There is a raging epidemic of rapes across the country, one more gruesome than the other, more often in the National Capital Region and around. It would be pertinent to mention the screaming headlines in newspapers ~ a 25-year-old trainee nurse, while returning home from work, gangraped near a Ghaziabad village. The crime was filmed on a cell phone. A 24-year-old woman picked up by two men from NOIDA’s Golf Course was raped in a speeding car. A self-styled 60-year-old godman Falahari was arrested in Alwar for raping a 21-year-old woman in his ashram.

The National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) has just reported that with 38,947 rape cases registered across India in 2016 compared to 34,210 in 2015, the country witnessed 106 rapes a day! As many as 2,116 among those raped were girls in the age-group 0-12 years. Instances of child rape shot up by 82 per cent in 2016 ~ to19,920 from 10,934 in 2015. Almost 40 per cent (1,996) of the total (4,935) rape cases in 19 metropolitan cities were reported from Delhi, which can claim the dubious distinction of leading in crimes against women ~ 13,803 out of 41,761 reported for the 19 metros. Delhi has incurred the sobriquet of India’s ‘crime capital’, ‘rape capital’, ‘stalking capital’, with rape videos on sale, testifying to how perilous the nation’s capital remains, particularly for women who made a distress call to the helpline every nine minutes on an average. Allegations of crime against women in the city include a molestation complaint every two hours, and a rape case every four hours.

Every fifteen minutes or less, a rape is said to be committed somewhere in the country. A testimonial indeed for a nation that claims to be the world’s largest vibrant democracy, besides a hoary, hallowed civilisation. We revere our country as Bharat Maata, where the feminine aspect is apotheosised as devi or goddess, mother, sister, daughter and is regarded as pure and sacred. Yet we witness daily acts of leering and stalking, catcalling and groping. In reality, we remain guilty of horrendous crimes against women, shameful treatment of the girl child, in embryo and after birth.

Rapists keep prowling along the roads with impunity. How does the country maintain its equanimity, and the government its conscience at these macabre episodes, of not only young girls but even toddlers brutalised by runaway youth, many among them juveniles, reinforcing the pervasive public perception of audacity and fearlessness of morbid young minds, administrative inertia, effete governance, and bankruptcy of social systems. Undoubtedly this is a complex issue, it encompasses the steadily eroding filial and societal norms and values as much as the growing alienation from, the state. The rape of these innocent women is, in fact, the rape of India’s soul and spirit; that’s how it occasionally galvanises men and women, young and old, in pain and anguish.

The rot runs deep. A complete subversion of means and ends has turned the life of Indian society upside down, to the point that there are criminal acts which are seldom condemned by the collective consciousness ~ kidnappings and rapes, smuggling and terrorism, thefts and murders, violation of laws and rules, criminals becoming public heroes, mafia gangs looming large with a halo of public acclaim.

With strange impunity, cartels of avarice and extortion grow and prosper, undeterred by the fear of the state or society. India’s society is suffering from multi-organ failures. Its numerous rudderless youth are bereft of values imbibed at home or in school or from the vicinity; indeed, they learn a lot ~ how to exploit and extort, how to seek , not to strive. The Bollywood bonanza on the idiot box fuels this new-found urge among them to ape the celluloid hero and possess the artefacts of fanciful lifestyle; lurid films and songs add to the malaise.

The ubiquity and magnitude of scandals and scams has benumbed the collective conscience. Even khap panchayats, ever so belligerent about community honour, remain inert. An image of an effete, confused, pusillanimous leadership endures. As Walter Lippmann in The Phantom Public lamented, the democratic man remains baffled and disenchanted; he couldn’t make his sovereign voice heard concerning a thousand tangled affairs. The multi-layered leviathan of governance remains immune; there is no clear accountability, no swift, punitive action. As per Delhi Police data, the conviction rate in rape cases in 2015 was just 29 per cent; at the all-India level, it hovered between 24 and 27 per cent during 2011-2013; a case takes an average of 4-5 years to conclude.

Shaken by the ‘high profile’ ghastly cases such as the Nirbhaya gangrape five years ago, one believed the long arm of the state and national conscience would serve as an effective deterrence against such barbaric acts. There is little tangible deterrence. Conviction rates are low, and falling: 44.3 per cent and 37.7 per cent in 1973 and 1983 respectively, 26.95 in 2009, 24.2 per cent in 2012. It transpires that, of the 17,301 heinous crimes reported across NCR in 2014, chargesheets were filed in 5,346 cases and only 919 criminals were convicted. The NCRB data reveals that 2,60,304 cases of crime against women were sent for trial in 2016; conviction was secured in 23,094 cases.

Even after the police identified 2,177 “dark spots”, like south-west and south Delhi as most vulnerable to crime, and recommended provision of adequate street lights, most of them remain defunct or non-existent. Certain mealy-mouthed and megalomaniac netas claim they can fix the system; they keep adding fuel to the fire. Besides the humiliation of registering complaints with an unsympathetic police, shoddy investigation, poor prosecution, trauma for victims to face gruelling court proceedings, delays in forensic reports, there are instances of victims succumbing to pressure for compromise, not to talk out of the fear of stigma. As police generally remains lackadaisical, the judiciary procrastinates.

Tthe police itself has earned notoriety with an abiding image of a force that is coercive, callous and corrupt. Rape is generally regarded as an urban crime. Delhi and its adjoining areas are notorious for depravity and decadence. For some days many years ago, the perfidious Delhi Bagiya tandoor case was the talk of the town. A local leader was in the eye of the storm, an archetypal familiar figure strutting along in the capital city, signalling that the high and mighty, the nouveau riche and the political neophyte, the tough and the strong will get away even with gross savagery inflicted on the meek and infirm.

Bringing to the fore the travails of the Peruvian society, from which a parallel can be drawn for India, Hernando de Soto’s The Other Path represents an indictment against the ineptitude and discrimination of the State in the Third World. The State as a rule legislates and regulates in favour of small pressure groups ~ what De Soto calls “redistributed coalitions” and discrimination against the interest of the large majorities whom this system punishes.

The new paradigm of public anger, the ire and angst of the people is a veritable powder keg, the more so because it is sincere and silent. This catharsis of inner outrage implies that the wages of sin will, in the end, permit no escape from retribution. The country’s mute majority is jolted by the young living with a profound sense of grief, reminding them of the insight from the American singer, John Gorka’s famous refrain, “The old future’s gone”. We may, or may not, yet be a failed state. However, given our decadent values, ethics, and mores, we can’t deny we are a failed society.

(The writer is Senior Fellow, Asian Institute of Transport Development, and former CMD, Container Corporation of India)