ADIL HUSSAIN BHAT

 

Every day newspaper and the electronic
news bulletin apprise us about the menace of crime against women in India. This
is rapidly increasing in spite of implementation of Criminal Law Amendment Act;
2013. Crime against women is not a new phenomenon. Women in every society have
been victims of humiliation, torture and exploitation for a long. Ideologies,
institutional practices and the existing norms in every society have
contributed much to their harassment. Crime against women in India is
increasing at high alarming rate. Either it is rape, kidnapping, abduction, dowry
deaths, wife battering, acid attacks, honor killing, and so on. The observation
of data published by the different agencies shows that, crimes against women is
constantly increasing every year. The country witnessed a 74 per cent increase
in crimes against women over the past 15 years between 1998 and 2011. According
to a report published by the Lok Sabah Secretariat (N0.2/RN/Ref/2013), the
total incidents of crime against women (both under IPC and SLL), which were 1,
85, 321 in 2007, increased to 2, 28,650 in 2011. In 2012, this number was 2,
44,270, thus recording an increase of more than 7 per cent during the year.

After independence, India has enacted
various legislative measures intended to ensure equal rights to counter social
discrimination and various forms of violence. Some of them are Hindu Marriage
act, 1955, Hindu Succession Act, 1956, Hindu Adoption and Maintenance Act,
1956, the special marriage Act, 1954, Dowry Prohibition Act, 1961, Prohibition
of Child Marriage Act, 2006, Article 15, 16 and 21-a and, so on. Additionally, to
decrease the level of crime against women, every year government of India tries
to frame different policies and programmes. But still, level of crime is
increasing day by day and year by year. No doubt, India has decreased gap
between two genders by their policies and programmers. But still demands for proper
mechanism to control the violence against her. Apparently, it looks that all
institutions are empowered by the constitution of India to control this heinous
crime; however, on ground level they are handicapped in this regard or
incompatible to decrease this in heinous crime India.

In addition, India has adopted different
programmer and policies, to improving the educational, social, political and
economic level of women section. In case of Education, literacy was increased
from 0.6% in 1901 to 65% in 2018. Pursuing higher education, government of
India has also introduced some new facilities for them like, free ship,
scholarship, loan facility, and hostel facility. In fact, the National
Educational policy 1986 was also in favor of women. Through this, it was
promoted the opening of Women study centers in colleges and universities.
Recently, new subject ‘Women Studies’ was also introduced in this regard in
some colleges and universities. Regarding Employment, India has achieved a
remarkable increase in the number of women going out of the four walls of the
household and become paid workers in different institutions. The number of
women employees is steadily increasing. Women are working as Doctors, Professors,
advocates, judges, administrators, authors, and personal assistants and so on.

India has empowered women in every field
of life, through different policies and programmes but failed in providing a
mechanism that can protect them from violence. Why governing values failed? The
laws, which India has in this regard, are not compatible with the present
structure of Indian society.  They might
be compatible, but in the traditional type of societies where, women are still
without education and so on. The present structure of Indian society is not
like that the structure of cast, class, and stratified based society of past.
It has changed a lot, mostly by Internet. Internet has totally changed the
structure of Indian society. So, when society changes its institutional
structure changes as well. It means society needs new governing values for its
institutions to be functional. India needs to adopt a new model of development
for society in such scenario, having a capacity to control the heinous crime
against women. The model of development, which India presently prevails, is not
applicable to this network society. Governing values are essential in every
society for its survival. They create social control on society, which is very
essential for the existences of human beings on earth. Keeping in view the changing
laws in society, different sociologists after French Revolution, Industrial
Revolution and Enlighten period also emphasized such changes. In this regard
Emile Durkheim has said Restrictive laws for primitive and Repressive laws for
Industrial society. So, laws are distinctively applicable for different of
society.

Our present social environment is totally
different from every type of society in the past, either primitive, feudalist,
agrarian, Industrial, and capitalist society. Its every institution is affected
by the variable of Internet. The working pattern of every institution and also
the pattern of crime have changed by the Internet. Government of India has to
take a review of every action which is related to internet and make some new
cyber laws to curb cyber crimes. This is because; internet is the only variable
which perpetuates more violence against women through different ways like, pornography,
obscene tick-tock videos and different application with lustful advertisements.
In this post-modern world, every institution of society works under the shade
of internet which changed their whole structure. This new structure of
institution perpetuated more violence against women in general. 

Indian society has evolved through different
stages of change. Its governing values also changed from time to time to make
equilibrium in a society. But the present structure of Indian society changed a
lot by this variable of Internet. It has affected every institution of society
both in a positive and negative way. But the way, it is perpetuating violence
against women is dangerous for any given society. It is high time that the
concerned authorities take a review and frame new laws regarding misuse of internet.

(Author is
a Sociology Tutor at Aims Coaching Center, Kulgam)