Uber cab rape: Why the ‘boys will be boys’ mentality needs urgent change

Radio cab services allow you to believe that you are safe. Last Saturday, I was out with friends, and I booked a radio cab service to take me home. As is my normal practice, I ordered a cab a few hours before the time I planned to leave. The service, after accepting the request and confirming details, sent a message back an hour later saying that the cab that I booked was not available, and that they would send me another one. I thought nothing of it, until I reached the parking space – there was a cab, with a driver – but it didn’t have the company markings. It was a tourist cab, it had a nice pleasant driver, and I got home without any problems. But, when I got in to the car, my heart did miss a beat – one of my mobiles had the map switched on to track every movement of the journey, the other one was clasped to my ear, while I was talking to a friend, through the journey. I used phrases like "I am travelling in X cab company’s car, have messaged you the car details" etc etc. There is a part of me which laughs at, what it describes as my over the top safety measures. It is the part of me that hates feeling insecure. But there is another part of me that whispers in my ear ‘better paranoid than sorry’. On most days I listen to the paranoid me, sometimes I don’t. 

I haven’t always been paranoid about my safety. For the last two decades as a producer of television content, I was used to working late in far flung places (even within Mumbai). This was before the era of late night drops that most companies employ now. There have been times I have returned home well past midnight, after two shifts of solid work, exhausted to the point of slumber, through areas that are not inhabited. Anyone who has filmed in the areas around Madh Island, would tell you the sense of isolation that the place has. But, the sense of security being breached was never there. Now, a combination of high profile cases in rapid succession, have shaken that sense of safety. And, it is hardly surprising. 

Women are being attacked for the simple reason that they are women. It is a crime of opportunity, an almost Russian Roulette with anyone being a target. The woman who went to Shakti Mills to cover a story, the woman who climbed into a bus on December 16, 2012, a woman who gets into a rickshaw or a cab, you or I – we are all walking targets, except that we don’t know where the attack will come from, or the men involved.

On Saturday evening, a woman called for a radio cab using an app on her phone – it was the Uber app. She believed that travelling by radio cab would provide her the safety and security of being able to reach home without being attacked. Her faith was shattered, her security breached, and her person attacked by a man who threatened to do to her what was done to the girl in the December 16 rape case - brutalise her with an iron rod. 

Naturally, there is outrage about the incident. There are those who want Uber Cabs to be banned. There are those who are protesting outside the Home Minister’s house. There are others who are talking about women travelling in groups and staying indoors, forgetting that most rapes take place at home, by men they know. While Uber should have had stringent background checks, while the Home Minister is ultimately responsible for law and order in Delhi – the fact remains that all of these are ways of diverting attention from a very basic fact – women are seen as targets, because that is how boys are brought up. “jaa rahi hai woh chamak challo", “kya item hai", “why this kollai very di’  are all things most women have heard at various points of time. Most of us have developed filters to block these out – because hearing them means reacting, and reacting means starting a fight which you cannot win. Every time I hear a politician say “boys will be boys” when it comes to rape, the reaction is not a civil conversation or an outrage on women’s rights, but a primeval desire to pummel sense into them. Physically. Along with other women who feel the same rage. 

There is a list of things to improve safety for women. Starting with sensitising the police and judiciary to crimes against women as well as sensitising politicians and leaders on a changing world. You can have better background checks, but those won’t deter the first-time rapist. You can have more police on the street and faster courts, but they won’t prevent a rape at home. So what do you do? Whatever you do will be doomed to failure if boys are brought up thinking every woman is out for the picking and that they have the right to force sexual intercourse on them. If women and girls have to be safe, there has to be a systemic, societal and attitudinal change at the individual family unit. Laws have to be strict. Punishment has to be stricter, and this entire ethos of ‘boys will be boys’ and questions on ‘what happens to the Indian family if marital rape is penalised’ needs to be met head on and demolished. 

The Justice Verma Committee Report, that made so many fantastic recommendations to ensure women’s safety, needs to be accepted in its entirety. The dilutions that were made to ensure its 'passage through Parliament, would need to come back in as amendments and, hopefully, passed. The security and safety of women cannot be held hostage to politicians who want to give a free pass to stalkers and rapists. 

Being paranoid is not going to help. Being angry is not going to help. Getting through tangible change is what will make the world safer for the next generations. It is too late for my generation – we have to live in a world we have made. But, can we ensure a better tomorrow for your daughters and sons, for your grand children? The answer depends on whether we have the will to make hard decisions and make the change.