Yesterday evening, on February 17, a horrific news of three Dalit girls tied up in a field and allegedly poisoned was reported from Unnao district, Uttar Pradesh. While two were found dead, one is battling for her life. The doctor has reportedly said that the girl’s survival rate is low because there seems to be considerable brain damage.

Unnao is also infamous for its 2017 gang rape of a 17-year-old minor which led to the conviction and life imprisonment of the former BJP member Kuldeep Singh Sengar, who was also held responsible for the (judicial) custodial death of the survivor’s father. Her relatives met with similar fate and died in a mysterious car accident.

A 19-year-old Dalit woman in Hathras, named four upper caste ‘Thakur’ men in her dying declaration after she was raped and strangled to death. The barbarism continued when the Uttar Pradesh Police first, delayed immediate medical attention and eventually denied that she had been raped.

In August, 2020, Lakhimpur Kheri in Uttar Pradesh reported the rape and murder of a 13-year-old girl who was strangled and left to perish in a sugarcane field. This was followed by a 17-year-old Dalit girl who was raped and killed while returning home after filling a scholarship form at a cyber cafe. Days later, in September, a three-year-old child was raped and murdered in the fields due to family enmity with another family in the same district, which acquired a lot of media attention.  

This new year ushered with another incident of inhumanity where a 50-year-old Angadwadi woman was allegedly gang-raped and brutalised in the temple compound in Uttar Pradesh’s Budaun district and succumbed to her injuries. The woman’s post-mortem report confirmed rape, injury in her private parts, and fracture in her legs.

Viewing all such horrific instances of crime from a prism of isolation, is where we all slip! These episodes are not independent of each other, rather this is an outcome of deeply entrenched casteism and systemic entitlement. Delay in taking cognisance of, and acting against (legally prosecuting) insensitive remarks from people wielding power, apathy from politicians including women leaders especially against the visible minority, has exposed the inbuilt fractures of our systems and how atrocities against women are internalised over the years.

Note that the caste system has intoxicated Indian men, especially “upper caste” Hindus, in such fashion that the only legitimate outcome seems to be that of dehumanisation. Women often, don’t only suffer aggravated sexual assault, but arrive at hospitals (the ones who survive), with broken bones, burn injuries, paralysed bodies and lacerated private parts.

According to the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) data of 2019, all States barring the Union Territories recorded 3,91,601 cases of crimes against women and Uttar Pradesh alone accounted for 59,853 cases. From 2015 to 2017, Uttar Pradesh had the greatest number of atrocities registered against Dalits, with an accelerating trend of 8,357 in 2015, 10,426 in 2016 and 11,444 in 2017.

Far from justice, women in Uttar Pradesh, especially Dalits continue to suffer from oppression and the protection of mere basic rights remain as remote and implausible as accountability of the state machinery. Some media outlets had reported that not even 24 hours had passed after the hasty cremation of the 19-year-old Hathras victim, a 22-year-old Dalit woman was sexually abused and murdered in Balrampur, Uttar Pradesh. TOI reported an incident that came to light in January, that a 16-year-old Dalit girl was raped, the incident was filmed and she was threatened for days in Firozabad, Agra. This once again demonstrated the incompetence of the administration and the legal system vis-a`-vis lower caste women.

Placed as ‘Shudras’ in the caste system below Brahmans, Kshatriyas and Vaishyas, they have historically served the three blatantly differentiated categories as workers, labourers, cleaners, and the upper caste men and women do very little to muddle this status quo. Caste and gender-based violence is a multi-dimensional issue that stems from misogyny, patriarchy where women are victimised to damage an entire community’s “honour”.

