We keep listening on women getting raped or women getting assaulted at various instances. The recent trending hashtag metoo and many more issues. Before pointing out what women claim that they have been abused or not, let's take a glance at a deeper understanding of the female life in India.
Firstly, marriages in India happen mostly through parents consent. You decide your life partner through your parents approval. The approval of parents is subject to requirements and expectations on the other party which may or may not be their children's.
So why am I talking something which is irrelevant to the concept? I'm explaining it. Marriages in India happen with lot of extravagance which sometimes done interestingly and few times forced to spend a lot due to demands from the other side. There are demands from either side like a girl's party demands higher salaried guy or rich guy and a good guy. Everything is an expectation here and conditional. The demands from the boy's side are dowry and calm girl who can take care of their in-laws. The dowry demand has been rampant in our country. Girl's family is forced to meet the expectations from the guy's side. The unfortunate thing in our country is that we can't give up and look for some other guy because dowry is being practiced by almost everyone in our country. There is literally no escape from this. Its as simple that if you don't want to give dowry, you hardly get a guy. Does an Indian family think that a guy makes money and girl makes to spend the money? It's a bitter truth which we never agree. Despite of giving dowry beyond their limit of expenditure, still they are forced to give gifts in the name of property or gold to the guy. Some may feel pride in giving dowry. There are laws which can protect women in dowry harassment under the section 498A. But, the dowry system in India happens in the closed walls. Of course, there were instances where a strained relationship in marriages have led to false accusations on the husband’s family under the section 498A making husband's parents, brothers and sisters who are sometimes pregnants jailed without verifying the allegations. The mental torture faced by the family have also led to suicides. Most of the times around more than 50%, 498A section is abused by married women with the help of lawyers fabricating false stories. This all happens after the marriage of course, but mostly everyone takes dowry before marriage. So the mistake lies everywhere and we fail to understand exactly what's the actual reason for this whole mess.
A happy marriage is followed by having children. Now, the expectations start again. Most of our Indians irrespective of location where they are from, don't want to have a girl child. People go on looking for a son and end up having several girl childs in their family. Sometimes, people abort their babies when they come to know its a girl child in the foetus. We have seen cases of female infanticide but not male infanticide. This is also a bitter truth we should accept that in India, girl child is given less importance. The preference of boy child over girl child is present in the whole india and the skewed sex ratio portrays everything. Around 1.27 crore sex selective abortions were taken place from 2000 to 2014 which averages approximately 2300 foeticides in a day. Though India has Prohibition of sex selection act, 1994, still there is lot of illegal abortions outnumbering legal abortions. Sometimes the lady is forced to have pregnancy and abortions several times which leads to many health complications. In this particular context, no matter whose fault it may be, the female is treated as a children bearing machine. The reason why I started this discussion with dowry because dowry is the “cause” and female infanticide is the “effect”. This isn't just a sole direct cause and effect relationship. There is still lot more to discuss.
A happy marriage with a girl child at home is still not a solution. Education to the girl child is still lacking. A few reports say that 40% of adolescent girls in India aren't attending the school because they are forced to perform household duties. May be, they are getting prepared for marriage. Indians logic says that a highly educated girl faces difficulty while searching for a groom who should be more educated than her. Fortunately, the trend is slowly changing with regard to education system and hopefully a greater number of girls are involved in education.
So far, I have discussed about the girl child’s oppression at household. Now let's see how they are treated outside. The main problem is security to the girl. Despite of police and law caring women, still security to the girl is always a challenge. There have been several incidents of sexual molestation and rapes happening in India. People pass on some lewd comments on girls when they pass nearby. Few people try to gain sexual favors despite of disinterest. Then people start threatening that they'll harm them. This isn't present just on the road. At workplaces too, senior colleagues try to demand sexual favors in exchange for work benefits or promotions or salary hikes. Most of the times, the victim is afraid to speak up because she may feel that she loses reputation.
Capturing images of a girl and putting in social media without her consent is also a mistake. We cannot predict the outcomes but the morphed pictures and photos getting shared onto various adult websites or dirty facebook pages say that all. It becomes an extremely a disgraceful situation to the girl or their family. It's not just about the morphed pictures but it also means recording or capturing private acts. Most of the times, men try to make unwanted physical contact against the girl's will and the girl becomes helpless at few situations and nobody would be there to rescue her.
So it comes to reporting now. Most of the cases in India either it can be violence against women or rape or any other sexual assault, they are always under reported. An article from Livemint said that 99% of violence against women in India is not reported. Though India stands at a better place in view of violence against women among major countries, we should also not forget the fact that India also have more of under reported cases and marital rape is not a crime in India. These variations in legal systems across countries would also play some role in decreased crime rate in India. There has been sudden spike in the reporting of rape cases since 2013 perhaps due to an unfortunate delhi rape case which shattered people across India and led to nirbhaya act and more awareness and boldness in reporting the cases. But the conviction rate has not been increased due to inefficient judicial system in India. More than 12 lakh cases related to violence against women were pending by the year 2016. We don't know how efficiently those cases are justified and how fast they may justify. This huge number is despite of huge under reported cases. And the crime rate is still rising.
The sexual abuse which has been recently trending with a hashtag ‘metoo’ also says that these acts have been hidden may be due to fear. Many people think those allegations can be false, but we may not deny the facts which I have already discussed. We men know about ourselves how good we are and how we treat women. Most of the times in a sexual abuse, men play role as a seducer.
We give less importance to the girl child at home and also outside. They are more vulnerable to be attacked by molesters. It is the mindset of people which should be changed. Firstly, you should understand who are you to assault a woman. What brings you right to own her? Your freedom should be defined with your own limits which should not affect others freedom. We see people talking vulgarly about women at our workplaces. What brings us the right to speak on them? It's nothing but degrading the social status of the women. You seem to be looking professional at work place and maintain professionality with women at your workplace but you start talking about the same girl in a vulgar manner when she's not around.
Sometimes I feel it's not just the ineffective judicial system which is making people to sexually abuse women. It's the lack of proper moral education which makes people as animals. Because law always enforces people to follow those rules but they never understand the ethical reasons behind the rules which were laid down. Once, when you start thinking it deeply, you would not feel you are forced to follow law. Law can only enforce people but it may not change people's mindset. We should start educating people on a broader sense.
The reason why girl child is less preferred over boy child is because of these several factors. There are still lot more to discuss but majorly these could be the reasons. The skewed sex ratio is because of lack of security to women, ineffective judicial system, lack of proper education system, following old age superstitions, etc. The list goes on. So, How do we bring change? Firstly, you change yourself. That's what is more needed. Let them have independence.
SAVE THE GIRL CHILD!!!
