Month: September 2019

A conversation that began post the December 16 Delhi gangrape has grown louder. We may be miles away from a world free of sexual assault, but we are certainly a few notches closer

If India’s MeToo movement has achieved anything, it is awareness, among corporates and employees, of the law; among predatory bosses that it’s #TimesUp; among women of the power of their collective voice(AP)

So, was it worth it, after all? One year after India’s MeToo movement, it isn’t out of place to paraphrase TS Eliot’s existential question.

On the face of it, there is plenty to be depressed about. A law student who has accused former minister Chinmayanand of raping her had to threaten suicide over the failure of the State to act. Police action was much delayed, though the accused has now been arrested.

The Bombay High Court has quashed a 2004 sexual harassment case against angel investor Mahesh Murthy, since the delay is not “properly explained”.

Actor Aamir Khan, who, in 2018, stepped down as the producer of Mogul after the director, Subhash Kapoor, was accused of sexual misconduct, is back in the film playing the lead. Khan says he was troubled that his decision might have cost Kapoor his “right to work”.

In October 2018, unshackled from decades of silence, an army of women in India joined a global outpouring against sexual harassment. This movement across 195 countries, expressed via 25 or so sister hashtags (#BabaeAko in the Philippines; #SendeAnlat in Turkey), garnered over 36 million impressions between 2016 and July 2019, found a United Nations report, “What Will it Take?” It “enabled conversations and connections that together have shaken hitherto stable systems of abuse and power”, notes the report.

In India, the results aren’t immediately obvious. Men accused by multiple women continue to write, be feted and find work. Others brazen it out. After facing a barrage of accusations, including rape, former minister MJ Akbar has brought charges of criminal defamation against one of his accusers, the journalist and my friend Priya Ramani. “This case has come at great personal cost to me”, she told the court.

And, yet, if India’s MeToo movement has achieved anything, it is awareness, among corporates and employees, of the law; among predatory bosses that it’s #TimesUp; among women of the power of their collective voice.

A conversation that began post the December 16 Delhi gangrape has grown louder. We may be miles away from a world free of sexual assault, but we are certainly a few notches closer.

Is it a coincidence that two cases of sexual assault that predate the MeToo movement have recently surged forward in the courts? The Supreme Court has rejected Tarun Tejpal’s plea to quash charges against him, and asked the Goa trial court to wrap up proceedings in six months. And, in a Delhi court, a researcher has begun her deposition against RK Pachauri, four years after she filed a complaint against her former boss.

“No woman now believes she has to remain silent”, says writer Mahima Kukreja, one of MeToo’s early accusers. Speaking up still comes at a cost, but it’s a cost that many more are now prepared to pay. Every step forward, no matter how tiny, whittles down the foundations of patriarchy and takes us one step closer to a world of equal dignity. Yes, it was worth it. It always is.

Namita Bhandare writes on gender

The views expressed are personal

Concerns about a national law on population revolve around two questions. Will it be coercive and will it further skew our already precarious sex ratio?

Days after Prime Minister Narendra Modi spoke of India’s ‘population explosion’ in his Independence Day speech, an RSS-backed organisation declared that there was no need for sex education in schools.

It’s an astonishing stand in a country where 240 million girls are married before 18 and only 7.1% of married women between the ages 15-19 use contraception. Awareness of birth control (along with sex education) is a key driver to fulfilling the PM’s assertion that keeping family size small is an act of patriotism.

At 1.37 billion people, projected to swell to two billion by the end of the century, concerns about India’s burgeoning numbers are not new. In 2016, a BJP MP introduced a bill under which couples opting for a third child would need government permission. That bill never came up for vote and in July, Rakesh Sinha, a nominated BJP MP introduced another bill that singles out couples with more than two children for punitive action, including disqualification of elected legislators, as well as incentives (cheaper health care, subsidised loans) for those who stick with two.

Underlying these concerns is a belief that it’s one community that produces the most children. So, BJP MP Sakshi Maharaj calls on every Hindu woman to produce four children and minister Giriraj Singh says India’s growing Muslim population is a “threat to the social fabric, harmony and development of the country”.

But, “There is no evidence to show that larger family sizes are due to reasons other than those determined by social and economic circumstances including poverty, lack of basic services and governance,” says Poonam Mutterja, executive director, Population Foundation of India. Analysis by Sachin Mampatta in Mint finds that at current growth trends, by 2061 Hindus will comprise 81% of the population; Muslims no more than 17%.

In fact, fertility rates are declining and, as of 2016, was 2.3 births per woman, finds Niti Aayog. Population growth has fallen from 21.5% in 1991-2001, to 17.6% for 2001-2011.

Concerns about a national law on population revolve around two questions. Will it be coercive? Will it further skew our already precarious sex ratio, as it did in China where the one-child policy resulted in 1.15 males for every female?

A 2005 study by Nirmala Buch reported in Economic and Political Weekly found that states that had adopted a two-child norm as a condition for panchayat elections had a spike in sex-selective and unsafe abortions. Men were also divorcing their wives and putting up their children for adoption, the study found.

“A combination of factors, including higher levels of female education, greater employment opportunities and access to a bigger basket of contraceptive choices are primary drivers to achieve population stabilisation, health and wellbeing,” says Mutterja. Another factor helps: Delaying marriage.

India has already learned the hard way that coercion rarely works. In 1975, Sanjay Gandhi’s nasbandi programme set population policies back by decades. It also cost his mother the elections.

Namita Bhandare writes on gender

The views expressed are personal