Our society boasts of treating woman as Goddess! The Dusserah season celebrated with fervour across the nation is all about worshiping womanhood in the nine forms of Goddess Durga. From ancient times, people had been worshiping her as Adi Shakthi. While all this had been happening in the pretence of religion, the ground reality appears grave!
The disturbing truth
It is extremely frightening to understand the different types of crimes against women recorded by the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) which include Dowry Deaths, Abetment to Suicide of Women, Acid Attack, Cruelty by Husband or his relatives, Kidnapping & Abduction, Kidnapping for Ransom, Kidnapping & Abduction of Women to compel her for marriage, Human Trafficking, Selling of Minor Girls, Assault on Women with Intent to Outrage her Modesty, Insult to the Modesty of Women, Procuring, inducing Children for the sake of prostitution, Seducing or soliciting for purpose of prostitution, Publishing or Transmitting of Sexually Explicit Material, Other Women Centric Cyber Crimes (Ex. Blackmailing/ Defamation/ Morphing/ Fake Profile), Sexual Harassment, Indecent Representation of Women, Murder with Rape/Gang Rape. Such crimes are increasing at an alarming pace in every nook and corner of the country.
Gravity of the Situation
Politicians, religious leaders, human rights activists and women’s organizations continue lecturing on women empowerment and equal rights for women while the crimes against women continue unabated. The statistics of the NCRB reveals the harsh reality! “A total of 4,05,861 cases of crime against women were registered during 2019, showing an increase of 7.3% over 2018 (3,78,236 cases). Majority of cases under crime against women under IPC were registered under ‘Cruelty by Husband or His Relatives’ (30.9%) followed by ‘Assault on Women with Intent to Outrage her Modesty’ (21.8%), ‘Kidnapping & Abduction of Women’ (17.9%) and ‘Rape’ (7.9%). The crime rate registered per lakh women population is 62.4 in 2019 in comparison with 58.8 in 2018.”
Well, let’s understand that all the above numbers are only the reported crimes of 2019 and try to figure out the fate of those that are not reported at all.
The depressing reality
Apart from crimes, women also face a huge disparity in every home and the society at large right from a very early age. The irony is that every woman wishes that her daughter leads a blissful and independent life while the same women do not want their daughters-in-law to be so! Starting there, the differences continue in the distribution of household work, food, clothing and other amenities between boys and girls within the same family. The elders in several families turn a blind eye towards the abuse of the girl child by relatives and friends. Even today, many families curtail the freedom of girls in terms of education, extra-curricular activities, games, sports, friendship and hobbies.
Isn’t it time for all of us to be fair towards the fair sex?
