Respect Women

Respect Women

Is it really that difficult to see, or am I missing something?

19 rapes have taken place in a span of one month in Haryana. I simply cannot wrap my head around the supposed solution doing the rounds, where people are considering lowering the marriageable age for girls to 15-16 years. Are we as Indians in general, or those wise Haryanvis in particular, playing dumb, or simply being indifferent? Haven’t there been cases of married women being raped in several parts of the country as well? So how the hell does reducing the marriageable age become a solution? That would be akin to addressing a food shortage problem by asking everyone to stop eating.

And the spineless attitude of law enforcers and politicians alike is only encouraging more such crimes. Where instead of punishing wrong-doers, they are considering punishing the ones who stands at risk, the ones who have been wronged.

I firmly believe that education is the solution. That, of course, combined with strict laws.

There are so many liberties and luxuries we take for granted in India. In Pakistan, a 14 year old girl is willing to lay her life on the line, and why? Just because she wants to learn. And some lowlifes have the sickness in them to pull the trigger on her.

But even that does not frighten her. She still wants to learn. And yet we, an educated society, behave like animals when it comes to respecting women, and act in such a helpless manner when it comes to protecting our citizens. So what is it that we are afraid of?

I think it is time we stop being dependent on crippled law enforcers and politicians, who’re too busy with their thumbs up their collective butts. Let us try to make our own neighbourhoods, cities and towns safer. Let us ourselves create the safer society that we want to live in.

And most importantly, let us educate. Educate our colleagues, friends, acquaintances even. Let us correct people who might harbor disrespect at any level towards women. Let us become more alert, more responsible, and more respectful when it comes to the women in our country. Be it for women we know, or for complete strangers. Let us look out for them and make them feel safer. We owe it to them. After all, none of us would be around right now, were it not for the ‘woman’ who gave birth to us.

Here’s a small something I had tried sometime back [Link: Spread a Message]. If you feel you have workable ideas or suggestions, I’d love to hear from you. It’ll be even better if we could discuss (over coffee, via email or any which way that works for you) and see if we can come up with a workable & easily replicable solution. You can reach me at shrutinshetty@gmail.com, or on Twitter @shrutinshetty.