Gender violence not just a legal issue
Gender-based violence must be tackled as a social problem as well as from the perspective of law and order. Too often, responses to cases of violence focus on one or the other—stronger laws and stringent punishments, without tackling the structural issues that contribute to such violence.
In Tamil Nadu, two recent cases of rape—one involving months of coercion, blackmail and harassment—have resulted in a concern about the state of law and order in the state. Unfortunately, these questions are often addressed through interventions of limited utility, such as installing more CCTV cameras. A more effective deterrent would be to empower survivors to file police complaints by making this process sensitive and quick, prosecuting such cases in a timely manner and improving conviction rates.
While the TN police now say that more survivors, especially younger women, are coming forward to register complaints, the fact remains that the process as it now exists largely revictimises survivors. A case in point is the two years it took the Chennai police to act on a complaint of rape against an IIT Madras scholar registered in 2020. It is not only at the police side that bottlenecks exist. Even POCSO cases can drag on for years, at significant cost to the survivor and family. Earlier reportage by this newspaper showed that sometimes pendency was the result of a special court going months without a judge! The assurance of sensitive survivor-centred processes and speedy trials will boost the confidence of complainants while shattering that of offenders.
Another important intervention is meaningful gender-sensitivity training among school and college students. This is in the pipeline, going by state policy documents. Not only will this training help seed real social change but it will also help better tackle gender-based violence committed by minors by challenging toxic values that youngsters may uncritically imbibe from family, friends and pop culture. Significantly, these interventions must focus on all children and not just girls as has too often been the case.