Violence Against Women In India: Treat The Disease And Not The Symptom

RG Kar Medical College is a 138-year-old institution with a rich history and several eminent alumni. It is present within a sprawling 26-acre campus in the heart of the city of Kolkata. Yet, it required the brutal rape and murder of a doctor there in the midst of a busy bustling hospital for everyone to know that there is no female duty doctor’s room within the emergency building. The victim doctor had to go to a secluded seminar room to get some rest. If there was a safe space for women within that emergency building, we wouldn’t be seeing the situation today. 

Kolkata is a city that I love despite its warts and consider myself an honorary Bengali. My three years living and working in the city have shaped me into the person I am. I did my residency at the Regional Institute of Ophthalmology, Kolkata. In my first year of residency, we realized to our chagrin that female residents did not get posted for night duties. 

The reason was that there was only a single room for the residents to sleep during the night. There was no separate room for female residents. The male residents had to sometimes escort the female residents to the ladies' hostel before starting their duty. 

In later years, when the proportion of male residents reduced, the hospital was forced to put female residents on night duties. But that too was useless, as most of the cases that used to come in an eye hospital at night were drunk men who had got injured. A male resident or a male RMO had to see the patient first. 

At the time I was a disgruntled idiot who harped on and on about this unfair treatment of male residents. But I now understand the several layers of fear under which women doctors have to operate under in government hospitals. 

I do not mean to imply that Kolkata or my alma mater is any different from any other big city or government hospital in those cities. My experience with both have been happy memories. This incident could have happened in any city and in any government hospital, so let’s not single out either as a root cause analysis.

In the last few days, it has been heartening to see young doctors and many others take to the streets of Kolkata with several medical associations in several cities following suit. I know in my heart that this is not going to change anything. 

Governments will make new committees who will then recommend new laws with more stringent punishments “if convicted”. The arrested perpetrator or perpetrators will either go scot-free after a few years because of “lack of evidence” linking those persons to the crime or would be “encountered” like in the Hyderabad rape-murder case a few years ago. 

This would satisfy the blood-lust of the masses- as I have seen several posts from colleagues and friends these last few days. Then everything would go silent and things would move on as usual. However, this would not change the ground reality of unsafe public spaces for women and not just women healthcare workers in their workspaces.

What we have to address is the deep rot in society that pervades this social media-fueled politically polarized environment. Our reactions to things much lesser than rapes and murders is the problem- from inappropriate behaviour of men ranging from verbal to physical sexual harassment- is seen through the disbelieving lens of a patriarchal society. 

Unfortunately, it takes a brutal rape and murder of a young doctor to wake up the nation against sexual crimes and violence against women in general. As per National Crimes Records Bureau data, 90 rapes a day were reported in 2022. That’s nearly 4 rapes every hour. There are many more not reported because of the stigma associated with sexual crimes on the survivors. 

We as a society are not moved when in Hathras, a Dalit rape & murder victim is forcefully burned in the dead of the night by the police against the wishes of the family. We just watch our TV screens without reacting, when Olympic medal-winning wrestlers who had everything to lose stood by the victims of sexual molester Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh protesting against him. We did not care when the police manhandled our elite athletes who were protesting peacefully. Several doctor colleagues of mine were sharing WhatsApp messages on doctor groups about how the wrestlers’ “agenda” is anti-national and all are falsely accusing the WFI chief. 

These same male doctors are now shedding crocodile tears going on marches on the streets yesterday during the Indian Medical Association strike. It is unfortunate that it takes Vinesh Phogat to get into an Olympic final against all odds for people to take her seriously. 

Our collective conscience was not affected by the molestation, rape, and parading naked of the Kuki Manipuri women, and that the Prime Minister of the country has not moved a finger to stop the violence there which has continued unabated for more than a year. 

Just this last week, a doctor in Odisha was arrested for raping two patients and a nurse in Uttarakhand was raped and murdered. There was no public outrage for these women. These examples are just the tip of the iceberg that gets into the news channels. There are a whole lot of stories that are buried deep inside most women’s hearts. 

I can start with the dark places within the medical fraternity. I have known my female colleagues having experienced subtle to overt sexual harassment from senior doctors right from medical school till date as a practicing physician. Most are intimidated to keep quiet or face further harassment through the power these men wield over their careers. 

Even the most outrageous episodes that manage to reach the institutional PoSH (Prevention of Sexual Harassment) committees just become an eyewash. The perpetrator gets away with barely a knock on the knuckles or at most a resignation- his public reputation intact and the outside world none the wiser. 

It just infuriates me that many of those people today are posting pictures of them next to a poster saying “Justice for Kolkata Horror”. I’m sure many of my non-medico friends know of such things in their professional circles. So this problem is not exclusive to the medical profession. The hospital is but a microcosm of the larger society. 

It should not need a brutal case like this young doctor or the Nirbhaya case to awaken the country. Public outrage should not depend on the caste/class location of the victim or one’s political affiliations. 

Every rape is gruesome, every molestation is gruesome, every incidence of eve-teasing is gruesome, and every episode of harassment even if verbal is gruesome. Every time we as a society disregard the accounts of women and forget the perpetrators of sexual violence just because their victims are alive to tell a tale- is when this vicious cycle starts and it ends in extreme cases like the one we have recently seen. 

If we as a society make women feel unsafe in their neighbourhoods and workplaces, we are failing as a country. Can we progress while oppressing 50% of our population? 

A death penalty for the perpetrators of the present crimes is not going to prevent future crimes of sexual nature but providing safe spaces for women in public areas as well as in their workplaces will go a long way in ensuring we won't see another brutal crime on a woman.

Certainty of adequate punishment by good prosecution for sexual harassment is more effective as a deterrent than the occasional capital punishment or mob lynchings for rape perpetrators. The public outrage, politics and protests should focus on this aspect the most. The anger we all have been experiencing since last week should be channeled to push for reform and not retribution or revenge. Our hospitals are the first places to start cleaning up the mess.

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Initially published on the author's personal blog here

Image by Janvi Bokoliya