NEW DELHI: The NARI 2025 National Annual Report and Index on Women’s Safety, released by the National Commission for Women, offers the telling reality of the urban safety landscape. The survey covered 12,770 women across 31 cities and yielded a national safety score of 65%, which implies that four in 10 women (40%) consider themselves unsafe despite government assurances.
Around 60% of women reported feeling safe, while 40% admitted they felt “not-so-safe” or outright unsafe. The anxieties deepen among younger women: while public harassment was reported by 7% of all respondents in 2024, the figure rose to 14% for those under 24, indicating that students and young professionals are disproportionately targeted in educational and recreational spaces.
The report shows low levels of faith in redressal mechanism. Only one in three victims of harassment filed a formal complaint, and confidence in the system is strikingly weak: 75% of women said they did not believe authorities would resolve their complaints. Even when incidents are reported, only 22% are formally registered, and action is taken in a mere 16% of those cases, highlighting a pervasive cycle of silence. Harassment hotspots reveal vulnerabilities, with 38% of cases occurring within neighbourhoods and 29% in public transport systems.
Workplace safety presents a paradoxical picture. A large majority—91%—described their office environment as safe, but nearly half of the respondents admitted they were unaware whether their organisation had implemented the mandated Prevention of Sexual Harassment (POSH) mechanism.
Among those who were aware, most found it effective, suggesting that awareness is as critical as legislation itself. The report stresses that women’s safety cannot be reduced to physical protection alone but must include psychological, financial, and digital security that collectively shape women’s access to mobility, opportunity, and dignity. It frames safety as a developmental issue rather than a law-and-order question.
The sense of safety also varies with time and place. Women reported relative comfort in offices and campuses during the day, but confidence collapsed after dark, where poor street lighting and unreliable public transport left them exposed.
City-level disparities are equally stark: Kohima, Visakhapatnam, and Bhubaneswar topped the index, followed closely by Aizawl, Gangtok, Itanagar, and Mumbai, where women expressed relatively higher perceptions of safety. In contrast, Patna, Jaipur, Faridabad, Delhi, Kolkata, Srinagar, and Ranchi occupied the bottom ranks. Ranchi recorded 44% feeling unsafe, while in Delhi and Faridabad the figure was around 42%. The numbers show a fractured urban landscape where geography shapes women’s fears as much as governance.