What Can Be Done For Rapid Elimination Of Rapes In India

Posted: February 28, 2021

Isn’t it tragic that unless the rape doesn’t involve extreme brutality and barbarity, we as citizens don’t find it to be worthy of our outrage and time?

It’s a new day and a bright and fresh morning. You wake up and get out of bed. You have your morning tea while reading the newspaper. You read about politics, sports, and all the latest Bollywood gossip. Amidst all this commotion, the news of gang rape in some remote area of your state lies in a corner when your eyes catch a glimpse of it. It seems like an ordinary article at this point. You bother reading the highlights, ‘a 13-year-old’, ‘3 men’, ‘family dispute’, just the usual. You move on to the next article. The end.

The tragic absence of outrage

Something that ticks me off more than the issue of rapes in our country is the normalization of the issue of rapes in our country. Isn’t it tragic that unless the rape doesn’t involve extreme brutality and barbarity, we as citizens don’t find it to be worthy of our outrage and time? But we aren’t the ones to blame here because according to India Today, with an average of 88 rape cases EVERY DAY, we simply cannot afford to have our time invested in every single one of them, so instead we wait until something that really catches our attention every single time. And trust me, the bar keeps getting higher.

But the question that’s bothering me is “Why?”. Why have we reached this stage? Probably because of the lack of justice served. The conviction rate here is as low as 27.8%. This means, out of 100 accused, only 28 get convicted.

Every time despite full-fledged outrage from the citizens we fail to see the problem being eliminated from society. From the Aruna Shanbaug case in 1973 to the Hathras gang rape in 2020, no amount of outrage or protests could help curb the issue. The problem still prevails. So what is it that’s going wrong? Why are our efforts ineffective and fruitless?

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