India: Protests 2.0, pt. II

"A female protester shouts as she is hit with an Indian police water cannon during a violent demonstration near the India Gate against a gang rape and brutal beating of a 23-year-old student on a bus last week, in New Delhi, on December 23, 2012. The attack last Sunday sparked days of protests across the country. (AP Photo/Kevin Frayer)"

Here we go with the second part of Saransh's article: 

"As it has been noticed, information diffusion is no longer a centralized process. Dispersal of information through social media attained unprecedented heights this time. Within minutes of an event taking place, the word would spread all over the country. Such hyper connectivity even though talked about for a while now could be seen real time. Once out there, information spread like wildfire and the task of information dissemination went from one to many. Social media campaigns acted as aggregators of information and people were able to garner huge support in holding protest marches in their own regions leveraging on these platforms
What was heartening to see was that it wasn’t just the women groups protesting for their right to safety but men (the average Joe) in equal numbers fighting for a secured life for their counterparts, the opposite sex. This may be said to indicate a gradual change in the mindset of our young male population particularly those from the urban class.

Aftermath. The rapes haven’t stopped in the backdrop of active debates, discussions and protests going on. The question still lingers. What should be done to the culprits? What should be done to ensure the safety of women who constitute half the population of our country? A few still throng places like Jantar Mantar to raise a voice and keep the momentum built up, but what now?

With so much of independent talk and views, what has become difficult to comprehend is the general stance of the people. It is like the last revolution that India had with its "Anti corruption" campaign. The idea, though extremely noble still has its implementation strategy not yet clearly laid out.

The problem with such scattered revolts is that individual protestors tend to forget who they are fighting against and who exactly is the enemy? Is it that constable who is firing those water cannons at the protestors simply because he had been ordered to or else is it that local mundu (delivery boy) who whistles at every passing girl because he enjoys it? Is it the minister who has 4 cases of rape against him or is it the parents who instill in their children the idea of male superiority right from their childhood?

The question that India needs to ask itself is, “who is the enemy? Why no one cares when local instances of violence take place against a woman in private or public spaces?”

What we as Indians need to introspect about is that to what extent are we willing to intervene to help curb this menace and provide a safe place for ourselves and others. A simple example is that the boy and girl had been dumped and were lying; bleeding profusely on the road after the horrendous incident that took place in December and no one came to their help for nearly 20 minutes. Passerby’s walked, drove past maybe muttering to themselves how miserable the situation of the country is, with not one of them even covering the bare victims with a cloth till the police arrived.  Is this how a country with a great future potential behave? How are we supposed to develop socially and economically if the last few traces of humanity are also disappearing at such a rapid pace? Is this truly our path to greatness and glory or are we just becoming a chump of goons running after our 8% growth rate and not giving a hoot about anything else?

A drastic change is required in the social fabric of our nation as well. People need to change, those 45 year old aunties calling their  neighbor’s daughter a slut because of her "revealing clothes" needs to change. The perception towards a girl needs to take cognizance of her ascribed traits rather than her sex? The young boy who is being scorned at by his father for crying and acting like a girl needs to change. Change begins at home. At this moment this statement cannot hold truer.

However we all know that gender sensitivity is not an add on that can be bolted on overnight. It’s a generational change that would complete not over one but several generations. What do we do in the interim transitional period? Or even more pertinent would be the question, "With all that anger and frustration unleashed during the last month, were you able to do something to improve the situation?" If not, then how are we in a better position?

I am sure that we might not have the answers but at least we are now much more aware of the right questions."

India: Protests 2.0, pt. I

We have been following news from India and have asked Saransh to give an insider's view on what has been happening so far and what is there to be done to stop the violence against women.

In case you have been in cryogenic state since mid-december, here are some news - 0, 1, 2, 3, 4 - and pictures you might want to go through before you go on reading.

"Indian women hold placards outside the residence of Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit during a protest over the gang rape of a woman in New Delhi, on December 19, 2012. The outpouring of anger is unusual in a country where attacks against women are often ignored and rarely prosecuted." (AP Photo/Manish Swarup)

"A public protest in India is usually a hidden propaganda fueled by a few to invoke a false sense of righteousness and purpose in the uneducated section of the society. It could typically be defined as a group of people fighting for a cause using a pre-defined method of demonstration within a defined timeline with orders being dispersed from a common high ranking source. In such cases diffusion involves targeting the needs of the source and coming up with a common consensus or compromise.

