Sunday marks the one year anniversary of the death of the 23 year-old woman who was gang-raped in New Delhi in December last year – an attack that triggered nationwide protests calling for harsher laws and better safeguards for women.
While Finance Minister P. Chidambaram announced a new fund for women’s safety in February, nearly a year on, the government is still undecided on how it plans to invest any of the 10-billion-rupees or $160 million.
The Finance Ministry said in a statement that it has received three proposals from different ministries and expects more. It said the fund could be expanded later to accommodate any projects.
The Home Ministry and the Department of Information Technology have proposed spending the whole fund on a system to better trace the location of phone calls from people in distress. It would be launched in 157 cities and would cost 10 billion rupees.
The transport ministry has suggested setting up a system to monitor public transportation vehicles through global positioning system tracking. The idea of the project–which would cost 17 billion rupees to implement in 32 cities–would be to reduce the time it would take police to track down any bus they suspect may be involved in violence against women or other crimes.
A third proposal is from the railway ministry which wants to provide an SOS alert system in trains, which would cost a relatively inexpensive 250 million rupees.
Activists said they want to see the money spent wisely and swiftly.
“It seems the fund was announced without a proper thought on how to utilize it,” said Kalpana Vishwanath, advisor at Jagori, a non-profit organization that deals with women’s rights. “Many good things can be done with this fund and we are hopeful that the government will keep up to its commitment.”
One year since the physiotherapy student was raped by five men in a moving bus and later died from her injuries, women’s safety continues to be a top concern of the Indian public.
In New Delhi alone 1,493 rapes were reported in the 11 months through November, more than double the number in the same period last year. Molestation cases during the period saw a more than four-fold increase. The sharp rise is likely due to the fact that more victims are now coming forward to report such crimes and may not necessarily reflect a worsening security situation, police officials say.
The Wall Street Journal