Bahujan Samaj Party member Ritesh Pandey elucidated this intersectional issue with great ease when he wrote, “In traditionally patriarchal societies, women are the currency of honour. A family’s, a community’s, a caste’s honour is inextricably tied to the “honour” of their female members — their purity, their morality, their chastity. Sexual violence operates on the nexus of land, caste, and patriarchy. It becomes a tool to maintain the status quo of land and caste. Sexual violence against women from lower caste communities is seldom about the individual woman; more often than not, it is about robbing the honour of a community, a caste, a family”, reported IE.

In the recent Budget Session of 2021, Smriti Irani, the Women and Child Development Minister, provided details of the Nirbhaya fund that was set up in 2013, to ensure safety of women in India. In the Lok Sabha, her written response stated, “Under Nirbhaya Fund, schemes/ projects worth Rs. 9,288.45 Cr. have been appraised till date. An amount of Rs.5,712.85 crore has been allocated and an amount of Rs.3,544.06 crore has been disbursed/ released by the concerned Ministries/ Departments”.

But almost seven years later, after the allocation of such whopping amounts which we are expected to accede to, the precarity of women in Uttar Pradesh and elsewhere has remained embarrassingly consistent in the face of upper caste pride and viciousness.

Related:

Unnao: Dalit girls found tied up in fields; 2 dead, 1 critical

Unnao rape case: Kuldeep Singh Sengar convicted

Women and Dalits are second class citizens according to RSS: Kasturi Basu

Uttar Pradesh: 19-year-old woman allegedly gang-raped when returning from Navratri event

Uttar Pradesh records highest crimes against Dalits: NCRB

It has shocked our conscience: Allahabad HC takes cognisance of Hathras incident

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The NHRC has put itself on “high alert” mode after Hyderabad’s brutal rape case rocked the nation. The Commission has issued notices to the Centre and all States and Union Territories on December 2, seeking reports on SOP (Standard Operating Procedure) to deal with cases of sexual assault, to be submitted within 6 weeks. The Commission has also asked for status reports on utilisation of the Nirbhaya fund in the last 3 years and details of availability of money in the fund.

The Nirbhaya fund which is administered by Ministry of Finance is a fund that can be utilised for projects of women safety and security. Any policies related to safety of women formulated by any State or UT can receive funding from the Nirbhaya fund after necessary approvals. It has a corpus of Rs. 10 billion.

The Commission noted in its statement, “The largest democracy of the world, which has adopted the longest written constitution and has a rich cultural heritage of gender equality, is today being criticised for having the most unsafe environment for women…“The incidents of rapes, molestation, gender based discrimination and other such atrocities against women have, unfortunately, become routine media headlines.”

The Commission also issued notices to Director-Generals of Police asking them about the best practices adopted to deal with cases of sexual abuse and details of the action taken against the police officers found insensitive and guilty of negligence. The Commission also went ahead and called for a detailed report from Ministry of Womenand child development for details on schemes or guidelines initiated and more importantly, the status of the implementation of the same.

Nirbhaya Fund utilization data

Data released by the Parliament recentlyrevealed that Maharashtra is the only State, among the large states, which has not used the Nirbhaya fund at all. Among the 12 states which were granted funds for the Mahila Police Volunteer Scheme, only 4 states utilised the fund.

This clearly shows that there has been no monitoring at the Centre’s end for implementation of these schemes and the States couldn’t care less for using this special fund for building a better, safer ecosystem for women.
 

Delhi High Court directions

The Delhi High Court has been monitoring policing in the State since after the Nirbhaya case of 2012. The Bench of Justices AnupJairamBhambhani and GS Sistani took cognisance of the current situation and issued certain directions to the government as well as the Delhi police.  The court has ordered police to deploy the cops at several vulnerable spots in the city and if possible to consider deploying women cops in plain clothes. The Court asked the central government, to look into augmenting manpower in Delhi Police in view of long duty hours and workload on the cops. The Court also asked the Delhi chief secretary to finds ways to utilise the vast sums of money accumulated in the Nirbhaya fund.

