Divya, my young cousin, is convinced that I prefer the ‘real’ world to the ‘virtual’ one. Gasp. She also imagines that I can provide her with her periodic intellectual fix. Gasp and chuckle. The last couple of weeks have been hot, grimy, dusty, and extremely real. Not very intellectual perhaps (in the sense of Parisian cafes and languid philosophy), but certainly hot, grimy, dusty, and extremely thought-provoking. My team and I have been spending time in Raichur – the north Karnataka district with the dubious distinction of having the lowest Human Development Index (HDI) in Karnataka – looking at how we might better create an environment of safety and protection for its women and children. As with all else in our country, it will take will to change. And the attitude to match. An attitude that will value women and children over cheap labour, easy sex and coerced money making.
Sattva, an online magazine for ‘realising equilibrium in social change’ asked me to write about the Gender Sensitisation and People-friendly Police Project, for their March (‘Women’s Day Special’) issue of the magazine. Having just watched an infuriating episode of ‘We the People’ on NDTV, with Barkha Dutt asking whether we ‘still need feminism’, I was provoked enough to write the following piece:
Policing Change: A Personal Perspective on Violence against Women and Children
A well known TV news channel in English had a Women’s Day special recently, asking the question ‘Do we still need feminism?’ As someone who has worked with the Karnataka police for the past few years on issues of violence against women and children (and is a feminist), I found it startling and disturbing, that so many participants on that talk show – including a senior woman police officer from Punjab – had no sense of the extraordinary moment of crisis we are in, as a country, as a ‘civilisation’, as a community of human beings.
India is missing from its population, over 50 million women and girl children (Census of India, 2001). ‘Missing’ because they are either killed (before birth, immediately after birth, or during their lifetime; one estimate says that 5 women die every day over dowry disputes) or trafficked (for commercial sexual exploitation, labour and other activities). 50 million is 5 crores, i.e. approximately the population of Karnataka; as I tell the police officers who participate in our workshops, there would be unimaginable world-wide horror if a bomb wiped out Karnataka tomorrow, but this ‘bomb’ of gender-based violence has been quietly exploding all over our country, in our homes or in a home near us, and there are very few who hear or see it. There is another ‘bomb’ that also exists: of those who are not killed, but who die many deaths in their every day living.