The problem with crime against women in Delhi

Why is Delhi India's most dangerous city
for women? Chaotic growth, bad policing and a judicial system close to collapse
    • The Guardian,
    • Jump to comments ()
Women on the streets of Delhi
Women on the streets of Delhi. Photograph: Mark Kolbe/Getty Images

Delhi is known for many things. There is the chaotic traffic, the stunning Mughal-era monuments, the street food, the burgeoning cultural scene that sees a steady stream of European designers and artists heading east in search of inspiration. There is poverty, of course, and the hubris that is the right of every emerging power. And then there is an element that, at least in the west, is less often heard about: the endemic sexual violence.

Almost every day, local newspapers carry stories covering the latest incidents of rape or harassment. In a metropolis with a population of between 12 and 18 million, depending on whether satellite towns are counted, some such cases are inevitable but the recent wave of violence against women has provoked a spate of outraged reports. "Who will stop them?" asked the Hindustan Times earlier this month as it reported that Delhi had seen 25 cases of rape, including several brutal gang rapes, and 42 "molestations" in the last month. One English-language local newspaper ran the banner headline of "Shame on Delhi Men".

"The dazzling streets of Delhi hide a dark truth," it said, publishing the results of a poll revealing that 66% of the capital's women were molested between two and five times last year and that 70% of men "looked the other way" when it happened. What happens when they don't was amply demonstrated last Thursday when a 55-year-old rickshaw driver in West Delhi was beaten to death for "defending his daughter's modesty" from a group of drunks.

According to the Indian government's 2009 Crime in India report, Delhi is by far India's most unsafe major metropolis for women and children. Though it accounted for only 13.2% of all crimes committed in 35 "mega cities" across India in 2009, nearly 24% of total rape cases and almost 40% of cases of reported kidnapping and abduction of women were committed here. Campaigners now want to know why.

One answer lies in the very nature of this fragmented, incoherent city. Over the past thousand years the centre of Delhi has been displaced nearly a dozen times. In recent decades, there has been almost no planning of its extraordinary, exponential growth. The result is a mess, insufficiently uniform to be a labyrinth, too varied to be described as an "urban jungle". Instead, Delhi is a series of independent clusters – of families, of trades, of communities, of wealth and poverty – split by major roads that are impossible to cross due to their chaotic traffic.

According to Ranjana Kumari, director of Delhi's Centre for Social Research, only 37% of the city was ever planned. "The rest is . . . slums, villages, with no proper lighting or development," she said last week. "There are many pockets of crime."

Another reason for the violence is the relationship between Delhi and its hinterland. Residents of the city have historically feared the people of the outlying zones, particularly during times of rapid social and economic change. This has been the case in many western cities at various times, such as Paris's "la zone" beyond the comforting rampart of the périphérique ring road. Many of the current attacks on women in Delhi involve gangs of young men from cities or small towns on the city's outskirts. Several recent attacks have been on people from a different world: young single women working in India's booming information technology sector. One last week saw a 40-year-old repeatedly raped by three men from Sonepat, a tough town 30 miles north of the capital. The coming together of old India and new India is often ugly.

A final factor is the manifest failures of the police. The Delhi policeman is a figure of legend, renowned for sloth, corruption, brutality and casual misogyny. A constable is classed as semi-skilled labour on government pay scales. Almost all the many dark detective novels set in northern India published in the last year or so have featured scenes of torture, humiliation, venality or simple incompetence set in the local thana, or police station. Most are based on true stories.

Combined with a judicial system on the point of collapse, where cases routinely take years to be processed, and an almost total lack of modern forensic capability on the part of investigators, it is easy to see why the stringent rape laws are not a major deterrent. "The policing skill is simply not there to enforce any kind of 'zero tolerance'," says Kumari. She suggests fast-track courts. This is something the new Delhi police commissioner, BK Gupta, has said he favours. Gupta has told reporters that "containing crime against women is a priority" and that in 2011 his force would be "emphasising women-friendly policing in the city". Quite what this means is unclear and, despite dozens of phone calls, texts, letters and emails to his office over the past four weeks, neither Commissioner Gupta nor any of his senior colleagues was available to give any further details.

What the ever-present sense of threat means for many young women in Delhi, however, is obvious. Out on a rubble-strewn pavement at a crossroads on the Delhi ring road last night, as the dusk closed in at around seven o'clock, Nisha and Shivalani were waiting for a bus. Both worked in the nearby office of a rice dealer. Both were heading home. More than half of incidents of sexual assault or harassment take place on public transport, a recent survey found. The two women stood close together and caught no one's eye. "I like Delhi during the day. I like people here," said Nisha, 24. "But not so much at night."

Latest posts

Today's best video

Today in pictures