Stopping rape in India: It's important to fix poverty, inequality as well

Since the Delhi gangrape last year, the outrage and debates over rapes have been unprecedented although statistically they led to nothing. There were either more rapes and gangrapes, or more cases of reported rapes. Unsurprisingly, there are two points of view that have sought to to crack the phenomenon and look for solutions - one looks at it as purely an issue of crime that should be handled by law-and-order fixes while the other goes a bit deeper and calls it a result of the gross inequality that Indian women have suffered for generations. Police, politicians and knee-jerk hardliners toed the first line while gender-activists followed the second path. [caption id=“attachment_1103351” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Capital punishment is not the answer: AFP[/caption] Both are right, but only to some extent - rape is a heinous crime and one of its determinants is gender inequality wired into our social values, and the men’s belief in their “entitlement to sex” as a UN report said on Tuesday. The crime needs deterrent punishment too. But is that all? In our quest for answers and solutions during times of crisis, do we connect all the dots? That too in our complex and fragmented societies of 1.2 billion people? Interestingly, there were a few voices that offered something more fundamental. They were of course weak blips in the overall cacophony, but prompt us to look at the complexity of the situation a little more rationally. In an interview to Der Spiegel on a totally different subject - the current economic crisis of India - economist Jayati Ghosh linked the hopelessness of the country’s youth, who see no future for themselves, to the increasing incidence of rapes in India. Academically, it is not a radically new position, but in the last one years only very few in India had the courage to say that because it went against the popularly held notions and outrage on the streets and TV studios. Let’s look at the the relevant questions by Spiegel journalist and Ghosh’s answers: Spiegel: Ahead of the parliamentary election next year, nobody believes the government has the courage to reform. What happens if your country falls even further behind in the process of catching up? Ghosh: Then we will face political and social chaos on a mass scale, and an increase in violence against women, as we are already seeing.  Spiegel: So the shockingly high number of rapes in India has economic causes?  Ghosh: Yes, and the degree of viciousness has gone up. Many unemployed young men see no future for themselves. They hang around on the streets, they see how others are enjoying their wealth, and that drives them mad. Then they go out and rape women, or vent their frustration at Muslims or members of lower castes. We will see much more of this kind of violence. It really scares me. A couple of days ago, politician Jaya Jaitely also said something similar on TV. She said social inequality was one of the reasons for the rapes- the rapists also wanted to subjugate somebody. It appeared simple, but did point to the many inequalities of our society and the issue of power. This is precisely the point many international academics have been trying to establish while scientifically analysing the reasons for rape. Criminality and gender inequality are certainly key contributing factors (some say even pornography), but a critical point that we miss in India is what Ghosh and Jaitely pointed to - “social disorganisation.” Social disorganisation refers to conditions that preclude the ability of traditional institutions such as family, community and even religion to govern social behaviors. The Social Disorganisation Index (SDX) that researchers use, include factors like geographical mobility, divorce, lack of religious affiliation, men who live alone, female-headed households with children and ratio of tourists to residents All the four convicts, and the one who committed suicide in jail, in the Delhi gangrape case come from such socially disorganised backgrounds - most of them lived in slums, came from broken families, were single men, and either grew up with criminals or were socially deviant themselves. They lived on the margins of society that the mainstream didn’t bother about. So were the men in the Mumbai or Manipal gangrapes. Since the Delhi gangrape, there has been unmissable public anger against rapes in the country and clear certainty for strong punishment - including the possible death penalty - but the rapists in Mumbai and Manipal didn’t seem to bother with this tide of opinion. Either they didn’t know what was going on in the country or they didn’t care. Or the social conditions around them blocked them out. In a study of rape in America, Yale researchers, Larry Baron and Murray Straus have succinctly summarised how social disorganisation turns mens into rapists: Poorly integrated and unstable communities reduce the social constraints against rape. [caption id=“attachment_1103361” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] We can’t afford to look the other way much longer: Reuters[/caption] What it means is that the tolerance of acts such as rape is so low in such socially disorganised societies, that the men from such backgrounds are susceptible to the criminal temptation of pouncing on women. Crime also has similar drivers. “The combination of sexism, social disorganization, unemployment, economic inequality, and the alienating conditions of urban life precipitates rape,” say Baron and Staus. This is exactly what Jayati Ghosh or Jaya Jaitely also said and what most of our prime-time gender-activists and politicians failed to acknowledge. A research paper in the Justice Quarterly (Vol 6, Issue 4) in 1989 argued that “inequality produces lifestyles which are associated with the opportunity for offenders and victims to come into contact with each other outside the company of suitable guardians. This American study showed that opportunities coupled with inequality (economic and racial) played an important part in rape and why some women in some areas were more at risk. Yet another study, that looked at the linkages between poverty, inequality and theories of forcible rape also found that poverty and inequality abetted rape. It’s not surprising that the solutions - tough laws, agitated judges and angry street protests - are not working because the fundamental reasons are hardly addressed. The perpetrators by and large come from a different milieu and there are no social constraints to guide them. Unless we get sympathetic to such zones, our women will continue to be unsafe. That is a politically complex problem that cannot be fixed by Sushil Kumar Shinde or the Delhi police commissioner, who are quick with their solutions. Which means that we are back to the basics - poverty, inequality and social integration (plus certainly the social transformation that should kill the notion and expression of male dominance as we have discussed many times before). We cannot trust the UPA government and the planning commission - who have rigged poverty estimates down to 21.9 by fixing a ridiculous Rs 33.33 in cities and Rs 27.2 in rural areas - with addressing poverty and inequality. Given the current food price inflation and other basic expenses of life, in real terms, it’s simple common sense to assume the number of poor people is remarkably higher. For once, the World Bank’s estimate of 68.7 per cent (for less than two dollars a day) looks more reasonable. Anyway, irrespective of whatever the government says, bulk of India is hopelessly poor and brutally unequal. Therefore, along with other determinants, policies to address rape should also address this social disorganisation and marginalisation of a large number of people. Baron and Straus suggest implementation of policies that will seek to construct a society in which women have equal rights with men; eradicate the demoralising and brutalising conditions of poverty and economic inequality; strengthen family and community ties to reduce the alienation and stress of urban life; and restructure male gender roles, in both sexual and nonsexual relationships, to emphasize warmth, equality, and supportiveness rather than aloofness, dominance, and violence. So, we need to remove the blinkers and see the larger social reality that surround us, particularly when the popular solutions are not working. And the silos that our wise women and men speak from should break down. Just as high walls, security systems and prisons do not deter crime, punishment and street-outrage will not stop rapes.