NO COUNTRY FOR WOMEN?

Aruna Shanbaug’s life has finally come to an end after 42 years of ordeal. Rape and assault by an inhuman hospital staffer had left her brain dead and in a permanent vegetative state. The death of Aruna has rekindled the debate on life and death and on legalizing active euthanasia. Or atleast for the next few days, the topic would be hotly debated in news channels, the op-eds and the social media posts and tweets, then suddenly some other girl would be raped, molested and thrown out of the moving bus and Aruna, will gradually take a back seat in our short lived memories.

The death of Aruna has actually forced me to look at how diverse human beings co-exist. On one side, we see the perfect resemblence of Hobbesian depiction of human nature as self- centered and wicked, evidenced in Hospital sweeper, Sohanlal Walmiki who sodomised the menstruating 25 year old Aruna and strangled her with a dogs’s chain. While on the other hand,we find the Gandhian belief in the basic goodness go humankind manifested in the form of the KEM nurses who have been Aruna’s family and took care of her as a child, without being paid any extra salary or conveyance allowance. They had refused permission to let her die. They have been her family since past almost 40 years when her actual blood relatives or ‘guardians’ refused to take her home. Aruna's nurses re-affirm one's belief that humanity still exists in people.

I am not attempting any debate on human nature here. What actually concerns me today is the sorry state of affairs for women in this country. 40 years have passed by, but we are still having Nirbhayas. Very, recently, a juvenile girl was molested and thrown out of the moving bus in Moga. Why do we find girls raped and brutally hanged on trees? Why are Dalit women still raped and killed? And these are only the incidents which come to the fore-front due to pro-active media, what about those that go un-noticed and un-reported? Really, have we not made India a safer place for women to live in, in the past so many years? No doubt we have come far in terms of framing of laws for rape and sexual assault in terms of POSCO and fast tracking rape cases. But why is Nirbhaya re-occcuring. Are we creating a society where one section of men is empowered over the other sections of society? 

We really need to re-look at the tardy pace of implementation of our well formulated laws. The offenders should be given strictest punishment under the law and also its execution should be ensured. They should not be dealt with any light handedness as a prominent politician remarked "boys are boys,they make mistakes, why hang them?" It is like giving them another excuse to rape.There should be zero tolerance for rape and crime against women.

We really need to create a society where women can move out fearlessly, wear what they want without being stared at, use public transportation at convenience, do what they love without being stalked or harassed, speak to who ever they want without being labeled as ‘being easy’. Unlesss, this is ensured, the day is not far when India is branded as ‘ No country for women!’

P.S- This post is not meant to portray India in a negative light. The blogger equally lauds the steps taken to ensure empowerment of women. But when it comes to safety of women, much remains to be desired. And this is what the blogger wishes to highlight through her post.