We need to manage public spaces, not women

Why in the News

In Delhi’s Aastha Kunj Park, three men posing as police officers gang-raped a 17-year-old, and young couples in Bihar’s Jamui and Samastipur were assaulted or harassed. Each victim was doing something ordinary in public, which shows the state still manages women instead of making public spaces safe.

What does it mean to manage women instead of public spaces?

1. Conditional access: In “Why Loiter?”, Shilpa Phadke, Sameera Khan and Shilpa Ranade argue that women gain access to public space only on proof of “respectability and purpose”.
2. Paternalistic approach: This view manages risk by restricting women, not the space. It is like keeping people indoors instead of fixing a broken streetlight.
3. Vocabulary of suspicion: Anti-Romeo squads in Uttar Pradesh, police overstepping their mandate and self-appointed moral guardians fixing curfews treat ordinary meetings between men and women as suspect.
4. Cover for crime: Because a friendship or a walk home can easily be branded wrongdoing, offenders find it easy to pose as police, as in the Delhi park case.
5. The takeaway: Policing women’s presence keeps them out of public life and hands abusers a ready disguise.

What have reforms since 2012 changed, and what did the Verma Committee ask for?

1. Legal reforms: After the 2012 Delhi gang rape and the 2024 rape and murder of a doctor at Kolkata’s RG Kar Medical College, India added fast-track special courts and harsher sentences.
2. Women at work: The female workforce has grown rapidly, with millions more women professionals, but public infrastructure has not kept pace.
3. Verma diagnosis: The Justice J.S. Verma Committee traced the 2012 crime to deep-seated patriarchy and the state’s failure to keep women safe. The Supreme Court reiterated that failure this week.
4. Verma recommendations: The Committee treated sexual violence as an expression of power, not desire. It recommended gender-sensitisation training for police, better public amenities for women and wider conversations on masculinity.

What does South Africa show about legal and lived equality?

1. Sandton killings: A women’s running club in Sandton, Johannesburg, lost a member on an evening jog. The bodies of 10 women have been found with signs of sexual assault.
2. National disaster: South Africa’s femicide rate is over six times the global average. Last year it declared gender-based violence and femicide a national disaster.
3. Progressive constitution: South Africa’s 1996 constitution protects women even from private discrimination. Three decades on, women still improvise safety, running in groups and tracking each other by phone.
4. Arrests in India: Unlike in South Africa, the alleged perpetrators of the Indian cases have been arrested.
5. Legal versus lived equality: Both societies mistake legal equality for lived equality, so rights on paper do not make streets safe.

Why must infrastructure come before generational change?

1. Slow social change: Dismantling male entitlement and raising boys who need no policing is generational work. Women’s mobility cannot wait for it.
2. Faster fixes: Regular patrols change the odds inside a park. Streetlights and better connectivity change what a walk home risks.
3. Infrastructure as choice: Safe infrastructure gives women alternatives and agency, and makes their presence in public unremarkable.
4. Less room for harm: Together with sensitisation, these measures cut the chances for toxic masculinity to cause harm.

Challenges

1. Moral policing by the state: Squads that watch couples divert police time from protecting women.
2. Dark public spaces: Unlit parks, lanes and bus stops remain common in Indian cities.
3. Slow trials: Judge vacancies and backlogs in special courts blunt the deterrence of harsher laws.

Way Forward

1. Space audits: Municipal bodies should map unsafe parks, lanes and stops and publish repair timelines.
2. Evening beat patrols: State police should patrol parks and transit hubs every evening.
3. End moral policing: State governments should disband squads that target consenting adults.

Conclusion

India has strengthened laws against sexual violence but still manages women’s behaviour rather than the spaces they use. The test is whether city budgets treat safe public space as core infrastructure rather than a response to the next crime.

Government Initiatives for Women’s Safety

1. Mission Shakti, ‘Sambal’: Runs One Stop Centres, the Women Helpline and Nari Adalats for legal, medical and counselling support.
2. Safe City Projects: In eight major cities, artificial intelligence (AI) enabled closed-circuit television (CCTV) cameras and panic buttons cover public spaces.
3. Nirbhaya Fund: Funds Women Help Desks in police stations to make them survivor friendly.
4. Zero FIR: Section 173 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023 lets a woman file a First Information Report (FIR) at any police station.

Matching Previous Year Question

“[2025, GS2, 10 marks] Women’s social capital complements in advancing empowerment and gender equity. Explain.”