December has been one helluva month. A quick day trip to Ahmedabad in the first week of December, and then a week long trip to Gurgaon. Yes! Mentioning Delhi shames me!
On the fateful day of 16th December, I was in Delhi and was scheduled to return back to Mumbai. Little did I know that the very streets and roads I took to reach the airport during the day would be in national news the next day for all the wrong reasons?
A 23 year old girl is gang raped in a moving bus on the streets of Delhi!
From then on, thousands of people have descended on the streets across the country, protesting and demanding the harshest punishment possible to the culprits. Is it about that one incident?
No! Such things keep happening at an alarming frequency in our country, and this one incident is the trigger which has caught the imagination of the country.
We Indians are a reactive lot. Hear about anything that disturbs us, and we react, and as it is with reactions, it dies out gradually.
Capital punishment, Castration, bobbitization, etc are the demand calls, and it may very well be awarded to the culprits of this case, and rightfully so. But does it end there? What steps are we ensuring that such an incident does not repeat?
Till now everyone, ranging from Sushma Swaraj, Sonia Gandhi and Sheila Dikshit have spoken about the tough punishment that should be handed out the culprits.
While better law enforcement, and stricter laws, is one part of the solution, the more sustainable long term solution is the very mindset.
Trying to understand the psychosis of the culprits, what provokes them to act in such a ghastly manner? An attitude which tells them internally that they can get away with it. This is the very root cause which needs to be tackled. And How?
It is time for a mindset change in the way we think.
In a patriarchal society like ours, where women are not allowed to talk in front of others, such incidents are bound to happen, and most of them would go unreported! This is what gives confidence to the culprits.
Right from folks at home, to the ones in power, everybody seems to be having a opinion on what a woman should do and what she should not. Why this discrimination. Are we not in a free country, and is the woman not an equal part of it?
The respect that a woman deserves should be given, and is capital punishment is the precedent for the same so is it.
What do you think is the sustainable solution to this growing menace?
Harsh as it may sound, this surely is the moment, when I am not at all proud to be an Indian!