Being A Woman It’s Difficult To Live In India – OpEd
Being a woman is difficult, particularly when someone is in India where a girl is raped every 20 minutes. Even in the present day the twenty-first century, India is still not a safe place for women. This country has been designated as one of most violent place on the planet for women.
Recently on January 19, 2021, top Indian athletes arranged sit-in mass demonstrations against the sport’s director, a BJP lawmaker, as well as several coaches. The head of the sports organization and a number of coaches have been accused of sexually harassing several female athletes, and the opposition has questioned the government’s silence in the matter. But this is not the first incident of its kind when the BJP is not active against such heinous crimes.
According to court records, the Narendra Modi administration in India authorized the discharge of 11 men who had been found guilty and given life sentences for gang-raping a Muslim woman and killing members of her family in the 2002 Gujarat religious riots. Legal blog The Leaflet shared on social media the approval letter from India’s home ministry, which is run by close Modi ally Amit Shah. As per 2018 survey conducted by the Thomson Reuters Foundation, “India is the most dangerous country in the world for women, ahead of Afghanistan, Syria, and Saudi Arabia”.
Although the Bharatiya Janata Party claimed that women were “nation builders” in its 2014 election manifesto and devoted a significant portion of its promises to them. The manifesto made the claim that women’s security is a requirement for their economic empowerment and outlined a number of measures increase women’s security. However the facts indicate that crimes against women have not decreased despite his BJP government being in office for eight years. Except for 2020, when the Covid-19 pandemic swept through India and a strict lockdown compelled the nation to lock down for several months, the statistics show a consistent rise year over year in violations against women. Resultantly when the Modi administration on July 20, 2018, faced the first no-confidence motion in parliament, presented its record on women’s empowerment.
Here rises an important question that has conditions for Indian women actually changed? First of all the government has not taken any action to address the low level of female political participation in India. According to the Inter-Parliamentary Union, India have less than 12% of women in both the lower and upper houses of parliament i.e. 147th out of 188 nations. Moreover, In terms of health and safety from sexual harassment and assault the situation is far from worse. Nearly all types of crimes against women have augmented in frequency recently; thousands of incidents of dowry harassment, assault, kidnapping, and rape have been reported in the past years.
The story does not end here — India’s second highest organized crimes is still human trafficking. Despite being illegal under Indian law millions of women are frequently trafficked illegally through India as forced labor, child marriages as well as commercial sexual exploitation. According to a Reuters study, 16 million women and girls in India are the victims of sex trafficking out of the country’s estimated 20 million commercial prostitutes. As per Legal Services India record after every three out four girls become prostitutes against their will.
According to the most recent government report, India reported 31,677 cases of rape in 2021, or 86 cases per day on average, while there were nearly 49 cases of crime against women reported every single hour. The National Crime Records Bureau’s (NCRB) report 2021 states that there were 28,046 rape cases in 2020 compared to 32,033 in 2019. The Ministry of Home Affairs is in charge of the NCRB. In comparison to 2020, there was a 19.34% increase in rape cases in 2021.
There have been new laws passed and initiatives started. However India must recognize that women too have rights and those rights must be upheld. There needs to be a better law and policy enforcement to provide women with equal opportunities and safeguard them from domestic abuse and other forms of maltreatment.
In ancient Indian culture, women were treated as equal to men, and there was no discrimination on the bases of gender, instead of that women were honored by society, and society at the time considered women as Janani which means giving birth (mother), even in Hindu scripts women are considered as Devi. They used to enjoy their full basic rights where they were free to receive education, at that time the wives of the rishis could willing to take part in spiritual activities with their husbands, they were also known as the Ardhangini (better half) too. In the Vedic era, they were a complete symbol of protector and caretaker of mortality and ideals.
Even now in India the women empowerment is all around, however incidents as mentioned do happen and are strictly dealt with .Imagine what is the status of women in the Indian neighbourhood of Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran.India has women Prime ministers,Presidents, Chief ministers,Governors judges and generals and still people like talking about “Being A Woman It’s Difficult To Live In India”.Look with in your own society before commenting on others.Adequate laws exist in India to safeguard their women.Political parties have nothing to do with this it is the culture and ancient tradition of INDIA that women were honored and respected by society which is still followed.However, criminals and bad elements exist in all societies imagine gun culture killings in the US!
Hi: I agree with the main point the author makes.
And I agree with the equality in ancient times, too.
But now, things have become worse–due to the Chaos caused by Muslim-Christian gangs taking over India from 1050-2023CE (you know Congress/BJP can’t undo after mess-up of ~1,000 Yrs.)