How best to stop sexual violence in India isn’t obvious

There is anger in the air. A sense of revolution in the streets, with demonstrators demanding change. But all this has been seen before. Countless rapes of women, from toddlers to octogenarians, are a persistent pestilence in our society. When the horror of a particular atrocity or the frequency of it breaches a tolerance limit, outrage erupts.

The establishment’s playbook is often to first ignore the incident, then try to suppress it by destroying evidence, and if that doesn’t work, to contain the political fallout (or leverage it). Then begins the blame game, ironically starting with the victim herself before dragging in the ruling dispensation. At the end of this slugfest, the angry masses are assuaged by grandiose promulgations of new laws. A handful of rapists are executed.

Also read: Kolkata doctor rape-murder case: Protesting doctors’ present new demands to Mamata Govt. What we know so far | 10 Points

‘Special packages,’ usually named after the victim in the news, are crafted and people are assured that women will now be safer. But they won’t be. It will happen again. That’s because we use band-aids for a problem in need of other responses.

Regardless whether perpetrators are castrated or executed, it won’t make a dent. If capital punishment worked as deterrence, then countries like China or Saudi Arabia would have fewer executions every year, not more. The execution of Nirbhaya’s murderers acted as retributive justice but effected no wider change. Unless we change our fundamental understanding, atrocities will continue, and ironically, each one of us will pay for it personally. Here is why.

Women constitute half our country’s population and could help raise Indian productivity. Well implemented interventions to close the gender gap in the workforce can boost our GDP significantly. However, the participation of women right now is among the lowest in the world. Lack of women’s safety is a big part of the problem.

The pervasive fear of sexual violence restricts women’s mobility as well as their access to education, employment and other economic opportunities. Women staying at home is an economic loss. So, sexual violence against women has a direct and quantifiable impact on the economy.

There are, of course, direct costs like the investment needed in preventive technologies and the extraordinary opportunity loss on account of women having to worry about their safety, apart from healthcare expenses for physical and psychological trauma, legal costs, etc. There is also the economic burden of incarcerating offenders.

Also read: Data dive: Can India overcome the cycle of sexual violence?

But we must worry about insidious long-term effects, too. Unsafe Indian cities are doomed to be less productive than they could be. A comparison of Mumbai with the National Capital Region displays a stark contrast. In Mumbai, women are less likely to be hamstrung by safety concerns.

Fear restrains women from pursuing higher education or vocational training, limiting their access to skills needed for higher paying jobs, thus perpetuating a vicious cycle of deprivation and lack of independence over their entire lifetime that impacts national income. Trillions of women’s work hours are forgone in a national loss entirely because of the security profile of a city.

Meanwhile, every rupee spent in CCTV cameras, increased patrolling and other measures is a drain from our tax contribution. Hence, we actually pay the cost of every rape or for that matter every crime that raises the ‘operating cost’ of a society. And while that makes clear how we are all affected by the menace, here is why sexual assaults occur in the first place.

The young doctor in Kolkata was the victim of a demented person(s), but the tragedy that befell her didn’t begin on 9 August. It began decades ago, when cat calls and eve-teasing were condoned as ‘boys being boys.’ It began when young girls were molested at homes by people they knew and were told to keep quiet about it, or worse, they were branded liars.

It began when victims saw that our socio-judicial system was so loaded against them, that living with injustice seemed better than trying to fight it. It began when social role models who were outed publicly (with evidence) for their predatory behaviour were protected and then feted on their return to social circles after a brief hiatus.

It began when society refused to properly acknowledge the protests of Olympic- level athletes until the courts intervened. It began when 8 men gang-raped and killed an 8-year-old girl to terrorize a minority and a section of society defended the rapists.It began when gang-rapists of a helpless woman and murderers of her child and family were released for ‘good’ behaviour and the nation by and large seemed okay with it. It began when leaders who proclaimed a need to protect women in their poll manifestos took to releasing godmen convicted of rape and murder into their very midst.

It actually began when all this was occurring all around us, and instead of calling it out at every step, we mostly chose to remain silent.

Also read: Transport, timings, SOS: How India Inc is trying to keep women staff safe

It is apparent that the rapist(s) who killed the young doctor was depraved and demented. But I wonder what excuse the rest of us can offer when we don’t seem to understand that there cannot be zero tolerance for a particular kind of rape in a society that is tolerant of every other crime against women and children.