By Rohit Singh:
Women of India are still not safe. This issue has been raised again but no one is really bothered in this nation to do something about it. Whether she is a college student travelling in some train, a working woman returning home or a housewife walking on a road, from a child of tender years to a lady 65 years of age, no one is safe. The case of the TV journalist Soumaya Visawanathan, who got killed while she was returning home late night after working in Delhi, had shaken everyone. On top of it Chief Minister of Delhi, Mrs. Sheila Dixit, infamously commented in an interview that Soumaya was trying to be “adventurous” by returning home all alone at such odd hours.
According to a survey posted on India Today website, one in every two Delhi University girls is sexually harassed. Shalini (name changed) , a student of a university in Chennai, still recalls how she and her friends got ill treatment from fellow passengers while they were back on their way after an outing and how everyone in that local train compartment was a mute spectator.
This kind of treatment is restricted not just to the natives but extends also to the foreigners visiting our country; the rape case filed by a British tourist in Goa in January 2008 was just one of the more publicised ones. Even in villages, some women as old as 50 years of age have the agony of being tagged as witches and are stripped naked and paraded around in the village.
So why is nothing being done except increasing women’s quota to 50 % in parliament, something that hardly matters if the common woman is still unsafe and prone to all kinds of dangers possible in this world. As far as the public is concerned, only a very small percentage of people present do not want to be “just mute spectators” but want to do something and bring a change around them. Rest of the so called “proud Indians” and especially our responsible “ministers” who fail to think beyond a hike in their salaries have accepted this miserable situation as a part of how the world is. The political will has vanished. Why is everyone’s spirit and conscience so dead here? Why can’t we mould India into a safer place for all to live? When will the spirit of being one awaken? The question is still haunting some place in the minds of the upcoming and existing generations of Indians but they do not understand that their actions are the answers to their questions.
The writer is a Correspondent of Youth Ki Awaaz.
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