Sunday, July 7, 2013

Of Women, Rapes and Media

I am so tired and sick of reading news about rapes, almost every day. Women and young girls getting raped is sad and inhumane. Reading these rape incidents made me ask two questions. Are we reading more country because after the Delhi rape case, the media wants to enlighten the people about similar incidents? Or is it because more rapes are happening? Enlightening the people about the events happening around them is a good thing. We can identify the most common causes in which a rape is happening, the locations, the trends-private buses, isolated places, a lonely kid at home and the neighbour who takes advantage of her etc.,. We can take precautions to avoid such situations to the maximum extent possible.

The only harmful part about the rape coverage is when the complete story of the rape is not given. We know that an innocent victim has been raped. What happened to the perpetrators after the crime? Are they brought to justice? How long does it take to bring them to justice? If the media covers only the details of the rape and not the aftermath it could lead to a flux of rapes because people with misogynist and anti-social attitudes feel that they can go away unpunished. This situation reminds me of the suicide story that Malcolm Gladwell wrote in his book, The Tipping Point. In his book, he discusses about the teenage suicide epidemic in South Pacific Islands of Micronesia. The suicide rates were 10 times higher than anywhere else in the world in 1970’s and 1980’s and the kids did it just for fun. Yes, you read it right, for fun. After a string of suicides were publicized by media, kids wanted to try it and see how it felt like to commit a suicide and they died in that process. A similar scenario will happen in our country as well. The only way to avoid rapes is to not only give information about the rape but also glorify the punishment as well. Humiliate the offenders in broad day light with his face exposed and him experience the wrath and hatred of the world. There is nothing worse than public humiliation for any person. Let such baseless beings shiver about the thought of the aftermath of rape even before committing such crime. Cover each step of the trial until the victims get justice. The media must shift the focus from rape to punishment.

We are a very reactive bunch of crowd. Somebody did react after the delhi rape and came up with a scientific rape defense system. Manisha Mohan, an Aeronautical Engineering student from SRM University in Chennai along with her fellow students, Niladhri Basu Bal and Rimpi Tripathi developed an anti-rape bra, which has pressure sensors and detects the change in pressure and sends a 3800 KV electric shock through the garment 82 times. This equipment will also send the GPS co-ordinates of the victim’s location to a relative or to the nearest police station. Kudos to the team, but do we really have to exhort to such extreme measures to keep women safe in our country?