Over the past few years citizen awakening in India has been on a slow boil primarily in the issues that concern the common man in their day to day life. But due of the December incident, the scales tipped over. Thousands of people poured out onto the streets not because of a particular incentive that they cared for but out of anguish that questioned why their women were not safe in their own country? Why their women could not enjoy the constitutional right to a safe living? There were no leaders to take orders from this time and a surprising innate sense of cohesiveness between people protesting, with nothing in common but a genuine concern for women was present. These protests or dare I say uprising over the last one month has actually been a movement of the well heeled, the newly sensitized, and the young educated blood of the country who finally realized that change is up to them and that they need to shout and scream loud enough to be heard by our "highly efficient" political leaders. They need to push hard and get the existing legal, political and judicial systems moving.

Day by day people kept pouring in, television channels broadcasted it live and the nation remained glued to the TV to stay informed about the happenings. However as hours passed, angers arose and impatience began to stir up.  Adding fuel to the scenario were the absolutely irresponsible atrocious statements from some of our leaders.  From a peaceful gathering, the mutated into an angry mob of people charging towards the President’s house with no one in command, the protestors were diverse with no common traits which could be used to subdue them leaving the police unsure of their next step. With emotions bursting out of these young guns they charged at the police, screaming, protesting and braving the water cannons in cold wintery mornings. It was no longer about right or wrong, no longer about the outcome; it was simply the anger of the common people that spewed out. It wasn’t for a political propaganda; it was a desperate call for the basic safety of women residing in their own nation.

Its situations like these that demand true leadership, and this is exactly where the Indian government faltered.  Not used to such altruistic passion, with no clear strategy in mind, the police was commanded to respond in the manner it usually would, to maybe an angry fanatical mob. No political leader came out to address this thronging mass of people gathered in the heart of Delhi. No one came out; they just waited for the storm to pass.

Our home minister even drew a parallel between the Maoists and the citizens gathered at India Gate in Delhi to explain the reason for silence by the government during the protests. What you infer from this is the sheer inexperience/ immaturity of not being able to differentiate cases like this compared to any other political rally or terrorist group..."

(The article is rather lengthy, so we have chosen suspense over long reading and invite you to come over tomorrow to see the second part.)

WSYA Power 2 Women: GotStared.at / Saransh

As you should know by now, I ♥ Being a Girl received one of the 2012 World Summit Youth Awards. The award showcases the best ICT solutions made by young people that moves us closer to achieving the MDGs. Ours is - obviously - in the category Power to Women.

As we are far from being the only ones doing things around gender via the internets and such, here you have some more:   

Saransh Dua, @SaranshDua and GotStared.At

I enjoy spending time with family and friends, reading, and traveling.

GotStared.At has grown a lot as a campaign in terms of the core idea behind the movement. Now it is a movement that aims to create a counter culture amongst the people in our society where respecting the other gender would be considered cool.

Over history it has been realized that certain trends tend to catch the fancy of the common man. AIDS awareness, education for the poor, green energies, etc. are examples of causes which, obviously being quite relevant, managed to gain wide spread public support in India when compared to many other pertinent issues as well. We aim to create something similar with the idea of gender as the central theme.

For too long the idea of gender debates, discussions have been a talk amongst the elitist in India. This needs to be converted into a discussion amongst the masses and we aim to do just that. We are all about simplification of complex issues which the public tend to shy away from discussing simply because of the jargon used in the messages sent to the public or the fact that in the age of twitter and face book people tend to be drawn more towards graphic driven content. We create posters and other visualizations portraying complex issues in the common mans parlance. The result of this is that rather than people tuning into what maybe a few experts have to say, to tune into what their community has to say and engage with them on the online platforms provided by us.

 

The idea behind #itsnotherfault came out at a time when most of the public in India was extremely hassled over the widespread assumptions that the girls who were getting molested on the street of India were the ones who were asking for it. This meant that the short clothes and bar hopping lifestyles were causing a rise in the “testosterone” levels of the Indian male and the poor guys had no option but to sexually harass the women as she was apparently “asking for it”.

So the site GotStared.At was initially developed by Dhruv as a place to come in and post what they were wearing while they were harassed. This led to a tremendous amount of virality as it was tackling a very pertinent issue of victim bashing as described above.
People from all over the world started posting pictures of the clothes that they were wearing when harassed and the flow of entries still hasn’t stopped as everyday there is more proof of the fact that no matter where you are, the only thing that will cause the harassment is the perpetrator and his intentions and nothing else.

The world would be a better place if everybody would:
  - See something new every week.
  - Listen to The Beatles, Pink Floyd and the list goes on...
  - Read The Story of My Experiments with Truth, Poor Economics, Think, The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid.
  - Try being genuine and humane.

Before I'm 80, I'd like to... travel the world.