“Par ap isme Modiji ya Yogi ji ko kyu beech me la rahe ho? (Why are you bringing Modi ji and Yogi ji into this.)”, asked a 65-year-old uncle who has been quite a BJP fan during a heated discussion on the Kathua and Unnao rape cases.
There are many others like him — uncles, aunties, college students, people sending Whatsapp forwards supporting either BJP or Congress with a single-mindedness of a woodpecker.
But the fact that I, as a lazy person, who takes as much interest in politics as a saloon owner in dandruff, is instigated to write this is due to a caustic disgust at what is happening around me.
No, it is not about your esteemed Modi ji or Yogi ji or Rahul ji or Kejriwal ji. It is about the mass rapes in Vachati village that happened in 1992 whose punishment was only granted in 2011. It is about the fact that 54 of the accused, for all the crimes committed on that night in Vachati, died comfortably due to old age before they even served for their crimes.
Look around. When was the last time that you heard a murder, an abduction, a rape having its final verdict announced by the court many years after the crime happened? Probably yesterday.
In a country with one of the highest backlog of cases pending in the world, how can we expect justice for the past rapes, let alone the present ones?
Why aren’t we talking about our understaffed courts, our non-digital court work, the corruption in courts to stall cases where the affluent can buy as much time as they want while the deprived have to give up their life’s savings for a decent lawyer?
Are the tears of the former Chief Justice of India not enough to scream about the state of the Indian judicial system in our faces and the faces of the government? Every government that shouts reforms when in the opposition tries to ‘control the situation’ when ruling.
Now dissolve this: According to NCRB data, the cities with the most rapes were in M.P, Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan. Is this at all shocking that these states fall in the bottom rankings for literacy rates according to the 2011 census?
Certainly, a good education and high qualifications don’t warrant that a person will not rape, but even the possibility that it makes humans more civilized, aware of their rights and sensible gathers enough hope.
Any man earning a decent salary wants to get their child admitted to an English medium private school. Since we all know what happens inside the confines of most Government-run schools. Then what remains the fate of education of the 360 million people (the largest poor section in the world) in our country? It’s no secret that joblessness and crimes go hand in hand.
But we are not talking about higher education here, even strengthening education till the senior secondary level, the framework of our nation by diversion from rote learning, effective checks on the corruption and laxity of government teachers, inculcating gender equality studies might prove impactful.
In the recent years, it has been a vicious pattern to be dumbstruck by a monstrous rape every few days.
After the national outrage, the candle marches, and the heated TV debates subside, we all go back to living with a minimum of 6 rape headlines a day. We have become numb to the normalcy of rape.
Though fast-track courts have been created, laws have been strengthened, the implementation of it seems like the spit marks in government buildings that everyone neglects.
Reforming judiciary and education: two factors like many others that can play a key role in ceasing this increase in rapes that are happening and will happen; are they included in the statement of our leaders running this country?
We have every right to ask and scream to reach out our government at the blatant failure between manifestos and the reality. And if we don’t, we are also at some fault as well.