Everytime I turn on the TV to catch some headlines, someone gets raped. Well, it’s not quite my TV watching that’s responsible for the crime rate, the crime rate is climbing alarmingly without law enforcement and the increasing indifference from society itself. People have become numb to the onslaught of crime and scams and confidence games. Is it getting to the point that, like the caged parrot … er … Sinha(CBI director) said, people think if you cannot stop it, why not just relax and go with the flow? Hey, did you read about that Assam rape festival post on the Internet? What’s with these morons in the West? Hey, did you read about the mutilation and rape of the woman going to pick her child up from school in Assam? What’s with these police in Assam? And so on.

I watch Crime Patrol Dastak from time to time whenever there seems to be a new episode. For some reason, I decided to watch on Sunday evening. They happened to air the episode based on the Nirbhaya rape in New Delhi on 16 December 2012, the one that the I&B ministry had told SONY not to air when it was newly made. It was disturbing to watch even almost a year later. And almost a year later, neither has that horrific rape been the “rarest of rare” crimes nor has the crime rate dropped to demonstrate any effects of all the deliberations of various committees etc. The Fast Track courts still managed to take almost nine months to give a verdict for the four adults accused of Nirbhaya’s rape. The juvenile will be out on the streets in three years minus the time he’s spent in the remand home already. Then again, the Talwars have only now been sentenced almost five and a half years after their daughter’s and domestic help’s murders, so I guess Fast Track is a relative term. In the kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.

With this Tehelka issue, I was surfing the Internet clicking on the cases that appeared below the description of other cases. I was sickened to my stomach to read these cases. Some have led to a few positive changes—that Bangalore rape-murder of the Hewlett-Packard employee by the man impersonating the driver led to companies tightening their security for transporting employees especially in the odd hours of the day/night. Whether this is widespread throughout India and whether this continues now, I don’t know. Railway safety remains dubious even after the case of that brutal rape and murder of the young woman by the man who tried to rob her, threw her off the moving train when she resisted, walked back to see her lying in blood, dragged her into some woods and brutally raped and killed her.

Rural India remains as dangerous and narrow-minded a place as ever with its regressive attitudes towards women’s development and progress and urban India remains a dangerous and narrow-minded place with its callous and aggressive attitudes towards women’s development and progress. Take your pick. In the early 1970s, the nurses and security in KEM Hospital, Mumbai, had written to the hospital authorities requesting them to provide a separate closed changing room for the nurses who had to simply catch a quiet, secluded corner anywhere to change and which was obviously a dangerous thing to do. In 1973, Aruna Shanbaug had reprimanded the ward attendant for stealing food meant for the dogs being used as study subjects and for truancy. Unfortunately, she did not go public with her threat to inform the hospital authorities.

The ward attendant caught her when she was changing in a deserted area and discovering that she was menstruating, penetrated her anally and used a dog leash to strangulate her. He went on to get employment in other hospitals, such are the superior security and quality standards of the Indian workplace. The hospital director, Deshpande, who was part of the system that couldn’t provide a secure changing place for the nurses, suppressed the information about Aruna’s rape, apparently to protect her and her fiancée’s families. She became a vegetable whom the Supreme Court refused to euthanize but in their great humanity and wisdom, decreed that vegetative patients could be allowed to die slowly by passive euthanasia(withdrawing their food).

Now, 40 years later, managements and the so-called law-and-order machinery in India haven’t evolved to become more intelligent or alert or vigilant. Globalization has only been incomplete—we picked up Western outfits and mannerisms but not their systems. Media keep piping up with news and faithfully cover everything that the politicians do to give them ample opportunities to distract the public from their inaction and incompetence. And while crime reporting is on the rise, nothing seems to improve with regard to crime prevention and crime and punishment. What is the National Commission of Women doing? What are all women doing? What are all women and men doing?

I was watching “The Practice” and there was this episode where this distraught widower comes to Eugene Young about getting the death punishment for the man accused of stalking and stabbing his wife to death. Young promises to watch the case first and sees that the accused is a man whom he had helped acquit of a murder years ago so he cannot take the case. During the trial, the DA gets an anonymous note about the widower’s involvement with some other woman and he does not deny it. Ultimately the case is dismissed for lack of sufficient evidence and the accused is acquitted and released(in spite of having made a violent video of his victim). As the accused emerges from the courthouse and Young is speaking to the widower, Young sees a pickup slowing down on the road and someone shoot the accused from the pickup after which the vehicle drives away. Everybody ducks but not the widower. Young soon realizes that the widower knew fully well that Young had been the lawyer to get the accused released many years ago and had deliberately approached him and also sent the anonymous note to the DA to ensure that the case would be dismissed. And he waits for the case to be dismissed and hires a killer to take the trash out.

What am I saying? I am asking questions actually. Why do we see people on the streets, dodging water cannons, carrying placards, wearing black tapes across their mouths, talking to the media about how the crimes make them feel? Why do we hear about families killing their children for family honor but nobody avenges the honor of their relatives who undergo so much pain and mutilation? Would you sit in the dark if the light bulb goes out and talk about how the darkness makes you feel or do you go out and buy a new bulb? If you give your neighbor your spare gas cylinder because they don’t plan ahead and place their orders in advance, do you think they will plan next time or ring your bell again? To clarify my meaning, if you tolerate one crime, do you think people will make sure everything is safe in the future or will they find other ways not to do their jobs?

When we talk of mindset, what are we talking about? Indian men do not consider women to be human beings. All the talk about goddess and devi ma etc is all just superstitious and sanctimonious talk. Indian women also do not consider themselves and other women to be human beings. Ever heard of women threatening their children to do this or that or they will tell Daddy when he comes home? Why? What will Daddy do that they cannot do? Don’t they have authority to be parents? When their sons grow up and get married, do they allow Daddy to intervene when they nitpick their daughters-in-law’s faults? Where is Daddy’s authority then? Indian men in all spheres of life are therefore dismissive of women’s plights because they were never brought up to give any importance to the female. Indian women too have not done anything to train their children or to alter their surroundings and instead of taken the path of least resistance. It’s a lot easier and more profitable to smile, fawn, flirt and side with men, which is what is happening over and over again regardless of the year of and people involved in these crimes.