Unsafe public spaces

Little has changed since thousands came out onto the streets of the national capital to protest for the safety of women following the horrific gangrape-murder incident on December 16, 2011. News publications are still rife with horrific stories of sexual assault against women. Violence against women in India is a reality that unfortunately isn't going anywhere soon. Deep-rooted social prejudices continue to govern the attitudes of many communities. What should change is how people in positions of authority respond to allegations of sexual assault against women.

The disappointing attitude of institutions like the police to the plight of victims is known to many, although there are now instance s of how individual multinational companies, whose services many Indians continue to utilise, also respond along similar lines. In the first instance, there was a horrific incident out of Gurgaon on May 29. Reports indicate that a 23-year-old woman had walked out of her house after a domestic dispute, and made her way to her parent's house carrying her eight-month-old infant. She boarded a truck but got off after the driver allegedly sought to molest her. She then hailed an auto with her daughter in which three persons were already seated, including the driver.

Instead of dropping her to her parent's place, they took turns to rape her at a vacant plot in Manesar. During the incident, the accused allegedly smothered the victim's daughter as she was crying. The infant died of asphyxia. Hours later, the woman took her child to a hospital in Gurgaon, where doctors said that her baby was dead. Unable to accept this devastating piece of news, she boarded the metro to the All India Institute of Medial Sciences, where doctors also confirmed the same.

The incident itself should send chills, but there were more adverse developments in store, as the police failed to register a First Information Report of the incident immediately, and only included the gangrape charge in the victim's complaint five days later. The Gurugram police have finally arrested three people in connection with the case. However, the area's police commissioner admitted to serious lapses on the part of the police in acting on the victim's complaint. One sub-inspector was suspended for negligence. Nonetheless, this is yet another instance of too little, too late on the part of police authorities. Sadly, this isn't the first case of police insensitivity to allegations of sexual assault, and there is little in the way of deterrence against such attitudes.

However, such a callous attitude to allegations of sexual assault isn't limited to local Indian police authorities. It has recently come to light how poorly senior officials of Uber responded to complaints of rape against one of its drivers filed by a 26-year-old female passenger. The success of app-based cab services among young professional women in the national capital is based on the convenience and safety such services provides, enabling them to travel from one place to another at any time of the day. Instead of responding to allegations of rape committed by one of its drivers with alacrity, the company attempted to question the victim's intent. In fact, a senior Uber executive obtained the medical records of the victim and presented these documents to the company CEO.

Within the company, there were discussions on whether its primary competitor Ola was behind the entire episode in an attempt to disrupt their business. In a desperate bid to wrest back its credibility among Indian consumers, Uber soon added a "panic button" and cab tracking features to its tax-summoning app. According to Uber, these safety features, each requiring two finger taps, were the first of its kind introduced by the San Francisco-based firm anywhere in the world. Despite these measures, one is forced to question the seriousness with which the company backs these assurances. Moreover, in a major rebuke of the company's initial response to the incident, a district court in the national capital sentenced the accused cab driver to life imprisonment.

On the issue of safety, it is imperative to understand the business model at play. App-based cab services like Uber and Ola do not consider themselves as a taxi service, but as players in the dissemination of information that caters to the convenience and safety of its consumers. Consequently, their business revolves around listing available taxi partners on their app, and then to provide customers with a method to connect, and in some cases pay, for cab rides. The fine print on their websites makes it categorically clear that these app-based companies are not liable for any harm that you would suffer by riding in their cabs. Nonetheless, courts around the world have made it abundantly clear last year that Uber should be considered "a participant in any respective violation committed by the driver". What both the Gurgaon gangrape-murder incident and the recent revelations about Uber reveal is that travelling in public spaces continues to be steeped in danger for most Indian women, with little aid from victim-blaming men in positions of power and an insensitive police force.

Within urban spaces, one of the prime areas marked for change by the Justice JS Verma Committee was the public transport system. In its report, the committee highlighted the urgent need for greater safety measures for women, who use public transport. Unlike their super-rich counterparts, most women still use the bus, metro, auto-rickshaw and in particular cases app-based cab services to travel around the city. There are significant differences between men and women when it comes to travel patterns. Though women assume a higher share of a household's travel burden and care-taking responsibilities, they have inferior access to both public and private modes of transport, according to the Global Report on Human Settlements.

Transportation systems have unfortunately taken a long time to account for these differences. The issue is one of political will and better policy implementation by the government (deregulating the outdated permit regulations on auto rickshaws and installing GPS systems in these vehicles, besides a complete revamp of the public bus system, among others). The emphasis must be on rethinking the way we understand public transport and the role gender plays. Speaking of technology, after the Nirbhaya case, there was a move to set up "panic buttons" on smartphones and linking these with GPS tracking software. The Himmat app, launched in Delhi and Jaipur recently, carries the panic button feature, which is used to send a signal to the police control room, allowing it to locate the phone and its user. Only those with a smartphone can avail of this app. Moreover, there is little information on how many times users have availed of the app and the Delhi Police's rate of response.