HOW SAFE ARE OUR METROS FOR WOMEN?
“A 51 year old Danish national gang raped in Delhi!” “A 16 year old student was raped by a group of men in Mumbai!” “A journalist was gang raped by 4 men in abandoned mills in Mumbai!” If you’ve been following news lately, you must have figured it out by now that these are the news which are becoming headlines now-a-days. And these are the events which took place in the span of last 4 to 5 months.
According to the reports released by UN, a woman is getting molested every 3 minutes and raped in every 14 minutes in India. It is not that all of a sudden, India became “unsafe” for women but it’s just that these incidents have started getting reported more now in the media. It is a good thing- as women are taking a stand and are not ashamed of being a victim of any of the gruesome crimes but are ready to fight against it. But the question is– Are women safe? Are they safe while travelling? Are they safe while they travel in the safest vehicle (Metro)? India’s biggest and the busiest cities- Delhi, Mumbai, and Chennai etc. are all caught up in crossfire! No place is safe anymore! No one is to be trusted! And still we have famous personalities saying that Girls arouse a man to rape her by wearing short clothes! Are you out of your mind? A 5-year old is getting raped brutally, what does she do to arouse a man? I can bet that she doesn’t even know what that means! The problem is not with the system, not with a girl’s dressing sense. But it is with us, and our mentality! All the people who think that if a girl is out with guy (friends) late in the night “deserves” to get raped are to be blamed. People believe that they are broad-minded when they say- “It’s safe for a girl to be in a metro, she is just being ambitious”. But the fact is that you cannot even go out with your friends without being the “object of interest”—pardon my language here, but that is how a woman is viewed as! Without being subjugated by countless stares, you are not expected to even pass a busy street. According to the reports released by National Crime Record Bureau, Delhi is the least safe place for women in India with the highest number of rape cases followed by Mumbai, Jaipur, Indore and Bhopal with the number of crimes increasing by 16,000 in a year making India one of the least safe places for women globally.
Now, it’s up to us to decide do we want this to continue? Do we want to be known as the country “where women get raped?” it’s all in our hands. Either we can change ourselves or we can complain about the world being a bad place! You choose! ————- ABOUT THE AUTHOR: This article is contributed by Kriti Tiwari, our intern. Kriti is a media student from Mumbai. She loves to read and is passionate about writing and dancing. She loves music and is ever so curious to know more and more about the world.