If cases like these are requisite to wake the authorities, the administration and the executive from their slumber then it speaks volumes about the kind of system we have built for women’s and children’s safety in the country and one can only be dismayed that such a crucial issue has become last priority for our government.

Related:

NHRC issues notice to Centre, states seeking reports on procedures to tackle sexual assault cases
Delhi High Court spells out measures to ensure safety of women and children in the capital
Revisiting the Justice Verma Committee report of 2013: #JusticeforPriyankaReddy
Dalit woman found dead, family alleges gang-rape: Kancheepuram
Sultanpur rape case: CJP moves NHRC citing lacunae in police investigation
35 year-old attempts to rape 4 year-old, paraded naked: Nagpur
Five Actions You Can Take To End Gender Based Violence

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The critics included National Commission for Women (NCW) which has raised questions on its sampling methodology. The Central Government has argued that this is an ‘effort to malign the country’.  The response on the Indian side is that of a denial. It is unwilling to see its mirror reflection. Shefali Vaidya, the BJP MP also went on the say that ‘few countries are as safe as India’.  The defenders of the national pride while on the one hand are in a ‘rejection mode’, on the other hand forget the fact that the nation also constitutes its half population which is made up of female gender.

Without getting into ‘correctness of ranking’, it is important to look into the issue and inquire if India is really becoming safer for Women. Two days after the release of the report, Mandasur in the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh witnessed media coverage over the rape of an eight year old girl child. India had not even recovered from the violence that was inflicted on Asifa, the eight year old girl child in Kathua. Similar incidents were also reported from Surat in Gujarat, Mainpuri and Sitapur in Uttar Pradesh, Nagaon district in Assam and Indore in Madhya Pradesh in 2018. According to a report by Child Relief and you, ‘sexual violence is committed against a child in India every 15 minutes’.

According to the National Crime Report Bureau statistics 2016, the reported cases of child trafficking victims were 763, incidents of selling minors for prostitution were 135 and victims of child rape were 19,920. These were the reported cases for 2015-16. It is to be remembered large number of cases do not get reported at the police stations.

No effort in the direction of legislative actions, judicial decisions, strengthening of law enforcement machinery, social boycott seems to be putting an end to this deadly cancer. The disease of rape and sexual violence is so ingrained in Indian society that it does not have an age. Right from an infant, child, adolescent, young, middle aged to an old – everyone seems to be unsafe. It does not have a relation. Reports on violence against women indicate that the biggest inflictors of violence also include own family members, relatives, neighbors and working spaces.

The social conscience of the Nation seems to be accepting this as a new ‘normal’. The nation which projects itself as respecting ‘women’ and ‘Bharatiya nari’ is nowhere in reality close to respecting women-hood. Having a set of female goddesses ‘Durga, Laxmi, Saraswati’ doesn’t make the Indian society a women friendly and gender sensitive society. The culture of having female goddesses at the most provides a justification of how the society treats its women. It hides the reality of what happens within families, communities and nationhood.

The patriarchal culture is so ingrained in Indian society that women end up incorporating them from their birth itself. If the girl child is able to escape ‘female infanticide’, then in the process of growing up she is taught how to behave, how to talk, what to dress, where to go and not go. The decisions in each stage of life are taken by men. An independent identity of women goes unrecognized. The child ends up listening to the stories of ‘sita’ and ‘savitri’ and ‘sati’ and ‘jauhar’ where female identity is subordinated to male identity.

While women tend to be victims, the burden-hood of prestige falls on the women. It is only through projecting that women are safe that the prestige of family, community and nation are glorified and defended. Hence it is not surprising that they become ‘ghar ki ijjat’ (prestige of family), ‘samaj ki ijjat’ (prestige of community) and ‘desh ki ijjat’ (prestige of nation). While family inflicts violence it comes with its narrative of family prestige falling on women. While community inflicts violence, the khap or samaj panchayats puts the burden of prestige on women. The same happens with the nation.

