Protection of women‏

9-Jun-2005
Dear President (Dr. Kalam)

Abduction and rape of woman and young girls are on the rise. This problem is going out of control every day. We should decisively kill this nuisance once for all. I have tried to consolidate my ideas on the problem and its solution as below

We are horrified by the news that girls are abducted at the age of 4 and given hormone injection for quick development to be sold to pimps at the age of 12. For 8 years they are prepared for proper shape to be used in sex trade. This business is running for many years. Can you please ask PM to go all out against abuse of woman and young girls including kids? This problem is going out of proportion every day with incidents of rape, abduction, sexual harassment, and prostitution. It is an extraordinary problem that requires extraordinary measure. The measure should include

·         Much tougher law to deal with this problem. Abduction and raping should be punished with life imprisonment. Pimps should be jailed for life.

·         A fast track court comprising 5-10 judges should be set up to deal exclusively with such cases in each state. Recently a fast track court in Rajasthan has given guilty verdict in a rape case in 3 weeks time.

·         There should be a special force in every state to deal with this problem. Whenever an FIR is lodged with local police, the case will be taken up by special force. It is a general practice by policemen to ask for bribes while taking FIR. It is not easy to fix this problem at present. Alternatively a pre-printed free post FIR form should be made available at every post office. Victim just needs to fill up their name and address so that special force police can come to take detailed FIR. This special force should report to CBI only. State will have no control over them.

·         Rehabilitation of sex workers. The number of sex worker may vary between 0.5 to 1 million. If rehabilitation means investment of Rs 5000 crore, we must spend that amount.

·         Any men caught in red light should be fined with one months salary or Rs 2000 whichever is higher. Failure to pay the sum the person will be jailed for 3 months. For subsequent offences fine and jail term will be doubled. We need to create centralized database of offenders with recording of fingerprint.

·         Demolishing all red light areas. However social scientist may not agree with this idea. In that case government may give licence to limited number of brothels across the country.

·         Women workers at construction industry or tea gardens are most vulnerable to sexual abuse and harassments. We should create a comprehensive database of woman working in these vulnerable industries.  NGO and woman rights organization members should talk to those women at least once in a year to know whether they have been abused or any potential threat of harassment. This will send a strong message to potential offenders that these women are well protected.

·         Arab marriage – this is a big nuisance primarily in the state of Kerala. We must grab and prosecute those Arabians at all cost.

·         Eve teasing is continuously on rise in the city area especially metro cities. It is the by-product of high society culture and influence of glamour world of show business. It is relatively easy to tackle. Impose hefty fine on eve teaser or on their parents/guardians. Lets deploy 1000 undercover women police everyday all over India to catch eve teaser. I believe within six month such things will come down to a great extent, if not eliminated.

·         Dowry is an age-old          problem in India. We have many laws to curb the problem. But none of the laws seems to be working. You will find only a handful of marriages where dowry is not given. I think parents of the brides are primarily responsible for this shameful culture. It is a social problem. Law cannot help much unless lie detector test of parents of both bride and groom is made compulsory immediately after the marriage. However we can reduce the menace by

o   Forcing both the family to submit their complete list of assets including cash and various loans before the marriage to the appropriate authority.

o   Limiting the amount of gift to the twice of parent’s monthly income.

o   Submitting the list of gifts given before and 1 year after marriage to the appropriate authority.

o   Random verification of the asset of the groom within 1 year of the marriage.

·         Time has come to ban some TV channels and TV programmes that promote soft porn. We also need to censor stupid music video and so called item songs of Indian movies. It has seductive effect on young minds. Channels like Ftv and Z Trend are basically soft porn channels.

·         Celebrity party should not be telecast. It is too glamorous life to be afforded by middle class. Now it is a fashion of dreaming to be a model or miss India or miss state or miss school. India needs more scientist, technocrats or sports personalities than models or beauty pageant. Having said this we feel proud when Indian women become miss Universe or miss World.

·         Hotels/resorts, big and small, should be warned about potential misuse of their premises by call girls or boss with his lady secretary. Hotel management should be fined heavily if found guilty of any immoral act.

·         Banning of all porn magazines/CDs from India and abroad. I don’t understand why government of India has given licence to at least 20 adult content magazines like Debonair?

·         We should also take help of technology to make our society more secured.

o   Install thousands of video cameras in potentially dangerous areas. It is quite common in UK where instances of mugging are very high.

o   Develop a mobile phone like device, which will send distress signal with geographical coordinates to the nearest police station when pressed. This is possible through GPRS system. In US parents can track their children with help of the mobile phone the children is carrying.