For the political class in India, the statistical burden of the rising number of rapes across the country seems to have stultified the administrative will and ethics. Far from being galvanised into action, the increasing incidences of rape are ending up as opportunities for legislators of various hues to voice their moral rightism. In the past four weeks, there have been three separate and gruesome cases of rape, followed by murder in one instance, in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh (UP), and the temblors of shock once again rocked the country. But in the bunkered fortifications of the polity, particularly of the UP government, the reverberation left no impact.
This deplorable immunity is not state specific; it is across India and it extinguishes every hope that the issue of rape will receive the importance it deserves. Such is the political implacability on this issue that even the keystone incident of ‘Braveheart’ in December 2012 in Delhi, which created an unprecedented public outrage in India, could not make a dent in it. Beyond people’s fury, the mood of governance has allied itself with tokenism. It remains to be seen if the new Narendra Modi-led Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government at the Centre can go beyond that. Can Modi, with his high-decibel rallying cry of performance-led governance, ensure that the law and judicial system are above reproach when it comes to dealing with rape? This can be the immediate exigent measure to come to grips with one of India’s most warped social phenomenon, whose roots are spread under vast terrains — sociocultural and moral proscriptions that condemn and disempower women, endemic chauvinism that flourishes despite changing social mores, blanket social apathy and a law-and-order apparatus that is forcibly yoked to political self-service.
In the face of this domination, many faces of governance have paled and the Modi government needs to prove that it can stare it down. While it is uncertain how soon India can meet the deadline for a revamp of its socio-moral values regarding women, there is no excuse for the BJP to delay setting a timeline to bring down the daily rape statistics in India.