The stated position of ‘defenders of national pride’ needs to be seen in this light. For them, the naming of India as the most unsafe place for women in the world hurts the ‘national soul’ or the ‘national prestige’. Hence the strong need to reject the report and justify why the nation is safe for women. Just as family and community does not recognize aspects of violence against women, so too the nation. A society which really feels the need to make itself safe and equal for women should dump the word of ‘prestige’ as it only covers up for the patriarchal structures and culture prevalent within.

Jayashubha is a post graduate in Organic Chemistry. She is interested in Gender and Social issues.

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Momeena (centre) is blind in one eye. She takes a shared rickshaw to work at a factory cutting loose threads from purses eight hours a day, six days a week for which she is paid Rs 5,500 a month. In India’s metros, women travel shorter distances, with most preferring to walk or take the bus to work, many choosing low paying jobs over long commutes.
 
“People talk rubbish about women who go out to work,” said Momeena, who uses only one name. But she was undeterred. “For me going out is a way to forget all my problems at home.”
 
The problems are plenty. Momeena was born blind in one eye. Her younger daughter, now 10, was born with a more severe disability and cannot walk, talk or move without assistance. An elderly father with whom the family stays in a ramshackle brick house constructed on a 12.5 sq m plot here on the north-west outskirts of Delhi, contributes what he can spare from giving tuition classes at home.
 
Momeena wasn’t waiting for her husband’s approval. “I don’t need his permission,” she said, “At least now I don’t have to beg for money from my family and neighbours every time my child is ill.”
 
It wasn’t easy for her to get a job. Not many people want to hire a woman with one eye. But a neighbour put in a word, and Momeena now has a job that pays her Rs 5,500 a month for cutting loose threads from purses eight hours a day, six days a week.

 
 
She’s not complaining. It’s a regular income for a woman who has only studied until the sixth grade. Unlike many women here who prefer to walk to work, Momeena takes a shared rickshaw, the fare each way is Rs 5, but she has no other choice since the factory is too far away for her to reach on foot.
 
India’s women are opting out of employment at a rising rate. Over 10 years to 2011, the year of the last census, as many as 19.6 million women fell off the job map at a time of increasing educational attainment and economic growth. At 24%, India’s female labour force participation is now the second-lowest in South Asia, just above Pakistan.
 
IndiaSpend’s ongoing nationwide investigation (read part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, part 6, part 7 and part 8), which examines why women are quitting jobs, revealed a complex layer of constraints, from the burden of housework to social attitudes.
 
In part 9 of the series we visit a resettlement colony on the outskirts of Delhi to understand the link between physical infrastructure, specifically transportation, and women’s participation in economic activity.
 
Located some 40 km away from the broad, tree-lined boulevards of Lutyen’s Delhi, Bawana (population: 73,680), like many of the city’s 45 resettlement colonies on the periphery of India’s capital, is the sum of its discards. When the Supreme Court ordered polluting industries out of Delhi, they came here. When slums were demolished and squatters were rendered homeless, they, too, came here.
 
Across India, women bear the highest cost of forced eviction. For instance, if the slum where a domestic worker lives is relocated to the outskirts of the city, she is not likely, given the cost and time taken, to be able to travel 40 km or so to get to work. And, so, she will end up quitting her job and will opt for a low-paying one that is closer home.
 
Data released by Census 2011 show the very different ways in which men and women commute to work, a story reported by IndiaSpend here.
 
In India’s metros, women travel shorter distances, with most preferring to walk or take the bus to work. Men seem to have greater choice, with bicycles, two-wheelers and four-wheelers to choose from.
 
Across India’s cities, women form only 22% of people who travel for work. In Delhi, it’s just 15%, according to Census 2011. “Women’s choices, whether for jobs or for colleges, is often determined by distance,” said Kalpana Viswanath of Safetipin, an NGO that supports safer cities.
 
