THE
REAL DETERRENT
The Delhi gang rape incident of December 16,
2012 led to such widespread public outrage as to force the central government
to enact tougher anti rape laws. The incident appeared to have shaken the
conscience of the nation to such an extent as to trigger a sense of hope that
we would see a reduction, if not the end, of such incidents in future. The hope
has been belied. Since then, the country has continued to witness a number of
high profile rape incidents, where victims were not only Indians, including
minor children, but even foreign tourists. The Mumbai gang rape incident of the
22 year old girl is the latest in this sequence of ugly events, which continue
to take place unhindered and uninterrupted.
Why
is this happening and why are we not able to control it? When the rape incident
of Delhi girl was followed by the gang rape of a Swiss tourist woman in Madhya
Pradesh, the Chinese Communist Party-run Global Times newspaper felt that “the
frequent rape cases cast a shadow on the quality of Indian democracy.” They
called it an indicator of the “failure” of India’s democracy to ensure good governance”
and “the weakness and incompetence of India's democratic system.” The quality
of governance at present may not be of the required standard, but to ascribe
the increasing incidence of rapes in the country to the failure of democracy is
somewhat far-fetched and fanciful. The reasons for continued assaults on
women’s dignity that keep on happening in this country lie elsewhere. There are
many reasons, but two are prominent. One is weak law enforcement and the other
is conservative mindset.
Whenever
such incidents occur, people blame the laws. The anti rape law in the country
presently is quite harsh, as 20 year sentence is a fairly severe punishment.
But people want stricter penalties, like chemical castration, death penalty,
hanging the accused in public, flogging them etc. Despite all the evidence, we
are not willing to accept that the effectiveness of laws in dealing with crimes
lies not in how harsh they are or how stringent is the punishment they
prescribe, but in how successfully they are enforced. Research done in the
field of criminology has clearly established that it is the certainty of
punishment and not its severity that deters people from committing crime.
This
element of certainty is missing from the scene because law is not being
enforced effectively. Enforcement of law has to be interpreted not merely in
terms of police action but as the effective completion of the process of
criminal justice, from the registration of FIR to final judgement in the case.
The way the criminal justice system is functioning in this country, it holds no
great terror to even the first timers, what to talk of the hardened criminals.
While crime is increasing, conviction rate is declining. In 1971, conviction
rate of total IPC crime was 62%, but by 2010, it had declined to 40.7% and in
respect of rape it was as low as 26.6 %. Thus about 73.4% of those accused of
committing rape get away after committing crime. This figure would be much
higher if you include the number of cases in which FIRs are not registered or police
do not succeed in charge sheeting the accused. Add to this the fact that the
number of cases pending in courts is becoming alarmingly large and it takes
years to settle them and you have the full picture about the ineffectiveness of
the law enforcement machinery. According to data compiled by the Parliamentary
Research Services (PRS), on 30th September, 2010, 2.8 crore cases were pending
in subordinate courts, 42 lakhs in High Courts and 55 thousands in the Supreme
Court. Justice is being delayed and denied. It is this ineffective enforcement
that has reduced the deterrent effect of law.
Another
reason why such crimes continue to occur in our society is our mindset, the way
we look at women in our day to day lives. The cultural norms and traditions that
flourish in our patriarchal society lower the dignity of women. Inside or
outside the family, we do not treat them with respect. Violence against women
gets its support from this type of environment.
A
French tourist woman who came to India complained that even though she did not
face any molestation, she was always afraid of the violence she saw in the eyes
of some Indian males. Similar experiences were encountered by an American
student Michaela Cross, from the University of Chicago, who came to India on a
study trip for three months last year. During her stay, she experienced such
relentless sexual harassment that she returned to her country with
post-traumatic stress disorder. In her write up on the visit “India: the Story
You Never Wanted to Hear,” she says that though she had prepared for the visit,
“there was no way to prepare for the eyes, the eyes that every day stared with
such entitlement at my body, with no change of expression whether I met their
gaze or not. Walking to the fruit seller's or the tailor's I got stares so
sharp that they sliced away bits of me piece by piece.”
Societal attitudes will
take time to change. What the police and others like parents and teachers need
to do is to draw lessons from the “Broken Windows” theory of criminology.
According to this theory, small acts of deviance, if ignored, escalate into
more serious and major crimes. Do not therefore ignore incidents of eve teasing
or molestation on the basis that youngsters are entitled to some indulgence or
of domestic violence on the ground that they are a family matter. In addition,
the whole criminal justice system must work so that crime against women no
longer remains a “low risk” proposition. Resources must be devoted to making
the functioning of the entire criminal justice system more effective than it
presently is.
This is the original version of the article published in the India Express dated August 27, 2013
