Are Women Safe in India?

Are Women Safe in India?

India put a rover on the moon's south pole in 2023.

India built UPI, which now processes more digital payments every month than the US, China, and Europe combined.

And yet, India cannot guarantee that a 26-year-old woman walking to her parked car at 9 at night will reach that car safely.

This is not a moral question anymore. This is an engineering question.

We are very good at building the systems we care about. We just have not chosen to build this one.

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The hard numbers:

→ The NCRB recorded over 4.45 lakh crimes against women in a single recent year, that is one reported crime every 71 seconds.

→ The conviction rate hovers at 27 percent. Seven of every ten accused men walk free.

→ NFHS-5 data shows nearly 1 of every 3 ever-married Indian women has faced violence from her own husband.

→ Rape inside a marriage is still not recognised as a criminal offence in India.

→ A husband can be jailed for stealing his wife's phone, but not for forcing himself on her.

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Where the system actually breaks:

→ The street - A working streetlight costs less than a CCTV camera, and yet lakhs of Indian lanes still do not have one.

→ The workplace - The POSH Act has existed since 2013, but audits show many companies either have no Internal Committee on record or one that has never met.

→ The police station - Women reporting assault are routinely questioned about their clothing and timing before the FIR is even drafted.

→ The courtroom - Fast Track Courts set up after the 2012 Delhi case run on years of delay and forensic backlogs.

→ The culture - At a recent stand-up show, a man told the comedian he had spent "₹370" on biryani for a date and was now "going to wasool" it from the woman. The crowd laughed. The clip went viral. A culture that prices consent at ₹370 will keep producing men who think she owes them.

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The part nobody connects - the economic cost:

McKinsey estimated in its 2018 "Power of Parity" report that if India closed its gender workforce gap, the country could have added 770 billion dollars to its GDP by 2025.

We did not.

Every unlit street in India is not just a safety failure. It is a GDP failure attached to that same lamp post.

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The real case study is us:

The husbands who confuse love with control.

The brothers who police their sisters' clothing, but never their friends' behaviour.

The voters who pick candidates on caste and religion, but never on what they have done for women.

The viewers who hit share on the offensive joke without pausing.

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If your sister, wife, daughter, or mother walked up to you tonight and said, "I do not feel safe in this country anymore", what would you honestly say to her?

And more importantly, what would you actually do differently tomorrow?

That is the question. Sit with it before you scroll past.

✍🏻 Mantra Joshi

Spotted a wrong number or something out of date? Tell me and I'll fix it.