Why has India failed to act on sexual violence?

After the 2012 gang rape and subsequent death of a medical student, a crime that was covered globally to India’s eternal shame, the nation was convulsed by debate over male violence towards women and the lack of safety for women, especially at night and in public places. The government of the time set up the Nirbhaya Fund in 2013 in her memory with 10 billion rupees ( about Dh549m). Every year, the government, including the current one which came to power in 2014, has added another 10 billion rupees. The total of 40 billion rupees was meant to be used on improving safety on buses, better street lighting, more CCTV cameras, a special helpline for women, an alarm system on trains, the compulsory addition of an SOS button on mobile phones and special investigative teams to deal with crimes against women.

One excellent proposal was to set up a one-stop crisis centre in every district to avoid women being shunted around from one department to another if they had suffered a crime. This centre would handle access to medical aid, police assistance, legal help and psychological counselling. But there is no sign of it.

Four years later, only 16 per cent of the total has been spent. Even the rebukes of top judges have failed to jolt the government into action. Last May, the supreme court questioned the underuse of the fund and accused the government of paying only “lip service” to improving women’s safety.

Amazingly, the lip service continues. In the budget announced at the beginning of this month, Arun Jaitley, the finance minister, continued the annual ritual and threw another 10 billion rupees into the Nirbhaya Fund. Before the budget, the media had reported extensively on the dismaying fact that hardly any of the money had been spent.

Crimes against women in India are growing and will in all likelihood continue to grow. As more women enter public spaces – for education or work or access to services or leisure – and shake up the old social order, the resistance to this massive shift in their status from men used to controlling them is to be expected. As the rapist- murderers of the student said after their arrest, she had no business being out in the evening with a young man. In their eyes, she got what she deserved.

Last year, official data for 2015 showed a 34 per cent rise in crimes against women over the previous four years. Even this has failed to galvanise ministers into spending the money.

The reason is a very curious feature of Indian political culture: its tremendous, immovable, tenacious inertia. Every decision takes far too long to be taken; implementation of that decision stretches interminably across years.

Add to the inertia the belief held by civil servants and politicians that talking about something is as good as doing something and you have chronic stasis. When this happens over something as important as spending the money in the Nirbhaya Fund, because millions of women will be spared violence, you feel like grabbing ministers and bureaucrats by the scruff of the neck and asking what will it take for you to fund an activity and start it?

The Hindustan Times reported that an analysis by a Delhi- based NGO called Centre for Development and Human Rights concluded that the delay in spending the fund money was because of the “lengthy interministerial coordination that is needed for approval of a project under the scheme”. All these good men and women know how grotesquely the young student suffered and know that other women may suffer similar fates yet they can’t exert themselves sufficiently to cut through the red tape.

If no one in the government can think of good ideas for improving women’s safety, let them ask NGOs. If that doesn’t work, let them look at the schemes that have worked in other countries. And if they don’t want to do that, then let them grab and run with a total no-brainer – build thousands of public toilets for women who have nowhere to go at present. Anything is better than nothing because nothing comes out of nothing.

‘ Last year, official data for 2015 showed a 34 per cent rise in crimes against women over the previous four years