Opinion A bitter inequity
Badaun gangrape must draw attention to the need to create public spaces that acknowledge women.
Badaun gangrape must draw attention to the need to create public spaces that acknowledge women.
The rape and murder of two girls in a village in Badaun, Uttar Pradesh, would perhaps have been averted if they had access to toilets. To say that is not to deny the existence of caste and patriarchy, which combined in horrific ways to violate the two girls, and made a chilling spectacle of their lifeless bodies. Nor to wish away the alleged complicity of the police, with the dominant Yadavs accused of the crime. Rather, the absence of sanitation facilities in Katra Sadatganj village — 100 toilets for 3,500 residents — and the circumstances in which the two girls were attacked starkly underline how gendered this deprivation is.
Nearly 48 per cent of Indians have no access to toilets, and are forced to relieve themselves in the open. The National Sample Survey Organisation report in 2012 revealed that 60 per cent of rural households have no access to latrines. This shameful sanitation crisis affects the health and productivity of people, stunts children, exposes them to malnutrition, and reveals an abject failure of the Indian state. For underprivileged, lower-caste women, though, this is a particularly bitter inequity, a measure of their extreme marginalisation, and of what little claim they have to public spaces and resources.
Unlike men, women in villages step out of their homes only early in the morning or late at night to answer nature’s call, and that is when the threat of sexual violence is the greatest. Many move in groups to avoid being preyed upon. Nevertheless, incidents of women and girls being raped while out in the fields have been reported in the past from many states. In Delhi’s slums, women have been assaulted while in common toilets. In other cities too, public toilets for women are pitifully few; some close down in the evening, on the assumption that women ought to return home before darkness falls. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has commendably talked of putting toilets before temples in the past. The Badaun gangrape is an opportunity for him to do just that, by plugging the leaks in multiple sanitation schemes. But, more importantly, it is a chance to create public spaces that acknowledge women and their needs. He would do well to listen to the women of Badaun while doing so.
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