Recently
Maharashtra Home Minister R R Patil assured all women journalists that
the Government would provide them special security when they are out on
their job.
Sounds like a populist measure dreamt up without considering the root cause of why crime in the society is on the rise.
Go
through the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) report which states
that ‘crimes against men are increasing rapidly' and more than 75% of
murders reported in this country are against men.
Take a look at the Murder rate of Men vs Women:
Male Victims-24,441, Female Victims-8,718 Total Victims-33,159
Culpabale Homicide Not Amounting To Murder (Sec.304 and 308 IPC) During 2009
Male Victims=3,529, Female Victims=753 Total Victims=4282
Now
we wonder, can a society provide safety to women, while men themselves
are not safe? The NCRB report summarized the data of crimes against
women and children, but they did not provide any details of crimes
against men.
Since
2005, we have been providing the crime and murder data compiled by the
NCRB to the Government, but they fed it to the bins as media never
showed any concern over the safety of men, which is a need of society.
If
you go through the report of "Committee to protect Journalists " and
click on Gender, it clearly mentions that 97% of the journalists killed
were men.
On
August 24th, a Journalist from UP, Mr. Akhilesh, was killed. But there
was hardly any protest from the journalists associations or any
candlelight vigils by common people of society.
I
am really not surprised given the biased approach prevalent in every
institution. We have death penalty for murder, but the cases are
increasing day by day. It is evident beyond reasonable doubt that
increasing the punishment alone won’t help in reducing crime.
When
someone commits a crime, what are the chances that he gets caught?
Currently the number stands at 10 to 15 per cent on an average.Today the
police can trap any innocent law abiding citizen in criminal cases but
fails to catch the real criminal for months/years.
Once
a criminal is caught the law punishes him for 10 to 12 years and if
someone wants to prove his innocence it takes 10 to 12 years. So, the
root cause is the failure of our criminal justice system and the police.
More
stringent laws mean more power to police/judiciary, which could lead to
abuse of power and more corruption. The failure of police to provide
safety to Indian men never gets highlighted.
All women activists/media are running behind the women safety issue, like in a desert desperately trying to find a mirage.
History itself states that where men are not safe, dreaming of safety for women is nothing but fooling yourself.
Safety/violence
is never a gender issue. Media friends must also understand the pain of
a woman when she loses her brother or son or father.
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