The growth rate of crime against women in India is more than the growth rate of Indian population itself. Such crimes were not reported to the police earlier because of social stigma but the number of cases reported has dramatically increased in the past few years. This can imply two things

1. Either the society has opened up towards taking help from the judiciary system and punishing the culprits or

2. The percentage of cases reported remain the same, however total number of cases have increased manifolds.

There is no answer to which of the assumption stated above is correct, but I personally wish that the second one is not true.

Crime against Women can be categorized under the following heads:

1. Domestic Violence

The incidents of domestive violence are higher among the lower Socio-Economic Classes (SECs). The Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005 came into force on October 26, 2006.

2. Female infanticides and sex selective abortions

India has a high Male / Female ratio and the main reason contributing to it is the killing of female child long before they open their eyes to this world. A surprising but true fact is that tribes in India have better Male/Female ratio as compared to well developed urban societies. Dowry can be attributed to as the main reason for female infanticide. Dowry is still prevalent in most parts of India. To counter this problem, all medical tests that can be used to determine the sex of the child have been banned in India.

3. Child Marriage

According to UNICEF’s “State of the World’s Children-2009” report, 47% of India’s women aged 20–24 were married before the legal age of 18, with 56% in rural areas. The report also says that 40% of the total child marriages in the World happen in India.

4. Dowry

A 1997 report claimed that at least 5,000 women die each year because of dowry deaths, and at least a dozen die each day in ‘kitchen fires’ thought to be intentional. In 1985, the Dowry Prohibition (maintenance of lists of presents to the bride and bridegroom) rules were framed. According to these rules, a signed list of presents given at the time of the marriage to the bride and the bridegroom should be maintained. The list should contain a brief description of each present, its approximate value, the name of whoever has given the present and his/her relationship to the person.

5. Sexual Harassment & Rape

Eve teasing is a euphemism used for sexual harassment or molestation of women by men. Many activists blame the rising incidents of sexual harassment against women on the influence of “Western culture”. In 1987, The Indecent Representation of Women (Prohibition) Act was passed to prohibit indecent representation of women through advertisements or in publications, writings, paintings, figures or in any other manner.

In order to analyze rapes in India, I downloaded data from the government’s National Crime Record Bureau and did some analysis on my own. Here is the summary.

Rape Map of India (Darker = More number of Rape Cases)

In terms of Total Number of Rapes Reported (click on the image for better viewing):

The number of cases alone in Madhya Pradesh are more than double of those in Uttar Pradesh. Surprisingly West Bengal has the second most number of reported rape cases. Compare the size of Karnataka and Delhi and the number of rape cases in the two states.

Some major high-sensitivity cities in India were studies and the report was surprising:

Mumbai reported 201 cases of rape, Bangalore 65, Kolkata 32, Pune 91, Chennai 47 and Delhi 414.

However the most surprising of them all was the following result:

Tier 2 cities in Madhya Pradesh (Bhopal, Indore and Jabalpur) show large number of reported cases.

Jabalpur reports 1:13016 (Rape Cases:Population), which is the highest in any city in India. Similarly Kolkata reports 1:140209 which is the lowest in any city in India. So what can be inferred from this data is that even though Kolkata reports less number of reported cases, the cases in other areas of West Bengal are high and that can be attributed to low education levels.

Total number of reported cases in Delhi is more than double in Mumbai. Delhi comes third in the list of cities prone to rape. The sequence goes like this:

1. Jabalpur (1:13016)

2. Bhopal (1:24598)

3. Delhi (1:26589)

Ahmedabad (1:113685), Bangalore (1:129630) & Kolkata (1:140209) remains the safest cities in India.

I am not deducing anything out of the data at the moment but I would love to find out a detailed correlation between education levels and such incidences.

Feel free to comment on this post and use this data wherever you want to use it.