For instance, Viswanath said, a 2017 study by economist Girija Borker found that women in Delhi University actually chose lower-ranked colleges if it made their commute shorter and safer.
 
Women may turn down better employment opportunities further away from home in favour of lower-paying jobs when public transportation is unreliable or unaffordable, said Viswanath.
 
Men and women also use public transportation very differently, found a December 2017 report, Women and Transport in Indian Cities, by the Institute for Transportation & Development Policy (ITDP) and Safetipin. For instance, women tend to combine multiple destinations within one trip–to pick up groceries on the way back from office, or drop a child off to childcare on the way to work.
 
“Gender-responsive transportation recognises not only the differences in the way men and women travel, but also addresses the inequities which women and girls face as users, transport workers and decision makers,” said urban planner and the report’s lead author, Sonal Shah. The goal of such an approach is to “enable women and girls’ access to social and economic opportunities”.
 
Safety concerns means women can’t leave home
 
Momeena’s family moved to Bawana from Yamuna Pushta in the early 2000s. Like the other houses on her lane, her house has no attached toilet, and since her daughter cannot be carried to the community toilet, she goes to the toilet on her bed, and Momeena just washes the sheets everyday. Like the other residents here, she gets running water for two hours every morning.
 
“Public policy can address inequalities in the household division of labour by supporting initiatives that reduce the amount of time women spend doing unpaid work,” noted a 1995 World Bank study. Improved water, sanitation, electrification and public transport are examples of policy intervention that would enable women to devote more of their time to income-generating, income-augmenting and income-saving activities, said the study.
 
Momeena’s house is located on one of the many identical narrow bylanes of the slum, lined with open sewers, goats and chickens running alongside. Piles of garbage lie rotting. Flies are everywhere.
 
But more than the lack of sanitation, for most parents, the big concern is the lack of safety. Described as the ‘most crime-wracked borough in the most crime-wracked city in the country’, outer Delhi (including Bawana) saw 1,093 abductions of children–an average of three a day–between June 1, 2014 and March 31, 2015, according to National Crime Records Bureau data.
 
For parents, this means extraordinary vigilance. Many mothers are simply unable to leave their children unattended and unsupervised for long hours. Momeena’s younger daughter is looked after by her elder daughter who is in the seventh grade. Her parents who live above her keep an eye on the girls. Is she worried about their safety when she’s gone? Momeena shrugged but looked away.
 
Shafeeqan, who also uses one name, has a husband who doesn’t have a regular job. So she needs to supplement the household income, which she does by packing agarbattis (incense sticks) at home. After sorting them according to size, she must make bundles of exactly 44 similar-sized agarbattis, six of these bundles are then slipped into in a tight, plastic sheath cover. For every 1,000 of these bundles of six–roughly a full day’s work–she is paid Rs 25.
 
“It’s very hard work but I don’t have a choice since I can’t go out and work until my daughter gets married,” she said.
 
Bawana was once slated to be the great industrial hub of Delhi, with small and medium enterprises churning out plastic toys, shoes, handbags, garments, fans, light bulbs, biscuits and so on. This dream didn’t quite materialise and, according to one report, over 5,500 of 16,000 factories and industrial plots are either vacant or not operational.
 
The women prefer factory jobs, such as they are, because they pay better than piecemeal work done at home, even though most pay only a third of the legally-mandated minimum wage of Rs 14,052.
 
Jamuna Kumari, who quit school after the sixth grade, has worked in various factories since she was 13. She earns Rs 8,500 at her present job at a readymade garments factory, working eight hours a day, six days a week.
 
Both Jamuna’s parents work in factories, as do two elder sisters. The youngest is still in school in the 11th grade. The responsibility of getting dinner ready falls on this sister. “Someone has to cook since we’re all exhausted when we get back,” shrugged Jamuna.
 
Like most women who work in factories, Jamuna prefers to walk to work. It’s a 30-minute walk each way along the Bawana Canal, a long, narrow stretch of water where boys can be seen swimming and older men drinking and doing drugs. Petty theft along this canal is so commonplace that it is often not even reported to the police, said Jamuna. The real danger is of more serious crimes against women, including rape, and so Jamuna knows better than to walk to work and back alone.
 
Groups of boys pass lewd comments, but it’s a daily hazard that she has learned to ignore, she said.
 
Sexual harassment on public spaces in Delhi is now so commonplace that it has become a stereotype–a fact of life that girls and women like Jamuna take in their stride.
 
Sexual harassment in public places is rampant and an overwhelming concern of 85.4% women–higher than fears of a violent physical attack and even rape–found a 2010 study of 5,010 women and men in Delhi by the NGO Jagori.
 
Almost two of three women reported facing sexual harassment between two to five times over the previous year. The harassment occurred day and night, in places secluded and crowded with most being reported from buses, public transport and roadsides, found the report.
 
Another report by ActionAid, released in 2016, found that 79% of women surveyed had experienced some form of harassment in public.

 
‘Transportation is the fulcrum that gets women to jobs’
 
The December 2012 gang-rape and murder of a young medical student in a bus in Delhi resulted in a focus on safety in public transportation. Various schemes have been announced, from GPS tracking and video recording in public transport vehicles, in 32 cities to a proposal for women-only ‘Tejaswini’ buses with women drivers and conductors in 2016 in Maharashtra.
 
“What we need currently is an economic development and a rights-based approach as well as concrete recommendations and actions to be taken by different stakeholders,” said Sonal Shah, the urban planner “Since gender is not a core competence in urban local bodies, there is a gap in understanding what they need to do.”
 
“Transportation is the fulcrum that allows women to participate in the workforce,” said Shah.
 
Yet, the factories prefer hiring younger women, said Radha, a social worker with Jagori who lives in Bawana. The reasons are many: Women workers are paid less, and they don’t generally unionise or agitate for their rights. When a fire at a firecracker storage unit broke out on January 21, 2018, 10 of the 17 workers killed were women.
 
The women don’t mind working in the factories because this is the best work they can get for their limited education, said Radha. But after 40, it is impossible to get any work in the factories.
 
Aarti Devi was laid off some six months ago and now does piecemeal work for a fan factory, assembling a plastic part that she calls a ‘conductor’, making Rs 90 for every 1,000  ‘conductors’ she assembles by screwing eight tiny bolts with an equally tiny screwdriver. It’s a job that strains her eyes, and, so, when her kids are home, everybody pools in and helps her complete her required 1,000 pieces.
 

Aarti Devi does piecemeal work for a fan factory, assembling a plastic part that she calls a ‘conductor’, making Rs 90 for every 1,000 ‘conductors’. It’s a job that strains her eyes, and, so, when her kids are home, everybody pools in and helps her complete her required 1,000 pieces.
 
The women are vulnerable to the slightest fluctuations in the job market.
 
Immediately after demonetisation, many lost jobs, as did their husbands. “I sat at home for five months without any work,” said Jamuna “It was an awful time.”
 
This is the latest in an ongoing nation-wide IndiaSpend investigation into India’s declining female labour force participation.
 
Read previous stories in this series:
 
Part 1: Why Indian workplaces are losing women
 
Part 2: In a Haryana factory, tradition clashes with aspiration
 
Part 3: Housework keeps India’s women at home (but some are changing that)
 
Part 4: India’s hospitality sector must first win over the parents of the skilled women it needs
 
Part 5: Why India’s most educated women are leaving jobs faster than others
 
Part 6: Why Himachali women work: the answer in a jam factory
 
Part 7: Judge to Worker: The spread of sexual harassment in India
 
Part 8: Bihar’s poorest women are changing their lives, with a little help
 
(Namita Bhandare is a Delhi-based journalist who writes frequently on the gender issues confronting India.)

Courtesy: India Spend
 

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